AI/BI release notes

This article lists new features and updates for the AI/BI product line. AI/BI is a business intelligence product that includes dashboards for visualization and reporting, plus Genie for conversational analytics.

Release process

Databricks releases updates to AI/BI products on an ongoing basis. All users get the same updates, rolled out over a short period of time.

Note

Releases are staged. Your Databricks account might not be updated with a new feature until a week or more after the initial release date.

November 2024

The following features and updates were released in November 2024.

November 21, 2024

AI/BI dashboards

  • Dashboard embedding is now generally available. See Embed a dashboard.

  • Dashboard viewers can now open datasets in a new tab from the canvas of a published dashboard. Access remains read-only.

  • When cloning a legacy dashboard to an AI/BI dashboard, the migration tool now attempts to automatically convert mustache syntax ({{param}}) to named parameter syntax (:param style). Multi-statement queries and queries that use the default catalog and schema picker in the SQL editor are also automatically converted. See Clone a legacy dashboard to an AI/BI dashboard.

  • Widgets can now be cut and pasted across dashboard pages using keyboard shortcuts.

  • Resolved an issue preventing successful image downloads when viewing a dashboard using the Safari browser.

  • Resolved an issue preventing data from being exported from a dashboard visualization widget.

  • Dashboard visualization updates:

    • Point maps now use new map styles.

    • Custom number formatting can now be applied to data labels in dual-axis charts. See Number formatting in charts.

    • Dark mode color schemes for table visualizations have been improved.

    • Pivot tables now adjust column header widths based on the number of columns in each header.

AI/BI Genie

  • Space editors can now add more tables to a Genie space using the Add Data button in the Data tab.

  • Resolved an issue where Genie would return the text of a SQL query instead of the results of the SQL query. You can still access the query text in the response.

November 13, 2024

AI/BI dashboards

  • Dashboard parameters now support multiple selections and date ranges. See Allow multiple selections and Apply date range parameters.

  • The dashboard dataset editor now supports multi-statement queries. See Write multi-statement queries.

  • Pivot tables now allow cell content alignment per measure.

  • Fixed an issue where HTML content in table visualizations did not wrap as expected.

  • Temporarily removed quantitative color scale legends in maps. You can use categorical legends for individual color mapping by value.

AI/BI Genie

  • The workspace toggle for enabling AI/BI Genie is on by default. To learn how to manage access to features in Public Preview, see Manage Databricks Previews.

  • Genie is available in the following new Geos:

    • Australia and New Zealand

    • India

November 6, 2024

AI/BI dashboards

  • The automatically created AI/BI Genie space based on your dashboard has been redesigned to allow viewers to start a chat with Genie from your published dashboard. See Enable a Genie space from your dashboard.

    Gif showing Genie chat window interaction on a dashboard.

  • New dashboards now support customer-managed keys for encryption. See Customer-managed keys for encryption.

  • Viewers of a published dashboard can now cancel running queries by clicking the refresh button in the upper-right corner of the dashboard.

  • Widgets can now be copied and pasted across dashboard pages using standard keyboard shortcuts.

  • Point Maps now support a size encoding.

  • Date formatting functionality has been added.

AI/BI Genie

  • Genie space authors can now add markdown descriptions to provide users with guidance on using Genie spaces. They can use markdown to include detailed descriptions, link to external user guides, and enhance the instructional content within the space.

  • Users can now download up to ~1GB of query results as a CSV file.

  • You can now apply formatting to table columns that appear in query results. See Format results.

  • Improved handling of different top K queries.

October 2024

The following features and updates were released in October 2024.

October 31, 2024

AI/BI dashboards

  • Multi-page reports are now available. See Create multi-page reports.

  • Downloaded csv files from pivot widgets have columns ordered by rows, columns, then cell values.

  • Databricks Asset Bundles (DABs) now support dashboards. See dashboard.

  • Choose a separate warehouse to run scheduled dashboard updates. See Create a schedule.

AI/BI Genie

The message regarding token limits has been removed. Smart context filtering allows Genie to avoid most token limit errors. Users should continue to build Genie spaces that are narrowly focused on a small set of data.

October 25, 2024

AI/BI dashboards

  • Dashboard authors can now add per-widget filters. See Static widget filters.

  • The date picker widget now supports the last 365 days as a quick filter option.

  • All filters now support default values. See Filter on fields.

  • Resolved error where visualization widgets displayed Cannot read properties.

  • Single and Multi-select filter widgets no longer show None as an option in the dropdown menu. However, dashboard authors can still set None as the default value.

  • Pivot tables can now show subtotals.

  • Pivot tables can now sort by measures.

October 17, 2024

AI/BI dashboards

  • Cross-filtering is now supported for box plots.

  • Range sliders now support default values.

  • Point map visualizations are now available in AI/BI dashboards. See Point map.

  • Email share notifications can now be sent for groups with up to 100 members.

  • The None option is hidden as a selectable option in Single value and Multiple value filter wiget drop-downs.

October 10, 2024

AI/BI dashboards

  • Histogram visualizations now support cross-filtering.

  • Pivot tables now allow conditional formatting for data.

AI/BI Genie

  • Genie now intelligently filters columns, column descriptions, and example SQL queries to help avoid exceeding token limits when generating a response. See Token limit warning

October 3, 2024

AI/BI dashboards

  • Customers can now add queries and visualizations from SQL cells in notebooks to AI/BI dashboards.

  • Custom number formats now apply to tooltips in percent-stacked charts.

  • The dataset selector in the visualization editor now shows schema loading errors for datasets.

  • Cross-filtering now supports multi-select on bar, scatter, heatmap, and pie chart types. Use keyboard shortcuts Command-Shift or Ctrl-Shift to select multiple sections.

September 2024

The following features and updates were released in September 2024.

September 26, 2024

AI/BI dashboards

  • Box charts are now available. See Box chart.

  • Custom number formats can now be applied to totals in pivot tables.

  • You can now select multiple marks for cross-filtering in dashboard visualizations. Hold Shift and click on different categories to apply filters across multiple selections.

AI/BI Genie

AI/BI Genie, a new text-to-SQL data analyis tool that enables users to get data-backed answers to their natural language questions, is now in Public Preview. See Work with an AI/BI Genie space.

September 19, 2024

AI/BI dashboards

  • Pivot table headers can now be sorted alphabetically.

  • Totals will not be rendered in pivot tables if any measure uses the None transform.

  • Filter widgets are now automatically named according to the selected filter fields.

  • Dataset names are now updated in the visualization configuration dataset picker when the dataset is renamed using Suggest name.

September 11, 2024

AI/BI dashboards

  • You can now embed AI/BI dashboards as an iframe in applications outside of Databricks. See Embed a dashboard.

  • Quick filter settings for the Date picker filter widgets now support 3, 6, and 9 months as options. Click the Calendar icon calendar icon on the right side of the date selector to view all quick filter options.

  • You can expand widgets to view them in full screen using the widget kebab menu.

  • You can now copy and share direct links to dashboard widgets using the widget kebab menu.

September 5, 2024

AI/BI dashboards

  • The width of the Values column in pivot tables now auto-adjusts based on the width of the cell value names.

  • An issue that caused the pivot table layout to break when the same field was added more than once has been resolved.

  • Cross-filter highlighting now works correctly in dark mode.

  • Find and replace is now supported in the SQL editor on the Data tab. Use keyboard shortcuts Command-F or Ctrl-F to open the find and replace tool.

  • The time displayed in dashboard widgets now respects the timezone of the attached SQL warehouse, rather than UTC. This behavior is consistent with widgets on legacy dashboards.

August 2024

The following features and updates were released in August 2024.

August 28, 2024

AI/BI dashboards

  • Added customization options for number formats for counter visualizations and pivot tables.

  • Resolved overlap between conditional and default styles. Now, styles are applied from only one source. The source can be either a condition that evaluates to true or the default setting.

  • Fixed zoom functionality for temporal data with categorical scale settings.

  • Addressed chart rendering issues for dashboards where multiple charts use the same source field but applied different transformations.

  • Charts generated using the Databricks Assistant prompt no longer flicker when the dashboard author reruns the data.

August 22, 2024

AI/BI dashboards

  • AI/BI dashboards are now generally available and the default dashboarding tool in the UI. Databricks SQL dashboards are now called legacy dashboards. The names of the related API tools have not changed.

  • When migrating a legacy dashboard to an AI/BI dashboard, the new AI/BI dashboard’s default warehouse is set to the last warehouse used in the SQL editor or the related legacy dashboard.

  • Account users can now scroll through available dashboards on the dashboard listing page.

  • Charts that support number formatting now include Pivot and Counter charts. See Number formatting in charts.

  • None is now supported as a measure in Pivot charts.

  • None transform is now supported for Pivot charts.

August 15, 2024

AI/BI dashboards

Audit logging is now available for query executions and dashboard subscription emails. See actions executeQuery, cancelQuery, and getQueryResult for query executions, and the action sendDashboardSnapshot for email snapshots. See Dashboards events.

August 8, 2024

AI/BI dashboards

  • Charts referencing the same dataset now support cross-filtering, which allows you to click on an element in one chart to filter and update related data in another chart. See Cross-filtering.

  • Custom number formatting is supported for most charts. See Number formatting in charts.

  • Resolved an issue affecting scrolling when selecting dates in the date-picker using the mouse wheel or touch screen.

  • The table visualization now correctly resets row numbers when changing the number of items per page.

  • Charts that use colors to differentiate between categories now maintain their color mappings when filters are applied.

August 1, 2024

AI/BI dashboards:

  • You can now configure visualization widgets to use static widget parameters. See Static widget parameters.

  • You can now set default values for the following filter types:

    • Single value

    • Multiple values

    • Date picker

    • Date range picker

    • Text entry

  • Viewers without edit access no longer see the toolbar for adding widgets while viewing a draft dashboard.

  • Share to anyone in my organization now shares to account-level users. See Share a dashboard

July 2024

The following features and updates were released in July 2024.

July 25, 2024

AI/BI dashboards:

  • Null indicators now inform dashboard authors of hidden nulls in charts.

  • Totals in pivot tables are now calculated in the backend, ensuring accuracy even when visualized data is truncated. Totals for all aggregations are supported.

  • Histograms now support a bin width of zero.

  • Dashboards can now be managed using Terraform. For details, see the Databricks Terraform documentation.

AI/BI Genie:

  • You can now add a link to a Genie space from an AI/BI dashboard. When dashboard viewers access the link, they can use the Genie space to answer their questions.

  • Use the Create a Genie space tool to create a new Genie space based on an AI/BI dashboard with one click. The Genie space uses your current draft dashboard to create the initial framework for a Genie space.

July 18, 2024

User interface updates

AI/BI dashboards:

  • The assistant can now help you edit chart axis titles and control the visibility of chart data labels.

  • You can now assign multiple measures to pivot tables.

  • Added more relative datetime options, such as Last 10 seconds and Last minute, for datetime parameter controls.

  • Provided a Now option in date picker control widgets for filtering datetime values.

  • Improved exception handling to allow editing widgets with upload errors.

  • Raised the size limit for dataset filtering on fields to be performed locally, with no query execution in the backend, to 100,000 rows or 100MB.

AI/BI Genie:

  • Time comparison questions return more accurate responses.

  • Responses to questions about ranked values now hide intermediate ranking columns to improve response readability.

  • New special-case handling prevents unintended application of certain optimizations.

  • The back button has been replaced by breadcrumbs for easier navigation.

  • You can now expand and view table details in the Data tab.

  • Improved handling of non-English characters prevents premature prompt submissions from special key combinations.

July 11, 2024

AI/BI dashboards:

  • Right-clicking on a dataset now shows the option Suggest name. This tool uses table metadata to automatically rename your dataset.

  • You can opt to hide the legend in a visualization widget.

  • Widget titles that are truncated now show the full title on hover.

  • Widgets now show a truncation warning if full results are not shown.

  • The Databricks Assistant for visualization authoring reverts to the original title upon rejecting a recommendation.

  • Published and draft dashboard views are now captured in AI/BI dashboard audit logs with the event names: getDashboard, getPublishedDashboard, and getDashboardDetails. See Dashboards events.

  • You can now set default values for Single value and Multiple values filter types. See Filter on fields.

  • Fixed an issue preventing users from switching from empty pivot to the other chart types in dashboard visualization editor.

  • Pivot column header text no longer overflows if it exceeds column width.

July 4, 2024

AI/BI dashboards:

  • Features:

    • Default values are now available for Single value and Multiple values filter types.

    • Counter charts now support conditional formatting and new text styles.

    • Added more color categories to the Color/Group by section of the dashboard visualization editor.

  • Fixes:

    • Descriptions in widgets now respect left padding when wrapping text.

    • Median aggregations are now preserved when migrating from Legacy dashboards to AI/BI dashboards.

  • Change:

    • The option to create a legacy dashboard has been removed from the New menu in the workspace sidebar and the Create menu in the file browser.

API support:

June 2024

The following features and updates were released in June 2024.

June 27, 2024

AI/BI dashboards:

  • The API for listing dashboards is now available. See List dashboards.

  • Fixed an issue where histograms occasionally failed to support decimal bin widths.

  • Added support for customizing scatter point size and opacity.

June 20, 2024

AI/BI dashboards:

  • Widgets created by Databricks Assistant now come with a title.

  • Users can now adjust point sizes and opacity in scatter charts.

  • Null values are now formatted consistently across counter, pivot, and table charts.

  • Improved blank canvas hint text when datasets have been created.

  • Fixed an issue where dashboards failed to rerun queries after being reopened from the file browser.

  • Fixed an issue that made it difficult to drag text box widgets.