Friday BriefingNo. 04
Week 46 ·
Power BI drops R and Python visuals, business profiles come to ChatGPT, and Claude builds dashboards
Power BI is retiring its R and Python visuals, businesses can now manage their own profile in ChatGPT, and Claude builds spreadsheets and dashboards.
Three topics of the week
- BI
Topic 1: Power BI switches off R and Python visuals in May 2027
SourcePower BI blog(opens in a new tab)What happened
In May 2027 Microsoft retires the built-in R and Python visuals in Power BI, after which they stop working in every published report, old ones included, along with R-based custom visuals. Python in Power Query is not affected.
What it means
None of them can be rebuilt exactly, so Microsoft points to other visuals or a Fabric notebook. If your reports live in Git as PBIP, a search for "pythonVisual" and "scriptVisual" will find them.
- Tracking
Topic 2: Businesses can now manage their own ChatGPT profile
SourceOpenAI(opens in a new tab)What happened
OpenAI has launched Businesses in ChatGPT in beta, where companies claim their profile in Business Hub, keep details and product feeds with pricing and availability current, and see how often they're mentioned and clicked. Business Agents are US-only for now.
What it means
Any eligible business in a country where ChatGPT is available can claim a profile. For marketing, the interesting part is the list of topics in which your website gets cited, though the conversations themselves stay private.
- AI
Topic 3: Claude now builds spreadsheets and dashboards
SourceClaude(opens in a new tab)What happened
Anthropic has launched Claude Sheets, Whiteboards and Claude Data. Claude Data builds dashboards from sources such as Snowflake or Salesforce and can use metrics your data team has certified, though only in beta for now.
What it means
Dashboards now get made in a chat window, bypassing the BI tool. On the Enterprise plan, admins decide who can use which products and connectors, and that should be settled before anyone hooks Claude Data up to Snowflake.
In brief
- Regulation
EU data protection authorities have picked the topic of their next joint enforcement action: automated decisions in recruitment, including AI. It starts in 2027, and taking part is voluntary.
European Data Protection Board(opens in a new tab) - BI
Databricks Genie now answers data questions in Slack and Teams, generally available. In Slack, everyone in a channel sees the answers by default, and admins can make them private.
Databricks blog(opens in a new tab) - Data
BigQuery measures is generally available. Metrics are defined once and mean the same in dashboards, SQL and agents, where until now they mostly lived in the BI tool.
Google Cloud blog(opens in a new tab) - BI
Snowflake can now pre-aggregate frequently queried metrics in semantic views, generally available. Queries against them get faster.
Snowflake release notes(opens in a new tab) - Security
At German host Mittwald, attackers used the MCP server for AI assistants to read session tokens that could open users' projects. Affected customers are told to replace their credentials.
mittwald(opens in a new tab) - Data
Databricks plans to move into the European sovereign clouds of AWS and Microsoft but gives no dates. Contracts with a Databricks EU entity are already possible.
Databricks blog(opens in a new tab) - Security
Notion AI chat transcripts from under 1% of Notion workspaces were caught up in an incident at its AI vendor Fireworks. The AI feature in your SaaS tool has subprocessors too.
Notion(opens in a new tab) - Tracking
Tag Manager tags that fire on history changes will also count pages the browser restores from its back/forward cache. Page views may go up without anything actually changing.
Tag Manager release notes(opens in a new tab)
Can wait
Databricks metrics as a Power BI model
Databricks can publish Unity Catalog metric views to Power BI as a semantic model. Revenue or margin would then mean the same in Power BI, in Databricks dashboards and in Genie, instead of being rebuilt in every workspace. For now it's a private preview you request through your account team.
SourceDatabricks blog(opens in a new tab)Left out on purpose
- Anthropic has started its IPO roadshow. It matters to investors, nothing changes for customers.Anthropic(opens in a new tab)
- Gemini 4 Hydrogen now runs in Google Search. Google promises more links but shares no click numbers.Google(opens in a new tab)
- Gemini sends Drive files to human reviewers: according to the report, that's personal Google accounts, not Workspace.GitHub(opens in a new tab)
- Claude Fable 5.2 is out and cheaper than 5.1. Test first, then switch.Claude release notes(opens in a new tab)
- United Airlines wants to keep AI agents off its platform. Annoying for travellers, irrelevant to your data.
Our unsolicited opinion
A bot in Teams can only answer data questions as well as revenue is defined. If the ERP, the sales team's Power BI model and finance's spreadsheet each have a slightly different number, the bot's answer is just one of three truths. We'd settle the definition first and invite the bot second, or you'll end up arguing with the bot instead of with finance.