AI/BI release notes 2025

The following AI/BI features and improvements were released in 2025.

March 2025

The following features and updates were released in March 2025.

March 13, 2025

AI/BI dashboards

• New audit log emitted for dashboard downloads: Downloading dashboards as PDF now triggers the audit log event triggerDashboardSnapshot.
• Dashboards are supported as a task type in workflows: Create a job task with the Dashboard task type to refresh dashboard results and optionally send subscription emails.

AI/BI Genie

• Easier to understand audit events: The updateConversationMessageFeedback audit event now includes a feedback_rating field to quickly see whether a rating is positive or negative.
• Genie Conversations API in Public Preview: The Genie Conversation API is now in Public Preview. Use the API to ask questions, retrieve generated SQL and query results, or get the details associated with a Genie space. For more details, see Set up and manage an AI/BI Genie space.
• Genie data sampling is now available in gated Public Preview: This feature improves Genie’s ability to translate user prompts into the right column and row values. To test this feature, contact your Databricks account team.
• Genie now self-reflects: As Genie generates SQL, it self-reflects to fix issues and return higher-quality answers. This improves Genie’s ability to author filter conditions and fewer SQL errors.
• Improved keyword contextualization: Genie has improved its ability to provide relevant context in its responses based on keywords in the user question.
• Improved benchmark evaluation logic: Genie now supports column and row reordering and permits extraneous column selection in SQL results.
• Calculated measures from dashboards better supported: Genie spaces created from dashboards are now better able to use any calculated measures defined on the dashboard.

Visualizations

• Fixed null value styling: Pivot table cells with null values now display with the correct styling.
• Sorting with filters now supported: Single-value and multi-value filters now support sorting.

March 6, 2025

Dashboards

• New visual indicators for column names: Duplicate column names are now greyed out to indicate lack of support.
• Fixed an issue with color mappings: Color mappings in the visualization editor now align with the renderer.
• Restricted character set: The name propertycustomer_ref_id in the serialized dashboard format is now restricted to alphanumeric characters, hyphens, and underscores. Before, there was no restriction in the character set.
• Dual-axis charts now support zoom: You can now click and drag to zoom in on non-combo dual-axis charts.
• Inclusive relative date ranges: The dates you select when choosing relative date periods in the date range picker, such as last week or last month, are now inclusive of the current date. See Date range picker.
• Freeze table columns: You can now freeze table columns to the left side of the table display. Columns stay in view as you scroll right on the table. See Dashboard visualizations.
• Fixed an issue with combo charts: Resolved misalignment between x-axis labels and bars when using a temporal field on the x-axis.

Genie

• Improved benchmarks: The benchmark evaluation function now more accurately detects incorrect results.

February 2025

The following features and updates were released in February 2025.

February 27, 2025

AI/BI dashboards

• Relative dates update: The relative dates in date and date range pickers now include the current day.
• Query history update: When viewing the query history, scheduled dashboard update queries now display the dashboard publisher as the user instead of System Service Principal.
• Error message improvement: Error messages for calculated measures now indicate that filter clauses are not supported.
• Publish notification feature: Dashboard authors can now send publish notifications when updating a dashboard. See Publish a dashboard.
• Ask Genie about specific charts: You can now ask questions about specific charts in Genie-enabled published dashboards. Genie uses the selected chart's title and dataset query as context for the conversation. See Ask Genie about a specific chart.

AI/BI Genie

• File uploads in gated Public Preview: A new feature that allows users to upload CSV and Excel files directly to a Genie space. See Upload a file. To enable file uploads, contact your Databricks account team.
• X-axis formatting: The x-axis for Combo charts now applies formatting for improved readability.
• Consistent security settings: Genie now respects the workspace level setting to enable Results tables clipboard features in admin security settings. See Manage your workspace.

February 21, 2025

AI/BI dashboards

• Quickly navigate to the most popular dashboards: Dashboard thumbnails are now shown for all dashboards published with embedded credentials. The dashboards listing page attempts to show thumbnails for the four most popular dashboards you can access. Dashboards you don't have access to do not appear on the listing page.

• Pivot tables support more cells: Pivot tables now accommodate up to 1,000 rows and 1,000 columns, up from the previous limit of 100 rows and 100 columns.

• Edit box plot display names: You can now edit the Y-axis display names in box plots, enabling a more customized presentation.

• Multiple Y fields for generated charts: Visualizations generated using the Databricks Assistant now support multiple Y fields.

• ColorBy performance optimization: Rendering is now optimized for charts with a very large number of groupings. This optimization prevents performance issues and crashes.

AI/BI Genie

Edit parameters in a response: You can now edit the parameter values used to generate a response to a trusted question. See Review a response.

• View data sources: Genie now displays the tables used as source data for each response.

• Avoid unnecessary wait times: You can now cancel a SQL query execution during the Waiting for warehouse state to avoid unnecessary wait times.

• Improved error messaging: Removed duplicate error messages from generated visualizations.

February 13, 2025

AI/BI dashboards

• Fixed dashboards listing page: An issue that caused some dashboards to be excluded from the listing page has been resolved. The listing page now shows all dashboards that you have permission to access.

AI/BI Genie

• Improved reasoning about generated SQL: Genie’s model for translating text into SQL now uses Chain-of-Thought reasoning to break down questions into manageable steps: first, identifying useful columns; next, planning the SQL generation; and finally, combining the parts into a single SQL query. This upgrade results in more robust and accurate SQL translations. You should see improvements in Genie’s ability to pick precise filter conditions and improved reasoning on nuanced questions.
• Fixed progress indication: Resolved an issue where Genie was showing a Still thinking status after a result had already been returned.
• Sharing a Genie space now sends an email notification to the recipient. See Share a Genie space.

Visualizations

• Fixed zoom behavior:
  • Resolved an issue where zooming in on a chart altered the colors associated with quantitative values.
  • Resolved an issue that prevented zooming in on categorical charts with temporal fields.
• Improved chart migration: Visualizations created in the SQL editor, legacy dashboards, and notebooks that do not include sorting now migrate as expected.

February 6, 2025

AI/BI dashboards

• Customize sort order and label angles: Control the sorting order of data on the axis and adjust the angle of labels in visualizations. See Format axis settings.
• Custom column widths for tables: All column types in table visualizations now support custom widths. Drag the handle at the top of a column to adjust its size.
• Clone dashboard pages: You can now duplicate dashboard pages. See Clone a page.
• Updated timezone handling: Visualizations now use the timezone from the dataset or compute resource instead of the browser settings. If a widget includes two columns with different time zones, the second is formatted to match the first.

AI/BI Genie

• Hide visualizations in the chat window: Visualizations include a collapse icon in the upper-right corner that you can use to hide a chart. Click Show visualization to expand. To learn more about working with visualizations in Genie, see Generate visualizations.

January 2025

The following features and updates were released in January 2025.

January 30, 2025

AI/BI dashboards

• Create calculated measures: Perform calculations and visualize new data fields without modifying the SQL queries that define a dataset. For details, see What are calculated measures?.
• Sort dashboards by name: You can now sort dashboards by name on the dashboard listing page.
• Expanded data display in charts: Dashboard visualizations now support up to 15,000 rows of data.

AI/BI Genie

• Genie-generated visualizations: When Genie detects that a visualization would improve response clarity, it includes one with the result.
• Improved warehouse status visibility: Genie now displays a Waiting for warehouse message when a request is queued and awaiting processing by the associated SQL warehouse.
• Updated warehouse picker UI: The warehouse picker in Genie spaces now automatically selects the first running warehouse from the list. Its updated appearance matches other compute selectors in the Azure Databricks UI.
• Fixed results table issue: Genie now reliably includes table results in responses.

January 23, 2025

AI/BI dashboards

• Publish using a service principal: You can now use the REST API to publish dashboards with service principal credentials. See Use a service principal to publish and share dashboards.
• Reorder datasets: Drag and drop dataset names to change their order in the Data tab.
• Cross-filtering support for point maps: Cross-filtering is now available for point map charts. For a list of chart types that support cross-filtering, see Cross-filtering.
• New scatter chart scaling options: A Log (Symmetric) scale function is now available for scatter charts.
• Fixed range sliders: The Range slider filter now correctly limits items to those within the selected range.
• Fixed tooltips: Tooltips now display accurate totals for charts with labels.

AI/BI Genie

• Fixed table identifier quoting: Genie now properly quotes table name identifiers in queries by adding backticks around each part of the catalog, schema, and table name. For example, catalog.schema.table is now formatted as `catalog`.`schema`.`table` to prevent TABLE_OR_VIEW_NOT_FOUND errors.
• Fixed ANY keyword error: Genie now replaces the ANY keyword with the IN keyword when querying list columns to avoid common SQL errors.
• Improved query descriptions: Genie now uses an updated model to generate more precise and accurate query descriptions.

January 16, 2025

AI/BI dashboards

• Download as PDF: You can now download a PDF copy of a published dashboard. See Download a published dashboard.

• Visually identify datasets in use: A visual indicator now marks whether datasets in the data tab are used in visualizations on the canvas. Datasets that support canvas widgets have a blue icon and a bolded title. Unused datasets have a grey icon and a non-bolded title.

  

• Generate new charts with Databricks Assistant: Databricks Assistant now supports creating dual-axis charts from natural language requests.

• COUNT(*) added as a measure: When choosing fields from the visualization editor, COUNT(*) is now in the measure section.

• Fix: Hover lines now appear correctly on horizontal charts.

• Fix: Downloading datasets as Excel files now preserves the correct numeric data types.

AI/BI Genie

• See warehouse details: The Default Warehouse selector in the space settings has been updated to display status, size, and warehouse type. You can also type to filter and select warehouses.

January 9, 2025

AI/BI dashboards

• Fix: Filters and context menus now appear in full-screen mode as expected.
• Show page names: Dashboard page names can now display 50% more characters before being truncated.

AI/BI Genie

• Improvement: Genie now correctly responds with the number of tables in a space.
• Improvement: Reduced the frequency of PARSE_SYNTAX_ERROR issues triggered by improper use of backticks.