It is long overdue, but time for a new updated version for the Power BI Model Documenter external tool! The latest release lasts from the first week of 2022 and since then close to 6000 people have downloaded the Model Documenter installer directly from the website, excluding the downloads and clones from the GitHub repository. I can’t share enough how happy I am with all the interactions I’ve had with people from all over the world providing feedback, asking questions and willing to contribute to the Model Documenter.

In this post, I elaborate on the newest changes and additions to the Model Documenter. Keep on reading!

What is fixed?

Since the introduction field parameters in Power BI, I have received several issues with regards to generating the vpax file, required to run the Model Documenter. With release v2.1.0 this issue is fixed! The update to this lasted longer than expected, however I’m happy that the nuget package used to generate the vpax file is updated and solves this issue.

Another issue that was raised, was duplicate values in the perspectives table as part of the model structure of the Model Documenter report. This issue is now fixed by generating an index to identify unique perspectives in an early stage during the loading of the vpax file to the Model Documenter templated report.

What is new?

Based on feedback I’ve received from many; I’ve enriched the template report with more insights into your data model! Massive thanks to everyone raising ideas and contributing in all different ways. Below a short overview of the new enrichments.

New enrichments:

• Insights in Power Query parameters and referenced queries – Read more
• Partitions and policies page, to show incremental refresh policies if applicable and show partition expressions – Read more
• Introducing a dedicated page to calculation groups – Read more
• Dedicated page for Field parameters – Read more
• Enhanced security page to split row-level-security and object-level-security – Read more

What’s next?

I do my best to keep evaluating the tool. Please keep contributing to all sorts of ways. Feel free to contribute directly to the repository and open a pull request. In case you encounter a problem or run into a bug, please let me know by creating an issue on GitHub!