AI/BI release notes 2026

The following AI/BI features and improvements were released in 2026.

March 2026

Connect external data sources to Chat (Beta)

March 23, 2026

You can now connect external data sources such as Google Drive or SharePoint to a Chat conversation, allowing Chat to search your company documents when answering questions. Each user authenticates individually using their own credentials. You can also connect custom MCP servers as additional data sources.

Dashboard enhancements and bug fixes

March 18, 2026

• Date filter keyboard input: Fixed an issue where entering a date value via keyboard for relative date ranges failed to accept the input.
• Dashboard theme color palette: Fixed a bug where the visualization color palette was hidden when editing dashboard themes at the workspace level.
• Pivot table column width: The minimum width of pivot table columns is now 30px, reduced from 50px.
• Drill through for pivot tables: Drill through is now available for pivot tables.
• Dashboard snapshot audit logs: Fixed a bug where audit logs for triggerDashboardSnapshot included internal system calls from thumbnail generation and probe snapshots. These internal requests are now excluded from the audit logs.
• Custom font data labels: Custom dashboard fonts now apply to data point labels.
• Forecast x-axis time binning: Forecast visualizations now properly apply x-axis time binning.
• Pivot table date cell formatting: Pivot table date cells no longer wrap at hyphens.
• Dashboard subscription audit logs: Audit logs now include the sendDashboardSnapshot event when a dashboard subscription sends a snapshot to a Slack or Teams destination. See AI/BI dashboard events.

Chat in Databricks One (Beta)

March 13, 2026

Chat in Databricks One is now available in Beta. Chat provides a unified, full-screen interface for talking to Genie. Genie routes your question to the most relevant Genie space or directly answers your question agentically using available data and data assets. See Chat in Databricks One .

Dashboard enhancements and improvements

March 12, 2026

• Dashboard embedding for external users is generally available: Embed AI/BI dashboards in external applications without requiring viewers to have Azure Databricks accounts. See What is embedding for external users?.
• Hide Databricks logo in embedded dashboards: Externally embedded dashboards now support hiding the Databricks logo using the hideDatabricksLogo option. See Hide the Databricks logo.
• Metric view lineage highlighting: Hovering over metric views in the lineage panel now highlights the visualizations built on those metric views.
• Certification and deprecation icons in lineage: Data objects in the dashboard lineage panel now show their certification or deprecation status.
• Clear individual active filters: You can now remove a single filter selection from the active filter bar without resetting all active filters.
• Mobile layouts: Dashboards now automatically render in a mobile-friendly layout when viewed on small screens in Databricks One. See Mobile layout.
• Custom subscription email subjects: When configuring a dashboard subscription, authors can now edit the subject line of notification emails sent to subscribers.
• Accounting-style number formatting: Number fields now support accounting-style formatting, which displays negative values in parentheses and vertically aligns currency symbols.
• Custom fonts: Dashboard authors can now select custom fonts for dashboards. Fonts must be preinstalled on viewer machines. If a font is not available, dashboards fall back to Databricks default fonts. See Set a custom font.
• Genie Code for dashboard authoring (Public Preview): Automate multi-step dashboard workflows using natural language prompts to create datasets, visualizations, layouts, and filters.

Account-level Databricks One (Beta)

March 12, 2026

Account-level Databricks One is now available in Beta. Users can now discover and interact with AI/BI dashboards, Genie spaces, and Databricks Apps from all workspaces in their account from a single entry point. Account-level Databricks One provides a unified homepage, cross-account search, and recommendations and favorites across workspaces.

Dashboard enhancements and improvements

March 5, 2026

• Embedded dashboard kebab menu: The Copy link to widget option is no longer shown in the kebab menu for embedded dashboards.
• Dashboard import warehouse ID fix: Importing a dashboard without a specified warehouse ID no longer clears the previously selected warehouse.
• End of life for legacy dashboards: Legacy dashboards (previously referred to as Databricks SQL dashboards) have reached end of life and are no longer available.
• Bar and line chart x-axis spacing fix: The x-axis spacing of temporal data labels is now consistent between bar and line charts.
• Pivot table drill through: You can now drill through data in pivot tables.
• Point map recentering on filter changes: Point maps automatically recenter to show relevant data when a filter is applied.
• AI chart suggestion fix: AI generated chart suggestions no longer disappear in some scenarios.
• Waterfall chart faceting: You can now apply faceting (also known as trellis or small multiple charts) to waterfall charts.

February 2026

Dashboard enhancements and improvements

February 26, 2026

• Unity Catalog metric view lineage: Dashboard info now shows Unity Catalog metric views in the lineage section.
• Dashboard refresh cancellation: Cancelling a dashboard refresh now shows the last available data instead of an error.
• DD-MM-YYYY date format: The DD-MM-YYYY date format is now available for date fields.
• Date range parameter "All" selection: Date range parameters now support All. When All is selected, the parameter value is null and all rows are returned. See Apply date range parameters.
• Genie agentic experience (Public Preview): Genie for dashboard insights now offers an agentic experience (Public Preview) by default.
• Point map recentering: Point maps now recenter upon relevant points when a filter is applied.
• Datetime drop-down menu fix: Fixed an issue where datetime drop-down menus could not be set in the global filters panel.

Dashboard visualization and interaction enhancements

February 19, 2026

• Pivot table hierarchies: You can now expand and collapse hierarchies in pivot tables.
• Stacked bar chart labels: Stacked bar charts now support showing min/max label values and total labels.
• Area and line chart sorting: Area and line charts now support sorting axes by measures.
• Dashboard content search: Global search in Lakehouse and Databricks One now matches on dashboard content, not just titles.
• Chart faceting: Charts now support faceting (also known as trellis or small multiple charts), rendering one chart per dimension value. See Faceting.

Dashboard enhancements and improvements

February 12, 2026

• Workspace admin theme permissions: Fixed a bug where workspace admins couldn't edit workspace-level themes.
• Level of detail calculations: Level of detail calculations now support EXCLUDE syntax on multiple fields. See Defining expressions at a coarser level of detail
• Color legend sorting: You can now sort color legends by another field in visualizations.
• Pivot table cell styles: Pivot tables now support HTML, JSON, and image cell styles.
• Pivot table cross filtering: Pivot tables now support cross filtering.
• Table resizing: You can now resize table and pivot table headers and columns.
• Histogram and funnel chart labels: Histogram and funnel charts can now show "total" labels.
• Assistant for dashboard authoring improvements: Assistant for dashboard authoring now supports creating labels and setting color encoding values.
• Multi-select parameter enhancement: Multi-select parameters now support selecting all values. See Allow multiple selections.
• Table visualization enhancements: Table visualizations now support aggregations and measures, inherit formatting from locales, and support background color styling, including conditional formatting and color gradients. As a result of this change:
  • Table formatting now uses the visualization library's formatting capabilities, ensuring consistency and allowing inheritance from locale settings.
  • The resize columns option has been removed to reduce bugs. Set column widths in the Style tab instead.
• Dashboard grid expansion: Dashboard layouts in the canvas now support 12 columns across instead of 6, providing more flexibility for widget placement.

Dashboard enhancements and new capabilities

February 5, 2026

• Parameterized dashboard tasks: Dashboard tasks in Jobs can now be parameterized, allowing job parameters to dynamically set dashboard filter values at runtime.
• Workspace-level dashboard themes: Dashboard themes can now be configured at the workspace level. See Manage AI/BI dashhoard workspace themes.
• Top-aligned text widgets: Text widgets now default to top-aligned text.
• Refresh-only schedules for individual data permissions: Authors and viewers of dashboards published with individual data permissions can now create refresh-only schedules that trigger cache refreshes without sending notifications, improving dashboard load times. See Subscribe to an existing schedule.
• Genie spaces enabled by default: Genie is now on by default for published dashboards, allowing viewers to ask questions using the Ask Genie button.
• Tag search: Tag search is now supported for dashboards, allowing users to find dashboards by their assigned tags.
• Assistant for dashboard authoring (Beta): Authors can now automate multi-step dashboard workflows using natural language prompts to create datasets, visualizations, layouts, and filters. The legacy inline-visualization prompting experience now redirects to the Assistant side panel.

Databricks One app thumbnail support

February 5, 2026

• App thumbnail uploads: Customers can now upload thumbnails as the preview image for Databricks apps.

Partner-powered AI features are now supported in the Canada, Brazil, and United Kingdom Azure Geographies

February 4, 2026

Partner-powered AI features in Canada, Brazil, and the United Kingdom that run with cross-Geo processing disabled now use models hosted in the same Azure Geography as the workspace. This aligns model hosting with Azure Geographies and ensures consistent regional availability.

Impact on user experience:

• Most AI features continue to work as expected with no action required.
• Some AI capabilities that depend on models not currently hosted in your Azure Geography might no longer be available with cross-geo processing disabled. See Availability of Designated Services in each Geo for more information on which features require cross-geo processing.
• If you rely on a feature that is no longer available in your Azure Geography, enable cross-geo processing to allow that feature to continue using models hosted outside your Azure Geography.
• For workspaces in these Azure Geographies, AI features will only use Databricks-hosted models if both partner-powered AI features and Enforce data processing within workspace Geography for Designated Services settings are disabled. If partner-powered AI features is disabled and Enforce data processing within workspace Geography for Designated Services is enabled, then AI assistive features are not be available in the workspace.

January 2026

Dashboard visualization and data improvements

January 29, 2026

• Fixed access request availability: Resolved an issue where the option to request access was not available and a "Resource not found" error was incorrectly shown.
• Full-width pivot tables: Widgets now render pivot tables at full width for better readability.
• Tooltip encodings on charts: Combo and dual-axis charts now support tooltip encodings.
• Image rendering in pivot tables: Cells can now display images directly in pivot tables.
• Dark mode scrollbar visibility: Scrollbars are now easier to see when using dark mode.
• Increased pivot data download limits: Download limits now support up to 10,000 rows by 1,000 columns for pivoted data.
• Fixed filter paste behavior: Resolved an issue where pasting a comma-separated list into a single-select filter only parsed the first element instead of keeping all values.
• Fixed stacked chart label rendering: Labels on stacked charts with a quantitative x-axis now render correctly in notebooks and in the SQL Editor.

Databricks One search and discovery improvements

January 22, 2026

• Databricks Apps filtering: Databricks One consumers can now filter to include or exclude inactive Databricks apps when browsing. Inactive apps are those with a status other than Running, such as Stopped, Deploying, or Crashed.
• Dashboard widget title search: Search now supports dashboard widget titles.
• Enhanced search rankings: Certified and favorite content is now boosted in search rankings in Databricks One.
• Recents and favorites in discovery: Recents and favorites are now surfaced in the For you page.

Dashboard subscriptions, custom calculations, and visualization improvements

January 22, 2026

• Account-level user subscriptions: Dashboard authors can now subscribe account-level users to scheduled dashboard updates. See Manage scheduled dashboard updates and subscriptions.
• Microsoft Entra ID user subscriptions: Dashboard authors can now subscribe users in Microsoft Entra ID to scheduled dashboard updates when automatic identity management is enabled.
• Custom calculation references: Custom calculations can now reference custom calculations on dashboard datasets. See Referencing other calculations.
• Cumulative totals on stacked bar charts: Stacked bar charts can now display the cumulative total of values.
• Improved tooltips on combo and dual axis charts: Tooltips are now easier to access when hovering over combo and dual axis charts.
• Fixed static widget filter drop-down menu values: Resolved an issue where values in static widget filter drop-down menus were not available when applied on a metric view.
• Fixed text widget character limit error message: Resolved an issue where trying to save a dashboard with text widgets exceeding 50,000 characters would fail without an error message. An error message now appears informing the author.

Databricks One is generally available

January 20, 2026

Databricks One is now generally available. Databricks One is a simplified user interface designed for business users, providing a single, intuitive entry point to interact with data and AI in Azure Databricks without requiring technical knowledge of compute resources, queries, models, or notebooks. Using Databricks One, business users can view and interact with dashboards, ask data questions in natural language using Genie, and use custom-built Databricks Apps that combine analytics, AI, and workflows. See What is Databricks One?.

Level of detail expressions for custom calculations

January 19, 2026

Level of detail expressions let you control aggregation granularity independently of the dimensions in your visualizations. Use fixed level of detail expressions to aggregate over specific dimensions regardless of visualization groupings, or use coarser level of detail expressions to aggregate at a higher level by excluding dimensions. Common use cases include calculating percentages of total, comparing values to dataset-wide aggregates, and creating cohort-level metrics. See Level of detail (LOD) expressions.

Value sampling features renamed

January 16, 2026

The value sampling features in Genie have been renamed to better describe their function:

• Prompt matching (previously value sampling)
• Format assistance (previously example values)
• Entity matching (previously value dictionaries)

Dashboard navigation, pivot tables, and text widget improvements

January 15, 2026

• Dashboard page navigation scroll bar: The horizontal scroll bar to navigate between dashboard pages is now thicker.
• Dashboard title character limit: Dashboard titles now have more horizontal space before truncating.
• Pivot table header height: Pivot table header height can be configured to enable wrapping for multi-row heights.
• Text widget markdown tables: Text widgets now support markdown table syntax.

Databricks One favorite and filtering improvements

January 15, 2026

• Mark assets as favorites: Click the star icon next to asset names in Databricks One to mark them as favorites.
• Favorite and certified content filtering: Filter content by favorite and certified status in Databricks One. See Listing pages.

Dashboard pivot tables, filters, and data export improvements

January 8, 2026

• JSON cell copy-paste improvement: JSON objects in table cells now remain expanded when you drag to copy-paste.
• Parameterized default catalog and schemas: Parameterize the default catalog and schemas when deploying dashboards using Declarative Automation Bundles. See dashboard.
• Multi-select filter paste enhancement: Paste comma-separated and newline-separated values into multi-select filters.
• Pivot table total rows: Pivot tables can now display total rows at the top.
• Dashboard widget drag handles: Dashboard widgets now have drag handles for resizing and repositioning.
• Pivoted table Excel downloads: Download dashboard data to Excel in pivoted format rather than flattened. See Download pivot tables to Excel.
• Timezone display fixes: Fixed a number of timezone-related issues, ensuring that displayed timezones match underlying data timezones instead of displaying UTC.
• Selective data point labels: Labels can now be shown only for first/last or min/max data points.

Change default workspace access to Consumer access (Public Preview)

January 6, 2026

Workspace admins can configure new users to receive Consumer access by default using group cloning. Consumer access provides access to Databricks One, a view-only experience for business users who need to view and interact with dashboards without creating workspace objects. The process creates a new group for existing users and updates the users group to grant only Consumer entitlement to new users by default. This preserves existing users' authoring privileges while streamlining consumer onboarding at scale.