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What does the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on do?

I recently tried to opt-out of Google Analytics tracking on a website using my secondary browser (no other tracking blocking active) and, expecting to be given a cookie setting, was surprised to be presented with the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on .

This seems an incredibly strange and heavyweight solution to stop tracking (which should be opt-in, but that's another story). What exactly does this add-on do? Does it introduce further privacy issues?

• browser-addons

What exactly does this add-on do?

The browser add-on works by running a function on every web page to set a variable turning Google Analytics scripts into no-ops. The code injected by the extension can vary slightly depending on which browser the extension is written for and is similar to the one below:

Does it introduce further privacy issues?

According to Giorgio Maone, yes . He states a website could reset the _gaUserPrefs variable to bypass the opt-out and that the presence of the variable can increase the uniqueness of the user agent's fingerprint.

Note that there is nothing inherently "heavy" about a browser add-on. The one distributed by Google is rather lightweight.

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Google Analytics and privacy: What you need to know

Google Analytics is reportedly used by more than half of all websites. This means during any given browsing period, it’s likely that at least some of that user’s activity is being tracked by website owners and data is being sent to Google.

The popularity of Google Analytics is no surprise given it comprises a powerful suite of tools, is fairly simple to get started with, and is free. As useful as this service is for business owners, it’s also powerful for Google itself. It drives the collection and reporting of massive amounts of data and contributes to Google’s position as a data powerhouse.

When we’re talking data, we also need to talk privacy. Of course, it’s not really Analytics customers (website owners) that need to worry. Rather it’s the users (website visitors) who are being tracked. While privacy policies are in place, it’s widely known that these are not always adhered to by website owners. As such, the vast majority of users may be giving up more information to Google than they’re aware of.

In this article, we’ll delve into Google Analytics and the associated privacy policies and guidelines. We’ll take a look at how information is being collected and used. Finally, we’ll offer insight into what site owners can do to ensure they abide by policies, and what website visitors can be doing to protect their information.

An introduction to Google Analytics and data privacy

The basic way in which Google Analytics works is that customers collect data through their website and it is sent to Google for analysis. Then data is returned to the customer to provide insights into their website traffic (e.g. geographic region and what type of device is being used) and user activity (e.g. page views and link clicks).

When it comes to privacy, there are of course potential concerns for website visitors. Many are providing personal information, such as email addresses and billing information, to the website owner. And they might wonder if Google is receiving that information. After all, Google collects as much personal information as it can about as many users as possible. In fact, its whole business model revolves around this. Under the premise of serving customers better, it’s essentially building a detailed profile of each internet user in order to sell advertising.

Google is very explicit about this in its blanket privacy policy (there’s no separate one for Google Analytics) where it details how information is collected and what it’s used for. However, when it comes to Google Analytics, the tables appear to be turned. Google states that it doesn’t want access to personal information about users through customers. Additionally, customers should not store or track such data themselves through the Analytics platform. This is necessary to comply with various regulations (country-dependent) surrounding the storage of personal data.

The onus is on customers

Instead, Google tells customers (website owners) to make sure they don’t send any Personally Identifiable Information (PII) via Analytics. As such, it’s the owners who bear the brunt of the responsibility when it comes to anonymizing information:

“You will not and will not assist or permit any third party to pass information to Google that Google could use or recognize as personally identifiable information.”

Google provides various tools to help them do this and lays out rules in its terms of service. One of the most significant guidelines maintains that every Google Analytics customer must have a privacy policy on their site that includes a mention of the fact that the site uses analytics.

“You must post a Privacy Policy and that Privacy Policy must provide notice of Your use of cookies that are used to collect data. You must disclose the use of Google Analytics, and how it collects and processes data. This can be done by displaying a prominent link to the site “How Google uses data when you use our partners’ sites or apps”, (located at www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners/ , or any other URL Google may provide from time to time).”

Of course, the stipulation is largely ignored or not even read in the first place, which is not a great start.

Customers can do several things to stop personal information being revealed, including masking IP addresses and disabling tracking on certain pages.

Again, most don’t actually do this and may not even read through enough documentation to know their options. It’s possible that Google relies on the fact that owners are negligent, as this means it has access to more personal information while the burden of responsibility lies with another party.

If Google didn’t want access to the data, it could enable privacy controls such as IP masking and disabled tracking by default. This way, owners would have to manually turn off such controls, which would likely drastically increase compliance. By telling owners what they can and can’t do and providing the tools to do it, Google absolves itself of responsibility and can continue to collect user information.

In the Data sharing settings section of the policy, it’s clear that real people have access to user data sent by owners: “All Google representatives that can access account data, including vendors, must agree to internal access policy terms and conditions. Data access requires appropriate authentication; all access is over SSL and is logged for security review, and representatives can only use Google-approved computers when accessing customer data.”

While Google has a lot to say when it comes to the topic of owners not sending PII, there is not much to say what happens when Google inadvertently receives such information. Its policy states that storage of such information by site owners could result in the termination of their accounts. But given the reportedly low compliance, it’s unlikely this happens all that often. Plus, it still doesn’t reveal what Google might do with the information. This lack of commentary about the consequences of noncompliance is probably the most worrying thing about it.

Google Universal Analytics

Google Universal Analytics brings the concept of a user profile to website owners. It basically means that owners will gain insight into users based on multiple sessions to get a better view of how each individual customer is interacting with their business. This is not supposed to be tied to any PII, but a user ID (not considered PII) can be assigned instead.

What this means for users is, once again, a profile is being built about them. This is a double-edged sword. While it can help businesses to serve users better, for example by creating a more personalized site experience, it can also feel like an invasion of privacy.

The types of information being collected

So what exactly are owners and Google seeing when you’re on a site that uses Google Analytics? Here we’ll explain what information users are giving up and how it’s being collected.

As stated in the Safeguarding your data answer section , “Google Analytics mainly uses first-party cookies to report on user interactions on Google Analytics customers’ websites.” Cookies are small pieces of data that websites use to track visits and activity by specific users. The cookies used by Google Analytics track user IDs and campaign information about each user.

Here are some of the items that are tracked:

• Page tracking: Customers can track pageviews on an overall or user-specific basis
• Event tracking: Events might be things like downloads, video plays, and mobile ad clicks.
• Social interactions: This is a more specific version of event tracking that focuses on social media elements, such as Facebook “Likes”.
• App/screen tracking: This tracks which part of the content users are viewing.

Overall, user activities on a particular site may be tracked to a very specific level.

The Google Analytics cookies are just one of several types of cookie used by Google. Advertising cookies are another type to potentially be concerned about. These cover things like previous Google searches and interactions with ads. When customers use Google’s Advertising features, they agree to have these cookies on their site. Again, they’re supposed to disclose this in their privacy policies, but we wouldn’t hold our breath.

Measurement protocol

Google also offers the use of the Measurement Protocol . This involves sending HTTP requests of raw user interaction data from any environment. One of the applications of this is to give customers the ability to “tie online to offline behavior.” How so? Well, in the age of the Internet of Things (IoT) , it’s not just your desktop, tablet, and smartphone that are connected to the internet.

The Measurement Protocol goes beyond websites and mobile apps to send Google data about off-site events like email opens, URL clicks, QR code scans, and offline purchases. And it doesn’t stop there. Everything from TVs and sound systems to microwaves and washing machines might also be connected.

Data could be sent from any of these devices through Google Analytics via the Measurement Protocol, meaning that businesses could really learn about your offline behavior. Those with so-called ‘smart homes’ could have their entire day mapped out, from what time they brew their coffee to which day they launder their delicates. Perhaps a little too creepy.

What’s more, Google boasts in one of its case studies that the Measurement Protocol helped “by capturing traffic coming from mobile devices that don’t support (or have disabled) JavaScript.” Ironically, one of the main reasons for disabling JavaScript on a mobile device is to prevent being tracked in the first place.

How it all comes together

Google is a data powerhouse and although this industry is going through some changes , it doesn’t show signs of slowing. The company’s main revenue stream is advertising, and it utilizes user information to propel its highly lucrative Google Adwords. The vast amount of data it has collected helps businesses target their ads at a very specific level, thus making Google some seriously huge profits .

Analytics is free to use and offers the perfect compliment to the Adwords model, enabling customers to see how effective their ads are. You don’t have to be an Adwords customer to use Analytics (and vice versa). But if you’re already using Analytics and you’re looking to run paid ads, chances are Adwords will seem like a natural progression. The two can be easily integrated and accessed via the same interface.

Google already has so much information about your site’s users that it has the power to help you run highly targeted ads. Plus, even if a user doesn’t graduate to Adwords, Google still has access to a ton of aggregate data about the site that it can use to benefit other Adwords customers.

Within AdWords, Google offers a remarketing feature. This helps customers retarget past website visitors by pushing out ads across all of that user’s devices. This means when you visit a website on your desktop, the simple fact you’ve accessed that site could mean you start seeing ads for that business popping up everywhere, on your desktop and mobile devices.

This can feel seriously invasive. It’s not only inconvenient and annoying but it can pose privacy issues, especially if you share some devices with others. Want to surprise your girlfriend with a wedding proposal? Then definitely avoid looking at rings online or your secret won’t stay safe for long.

How to protect your privacy

Thankfully, you don’t have to do a ton of digging and tweaking to make sure your data is as safe as possible. Whether you’re a Google Analytics customer or a website visitor, there are controls available to help you .

Customers (site owners)

We mentioned some of the options available earlier, but we’ll go into a bit more detail about them here. Again, the onus is on Google Analytics customers to make sure personal information doesn’t get to Google.

Display a privacy policy

When you become an Analytics customers, you agree to terms that include that you post a privacy policy on your site. This doesn’t just involve a mention of the fact that you use Analytics. You also have to explain what features are used and what happens to the data. If you’re using Advertising features , you’ll have to disclose this too.

Remove PII from data

Although it can be a cumbersome task, removing PII from your website data is a must if you want to abide by the rules. Whatever data is collected from your site, be it names, email addresses, or phone numbers, it should be removed before the data is sent to Google.

Anonymize IP

If a site owner requests IP address anonymization, Google will set the final part of each user IP address to zeros so that the full address is never stored. However, since the IP address if used for geographic reporting, masking the IP may make this less accurate.

Disable tracking

There is the possibility of disabling tracking on certain pages or for certain users. This means owners could potentially offer their users the option to opt out (or opt in if it’s set up that way) of Google Analytics tracking.

Users (site visitors)

Since it’s clear from studies that many owners can’t be trusted to follow the guidelines in place, users would be prudent to put their own measures in place to prevent their information being tracked and collected.

Google Privacy Controls

Google has set up an entire privacy control section to help you decide things like what information Google collects, the type of data associated with your account, and what ads are shown. While this is great, there are a couple of problems. First, you have to be a Google account holder (e.g. Gmail or G Suite customer) to access the controls, which means you could end up handing over more personal information. Second, by default, the settings are pretty much set to the least private options. You have to go into each section manually and change everything if you have any hopes of maintaining some privacy.

Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on

If it’s just Analytics you’re concerned about, you can use the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on . This will prevent your site activity being monitored by Google Analytics. However, it doesn’t stop site owners gathering information via other methods.

Third-party extensions

If you want a more comprehensive browser add-on, there are plenty of third-party extensions available. These will help block tracking form Google Analytics as well as other common tracking sites.

Use a Virtual Private Network (VPN)

Finally, one of the best ways to browse worry-free is to use a Virtual Private Network (VPN) like ExpressVPN or CyberGhost . These provide IP masking by giving you an entirely different IP from a server location of your choice. This way, you don’t have to rely on site owners to anonymize your data for you. Plus, VPNs have plenty of other benefits, including securing open wifi connections and unblocking geo restricted content. With some prices starting at under $3 per month, it’s worth the peace of mind.

Final Comments

In today’s landscape, it would be difficult for many businesses — particularly online ones — to compete without the use of analytics software. Indeed, the success of many companies hinges upon their ability to track how customers interact with their sites. Therefore, the collection of at least some anonymized data can be considered crucial.

With that being said, privacy continues to be a real and valid concern for consumers. As such, it’s increasingly important for businesses to strike a balance between tracking consumer activity and being respectful of their privacy. As outlined above, this is possible by being clear about exactly what information is being collected, taking measures to anonymize data, and explaining how one might opt out altogether.

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This information can be used to target ads and monitor your internet usage.

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Google releases add-on to block its own analytics

With a nod toward user privacy, Google's new add-on will stop certain data from being sent from PCs when visiting a site that uses Google Analytics.

Stung by a laundry list of privacy concerns, Google has released a new add-on designed to block the information captured for Web sites that use its own Analytics service.

The new Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on stops the flow of certain data from your PC whenever you visit a site that uses Google Analytics. Web sites insert Google Analytics' JavaScript code into their pages to capture the IP address, browser version, operating system, ISP, and similar items from visiting PCs. That data is sent to Google and then accessible through a Web site's free Google Analytics (GA) account.

The beta version of the new opt-out add-on works with Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome.

To further address privacy issues, Google has released a new tweak to GA's JavaScript that lets Web site owners anonymize visiting IP addresses sent to Google. The new code sends only a portion of the IP address, removing the last octet. Since the general location of a site visitor can be identified by the IP address, this tweak prevents the full geographic information from being captured.

The company has been criticized over recent gaffes such as Google Buzz, which exposed data without users' permission , and Google Street View, which the company admitted inadvertently grabbed data from open Wi-Fi networks .

Google continually faces the challenge of capturing data for its own use but at the same time not ticking off people by violating their privacy. The new changes to Google Analytics may be good news to people who don't want their private data, even computer data, revealed. But it could leave Web sites in the lurch.

If people can turn off the Google Analytics tracking code, how do Web sites know they're getting reliable and accurate information in their Google Web stats? Google's blog even acknowledges that tweaking the JavaScript code to block out the last octet of the IP address would limit the accuracy of the geographic data captured.

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Privacy controls in Google Analytics

Site and/or app owners using Google Analytics and Google Analytics for Firebase (aka “customers”) may find this a useful resource, particularly if they are businesses affected by the European Economic Area’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), or other similar regulations.

For additional information, refer to Safeguarding your data .

Disable Analytics data collection (app)

Disable analytics data collection (web), disable collection of granular location and device data, redact email addresses and user-defined url query parameters, disable collection of google signals data, disable advertising features (app), disable advertising features (web), disable advertising personalization (app), disable advertising personalization (web).

• Set the retention period for the Analytics data you collect

User-level Data Access and Portability

Delete end user data stored on a mobile device, delete end user data stored on analytics servers.

• Allow for / Disable Ads Personalization for any property
• Use the Google Analytics for Firebase iOS SDK to verify app installation

You can programmatically disable data collection from Android and iOS apps that use the

• Google Analytics for Firebase SDK ( instructions )
• Google Analytics Android SDK ( instructions )
• Google Analytics iOS SDK ( instructions )

Learn more about the data that Google Analytics and Google Analytics for Firebase collect.

You can programmatically disable data collection from

• Google Analytics 4 properties with gtag.js ( instructions )
• Universal Analytics properties with gtag.js ( instructions )
• Universal Analytics properties with analytics.js ( instructions )

Universal Analytics properties with ga.js ( instructions )

Users of your website can also opt out from data collection using the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on .

You have the option to enable/disable the collection of granular location-and-device data on a per-region basis. Analytics collects this data by default. If you disable this data collection, Analytics does not collect the following data:

• Latitude (of city)
• Longitude (of city)
• Browser minor version
• Browser User-Agent string
• Device brand
• Device model
• Device name
• Operating system minor version
• Platform minor version
• Screen resolution

If you edit the settings and disable collection for a region, then Analytics maintains any historical data that you've collected but no additional data is collected from the time of the change forward.

If you disable the collection of granular location and device data for a region, then modeled- key events volume is significantly reduced for that region. Downstream key event modeling and reporting in linked Google Ads and Search Ads 360 accounts is also impacted.

You can configure your web data streams to perform client-side text redaction of email addresses and user-defined URL query parameters.

Learn more about Data redaction .

When you activate Google signals, you have the option to enable or disable collection of those signals on a per-region basis. If you edit Google-signals settings and disable collection for a region, then Analytics maintains any historical data that you've collected but no additional data is collected from the time of the change forward. If you disable collection of Google-signals data, you will not have access to remarketing lists based on Analytics data, advertising reporting features, or demographics and interests.

If you deactivate Google signals, then remarketing is not available for the impacted regions. Downstream key event modeling and reporting in linked Google Ads accounts is also impacted.

You can programmatically disable collection of data for advertising features from Android and iOS apps that use the:

You can programmatically disable collection of data for advertising features from:

You can programmatically disable advertising personalization for data from Android and iOS apps that use the Google Analytics for Firebase SDK ( instructions ).

You can programmatically disable advertising personalization for data from:

IP masking is available in Google Analytics for both web and app. Learn how IP masking works .

Universal Analytics properties

You can mask IP addresses for Universal Analytics properties using

gtag.js ( instructions )

analytics.js ( instructions )

ga.js ( instructions )

Google Analytics 4 properties

In Google Analytics 4, IP masking is not necessary since IP addresses are not logged or stored.

Set the retention period for the Analytics data that you collect

You can set the retention period for data you collect from

Universal Analytics properties ( instructions )

Google Analytics 4 properties (for websites) ( instructions )

Google Analytics for Firebase. You can choose to retain user data for a maximum of 14 months or retain data according to the Analytics default data-retention policy ( instructions )

For Universal Analytics properties, you can pull event information for any given user identifier via the User Explorer report or the User Activity API . These features allow you to analyze and export event level data for a single user identifier. In addition, 360 customers can integrate with BigQuery to create a full export of all event data associated with their users in a single queryable repository.

For Google Analytics 4 properties, the same functionality exists within Explorations. You can pull event information for any given user identifier via the User Explorer report or the User Activity report. These features allow you to analyze and export event level data for a single user identifier. You can also use the User Activity report to delete individual user records. In addition, you can integrate with BigQuery to create a full export of all event data associated with users in a single queryable repository.

The Google Analytics for Firebase SDK lets you add controls to your app so that users can delete Analytics data stored locally on their mobile devices, and reset the app-instance ID in the process. Learn more about using resetAnalyticsData on Android and iOS .

The SDK also lets you control whether or not any Analytics data is collected from the app on a specific device. Learn more about using setAnalyticsCollectionEnabled on Android and iOS .

You can use the Google Analytics API to honor requests from users to delete data about them from Analytics servers on a per-app, per-device basis. Learn more about the User Deletion API.

Allow for / Disable ads personalization for any property

You can control whether data collected from end users for any property may be used for ads personalization via the advanced setting to allow for ads personalization .

Use the Google Analytics for Firebase iOS SDK to register attribution with SKAdNetwork

Unless app developers choose to opt out via a static configuration flag ( instructions ), the Google Analytics for Firebase (GA4F) iOS SDK will automatically call, upon first open, Apple's SKAdNetwork registerAppForAdNetworkAttribution API, which provides app-install-validation information to ad networks registered with Apple.

The SKAdNetwork API has been updated for iOS 14 and will be relied on more heavily for app-install attribution due to Apple’s new privacy and security features announced in WWDC 2020, which now require app developers to obtain consent via a privacy-disclosure pop-up before using the identifier for advertisers (IDFA) to track iOS users.

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Need more help, try these next steps:.

Check out google.com/analytics/learn , a new resource to help you get the most out of Google Analytics 4. The new website includes videos, articles, and guided flows, and provides links to the Google Analytics Discord, Blog, YouTube channel, and GitHub repository.

Start learning today!

Does Safari block Google Analytics?

Published on Jun 4, 2022 and edited on Apr 16, 2024 by Iron Brands

In June 2020, Apple launched a new 'Privacy Report' during their first digital WWDC event . This included new privacy guidelines and a summary of trackers blocked by Safari (an Apple product) on iOS, Big Sur, and iPadOS.

The new features caused some confusion among the attendants. From the presentation, it seemed that Safari blocked Google Analytics by default. However, the truth is a bit more nuanced.

So what was the fuss all about again, and what privacy updates have been implemented since? We’ll also touch upon the impact future privacy updates will have on the usability of tools like Google Analytics. What is the likelihood that Safari will ever block Google Analytics?

Let's dive in!

Safari does not block Google Analytics by default - just third-party cookies

Move towards privacy, phasing out of third-party cookies, google analytics creates a blind spot, there are google analytics alternatives out there, google analytics is a privacy nightmare, data transfers are still an issue, final thoughts.

With the "Privacy Report," Apple added many new privacy features to help protect users from being tracked across the internet. In the presentation, Apple showed that Google Analytics was the most frequently blocked tracker. This made everyone assume that Safari is blocking Google Analytics from tracking website visitors by default. However, this was a false assumption, and the truth is a bit more complicated.

This was the screenshot shown during the event. Google Analytics is marked as a prevented tracker in the picture, which caused the confusion.

The first to react was analyst Simo Ahava who explained what was really going on:

"When the Safari screenshot from #WWDC says it prevents " http://google-analytics.com ..." it likely means ITP flagged that domain as a cross-site tracker and restricts its access to third-party storage. NOT that it actually "blocks GA."

As more information surfaced, it became clear that Safari was not blocking Google Analytics but rather its third-party cookies.

• First-party cookies are stored by the domain (website) you visit.
• Third-party cookies are created by domains other than the one you visit directly, hence the name third-party.

If you want to freshen up your mind regarding first-party vs. third-party cookies, check our "cookie article." 

The Intelligent Tracking Prevention in Safari 14 blocks cross-site tracking, limiting only portions in Google Analytics. Website owners should have no trouble seeing their website analytics, as it relies on first-party cookies. Google Analytics still functions as an analytics platform, but you can't use it for retargeting and other features that rely on cross-website tracking.

So Safari does not block Google Analytics, but Apple's "Privacy Report" did accelerate a privacy trend that is not stopping anytime soon.

In the past year, we've seen a crackdown on government bodies on the use of Google Analytics. Privacy laws like GDPR, PECR & CCPA are getting stronger by the day, and organizations seem to care more and more about running their business ethically.

In addition, Apple is moving forward with its privacy operations. They recently added the App Tracking Transparency (ATT) feature in their iOS15, which runs on 72% of modern iPhones. 

The ATT consists of a pop-up that asks users if they want to be tracked when they open the app. Facebook announced that this new feature will cost them 10 billion in ad revenue this year alone.

Next to that, Apple launched a commercial showing a girl whose digital identity and belongings are sold off by an auctioneer. At the time of writing, it's 16 days old and already has 7,7 million views on Youtube.

Obviously, the video has some marketing angle to it. Still, the fact that the biggest company in the world has its marketing focus on privacy shows the importance and relevancy of digital privacy.

Why you should move away from Google Analytics

As mentioned above, Safari does not block Google Analytics. You can still still see your website analytics. However, the privacy trend is not slowing down, and Google is just not moving with it.

Google Analytics users were recently forced to move from Universal Analytics 4 to Google Analytics 4. This move is forcing them to do quite a bit of re-learning on the new version and its different metrics. Additionally, it forced them to ditch third-party cookies, as Google Analytics 4 does not support them.

Universal Analytics 360 users have one more year before the switch, but their time is going to come. Where you are still using Universal Analytics 360, or trying to grasp the new version, this is a good time to ditch Google Analytics and move to a more privacy-friendly service.

Although Google Analytics is the most powerful analytics tool there is, it will become more and more inaccurate. Internet users demand privacy, not by knocking on your door and asking for it, but by using tools that block Google Analytics. More and more internet users use ad-blockers or plugins that block Google Analytics scripts.

In addition, many privacy laws (such as the ePrivacy Directive in the EU) require a cookie banner to collect consent. When more and more website visitors refuse consent, you will miss them in your Google Analytics data.

Organizations have taken so long to become more privacy-friendly because of the lack of privacy-friendly tools that are as good as non-privacy-friendly ones. You might want to check other tools if you just use Google Analytics to get insights on your website statistics. There are alternatives to Google Analytics that are simpler to use with more straightforward dashboards that don't sell your visitor data to third parties.

You might have heard that Google Analytics is an invasive service. That's an understatement.

The core of Google's business model is hoarding personal data from its countless services and feeding it to the online advertising environment (which it controls for the most part). The heart of online advertisement is the real-time bidding (RTB) system through which advertising spaces are auctioned and sold in real time. In order to make these bids as economically efficient as possible, lots of personal data from each visitor are disclosed to the hundreds of advertising companies taking part in the auction.

This is worse than selling data. Google is selling advertising spaces and disclosing immense amounts of personal data on the side, to companies over which it has no control. In other words, it's a privacy nightmare, and it is deeply embedded in the company's business model. No amounts of small tweaks to Google Analytics' privacy settings can fix that.

We wrote a lot about Google Analytics' issues with data transfers under the GDPR and about how those issues led six EU countries to ban Google Analytics .

The long legal saga of data transfers came to a halt because of the new EU-US data transfer framework, but this stability is only temporary. Privacy advocates have already announced that they will challenge the new framework, and there is a very real chance that they will succeed in shooting it down like they did in the Schrems I and II.

Incidentally, Microsoft is pouring billions into its EU Data Boundary Program - which may or may not have something to do with the fact that it expects companies to flock to its servers as soon as the new data transfer framework is invalidated by the Court of Justice.

Bottom line, we will likely all be back to square one soon.

Digital privacy is becoming increasingly important in our lives, and organizations have started recognizing this. Apple has made privacy one of its future core pillars. Its privacy features are hurting ad platforms like Google and Facebook and making their tools, such as Google Analytics, less powerful. We feel that privacy is a fundamental human right.

Also, more and more people are rightfully concerned about their privacy on the internet and are taking matters into their own hands by switching to privacy-centric apps or browsers.

Data protection authorities are also showing their teeth by declaring the use of Google Analytics unlawful in Italy , Denmark , France & Austria. More EU member states are likely to follow in the coming months, as this was a coordinated effort on a European level.

In addition to the above, we feel that privacy is a fundamental human right, so we created Simple Analytics.

Simple Analytics is not impacted by privacy updates, like the one mentioned above by Apple; it only strengthens our case. We are cookieless by design and never collect any personal data.

We are EU-based. Fully GDPR compliant, and the data we collect is yours. YWe believe in creating an independent internet that is friendly to website visitors. If this resonates with you, feel free to give us a try .

GA4 is complex. Try Simple Analytics

GA4 is like sitting in an airplane cockpit without a pilot license

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Safari now blocks Google Analytics on sites, new Privacy Report feature shows [u]

The new Intelligent Tracking Prevention page in Safari for macOS Big Sur.

At its WWDC 2020 keynote on Monday, Apple announced a suite of new privacy features in the macOS Big Sur version of Safari that included a new Privacy Report showing which trackers are blocked on a site.

As technology analyst Benedict Evans pointed out in a tweet, that Privacy Report indicates that Apple's Safari Intelligent Tracking Prevention 2.0 is now officially blocking Google Analytics.

Yes, Apple is now blocking Google Analytics entirely, even with anonymised IP. pic.twitter.com/Ypnk5T4VAn — Benedict Evans (@benedictevans) June 22, 2020

It isn't clear if anything in Safari for macOS Big Sur is specifically blocking Google Analytics, or if the new Privacy Report is just showing that it has been. Apple's features macOS page doesn't offer any clarity.

Google Analytics is one of the most popular web tracking and analysis services used by millions of popular websites.

The Privacy Report and blocking of Google Analytics are just two parts of a broader push toward privacy by Apple. According to a report from December 2019, Apple's Safari Intelligent Tracking Prevention feature has resulted in a 60% decrease in pricing for targeted Safari ads.

Update: As more information has surfaced, it appears that Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) in Safari 14 is not completely blocking Google Analytics. Instead, it's blocking third-party tracking cookies and cross-site scripting requests on Google Analytics from loading. The Privacy Report feature just reflects that. It looks like first-party Google Analytics cookies aren't blocked, so it'll still function as an analytics platform.

20 Comments

Yeah, saw this during the keynote. Must have caused some indigestion at Google. But what the heck, they can buy a cheap bottle of wine and commiserate with Intel on the curb outside of Apple’s spaceship campus. Welcome the the club of hangers-on who’ve overstayed their welcome due to bad behavior or ineptitude. 

Great news. Weaning oneself off Google entirely is very difficult -- even on a Mac -- but much needed. Thanks Apple, and the fall can't come soon enough!

Agreed - I'm sure Google will turn around and figure out a way around the blocking. So goes the game...

Well, I just hope Safari will work on my Bank's Bill Pay site.  It does not now, unless I Turn Off "Prevent Cross-Site Tracking".  FireFox works.  I guess the Bill Pay and the Bank want to have a relationship with me, the customer.

This feature should be made available now. Why wait?

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Microsoft fabric updates blog.

Microsoft Fabric April 2024 Update

• Monthly Update

Welcome to the April 2024 update!

This month, you’ll find many great new updates, previews, and improvements. From Shortcuts to Google Cloud Storage and S3 compatible data sources in preview, Optimistic Job Admission for Fabric Spark, and New KQL Queryset Command Bar, that’s just a glimpse into this month’s update.

There’s much more to explore! Read on and let us know what update you’re most excited about and what you found the most helpful.

Fabric Conference Day 1 Keynote is now available!

Did you miss it, or want to hear it again? We are excited to release the FabCon Day 1 Keynote to the Microsoft Fabric YouTube Channel !

If you aren’t already, be sure to subscribe to the Microsoft Fabric Channel! Check out the amazing announcements & demos from Arun, Amir, Wangui, and other awesome presenters. The Day 3 keynotes will be released later this month, and more content will be released regularly moving forward.

Make sure you check out the blog post from Arun, that highlights the announcements from FabCon you can find that here:  Announcements from the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference

Earn a free Microsoft Fabric certification exam! 

We are thrilled to announce the general availability of  Exam DP-600 , which leads to the  Microsoft Certified: Fabric Analytics Engineer Associate  certification.  

Microsoft Fabric’s common analytics platform is built on the instantly  familiar Power BI experience , making your transition to Fabric Analytics Engineer easier. With Fabric, you can build on your prior knowledge – whether that is Power BI, SQL, or Python – and master how to enrich data for analytics in the era of AI. 

To help you learn quickly and get certified, we created the  Fabric Career Hub.  We have curated the  best   free   on-demand and live training, exam crams, practice tests and more . 

And because the best way to learn is live, we will have  free live learning sessions  led by the best Microsoft Fabric experts from Apr 16 to May 8, in English and Spanish. Register now at the  Learn Together  page.

Also,  become eligible for a  free certification exam  by completing the  Fabric AI Skills Challenge.  But hurry, the challenge only runs from  March 19 – April 19  and free certs are first-come, first-served! (limit one per participant,  terms and conditions  apply). 

New Visual – 100% Stacked Area Chart

Line enhancements, enhance q&a with copilot-generated linguistic relationships, snowflake (connector update), storytelling in powerpoint – improved image mode in the power bi add-in for powerpoint, storytelling in powerpoint – continuous slide show auto refresh, storytelling in powerpoint – auto populating the slide title, introducing the fabric metadata scanning sample app, dynamic subscriptions for power bi and paginated reports, supporting folders in workspace, new “clear barcode” action in the report footer, open power bi items in full screen mode, new visuals in appsource kpi matrix growth rate chart by djeeni v1.4 aimplan comment visual.

• Financial Reporting Matrix by Profitbase 

Horizon Chart by Powerviz

Drill down scatter pro by zoomcharts, image gallery, horizontal bar chart, multi-pane card 1.1.

• Introducing Copilot pane in Power BI Desktop (preview) 
• Shortcuts to Google Cloud Storage and S3 compatible data sources (preview)
• OneLake data access roles – public preview

Tenant level Private Link

Managed private endpoints for microsoft fabric.

• Trusted Workspace Access for OneLake Shortcuts
• Git Integration

Partition elimination performance improvement for tables with a large number of files 

Mirroring (public preview) .

• Optimistic Job Admission for Fabric Spark 
• Single Node Support for Starter Pools
• Container Image for Synapse VS Code 
• Git Integration with Spark Job Definition 
• New Revamped Object Explorer experience in the notebook 
• %run your scripts in Notebook
• Semantic Link is now GA! 

Capacity level delegation for AI and Copilot 

Eu customers can use ai and copilot without cross-geo setting .

• New KQL Queryset Command Bar 
• New Update Command Public Preview 
• Introducing Pause and Resume Feature in Eventstream
• Fabric Real-Time Analytics Integrates with Newly Announced Database Watcher for Azure SQL (preview)

Service Principal Name authentication kind support for On-Premises and VNET data gateways 

• Certified connector updates

Updated Fabric data pipeline homepage 

• Pipeline support for CI/CD in public preview 
• Data Factory Data Pipelines APIs
• Increase in Pipeline activity limit
• Fabric Warehouse in ADF copy activity
• Edit column type to destination table support added to Fabric Warehouse and other SQL data stores
• SFTP: performance improvements when writing data to SFTP

Introducing the new 100% Stacked Area Chart, now available in our core visuals gallery. These visuals display the relative percentage of multiple data series in stacked areas, where the total always equals 100%. It’s perfect for showing the proportion of individual series to the whole and how they change over time. Find it in the visual gallery, on-object dialog, or format pane, right next to the Stacked Area Chart. Give it a try and share your feedback with us!

For more detailed information about this new visual, and the new line enhancements you can read our article: PBI Core Visuals

Take your line charts to the next level with our new line control features.

• Adjust line color transparency under Lines > Colors > Transparency.
• Control the color and transparency of each series by selecting them in the ‘Apply settings to’ dropdown.
• Use Monotone and the new Cardinal smooth type for full control of smooth lines.
• Choose from before, center, and after step lines to align your visual with your story.

Try out these new features and enhance your line charts.

These new line enhancements are just the beginning, there is more to come. Try them out and stay ahead of the curve. We would love to hear about your experience and the amazing things you can achieve with these new features.

Improving your linguistic schema is an important step in making sure that the Q&A visual can understand the wide range of questions people might ask about their data. This is why, back in September , we added a new section into the Q&A setup menu to help you add linguistic relationships to teach Q&A about words which qualify or relate your data.  

But we also know that coming up with all the different words people might be using to refer to your data can take time and effort, and we’ve been working on ways to make that process easier for you! In November , we introduced a way for you to quickly generate new synonyms for the names of tables and columns in your model; this month, we’ve introduced the same functionality for linguistic relationships!  

When you open a report with a Q&A visual, if you have Copilot enabled and you’ve already added synonyms, you’ll now see a banner prompting you to get relationships with Copilot as well.  

Unlike with synonyms, Copilot generated relationships will not be used to understand natural language inputs until you have approved them, so make sure you accept the ones which work for your model!  

Allow Copilot to help interpret Q&A questions.

You can also now use Copilot to improve the Q&A engine’s term recognition when you ask questions! This new feature will trigger when you ask Q&A a question which uses words or phrases which Q&A doesn’t recognize, but which it detects might be referring to data entities like tables or columns. Then, Copilot will also check those unknown words or phrases to see if there is any reasonable match and if so, return the answer as a visual as though a suggested synonym had been applied.

This feature is not a replacement for synonyms! In fact, adding synonyms for the entities in your semantic model is even more important to create good matches, as they increase the surface area to check for similarities. It will widen the range of inputs Q&A will recognize, but like a multiplier, it will improve recognition for well modeled data much better than it will for poorly modeled data.  

This feature will be automatically enabled when you choose to get synonyms with Copilot, but you can also turn it on or off manually in the suggestion settings menu in the Synonyms tab in Q&A setup. 

Data Connectivity

The Snowflake connector has been updated to support the use of Snowflake dynamic tables .

We’ve made saving Power BI content as an image more simple and more powerful. 

First, we’ve added a new dropdown menu to the add-in’s footer. In that menu, you can choose whether you want to see live data or a snapshot. So now it is much easier to find where to switch between live data and a static image.

Second, for snapshots, you now have two options:

Public snapshot: Anyone who can view the presentation can view the image.

Snapshot: Only those who have permission to view the report in Power BI will be able to see the snapshot.

Third, we’ve disabled the default snapshot, so that the slide thumbnail doesn’t show the image by default (this also applies when you copy & paste the slide into an email for example), but only after the add-in is loaded and the required permissions have been checked.

And lastly, we honor this setting when you open the presentation in PowerPoint for the web. You still cannot change a live view into a snapshot in PowerPoint for the web, but if you or someone else has changed the view to snapshot in the PowerPoint desktop app, this will be respected, and you will see the snapshot also in PowerPoint for the web.

PowerPoint allows you to continuously playback a presentation. This is especially useful when you want to present information in public displays without any human interaction.

If a presentation that is running continuously has slides that include the Power BI add-in, the data in the add-in might become outdated, since the add-in gets the data from Power BI when the slide is loaded, or when the user manually refreshes the data being presented.

With the new automatic refresh in slide show feature, you can set the add-in to automatically pull fresh data from Power BI while the presentation is in slide show mode, ensuring that the presentation will always show the most recent data.

To enable automatic refresh, go to the add-in footer, select Add-in options, choose Slide show settings, check Automatic refresh in slide show and set the desired frequency.

Note that auto refresh only happens in slide show mode and not while you’re editing the presentation.

When you add the Power BI add-in to an empty slide that doesn’t have a title yet, the Power BI add-in is here to help. It offers you suggestions for the slide title based on the content of you add-in. The title can be the report name, the page/visual name, or both. Just select the desired option and hit Add title.

We’re delighted to announce the availability of the new Fabric metadata scanning app. This sample application builds upon the metadata scanning capabilities of Fabric’s set of Admin REST APIs collectively known as the scanner APIs. This new app can be used as a reference for admins interested in utilizing the Scanner API to catalog and report on all the metadata of their organization’s Fabric items.

The Fabric metadata scanning sample app handles all the steps for calling the scanner API including authentication, parallelism, throttling, and incremental scanning. In addition, it provides a central configuration file which can be easily modified to suit the specific needs of the caller. Currently authentication is supported both by using a service principal and a delegated token.

The app is available as a Microsoft open-source project, and is open for suggestions and improvements here: Fabric Metadata Scanning

We’re pleased to announce that you can now send dynamic per recipient subscriptions to up to 1000 recipients instead of the earlier limit of 50 recipients from the data in the Power BI semantic model. For existing subscriptions, we will automatically send subscriptions up to 1000 recipients if your Power BI semantic model contains that many rows of data. You need to edit the subscription if you don’t want to automatically send subscriptions. Learn more about creating dynamic per recipient subscriptions for Power BI Reports and paginated reports .

This feature will be available in some regions as soon as today, however depending on the geography in which your Power BI tenant is located, it may take up to two weeks to appear.

The Power BI Mobile apps support folders in workspace. So, you can access items that are organized in folders inside of your workspace directly from the mobile app.

Workspace and folders are Fabric entities, which means that you can add items that are not necessarily Power BI items to a workspace. But the Power BI Mobile apps only support a subset of Power BI items. Therefore, only the Power BI item will be accessible when you are browsing the folder content from the app. If a folder contains only non-Power BI items, it will appear empty in the mobile app.

When a field in your model is marked as a barcode, you can use your mobile device camera to scan the barcodes of real objects to filter reports that are built on this model. This feature is extremely useful for retail, where you can scan the barcode on a piece of merchandise to get a report showing data about the item directly in your mobile app (for example, inventory information, product selling data, etc.).

To make it easier and more intuitive to use barcodes and based on feedback we’ve gotten from our users in stores, we’ve added a new button to the report footer that makes it a one-click action to clear any previously scanned barcode from the report’s filter.

Learn more about scanning barcode from the mobile app

We continue to simplify the experience of using the Power BI Mobile apps, always keeping in mind the frontline workers who need quick access to their content. In this monthly update we’ve made it possible to open Power BI items in full screen, so users can view their data at its max.

Opening an item in full screen is supported both for launch items and when using a universal link.

A launch item is a Power BI item (report, page, app, etc.) that the user has selected to automatically open when they open the app. Now, you can also tell the Power BI Mobile app to open this item in full screen mode.

To set a launch item to open in full screen mode, go to:

Settings > Launch item and enable the Open in full screen toggle.

Using an MDM tool that supports an AppConfig file, mobile device administrators can also configure a launch item to be opened in full screen mode for their users.

You can also add the query parameter? fullscreen=1 to a Power BI item’s link. When you use a link with this parameter on your mobile device, the mobile app will open the item in full screen mode.

Visualizations

Financial reporting matrix by profitbase.

Making financial statements with a proper layout has just become easier with the latest version of the Financial Reporting Matrix.

Users are now able to specify which rows should be classified as cost-rows, which will make it easier to get the conditional formatting of variances correctly:

Selecting a row, and ticking “is cost” will tag the row as cost. This can be used in conditional formatting to make sure that positive variances on expenses are a bad for the result, while a positive variance on an income row is good for the result.

The new version also includes more flexibility in measuring placement and column subtotals.

Measures can be placed either:

Default (below column headers)

Above column headers

If you have multiple fields showing on your column headers, you can now decide which of these fields you want a column subtotal for.

This is in addition to the already existing features of the Financial Reporting Matrix:

Adding custom rows

Applying company/customer specific themes

Expand/collapse columns

Conditionally hide columns

+ much more

Highlighted new features:

New Format Pane design

Measure placement – In rows

Select Column Subtotals

Row Options

*Get the visual from AppSource (fix link) and find more videos here !

A Horizon Chart is an advanced visual, for time-series data, revealing trends and anomalies. It displays stacked data layers, allowing users to compare multiple categories while maintaining data clarity. Horizon Charts are particularly useful to monitor and analyze complex data over time, making this a valuable visual for data analysis and decision-making.

Key Features:

Horizon Styles: Choose Natural, Linear, or Step with adjustable scaling.

Layer: Layer data by range or custom criteria. Display positive and negative values together or separately on top.

Reference Line: Highlight patterns with X-axis lines and labels.

Colors: Apply 30+ color palettes and use FX rules for dynamic coloring.

Ranking: Filter Top/Bottom N values, with “Others”.

Gridline: Add gridlines to the X and Y axis.

Custom Tooltip: Add highest, lowest, mean, and median points without additional DAX.

Themes: Save designs and share seamlessly with JSON files.

Other features included are ranking, annotation, grid view, show condition, and accessibility support.

Business Use Cases: Time-Series Data Comparison, Environmental Monitoring, Anomaly Detection

🔗 Try Horizon Chart for FREE from AppSource

📊 Check out all features of the visual: Demo file

📃 Step-by-step instructions: Documentation

💡 YouTube Video: Video Link

📍 Learn more about visuals: https://powerviz.ai/

✅ Follow Powerviz: https://lnkd.in/gN_9Sa6U

ZoomCharts has just launched the latest addition to their suite of user-friendly custom visuals – Drill Down Scatter PRO. It provides all the features you would expect from a great scatter chart visual, but what sets Scatter PRO apart is the ability to easily drill down. Simply click on a data point and see all the values underneath it.

This way, you can quickly find your answers while also gaining a full understanding of where they come from. Furthermore, the visual’s UI is designed to be smooth and user-friendly for PCs and touch devices, and with cross-chart filtering you can use Scatter PRO to build incredible reports for immersive data exploration.

Main features:

Drill Down: Create a multi-level hierarchy and drill down with just a click.

Dynamic formatting: Apply custom marker colors, shapes, or images to each data point directly from data.

Trendlines: Show a linear or polynomial regression line on the chart.

Thresholds: Display up to 4 line or area thresholds on each axis.

Area Shading: Highlight up to 8 custom areas with rectangles or ellipses.

🌐 Learn more about Drill Down Scatter PRO

Documentation | ZoomCharts Website | Follow ZoomCharts on LinkedIn

The Image Gallery is the first visual to be certified by Microsoft that allows for the display of high-quality images and their exportation along with other report content. There is no need to upload images to the Cloud, a CDN, or use any datasets. Simply import your images directly into the visual and share them instantly with your colleagues.

This visual boasts several impressive capabilities:

Microsoft certification ensures that the visual doesn’t interact with external services, ensuring that your images are securely stored and encrypted within the report, consistent with your report’s sensitivity settings.

Automatically saves your selected image in preview mode, allowing your colleagues to view the exact image you have highlighted.

Images can be uploaded or removed exclusively in Edit Mode. Users in View Mode can only view the images.

The visual is compatible with Power BI’s export functionality to PDF and PowerPoint.

Image Gallery Link

A space-saving horizontal bar chart designed with category labels placed inside the bars for clarity.

This horizontal bar chart serves as an efficient filter to navigate through your data more effectively, optimizing space by placing the category labels within the bars themselves.

Adjustable Bar Thickness and Spacing: Offers the flexibility to adjust the thickness of the bars and the spacing between them. This allows for optimal use of space and improves readability, especially when dealing with large datasets.

Tooltip Details on Hover: Displays detailed information about each category when the user hovers over a bar. This feature provides additional context and insights without cluttering the visual.

Data-Driven Category Labels: Automatically updates category labels based on the data source. This ensures that the chart remains accurate and up to date, reflecting any changes in the underlying data.

Support for Hierarchical Data: Allows users to drill down into hierarchical categories within the chart. This functionality enables a more detailed data analysis without leaving the context of the initial visual.

Export Options: Offers the ability to export the chart as an image or PDF, facilitating easy sharing and reporting outside of Power BI.

HorizontalBarChart Link

Introducing the “ Trends ” visual for Power BI – your gateway to leveraging Google Trends data for strategic business analysis. This innovative visual tool allows you to compare brand popularity, monitor market trends, and gain insights into consumer search behaviors directly within your Power BI environment.

With Trends visual, you can:

Analyze the ebb and flow of brand interest over time to identify market opportunities and competitive threats.

Compare the popularity of products to inform marketing strategies and product development decisions.

Understand seasonal trends to optimize your marketing campaigns and inventory planning.

Securely integrated and easy to use, “Trends” transforms your Power BI reports into a dynamic analysis tool, offering a comprehensive view of the market landscape. Dive into data-driven decision-making with “Trends” and stay one step ahead in the competitive business environment.

New visual: Multi-pane Card can be used to group and show data in multiple collapsible panes in Power BI reports. It is an alternative to multi-row card visual, but it can combine columns into a few groups and put each group’s data in each pane. It is suitable to show data in detail with a reduced number of report pages.

Screenshot 1 (Show data in 3 groups: Area and Population, GDP and Foreign Exchange Reserves for countries)

Data can be sorted by a specified column and numbers can be converted to a human readable string. You can also set up how many rows that you want to show on the card. Using these features, it will be very easy to show “Top 10 best performing stores” or “Top 10 worst performing stores” for retail businesses.

Screenshot2 (Combined with drilldown choropleth map to show the top 10 richest countries by GDP per capita for each continent and subregion)

You can go to Microsoft AppSource: Multi-pane Card , to download and try it.

To learn more on how to use it, please read tutorials ( https://www.mylocs.ca/tutorials.html#multi-pane-card ).

Introducing Copilot pane in Power BI Desktop (preview)

Earlier this year, we announced preview of Copilot for all customers with Premium/Fabric capacity in Power BI web . We’re thrilled to share that the same Copilot experience for report creation is now available for preview in Power BI Desktop. With our current preview, users can create reports faster and easier in the Power BI Desktop experience. You can now open the Copilot pane in report view and ask Copilot to:

Create a report page – Copilot will create an entire report page for you by identifying the tables, fields, measures, and charts that would help you get started.

Summarize a semantic model – Copilot will help you understand your Power BI semantic model by summarizing the data in your model.

Suggest a topic – Copilot will suggest topics for your report pages.

Click here to learn more about how to get started.

Shortcuts to Google Cloud Storage and S3 compatible data sources (preview) 

We are excited to announce that you can now create OneLake shortcuts to your Google Cloud Storage (GCS) buckets and S3 compatible data sources! 

With the addition of GCS, you can now utilize cross-cloud shortcuts to analyze your data across all three major cloud platforms. Shortcuts in OneLake allow you to connect to your existing data through a single unified name space without having to copy or move data. Just open Lakehouse in Fabric, create a shortcut to GCS, AWS S3 or ADLS Gen2 and immediately start analyzing your data through Spark, SQL and Power BI. 

OneLake is also adding connectivity to data sources that offer an Amazon S3 compatible API, a widely supported API offered by many distributed file systems and services that offer object storage. With this new feature, it’s quick and easy to create a shortcut that references your cloud based S3 compatible data sources. The data source endpoint simply needs to offer S3 compatible APIs, be publicly hosted and accessible, and accept the key/secret credentials you provide during shortcut creation. Once you set up your shortcut, you can access and use your data with the many Fabric engines or other services using OneLake’s open APIs . 

Learn more in our recent blog posts for S3 compatible shortcuts and GCS shortcuts ! 

OneLake data access roles (preview)

OneLake data access roles for folders are a new feature that enables you to apply role-based access control (RBAC) to your data stored in OneLake. You can define security roles that grant read access to specific folders within a Fabric item and assign them to users or groups. The access permissions determine what folders users see when accessing the lake view of the data, either through the lakehouse UX, Spark notebooks, or OneLake APIs. 

OneLake previously managed data access at the Fabric item level. Access to the OneLake data behind a Fabric item could be granted or removed for users or groups. Data access roles now allow for defining security roles that can grant access to individual OneLake folders within a Fabric item. The granted access inherits to any newly added sub-folders in a transparent manner. Role permissions and user/group assignments can be easily updated through a new folder security UX or through API calls. The security also extends to 3rd party access requests made through the OneLake APIs. 

Check out the full announcement blog or jump right into the getting started guide!  

Organizations today rely on cloud platforms for storage and analysis of data at scale and need to keep up with the accelerating volume of data while protecting sensitive information.  While enterprises in Banking, Healthcare, and similar domains require strict data security standards by default, securing business-critical data is the highest priority for all enterprises. We are excited to announce the public preview of an enhanced networking feature, Azure Private Link for Microsoft Fabric, for securing access to your sensitive data in Microsoft Fabric by providing network isolation and applying required controls on your inbound network traffic. 

Private Links enable secure connectivity to Fabric by restricting access to your Fabric tenant from an Azure VNet of your choice and blocking all public access. This ensures that only network traffic from that VNet is allowed to access Fabric experiences like Notebooks, Lakehouses, Warehouses in your tenant. 

With Azure Private Link, you can: 

• Restrict traffic from the internet to Fabric and route it through the Microsoft backbone network. 
• Ensure only authorized client machines can access Fabric. 
• Comply with regulatory and compliance requirements that mandate private access to your data and analytics services. 

While Azure private links were supported in Power BI at a tenant level, we are now extending this feature to other Fabric workloads with this release. For example, connecting to your data in Onelake using the OneLake Explorer can be protected through Private Links. Similarly, you can access Warehouses and Lakehouse SQL endpoints in SQL Managed Studio via Private Links. A list of supported scenarios and limitations can be found at Use private link to access Fabric. for detailed instructions, please refer to How to set up private endpoints to access Fabric . 

We are excited to announce the public preview of Managed Private Endpoints for Microsoft Fabric. This feature allows secure connections to data sources that are behind a firewall or not accessible from the public internet. Managed Private Endpoints enable Fabric Data Engineering items to access data sources securely without exposing them to the public network or requiring complex network configurations. These private endpoints provide a secure way to connect and access data from sources like Azure SQL DB or Storage account blocked from public access from your Fabric Spark Notebooks or Spark Job Definitions. 

Workspaces with managed private endpoints have network isolation through a dedicated managed virtual network. These managed virtual networks (Managed VNETs) separate the Spark compute clusters from the shared virtual network and enable network security features such as private links and managed private endpoints. Microsoft Fabric takes care of the provisioning and management of the virtual networks and private endpoints, so users do not have to create or manage these network infrastructure resources themselves. 

By just providing connection details, your managed private endpoint is instantly provisioned in the Managed VNET and a request for private endpoint access is submitted to the data source administrator for approval.  

Users can track the status and approval process of the managed private endpoints from the Network security section of the Workspace settings. 

Managed Private Endpoints support various data sources, including Azure Storage, Azure SQL Database, Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Cosmos DB, Application gateway, Azure Key Vault, and many more. 

Learn more about the data sources supported, please refer to our documentation Create and use managed private endpoints in Microsoft Fabric (preview) – Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn  

Note: Managed private endpoints are only supported for Fabric Trial capacity and Fabric capacities F64 or higher SKUs.  

To learn more about the benefits, detailed steps of setup and limitations of managed private endpoints in Microsoft Fabric, please refer to our documentation Overview of managed private endpoints in Fabric.   

To learn more about network isolation offered by managed virtual networks, please refer to Overview of managed virtual networks in Fabric . 

Trusted Workspace Access for OneLake Shortcuts 

Trusted workspace access allows you to securely access firewall-enabled Storage accounts. With Trusted workspace access, you can create OneLake shortcuts to Storage accounts, and then use the shortcuts in various Fabric items, such as Spark notebooks, SQL analytics endpoints, semantic models, reports, data pipelines, and dataflows Gen2.   

Trusted workspace access is designed to help you securely and easily access data stored in Storage accounts from Fabric workspaces, without compromising on performance or functionality. You can leverage the power and flexibility of Fabric and OneLake to work with data in place without compromising on security. 

How does Trusted workspace access work? 

Trusted workspace access is based on the concept of workspace identity, which is a unique identity that can be associated with workspaces that are in Fabric capacities. When you create a workspace identity, Fabric creates a service principal in Microsoft Entra ID to represent the identity.   

Workspace identity enables OneLake shortcuts in Fabric to access Storage accounts that have resource instance rules configured. Resource instance rules are a way to grant access to specific resources based on the workspace identity or managed identity. You can create resource instance rules by deploying an ARM template with the resource instance rule details.  

To leverage Trusted workspace access in Fabric workspaces, you can create a OneLake shortcut in a Lakehouse, and provide the URL of the Storage account that has been configured with a resource instance rule. While creating the shortcut, you need to select organizational account or service principle for authentication and ensure that the principle used for authenticating to Storage has the appropriate Azure RBAC roles on the Storage account. Once the shortcut is created, you can use it in various Fabric items. 

How to get started with Trusted workspace access?

Trusted workspace access is available for workspaces in Fabric capacities (F64 or higher). To get started with Trusted workspace access, you need to do the following steps:  

• Create a workspace identity for your Fabric workspace if you don’t have one already. If you face issues with creation of the workspace identity, follow the troubleshooting guidelines provided here . 

Create a workspace identity. 

2. Configure resource instance rules for the Storage account that you want to access from your Fabric workspace. Follow the guidelines for configuring resource instance rules for Fabric workspaces here . 

Resource instance rules in a Storage account 

• Create a OneLake shortcut to the Storage account in a Lakehouse and select the organizational account or service principal option for authentication.   

Create an ADLS g2 shortcut in a Lakehouse. 

4. Use the OneLake shortcut in various Fabric items, such as Spark notebooks, SQL analytics endpoints, semantic models, reports, data pipelines, and dataflows Gen2.  

Access data stored in firewall-enabled Storage accounts through OneLake shortcuts. 

For more details and guidance on how to use Trusted workspace access, please refer to the documentation links below.  

• Trusted workspace access in Fabric  
• Workspace identity in Fabric  

Data Warehouse 

Git integration .

We are excited to announce the Git integration for the Warehouse! This feature allows you to check in the changes of your Warehouse into an Azure DevOps Git repository as a SQL database project. Git integration enables source control capabilities for developers to integrate their development processes, tools, and best practices directly into the Fabric platform. 

Some scenarios that are enabled by Git: 

• Backup and version development work 
• Revert to previous stages 
• Collaborate with others or work alone using Git branches 
• Apply the capabilities of familiar source control tools to manage your Warehouse 
• Commit changes 
• Sync changes from Git 
• Manage conflict resolutions 
• …and many more! 

The SQL analytics endpoint of a Lakehouse uses partition elimination to read data from only those partitions that are relevant to the query. Recent improvements have boosted performance even more when queries are aimed at a few partitions in a table that has many files. 

We are thrilled to announce Mirroring in Fabric for Azure SQLDB, CosmosDB and Snowflake is in Public Preview!  

Mirroring in Fabric allows users to enjoy a highly integrated, end-to-end, and easy-to-use product that is designed to simplify your analytics needs. Built for openness and collaboration between Microsoft, and technology solutions that can read the open-source Delta Lake table format, Mirroring is a low-cost and low-latency turnkey solution that allows you to create a replica of your Azure SQL DB, Snowflake or CosmosDB data in OneLake which can be used for all your analytical needs. Learn more

Data Engineering 

Optimistic job admission for fabric spark.

We are excited to announce a new feature for Fabric Spark: Optimistic Job Admission. This feature aims to reduce the frequency of throttling errors (HTTP 430: Spark Capacity Limit Exceeded Response) and improve the job admission experience for our customers, especially during peak usage hours.  

Throttling errors on Spark workload occur when the Spark usage exceeds the Fabric capacity limits. In the current job admission policy, Fabric Spark reserves the maximum number of cores that a job may need during its execution, based on the maximum number of nodes that the job can scale up to. This ensures that the job will always have enough resources to run, but it also limits the number of concurrent jobs that can be admitted in the cluster. 

With Optimistic Job Admission, Fabric Spark only reserves the minimum number of cores that a job needs to start, based on the minimum number of nodes that the job can scale down to. This allows more jobs to be admitted if there are enough resources to meet the minimum requirements. If a job needs to scale up later, the scale up requests are approved or rejected based on the available cores in capacity.  

Optimistic Job Admission can significantly increase the max number of concurrent jobs for our customers, especially for those who use large SKUs. For example, if a customer is using F32 SKU, which has 64 Spark VCores (Based on 1 CU = 2 Spark VCores) and 192 Max Burst Cores for concurrency (based on the 3X burst multiplier), they can only run 3 jobs concurrently in the current job admission policy, assuming they have the default starter pool configuration. 

Now with Optimistic Job Admission, they can run up to 24 jobs concurrently with the same configuration. This is an 8x improvement!

We hope that this feature will help you run more jobs faster and more efficiently on Fabric Spark. 

Single Node Support for Starter Pools 

Do you hate waiting for your Spark sessions to start in starter pools with single node configuration? If yes, you will love the update on single node starter pool support. This feature lets you set your starter pool to max one node and get super-fast session start times for your Spark sessions. With this new support that’s been introduced, the system allocates the driver and executor with 4 cores each and 56 GB in memory, so that they fit within a single medium node configuration for Starter Pools. This improves session start times to 5 seconds in single node starter pool configurations. 

How can you use it? 

To use this feature, follow these steps: 

• Go to your Fabric workspace and choose the Workspace settings. 
• Select the Data Engineering/Science option to expand the menu. 

• Select the StarterPool option from the Pool selection and click on Edit. 

• Set the maximum node configuration for your starter pools to 1.

• Save your changes and enjoy super-fast session start times for your Spark sessions.

Container Image for Synapse VS Code

To simplify the development process for Synapse VS Code extension, we have released a container image that contains all the necessary dependencies for the extension ( Microsoft Artifact Registry) . This image is available in Microsoft artifact repository and can be pulled with a single command. By using this image, you do not need to install Java, Miniconda, or any other tools on your local machine. You can work on your Synapse projects inside the container environment, which is isolated and consistent. 

We have also integrated the container image with VS Code dev container feature, which allows you to open a folder or a repository inside a container and use the VS Code editor and extensions as usual. To use this feature, you need to install the Remote – Containers extension and create a devcontainer.json file in your project folder. We have provided a sample devcontainer.json file that you can use as a template or customize according to your needs ( SynapseVSCode/samples/.devcontainer at main · microsoft/SynapseVSCode (github.com) ). The dev container feature will automatically pull the container image, mount your project folder, and launch the VS Code editor inside the container. You can then enjoy the full functionality of the Synapse VS Code extension without any hassle. 

Git Integration with Spark Job Definition

We are excited to announce the Git integration for Spark Job Definition artifacts. This feature allows you to check in the changes of your Spark Job Definitions into a Git repository, which will include the source code of the Spark jobs and other artifact properties. By using Git as a version control system, you can track the history of your Spark Job Definitions, collaborate with other developers, and implement CI/CD workflows for your Spark projects. 

The Git integration for Spark Job Definition artifacts is designed to enhance your development experience and enable CI/CD scenarios for your Spark projects. We hope you find this feature useful, and we welcome your feedback and suggestions. 

When a new Spark Job Definition is made with a PySpark script as the main definition file, the Git status shows that this is an unsaved change that needs to be committed.

Once the change is finalized mich

The structure of the linked git repository and the file containing the source code that was submitted.

New Revamped Object Explorer experience in the notebook  

We are excited to announce the release of a revamped object explorer experience. The new experience is designed to improve flexibility and discoverability of data sources in the explorer and improve the discoverability of Resource folders. 

Try it out and add new Data sources clicking on the +Data sources button and upload new modules or create folders by clicking on the Resources folder and let us know what you think.   

%Run your scripts in Notebook  

Now you can use %run magic command to run your Python scripts and SQL scripts in Notebook resources folder, just like Jupyter notebook %run command. By this way you can easily reuse common modules that developed from your local IDE and use them in your Fabric Notebooks conveniently. We also introduced different command parameters to make sure complex cases such as reference run and high concurrency mode can be covered without friction, stay tuned for the best practice example for the usage! 

Data Science 

Semantic link is now ga  .

Semantic links are now generally available! The package comes with our default VHD, you can now use Semantic link in Fabric right away without any pip installation. Check it out .  

We introduced a new feature in December 2023 that allows tenant admins to enable AI and Copilot in Fabric for certain security groups in addition to the entire organization. Today, we are excited to announce that you can enable AI and Copilot for a specific Capacity. You can test Copilot at a certain capacity without impacting other workloads. This allows you to adapt Copilot to meet the needs of different groups in your organization and manage your capacity more effectively. 

AI and Copilot in Fabric are powered by large language models that are only available in limited datacenters. Previously, users who were not in US and France had to turn on the cross-geo setting to use AI and Copilot. Since mid-March, we updated the cross-geographic mapping logic, EU customers can use AI and Copilot without turning on the cross-geo setting, and their AI and Copilot requests will be processed within EUDB. Check it out ! 

Real-time Analytics

New kql queryset command bar.

Finding the commands for the actions you are trying to perform just got easier with our latest update to the KQL Queryset. Now, it’s easy to distinguish between actions applicable at the Queryset level and the single query level. 

Introducing a secondary command bar within the query editor dedicated to hosting query-level actions. Enjoy smoother navigation and streamlined functionality for a more efficient querying experience. 

New Update Command Public Preview  

The new update command is now in public preview! 

This allows you to update existing records in a Kusto Table.  This can be useful to fix ad hoc data issues or be integrated into a data loading pipeline.  The command has a “what if” mode to try a command before running it on your data. 

.update table Employees on Id <| 

  MyStagingTable 

  | where true 

Introducing Pause and Resume Feature in Eventstream   

We’re excited to introduce a powerful new feature in Fabric Eventstream: The Pause and Resume Feature. This powerful capability empowers you with unprecedented control over your data streams, enabling you to pause data streaming from various sources and destinations within Eventstream. You can then resume data streaming seamlessly from the paused time or a customized time, ensuring no data loss. 

Key Features: 

• Activate/Deactivate All : You can quickly pause and resume all data traffic flowing in and out of Eventstream with the Activate All and Deactivate All options on the menu bar. 
• Toggle Switch Button : Each node has a convenient toggle switch button, allowing you to activate or deactivate any data source from streaming in or out of Eventstream with ease. 

With the Pause and Resume feature in Fabric Eventstream, you can pause traffic from specific sources and destinations whenever needed. Whether it’s for troubleshooting purposes, building proof-of-concepts with test data, or minimizing unnecessary data processing costs, this feature offers unparalleled control over your data streams and leads to more efficient resource allocation.

Fabric Real-Time Analytics Integrates with Newly Announced Database Watcher for Azure SQL (preview)  

Azure SQL family users can now take advantage of an enhanced monitoring solution for their databases and leverage Microsoft Fabric integration. With the introduction of the new Database Watcher for Azure SQL (preview), users gain access to advanced monitoring capabilities. Through integration with Microsoft Fabric, they can effortlessly stream, store, and analyze monitoring data in real-time using an Eventhouse database in Fabric Real-Time Analytics. This integration enables users to stay informed about their database performance and make timely, informed decisions. 

Database watcher is a new managed monitoring solution for database services in the Azure SQL family. It supports Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance. 

Database watchers collect in-depth workload monitoring data to give you a detailed view of database performance, configuration, and health. Monitoring data from the databases, elastic pools, and SQL managed instances you select is collected in near real time into a central data store. To store and analyze SQL monitoring data, database watcher uses an Eventhouse database in Fabric Real-Time Analytics (as a complement option, Azure Data Explorer is also supported). 

Dashboards in Azure portal provide a single-pane-of-glass view of your Azure SQL estate and a detailed view of each database, elastic pool, and SQL managed instance. 

A conceptual diagram of a database watcher deployment, showing the flow of monitoring data from Azure SQL resources to a database watcher.  The monitoring data is stored in Fabric Real-Time Analytics .  Dashboards in the Azure portal show you a single-pane-of-glass view across your Azure SQL estate, and a detailed view of each database, elastic pool, and managed instance.    

You can query data in your Eventhouse database in Real-Time Analytics using KQL or T-SQL , analyze and model your data using Real-Time Analytics Querysets or Fabric Notebooks , build custom visualizations using KQL built-in visualizations or Power BI . 

To analyze collected monitoring data, the recommended method is to use KQL. KQL is optimal for querying telemetry, metrics, and logs. It provides extensive support for text search and parsing, time-series operators and functions, analytics and aggregation, and many other language constructs that facilitate data analysis. You can find examples of analyzing database watcher monitoring data with KQL in the documentation . 

The dashboards, complemented by KQL queries, enable you to delve deep into the performance and configuration of your databases. This means you can detect, investigate, and troubleshoot a wide variety of database performance and health issues. 

Whether you’re tackling resource bottlenecks or fine-tuning your Azure SQL resources for the best balance of cost and performance, Database Watcher equips you with the insights needed to make informed decisions. It’s your pathway to optimizing your Azure SQL setup for peak efficiency and cost-effectiveness. 

Next steps  

One effective approach to grasp the potential and the power of Database Watcher is to give it a try yourself. Set up your Azure SQL resources with Database Watcher, explore the dashboards, and start running some queries with KQL.  To read more about Database Watcher, check out the documentation . 

Data Factory 

Dataflows gen2 , fast copy  .

Dataflows help with ingesting and transforming data. With the introduction of dataflow scale out with the SQL DW compute, we are able to transform your data at scale. However, to do this on a scale, your data needs to be ingested first.  

With the introduction of fast copy, you can ingest Terabytes of data with the easy experience of dataflows, but with the scalable back end of Pipeline’s Copy Activity. 

We released support for Azure Service Principals (SPN) as an authentication kind last year. Now we’ve added support for this new authentication kind for on-premises data gateways and VNET data gateways.  

Azure service principal is a security identity that is application based and can be assigned permissions to access your data sources. Service principals are used to safely connect to data, without a user identity. Learn more about service principals.  

You can learn how to leverage the service principal authentication kind from the documentation available and leverage this in multiple connectors such as Azure Data Lake Storage, Dataverse, Azure SQL database, Web connector and more. 

Certified connector updates  

We’re pleased to announce the new and updated connectors in this release: 

• [New] Topcon Aptix Insights 
• [Update] BitSight Security Ratings 
• [New] Zendesk Data 
• [Update] Planview OKR 
• [Update] BQE Core 
• [New] LinkedIn Learning 
• [New] LEAP 
• [New] Samsara 
• [Update] Celonis EMS 
• [New] Supermetrics 
• [New] Exact Online Premium 

Are you interested in creating your own connector and publishing it for your customers? Learn more about the Power Query SDK and the Connector Certification program . 

Data pipelines 

The Data pipeline homepage is now updated with an all-new look! You’ll now find new guidance cards to help you find what you’re looking for more quickly.  

Pipeline support for CI/CD in public preview

When developing workflows with Data Factory’s pipelines it is very important for developers to be able to save their work in a Git repository for versioning, source control, and CI/CD. We are happy to announce the public preview of CI/CD support for Data Factory pipelines! Now, you can connect your Azure DevOps (ADO) projects to your Fabric workspace and commit, merge, and branch your pipelines using Fabric’s Git integration. Additionally, you can now use the built-in Deployment Pipelines inside Fabric to assign workspaces to different environments (dev, test, prod) and promote your changes easily without using ADO! 

Data Factory Data Pipelines APIs 

You can now use our public APIs to create, execute, and monitor data pipelines in Fabric Data Factory. 

Increase in Pipeline activity limit 

As a cloud service for analytics workflows, the Data Factory team has had a limit of 40 activities per pipeline since the early days of Azure Data Factory. The same orchestration engine drives Fabric Data Factory data pipelines and we’ve reacted to your feedback that many times you need more than 40 activities in a pipeline to perform complex workflows that require error checks, branching, and other control flow capabilities. We’ve now updated the limits for the Data Factory pipeline service in both Fabric and Azure (Azure Data Factory & Synapse pipelines) to now allow up to 80 activities per pipeline. 

Fabric Warehouse in ADF copy activity  

We’re excited to announce that you can now connect to your Fabric Warehouse from Azure Data Factory/Synapse pipeline. You can find this new connector when creating a new source or sink destination in your copy activity.  

This connector is also supported in the Lookup activity, Stored Procedure activity, Script activity, and Get Metadata activity.  

Edit column type to destination table support added to Fabric Warehouse and other SQL data stores 

When moving data from any supported data sources into Fabric Warehouse or other SQL data stores (SQL Server, Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance; Azure Synapse Analytics) via data pipelines, users can now specify the data type for each column under the destination table, as well as customize the precision and scale to certain data types such as decimal, numeric, etc.  

SFTP: performance improvements when writing data to SFTP 

SFTP connector has been improved to offer better performance when writing to SFTP as destination.  

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Welcome to the February 2024 update. We have a lot of great features this month including Fabric Git Integration REST APIs, Fabric notebook status bar upgrade, Copilot in Dataflow Gen2, and many more! Fabric Community Conference Join us at the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference the ultimate Microsoft Data & AI learning event, on March 26-28, … Continue reading “Microsoft Fabric February 2024 Update”

• First things to know about calls
• Get to know the new calling experience
• Start a call from a chat
• Use the dial pad to make a call
• Answer a call
• Optimize mobile data usage
• Add someone to a call
• Make multiple calls at the same time
• Put a call on hold
• Transfer a call
• Park a call
• Use end-to-end encryption for Teams calls
• Use the Queues app
• Manage your call settings
• Call forwarding, call groups, and simultaneous ring
• Manage your call queue and auto attendant settings in Microsoft Teams
• Merge calls in Teams
• Share a phone line with a delegate
• Check your voicemail
• View or add contacts
• View your call history
• Turn off automatic video in a call
• Manage your support call queue
• Use certified Teams devices to help manage calls and meetings
• Use Microsoft Teams on Apple Vision Pro
• Get started with Teams phones
• Get started with Teams displays
• Get started with Teams panels
• Broadcasting audio and video from Teams with NDI
• Get started with Microsoft Teams Rooms
• Use shared display mode in meeting rooms
• Cast content from a mobile device to a Teams Room
• Teams Rooms (Windows)
• Teams Rooms (Android)
• IntelliFrame for Teams Rooms
• Experience Cloud IntelliFrame
• Create Recognition profiles
• Use Teams Intelligent Speakers to identify in-room participants in meeting transcription
• Use the MacBook Pro Touch Bar in Teams meetings and calls
• Connect third-party devices to Teams
• Use a room remote to control a Teams Room device
• Connect a Teams display or desk phone to Teams Windows desktop
• Participate in a Teams meeting on Surface Hub
• Place Teams calls with Apple CarPlay
• Getting started with Teams Phone Mobile
• Manage call settings in Teams Phone Mobile
• Overview of Teams calls
• Set up a delegate to take your calls
• Tips for Teams calls

Use the Queues app for Microsoft Teams

The Queues app is a native Teams experience that extends the customer engagement capabilities of your organization. This collaborative call handling solution allows team members to manage customer calls and team leads to manage queues, access reports, and analyze data. You can pin the app to the left side of Teams for easy access.  

Beginning with surfacing calls in the Call queue, your team can use the Queues app to handle incoming calls, whether they are PSTN or VOIP. You can make outgoing calls on behalf of the call queues or auto attendants that you are assigned to. You can review your call queue metrics and collaborate seamlessly with leads or colleagues within the flow of work. Depending on your permissions, you can monitor call queues and auto attendants in real-time, opt in or opt out your team members, generate performance reports, and configure the call queues and auto attendants.

Note:  The Queues app is currently in private preview. Once generally available, it will be included in Teams Premium, an add-on license that provides additional features to make Teams meetings more personalized, intelligent, and secure. To get access to Teams Premium, contact your IT admin.

Launch the app

Once you've been authorized by your IT admin, the Queues app will be ready to use.

Find the Queues app.

You can pin the app to the bar by right-clicking it and selecting Pin .

View the call queue

Depending on how your organization is structured, you may have several call queues you can opt in to. From the Queues app, you can see available queues to join along the top of the window.

Select the queue you would like to opt in to.

Click Opt in .

Once opted in, you will start to receive calls from this queue. To opt out, return to the same button and select Opt out . This will remove you from the list of opted-in team members, and you will stop receiving calls.

Additionally, team leads can opt in or opt out their team members directly. Hover over their name and the Opt in/Opt out button will appear. 

Note:  If Presence-based routing is turned on in Call settings , team members must be both opted in and have their status set to Available in order to receive calls.

Interact with your team

Your teammates are grouped by their opt in/opt out status. To send a message or initiate a call, simply select a team member from the menu.

Under M anage queue , select People.

Click on the name of the person you would like to interact with. If you call a team member this way, you will have the option of choosing which phone number the outbound call uses.

Use the dialpad

Select Dialpad from the bottom left corner of the window to expand the view. From there, you can place outgoing calls. 

If your organization has multiple outbound numbers to choose from, you will see a dropdown appear above the Call button, allowing you to choose which number you’d like to place outbound calls with.

View call history

To view past calls, including calls or voicemails you may have missed, select Calls under Manage queue . 

You can select any call in your history to see more detailed information and call that number back using the number associated with your call queue.

Currently, call history includes the past calls that you have picked up or calls that you have missed that have a voicemail.

View real-time statistics

If authorized by your IT admin, you can see real-time statistics for your call queue, such as total number of calls in the queue, average call time, and longest wait time. The available statistics are based on your admin settings, and new metrics may come available in the future.

There are two ways to find your analytics dashboard.

First, when you have a queue selected, you will see an overview for that queue at the top of Quick access on the left side of the Teams window.

Second, to see a wider range of analytics for all of your queues, your team members, and your auto attendants:

Select Analytics in the top right corner of the window.

Select the queue, auto attendant, or team member you’d like to see the analytics for from the dropdowns.

Related topics

Manage your call queue and auto attendant settings

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Google Analytics Opt Out extension Mac OSX 10.14

Just updated to 10.14 and noticed my Google Analytics Opt Out Extension no longer shows up in Safari. Redownloaded from google, placed in Applications as instructed, but doesn't show up in preferences/extensions. Looking for information on how to opt out of Google Analytics.

Posted on Jun 19, 2019 2:43 PM

Posted on Jun 20, 2019 5:16 AM

I have an ad blocker here that downloads from the Mac App Store as an application. Simply clicking on that application installs the ad blocker extension into Safari 12.1.1, and one can then quit the application. Same technique for updates to the application from the Mac App Store. This may be the process by which Google is now installing extensions into your versions of Safari.

Or, Google has not updated their browser extension and it is simply incompatible.

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• Safari Extensions I just noticed a search icon on my mac. When I clicked on it, two Safari extensions are listed: "PremiumContinental 1.0" and "SkyWard"...Does anyone know if these extensions are safe and what are they used for? Thank you. 391 2
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Jun 20, 2019 5:16 AM in response to GPC1973

Jun 19, 2019 8:06 PM in response to Eric Root

Thanks for looking into this.

Am now at home on my laptop and noticed it doesn't seem to install on OS 10.12.6, Safari 12.0.3 either.

Tried rebooting the laptop to no avail.

Will try rebooting office computer tomorrow.

Jun 19, 2019 7:23 PM in response to GPC1973

Have you tried restarting since you installed the Google Analytics Opt Out Extension?

Jun 20, 2019 1:59 PM in response to VikingOSX

Thank you, double clicking the extension 'launched' it and now it is listed in my Safari Preferences. Problem solved.