Custom visuals stopped working on latest PowerBI Desktop update

[Master_T]

Hi everyone

I have developed a few custom visuals some time ago (they're built on API v2.6.0) and they worked without issues for more than a year.

However, the last PowerBI Desktop update (2.84.981.0) broke them! Now they don't render on the page and they don't show the custom formatting properties in the appropriate panel, they're just "dead"!

Note that this only happens on PowerBI Desktop, if the report is published on the app.powerbi.com portal they work perfectly, which is a problem because it means I have no way to debug the problem, since the dekstop client doesn't have a developer mode and on the powerbi portal they work. Any ideas? 

[Greg_Deckler]

@dm-p 

[dm-p]

Hi @Master_T,

I'm on a slightly different version of Desktop (it's about the same) and I'm not having trouble with any of mine or some marketplace visuals I've checked.

However, if things were working and now aren't, and nothing has changed in-between the visual last being packaged (i.e. assuming that you haven't rebuilt them recently) then it suggests an issue with the developer visual host inside Desktop, or an incompatibility with a particular package or dependency you're using.

I'm right in the middle of a cross-country house move so don't have a readily available dev environment to offer targeted assistance and do specific tests, but I'd recommend considering/trying the following:

1. Create a new visual (e.g. pbiviz new) and do the bare-minimum to package the visual. Does that load and work?
2. If it does, do older packaged versions of your visual (if you have them) work? It might be possible to then isolate any particular changes (particularly if you've added node packages without fixing their versions)
3. A cheap way of debugging in Desktop (last I checked) is that you can use alert() to display a message box, whereas this doesn't work in the Service when debugging. so, you could wrap your constructor() and update() methods in a try...catch block, and alert() the error details if anything is firing at all. This might give you something to focus on.
4. Failing that, email pbicvsupport@microsoft.com for assistance. The team aren't really active on the forums any more, but are quite responsive on this channel - provide them with as much info as possible, and ideally source code so that they can look for anything obvious. They may also be aware of any current issues with the developer visual host in Desktop.

Regards,

Daniel

[Master_T · Accepted solution]

Thanks for your reply and suggestions After further testing, turns out that the problem was a javascript library that I was using that didn't work correctly in the news version of PBI Desktop. I solved the problem by updating the library. The thing that is a bit worrying tho, is that it means PBI Desktop has updated the web engine that it uses internally to render visuals without any warning to the users, which is bad. Such a change should be mentioned in the release notes, otherwise every time PBI is updated we won't know if the update is gonna break half our visuals...