Amazon QuickSight continued a fast pace of innovation in 2024, helping more customers than ever before deliver data insights at scale to make better-informed decisions. We doubled down on speed, scalability, and differentiated AI capabilities customers tell us they love. In this post, we start with some key highlights, and then share a full list.
Powerful new AI capabilities with Amazon Q in QuickSight
In April, we announced the general availability of Amazon Q in QuickSight with generative business intelligence (BI) capabilities to get data insights using natural language. Amazon Q in QuickSight enables business users to ask and answer questions of data not answered in their dashboards with multi-visual data Q&A, get executive summaries of dashboards to quickly discover key trends and insights, and automatically build documents and slides explaining data with stories. Business analysts can quickly build dashboards and reports using simple prompts to describe visuals, calculations, and refinements.
In December, at AWS re:Invent, we expanded the capabilities of Amazon Q in QuickSight, announcing public preview of scenario analysis, an agentic data analysis capability that enables business users to solve complex business questions 10 times faster than spreadsheets.
We also brought together insights from documents and databases with general availability of unstructured insights in Amazon Q in QuickSight, using Amazon Q Business for deeper understanding when answering questions in data Q&A or building stories.
Faster to build beautiful and user-friendly analytics
Throughout 2024, we invested in customer-requested capabilities to improve the dashboard and report building experience for data analysts, including the ability to import visuals from one analysis to another, cross-sheet filtering controls to synchronize filter state across tabs on a dashboard or report, multi-select apply for faster filter and parameter updates, and nested filters to use data from one field as filter values for another.
We also added new data visualization capabilities, reducing time and effort for you to modernize your analytics to QuickSight, and providing more flexibility for data analysts to create compelling experiences including Highcharts support, allowing hundreds of different customizable visual types, layer maps to visualize custom shape files, the ability to quickly customize using fonts and images, and multi-column sorting, allowing dashboard consumers more flexibility to explore data.
Pixel-perfect reports got new capabilities to support additional use cases with the introduction of repeating sections allowing reports to maintain context across multiple pages, prompted reports with reader scheduling allowing business users to customize when to receive reports and what data they see, and API support for developers to send reports on demand.
We also added additional customization capabilities, allowing developers and administrators to customize the QuickSight experience to match their brand.
Faster to scale, simpler to manage, and effortless to govern in more scenarios
We launched deeper integrations with key customer-requested data sources, allowing faster migrations to QuickSight and better performance. This included Amazon Redshift with improved AWS Lake Formation support to enable cross-account use cases, Google Big Query with Direct Query support allowing data to remain in place while powering QuickSight experiences, and Snowflake and Starburst with OAuth support for role-based access control (RBAC) providing enhanced security.
We improved our in-memory analytics optimized data store SPICE to support a broader range of enterprise use cases with high performance, including support to apply joins when ingesting data to load data more quickly, and API capabilities for developers to define and manage customer keys used for data encryption and configure automatic purchasing of additional storage capacity.
We deepened governance capabilities for service administrators by adding support for AWS PrivateLink to securely connect to data sources, custom permissions for AWS IAM Identity Center to define capabilities users should have access to using directory groups, and subfolders in restricted folders allowing content permissions to be established by project or organizational hierarchies.
We expanded existing APIs which allow programmatic access to export and import QuickSight assets by including support for shared folders. This allows continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) and automated content migration at scale.
Full list of QuickSight capabilities
The following table contains the full list of new QuickSight capabilities launched in 2024.
| Feature | Summary | Relevant Links |
| Amazon Q in QuickSight | Amazon Q in QuickSight provides simple, fast access to data insights for your entire organization using natural language. With this launch, we’ve expanded data Q&A to be included by default for QuickSight user roles. | Press Release | Amazon Q in QuickSight BI Blog | Anthology Customer Blog |
| Amazon Q in QuickSight scenario analysis (preview) | Scenario analysis is a powerful new agentic data analysis capability, helping business users solve complex problems using natural language. | Scenarios Blog | Scenarios re:Invent Session |
| Amazon Q in QuickSight unstructured insights | Support for unstructured insights in data Q&A and story generation helps business users get more complete insights by drawing related information from a user’s documents, websites, and applications for richer narratives. | Unstructured and Structured Blog | Unstructured re:Invent Session |
| Amazon Q in QuickSight data Q&A v3 | Data Q&A gets more powerful with this under-the-hood upgrade, allowing you to answer a broader range of questions and get accurate answers of data. | v3 Q&A Community Post |
| Layer maps | This new geospatial visual offers support for visualizing custom shape files. | Blog | What’s New Post | Documentation |
| Highcharts visual | Authors can create custom visualizations beyond standard chart offerings using the Highcharts Core library through declarative JSON syntax. The feature includes an integrated code editor with autocomplete and real-time validation capabilities, while enabling authors to reference QuickSight fields and themes using QuickSight expressions. This enhancement expands visualization options to include specialized charts like sunburst charts, network graphs, and 3D charts, all while maintaining security by preventing CSS and JavaScript injection. | Blog | What’s New Post | Prebuilt Chart Examples |
| Prompted reports | Users can create customized views of pixel-perfect reports using filter controls and schedule them for email delivery. Authors can set up filter controls for different audiences, and readers can use these prompts to filter data according to their needs and schedule automated report delivery. This makes sure that users receive personalized reports with their preferred data views at their chosen delivery times. | Blog | What’s New Post | Documentation |
| Reader scheduling | Readers can generate filtered views of pixel-perfect reports and create schedules to deliver reports through email. Readers can create up to five schedules per dashboard for themselves. | Blog | What’s New Post | Documentation |
| Import visual | Authors can transfer visuals between analyses and dashboards along with their associated dependencies, including datasets, parameters, calculated fields, filters, visual properties, and conditional formatting rules. This feature enhances efficiency in dashboard creation by eliminating the need to recreate visuals from scratch. | Blog | What’s New Post |
| Cross-sheet filters and controls | Authors can create and manage filters that work across multiple sheets or entire analyses or dashboards with simple configuration. The functionality streamlines filter management by allowing single filters to be applied across specified scopes, and any edits automatically update across linked sheets. This enhancement provides readers with a consistent filtering experience as they navigate between sheets, allowing data selections to persist and enabling dashboard-wide filter creation for improved data exploration. | Blog | What’s New Post | Documentation |
| Nested filters | With this new advanced filter type, authors can use a nested filter to use one field in a dataset to filter another field in the dataset. | Blog | What’s New Post | Documentation |
| Multi-select controls Apply button | This option enables readers to make multiple updates to a control, and these are only loaded after the reader chooses Apply rather than updating immediately. | Documentation |
| Update visual manually | Users can use this setting to only update applicable visuals in an analysis when they apply their changes. | Documentation |
| Font customization | This feature allows complete font customization for tables and pivot tables, and other visuals can have customized fonts for specific elements like titles, subtitles, and legends. Authors can configure font properties, including size, family, color, and styling options like bold, italics, and underline across analyses, dashboards, reports, and embedded scenarios. Elevate your visual storytelling with enhanced typography options. | Blog | What’s New Post |
| Image component | Authors can upload images directly from their local computers to enhance dashboards with company logos and branding. The feature supports various file formats, including .bmp, .jpg/.jpeg, .png, .tiff, and .webp, with a maximum file size limit of 1 MB and up to 10 images per sheet. This enhancement provides greater flexibility for authors to customize their QuickSight visualizations with static images. | Blog | What’s New Post |
| Multi-column sort for tables | With this feature, you can sort by multiple columns in tables. Both authors and readers can sort by two or more columns simultaneously in a nested fashion (for example, first by column A, then B, then C) using the new sorting popover. You can add, remove, reorder, and reset the sort on a table. Readers can also perform multi-column sort using hidden and off visual fields as defined by the author or opt for single-column sort from the column header context menu as well. | Blog | What’s New Post |
| Increased data limits for bar charts | You can now display 10,000 data points across the entire bar chart family, including horizontal and vertical bar charts. | Documentation |
| Triggering scheduled reports through an API | Using the AWS SDK, developers can invoke the StartDashboardSnapshotJobSchedule API to run the report, which will follow the configured scheduled report settings, including export type (PDF, CSV, Excel) and email set up (subject line, body text, and attachment setting). | What’s New Post | Documentation |
| GetClusterCredentialswithIAM for Amazon Redshift data sources | This feature makes the database user and group parameters optional, thereby implicitly tying the temporary user identity to the IAM credentials. You can use the Lake Formation managed Redshift data share feature to support cross-account use cases. | What’s New Post | Documentation |
| Direct Query support for Google BigQuery | QuickSight has expanded its Google BigQuery connector capabilities by making Direct Query functionality generally available. This enhancement allows you to perform near real-time querying of your BigQuery data without limitations on row count or data size, eliminating the need to cache data in SPICE. The functionality is now available across supported QuickSight AWS Regions. | What’s New Post | Documentation |
| QuickSight support for SCRAM authentication in PostgreSQL data sources: Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL, Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL, and standard PostgreSQL | QuickSight now offers the latest PostgreSQL driver version for the following connectors: Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL, Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL, and standard PostgreSQL, thereby supporting SCRAM-based authentication to PostgreSQL from QuickSight. No additional configuration is needed in QuickSight as long as you use the appropriate PostgreSQL engine version and have the correct configurations in PostgreSQL for SCRAM. | Community Announcement |
| Client credentials OAuth for Snowflake with RBAC | This feature enables machine-to-machine authentication to Snowflake, suitable for client applications to access the resource server without the involvement of a user. | What’s New Post | Documentation |
| Client credentials OAuth for Starburst with RBAC) | This feature enables machine-to-machine authentication to Starburst, suitable for client applications to access the resource server without the involvement of a user. | What’s New Post | Documentation |
| SPICE capacity Auto Purchase API | Users can programmatically enable automatic SPICE capacity purchases, eliminating the need for manual QuickSight console UI interactions. The feature enables QuickSight to automatically acquire necessary capacity when users’ consumed capacity exceeds their provisioned capacity, making data ingestion seamless without worrying about manual capacity purchases. | What’s New Post | Documentation |
| SPICE CMK API | Users can programmatically configure customer managed keys (CMKs) for encrypting and managing SPICE datasets, replacing the previous manual configuration process through the console UI. This feature enables you to revoke access to SPICE datasets with one click and maintain auditable logs tracking dataset access, while increasing security and transparency. The CMK capability gives you more control over your SPICE datasets and helps satisfy security requirements by company and government agency policies, available across supported QuickSight Regions. | What’s New Post | Documentation |
| Increased join sizes during SPICE ingestion | QuickSight has increased its table size limit for joining SPICE datasets from 1 GB to 20 GB, significantly expanding data preparation capabilities for users working with large datasets. This enhancement eliminates the previous limitation where combined secondary tables had to be less than 1 GB, which often required you to create workarounds in your upstream data pipeline. The new 20 GB limit for secondary tables enables large cross-source join tasks through SPICE ingestion, providing users with greater flexibility in building complex data models. | What’s New Post | Documentation |
| Account instances of IAM Identity Center | QuickSight has expanded its integration with IAM Identity Center to support account instances, allowing administrators to configure QuickSight with their organization’s identity provider (IdP) or IAM Identity Center identity store without additional single sign-on configuration. Account instances enable isolated deployments of applications in a single AWS account, providing administrators the ability to manage user and group access through their IdP groups and assign QuickSight roles (administrator, author, and reader). Users can seamlessly sign in to QuickSight using their organization’s IdP credentials through the AWS access portal or directly from QuickSight. | What’s New Post |
| QuickSight with PrivateLink | PrivateLink enables secure private connectivity between services through virtual private cloud (VPC) endpoints while keeping network traffic contained within the AWS infrastructure. With this integration, you can access services by calling endpoints within your VPC instead of using public IP addresses, so traffic remains private on the AWS network. | What’s New Post |
| Subfolders in restricted folders | Users with contributor permissions can create content in restricted folders and subfolders, but are prevented from managing permissions on folders and assets contained within. This hierarchical structure enables administrators to govern sharing of BI assets across their organization by setting viewer and contributor permissions for users and groups at different folder levels. | What’s New Post |
| Custom permissions for IAM Identity Center users | Administrators can restrict specific application capabilities for IAM Identity Center users through profile assignments. The feature allows administrators to disable certain capabilities for users or roles, such as preventing data exports to Excel or CSV or limiting asset sharing permissions. These custom permissions are managed through a comprehensive set of APIs that support identity types in QuickSight and are available across Regions where QuickSight is supported. | What’s New Post |
| Sharing views of embedded dashboard | Enables sharing views of embedded dashboards, allowing developers to implement collaborative capabilities within their applications. This enhancement lets embedded dashboard readers share unique links that display their specific changes while remaining within the application. The feature, which includes personalization capabilities like bookmarks for anonymous users, is available across supported QuickSight Regions. | What’s New Post |
| Brand customization | Administrators with appropriate IAM permissions can align the QuickSight interface with their organization’s brand identity through modifications to visual elements like colors and logos. The feature enables customization of logos, favorite icons, and color schemes that can be configured through the public API or UI. These branding changes are then reflected across non-admin pages on the QuickSight console, embedded components, and communications like schedules, alerts, and share emails. | Blog | What’s New Post |
| Expanded Amazon EventBridge integration | Users can automate workflows like continuous deployment and backups through near real-time event delivery. Developers can create rules to specify which events they want to monitor and define corresponding actions when those rules are triggered. This enhancement provides greater flexibility in automating QuickSight related processes through EventBridge integration. | What’s New Post |
| Folders in assets as bundle (AAB) | Users can back up, restore, replicate, and migrate QuickSight folders along with their member assets and subfolders. This update to the StartAssetBundleExportJob and StartAssetBundleImportJob APIs eliminates the need to manage folder deployments separately, which was required in previous versions. | What’s New Post |
| New QuickSight Regions | Amazon QuickSight is now available in Milan, Zurich, Cape Town and Jakarta Regions | What’s New Post |
| New Amazon Q in QuickSight Regions | Amazon Q in QuickSight expanded to be available in Asia Pacific (Mumbai, Sydney), Canada (Central), Europe (Ireland, London), and South America (São Paulo) Regions, and launched in Europe (Frankfurt), US East (N. Virginia), and US West (Oregon) Regions. | What’s New Post |
Looking ahead
Despite our fast pace of innovation over the last several years and the many service improvements the QuickSight team was able to launch in 2024, with increased customer demand we’re finding many new areas to invest. Although customers love Amazon Q in QuickSight, many want AI to go deeper in their BI workflows and solve additional use cases. Customers want high performance access at scale to the large volumes of data that get created every day. Finally, we see a need to continue to support enterprise governance needs in a landscape with constantly evolving strategies and tools.
Amazon QuickSight Community
Stay up to date on new features through the Amazon QuickSight Community, where you can learn from other BI enthusiasts from across the globe and access over 500 learning resources—all from one central location! Accelerate your QuickSight learning journey by taking advantage of Q&A, resources for getting started with QuickSight, documentation, workshops, demos, on-demand videos, how-to articles, user groups, learning dashboards, and the QuickSight event calendar.
2024 was an exciting year for the QuickSight Community, filled with growth, innovation, and engaging learning content. Our quarterly QuickSight Experts blog series featured insights from industry experts, including Sanjeeb Mohapatra, Erik Göllner, and David Wong. We introduced the Q Corner, a comprehensive resource dedicated to Amazon Q and its cutting-edge generative AI capabilities. We also launched Japanese language content, including Q&A, videos, learning series, and articles. The QuickSight Community celebrated the success of QuickSight at re:Invent 2024, with on-demand access to select QuickSight re:Invent session videos and live launch updates in our re:Invent Corner. Our knowledge base expanded significantly, surpassing 12,000 searchable Q&A questions. Our weekly QuickSight Learning Series and online and in-person learning events continued to provide valuable content. Our learning content is available through live sessions, on-demand and tailored to different time zones and user types.
QuickSight experts
We wrapped up 2024 by announcing our Top 10 QuickSight Experts on the QuickSight Community, who have made an impact by sharing their expertise and helping others on their BI learning journey.
Sign up for the QuickSight Community to get started asking questions, showcase your visualizations in the Gallery, or subscribe to receive notifications on the specific content you want to see!
Conclusion
In this post, we shared the new capabilities of QuickSight launched in 2024, helping more customers deliver data insights at scale to make better informed decisions.
Try out the new QuickSight capabilities for yourself, and share your feedback in the comments.
About the authors
Jose Kunnackal is Director of Product Management for Amazon QuickSight, AWS’ cloud-native, fully managed BI service. Jose started his career with Motorola, writing software for telecom and first responder systems. Later he was Director of Engineering at Trilibis Mobile, where he built a SaaS mobile web platform using AWS services. Jose is excited by the potential of cloud technologies to help customers make the most of their data.
Sean Boon is Senior Manager of Product Management at Amazon QuickSight, where he manages QuickSight’s data, visualization, and reporting capabilities. Zac Woodall is Principal Product Manager of AIML at Amazon QuickSight. As the product leader for AIML capabilities in Amazon QuickSight, Zac applies AI to simplify product experiences making data more useful and accessible. Zac has 24 years of experience helping create some of the world’s most used enterprise and consumer software, with stints in startups, Tableau, and Microsoft before coming to AWS.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/business-intelligence/amazon-quicksight-2024-year-in-review/