The Best Articles and Tutorials About Cloud Analytics, BI and Management
Paul Hansen is an experienced Analytics Engineer and Senior BI Developer, skilled in data architecture, ETL processes, and data visualization. He has a strong background in SQL, Python, and cloud platforms like AWS and Azure. Paul has led teams to create integrated data solutions, leveraging tools such as dbt, SSIS, and Power BI. His recent roles have ranged from Senior BI Developer to BI Team Lead, demonstrating his ability to manage complex projects and deliver insightful business intelligence solutions. Paul values a collaborative work environment that fosters innovation and professional growth.
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The semantic model settings pane is becoming the default way to configure semantic models in the Power BI service. The pane opens alongside your workspace, so you can review and change settings without leaving the current page. It provides the same settings as the full semantic model settings page while keeping the surrounding context visible. […]
This post first appeared at https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Power-BI-Updates-Blog/Manage-semantic-model-settings-in-context-with-the-default/ba-p/5366792. The author is kayuHere’s a situation I’ve found myself in many times. You’re called to help someone whose Power BI report is suddenly very slow. You ask whether any changes were made to the semantic model around the time performance got worse and the answer is no, absolutely not. You then spend anything from a few hours to […]
This post first appeared at https://blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2026/09/13/find-what-changed-and-when-in-your-power-bi-semantic-model/. The author is Chris WebbIn December, we announced the retirement of Power BI Q&A, our legacy natural-language querying experience, with retirement planned for December 2026. To give current Q&A user’s additional time to assess their dependencies and transition to newer Copilot-powered solutions, we’re extending the retirement date to February 2027. This post recaps the affected experiences and provides updates […]
This post first appeared at https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Power-BI-Updates-Blog/Power-BI-Q-A-retirement-reminder-February-2027-timeline-update/ba-p/5365841. The author is mohammadaliIn case you haven’t already seen the blog post on the Power BI blog or the discussion on LinkedIn, we at Microsoft published a new white paper last week to help you decide which storage mode to use when you’re using Power BI to create semantic models and reports on data stored in Azure Databricks. […]
This post first appeared at https://blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2026/09/06/choosing-a-power-bi-storage-mode-for-reporting-on-data-from-azure-databricks/. The author is Chris WebbMany enterprise Power BI semantic models use Azure Databricks as a data source. When building these models, developers and architects face an early and consequential decision: which storage mode to use. Cost, security, and ease of development and tuning all factor in — but report performance is probably the most important of them, because reports […]
This post first appeared at https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Power-BI-Updates-Blog/Modern-Power-BI-architecture-choices-for-reporting-on-Azure/ba-p/5364286. The author is eiki_suiMicrosoft has refreshed its Power BI sample reports with modern visual defaults, stronger semantic models, mobile-optimized layouts, and newer authoring features to help creators build clearer, more effective reports. This post first appeared at https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Power-BI-Updates-Blog/Power-BI-sample-reports-refreshed-with-modern-visual-defaults/ba-p/5363807. The author is DataZoeRead More
This post first appeared at https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Power-BI-Updates-Blog/Power-BI-sample-reports-refreshed-with-modern-visual-defaults/ba-p/5363807. The author is DataZoeSeveral years ago I wrote a very popular blog post about how to store images for your reports inside your Power BI semantic model. It solved the problem of how you could use display images (for example of products) inside your reports without making those images available via a public URL or personal OneDrive Embed […]
This post first appeared at https://blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2026/08/30/referencing-images-and-other-files-in-power-bi-reports-using-onelake-urls/. The author is Chris WebbCalculated columns are now available in preview for Direct Lake on OneLake semantic models. This has been one of the most requested capabilities since Direct Lake launched and closes a long-standing gap with Import and DirectQuery storage modes.You can define calculated columns directly in your semantic model using DAX in web modeling and Power BI […]
This post first appeared at https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Power-BI-Updates-Blog/Direct-Lake-Calculated-Columns-Preview/ba-p/5357159. The author is VivienneVereenUpgrading Power BI Dataflows Gen1 is now easier with the Dataflows Upgrade Wizard. Now in preview for eligible workspaces assigned to Fabric capacity, the wizard provides a guided experience to upgrade Power BI Dataflows Gen1 items to Fabric Dataflows Gen2 (CI/CD). The wizard preserves key properties of the existing dataflow and assesses each item before […]
This post first appeared at https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Power-BI-Updates-Blog/Upgrade-Power-BI-Dataflows-Gen1-to-Fabric-Dataflows-Gen2-with/ba-p/5360422. The author is eranbenayunThere’s so much going on in the Fabric community that it can be hard to keep up with it all. Semantic Link Labs is a great example: in the six months or so since I last had a proper look at it my colleague Michael Kovalsky has done a whole load of cool things and […]
This post first appeared at https://blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2026/08/23/tools-with-interactive-uis-in-fabric-notebooks-with-semantic-link-labs/. The author is Chris WebbIf your organization uses Power BI, you own something most companies chasing AI are desperately trying to build. You just may not know it by name.Let me explain.The invisible thing behind every reportEvery Power BI report you have ever opened sits on top of a semantic model. Every single one. No exceptions. The report is […]
This post first appeared at https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Power-BI-Updates-Blog/The-AI-Semantic-Layer-You-Probably-Already-Have/ba-p/5360197. The author is bogdancWelcome to the August 2026 Power BI Feature Summary! This month includes updates across reporting, modeling, data connectivity, mobile, embedded analytics, and developer experiences, with a mix of generally available enhancements and new preview capabilities. Let’s take a look at what’s new. Table of Contents This post first appeared at https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Power-BI-Updates-Blog/Power-BI-August-2026-Feature-Summary/ba-p/5348434. The author is murray-kpRead More
This post first appeared at https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Power-BI-Updates-Blog/Power-BI-August-2026-Feature-Summary/ba-p/5348434. The author is murray-kpPower BI Projects (PBIP) make reports and semantic models file-based, enabling source control, automation, and other developer workflows. You can edit those files directly in a code editor or through external tools. Until now, changes made outside of Power BI Desktop wouldn’t appear until you restarted the application. With this update, Power BI Desktop detects […]
This post first appeared at https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Power-BI-Updates-Blog/Edit-your-Power-BI-projects-anywhere-and-reload-them-instantly/ba-p/5359136. The author is saralamOne of the most common questions I hear from customers as they move to an allocation-based billing model is:”What levers do I actually have if I want to control how many resources my workloads consume?”Many customers are looking for a way to prevent specific workloads from scaling aggressively and consuming more resources than they’re comfortable […]
This post first appeared at https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Power-BI-Updates-Blog/Using-Custom-SQL-Pools-to-balance-performance-and-cost-in-Fabric/ba-p/5359735. The author is joannapeaIn last week’s post I mentioned that while Power BI reports (unlike Excel PivotTables) do not support the Detail Rows Expression feature, it is possible to partially work around this limitation by using the paginated report visual. In this post I’ll show you how I was able to do this and what is and isn’t […]
This post first appeared at https://blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2026/08/16/displaying-the-output-of-detail-rows-expressions-in-power-bi-reports-using-the-paginated-report-visual/. The author is Chris WebbTMDL View on the Web is a feature in Power BI that enables developers to view and edit semantic models as code directly in the browser using TMDL. It expands the Power BI web modelling experience by introducing a rich code editor for working with TMDL scripts—giving pro developers full transparency into the semantic model […]
This post first appeared at https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Power-BI-Updates-Blog/TMDL-View-on-the-web-Edit-semantic-models-as-code-in-your/ba-p/5332653. The author is saralamIf you have a DirectQuery fact table in Power BI you can use user-defined aggregations to improve query performance; querying a smaller, summarised copy of your data in an Import mode aggregation table is always going to be faster than querying a large fact table containing all your detail data that is in DirectQuery mode. […]
This post first appeared at https://blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2026/08/09/using-detail-rows-expressions-to-drill-to-a-different-fact-table-in-power-bi/. The author is Chris WebbBring your Power BI reports to life with dynamic conditional formatting for lines and legends that stays consistent and updates automatically as your data changes. This post first appeared at https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Power-BI-Updates-Blog/Deep-dive-into-conditional-formatting-for-lines-and-legends/ba-p/5331078. The author is DataZoeRead More
This post first appeared at https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Power-BI-Updates-Blog/Deep-dive-into-conditional-formatting-for-lines-and-legends/ba-p/5331078. The author is DataZoeThis week there was another big Copilot-related announcement for Power BI – but on the Excel blog. You can now analyse data from Power BI semantic models using Copilot in Excel. Full details on how to enable this are in the docs here, but what does it look like? Using the same semantic model from […]
This post first appeared at https://blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2026/08/02/analysing-power-bi-data-using-copilot-in-excel/. The author is Chris WebbOne of the most rewarding parts of working with DAX is discovering that two measures can return exactly the same result while taking very different paths through the engine. To the report user, there is no difference. The number is correct, the visual renders, and the report appears to work. […]Read More » This post […]
This post first appeared at https://exceleratorbi.com.au/the-hidden-cost-of-vertipaq-scans/. The author is Jason Cockington