In The Trenches
With SSAS, SSIS, SSRS, DAX, MDX, Power BI and MDS
I’ve just come across an interesting new project from Microsoft Research called Charticulator. It’s described as a tool for the “Interactive Construction of Bespoke Chart Layouts”, and you can use it for creating some very nice data visualisations like this: So I had a play with it, was quite impressed, and then I watched the […]
The excellent work that David Eldersveld has been doing recently on using SVG images in Power BI has generated a lot of interest; now that the August 2018 release of Power BI Desktop allows you to set data categories on measures – and specifically the Image URL data category – David has been able to […]
I read this blog (and Matt Allington, and Ken Puls) pretty religiously. But PowerPivotPro is probably my favorite because it deals with a lot of real-world situations, not just technical solutions. So, I’m going to continue that theme and… This post first appeared at https://powerpivotpro.com/2018/08/build-as-they-talk/. The author is Matthew RunyonRead More
One thing I did a long time ago was set up my own forum called PowerPivot Forum. This forum is open to anyone to join and to ask questions and/or help others. If I have any spare time (decreasingly so these days), I help people out on the forum too. It occurred to me that the forum […]
Today I got from the production team the first chapters of the book for final proofreading. I had to share with you a screenshot of the first page of Chapter 1: Pre-order the book here. This post first appeared at https://datachant.com/2018/08/15/first-page-of-chapter-1-introduction-to-power-query/. The author is Gil RavivRead More
My P3 Story! Well, it looks like I’m up next to share my PowerPivot and P3 story! I really enjoyed Ryan’s story, and I took away from it that you must make time for what you what to achieve in… This post first appeared at https://powerpivotpro.com/2018/08/journey-to-p3-krissy-dyess/. The author is Krissy DyessRead More
When I read about the new conditional formatting by values feature in the August 2018 release of Power BI Desktop, my first thought was to write a blog post on how DAX can be used to generate the hex values for colours – but then Daniil Masyluk wrote an excellent post on that (and more) […]
Walk through using real-world visualizations in your Power BI dashboard. Microsoft Visio offers the perfect canvas for visually contextualizing data and depicting process flows. Using the new Visio visual for Power BI, you can easily bring alive Visio’s powerful visualization capabilities right within your Power BI dashboards to drive insights and action. This post first […]
While I was playing around with the new release (August 2018) of Power BI Desktop I noticed there was an undocumented change: similar to the OData improvements I blogged about here, there is a new option in the AnalysisServices.Database() and AnalysisServices.Databases() M functions that turns on a newer version of the MDX generation layer used […]
I am excited to share an excerpt from the draft manuscript of my book. In this excerpt, which is part of chapter 12, “Advanced Text Analytics: Extracting Meaning,” you will learn how to translate text in your Excel and Power BI reports using Microsoft Cognitive Services’ Translator Text API and Power Query. Pre-order the book […]
Our August release is filled with features that address some of the top requests we’ve heard from users. The most exciting of which is our Export to PDF feature which is geared towards our #1 feature request on UserVoice, printing in Power BI Desktop. We also have an exciting update for data scientists and statisticians […]
Today, I’m excited to announce the public preview of a new workspace experience in Power BI. The new workspace experience is designed to enable enterprises to easily manage Power BI content at scale using security groups, distribution lists, and Office 365 Groups. When using the new workspace experiences, you can create App workspaces without creating […]
The journey continues… Five years on from my life-changing encounter with PowerPivot, my pilgrimage to the Nirvana of Modern Excel continues with some occasional detours. When I first encountered PowerPivot back in 2013, I thought that this tool would obviously… This post first appeared at https://powerpivotpro.com/2018/08/finding-the-magic-part-2-on-the-way-to-data-happiness/. The author is Sakiko StickleyRead More
Level: Intermediate A couple of weeks ago I posted a list of my ideas that I have created at ideas.powerbi.com and asked you to vote for them if you agree with the concept (please go back and take a look if you missed it). I thought it would be interesting to keep track of the […]
The Power BI World Tour will provide users with an incredible learning opportunity to gain the skills necessary for success in a highly competitive marketplace. This post first appeared at https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/2018-power-bi-world-tour-powered-by-your-local-user-group/. The author is Read More
Reid Havens covers cover building a KPI scorecard with custom visuals in Power BI. Learn about some great custom visuals in conjunction with DAX calculations to build out a quality scorecard template to use in your business. This post first appeared at https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/8-16-18-webinar-building-a-kpi-scorecard-with-custom-visuals-in-power-bi-with-reid-havens/. The author is Read More
My posts from two weeks ago (see here and here) on using Process Monitor to troubleshoot the performance of Power Query queries made me wonder about another question: how does the performance of reading data from CSV files compare to the performance of reading data from Excel files? I think most experienced Power Query users […]
One of the most powerful features (and there are lots) that I’ve found about Power Query is the ability to hold an entire table in a single cell. Once I’ve got a table in a cell, then I can start… This post first appeared at https://powerpivotpro.com/2018/08/power-query-magic-nested-calculations-in-power-query-finance-application/. The author is Michael HumpherysRead More
One thing that I still get confused about writing is pivot queries. I find myself needing to lookup the syntax every time. Basically you use Pivot and Unpivot to change the output of a table. If you would like rows turned into columns you can use pivot and for the opposite you can use unpivot. […]
8/2 Webinar: See how PowerApps and PowerBI can provide school teachers the apps and the reports they need by Daniel Christian This post first appeared at https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/8-2-webinar-see-how-powerapps-and-powerbi-can-provide-school-teachers-the-apps-and-the-reports-they-need-by-daniel-christian/. The author is Read More