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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Paul Hansen – Business Intelligence Professional 2023
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Business Intelligence and Analytics Blog
Power BI’s modern visual defaults and new Customize theme experience enable report authors to centrally manage colors, typography, visual styling, page settings, and filter pane formatting across an entire report, creating consistent, professional reports faster while preserving visual-specific customizations. This post first appeared at https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Power-BI-Updates-Blog/Deep-dive-into-modern-visual-defaults-and-formatting-your-entire/ba-p/5303513. The author is DataZoeRead More
This post first appeared at https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Power-BI-Updates-Blog/Deep-dive-into-modern-visual-defaults-and-formatting-your-entire/ba-p/5303513. The author is DataZoeWelcome to the July 2026 Power BI update!This month, we’re introducing new capabilities across reporting, modeling, mobile, and embedded analytics. Highlights include expanded modern visual defaults, conditional formatting improvements for line charts and legends, new org app capabilities and APIs, Model Options in the Power BI Service, and TMDL View on the web.Let’s take a […]
This post first appeared at https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Power-BI-Updates-Blog/Power-BI-July-2026-Feature-Summary/ba-p/5303533. The author is murray-kpThe future of Power BI and Copilot starts by meeting users where they already work. We’re bringing trusted Power BI answers into Microsoft 365 Copilot first, so people can ask questions of governed business data in the flow of work — then carrying that richer, more conversational experience back into the Power BI service itself. […]
This post first appeared at https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Power-BI-Updates-Blog/Bringing-Power-BI-Insights-to-Every-Copilot-User/ba-p/5309360. The author is svredevoogdThis week, in the announcement about support for Fabric Pipelines in Workspace Monitoring, I noticed that it came with an Operations Agent that actively monitors and analyses Pipeline activity. And that got me thinking, since Workspace Monitoring also contains Power BI activity data, why not create an Operations Agent to actively monitor Power BI too? […]
This post first appeared at https://blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2026/07/19/using-fabric-operations-agents-and-workspace-monitoring-with-power-bi/. The author is Chris WebbPower BI’s new date picker slicer helps report authors set dynamic default date ranges while giving viewers flexible, easy ways to explore dates, ranges, and rolling periods as data refreshes. This post first appeared at https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Power-BI-Updates-Blog/Deep-dive-into-Power-BI-reporting-with-the-new-date-picker/ba-p/5295674. The author is DataZoeRead More
This post first appeared at https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Power-BI-Updates-Blog/Deep-dive-into-Power-BI-reporting-with-the-new-date-picker/ba-p/5295674. The author is DataZoeThis is a blog post I’ve been meaning to write for a long time. Since Fabric launched there has been a lot of focus on Direct Lake mode in Power BI and a lot of people used it because it was the cool new thing. Arguably, we at Microsoft have been guilty of telling people […]
This post first appeared at https://blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2026/07/12/the-benefits-of-using-direct-lake-mode-in-power-bi/. The author is Chris WebbDiscover how the Shape Map visual (Generally Available) in Power BI helps you bring custom geographic boundaries, flexible map formats, and data-driven color formatting into your reports. This post first appeared at https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Power-BI-Updates-Blog/Deep-dive-into-the-Shape-Map-in-Power-BI-Generally-Available/ba-p/5255561. The author is DataZoeRead More
This post first appeared at https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Power-BI-Updates-Blog/Deep-dive-into-the-Shape-Map-in-Power-BI-Generally-Available/ba-p/5255561. The author is DataZoeDiscover how Power BI’s tooltip (Generally Available) options help you tailor hover experiences—from curated field lists and sentence-style insights to fully custom report page tooltips. This post first appeared at https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Power-BI-Updates-Blog/Deep-dive-into-tooltip-options-in-Power-BI-visuals-Generally/ba-p/5255518. The author is DataZoeRead More
This post first appeared at https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Power-BI-Updates-Blog/Deep-dive-into-tooltip-options-in-Power-BI-visuals-Generally/ba-p/5255518. The author is DataZoeA few months ago I wrote about a rare error – the “Maximum allowable memory allocation” error – that may occur when the physical machine, or node, that a semantic model is running on in the Power BI Service comes under memory pressure. Recently, someone I was working with who was doing some load testing […]
This post first appeared at https://blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2026/07/05/understanding-the-database-was-evicted-to-balance-the-cpu-load-error-in-power-bi/. The author is Chris WebbWe’re proud to share that Microsoft has once again been named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms for the nineteenth consecutive year. This post first appeared at https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Power-BI-Updates-Blog/Microsoft-named-a-Leader-in-the-2026-Gartner-Magic-Quadrant-for/ba-p/5262403. The author is NicoCristacheRead More
This post first appeared at https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Power-BI-Updates-Blog/Microsoft-named-a-Leader-in-the-2026-Gartner-Magic-Quadrant-for/ba-p/5262403. The author is NicoCristacheVisual calculations (Generally Available) in Power BI, making it easier to add DAX calculations directly to the visual where they’re used. This post first appeared at https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Power-BI-Updates-Blog/Deep-dive-into-visual-calculations-Adding-calculations-directly/ba-p/5255359. The author is DataZoeRead More
This post first appeared at https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Power-BI-Updates-Blog/Deep-dive-into-visual-calculations-Adding-calculations-directly/ba-p/5255359. The author is DataZoePower BI reports continue to help analysts build secure, governed BI experiences on semantic models, while Fabric Apps expands what developers can create from the same trusted data. This post first appeared at https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Power-BI-Updates-Blog/Power-BI-reports-and-Fabric-Apps-Expanding-how-you-build-on-your/ba-p/5234706. The author is DataZoeRead More
This post first appeared at https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Power-BI-Updates-Blog/Power-BI-reports-and-Fabric-Apps-Expanding-how-you-build-on-your/ba-p/5234706. The author is DataZoeLevel: Beginners Original Post: November, 2016 It was only a few months after Power BI was born, that Matt first posted on this topic. At that time, his focus was still primarily on Power Pivot in Excel, as Power BI was still in its infancy. Despite this, understanding when it […]Read More » This post […]
This post first appeared at https://exceleratorbi.com.au/lookup-tables-in-power-bi/. The author is Jason CockingtonPower BI Desktop Bridge (Preview)Power BI Desktop Bridge introduces a new way of working, allowing external applications and agents to interact directly with Power BI Desktop! What is Power BI Desktop Bridge?The bridge is a lightweight local server that lets external applications interact directly with Power BI Desktop. Think of it as a direct, secure channel between […]
This post first appeared at https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Power-BI-Updates-Blog/Power-BI-Desktop-Bridge-Preview/ba-p/5227769. The author is saralamFor as long as I’ve been using Power BI – which has been from the beginning – the advice about which storage mode to choose has been the same: use Import mode unless you have a really, really good reason to use DirectQuery mode and even then you’re probably wrong and should use Import mode. […]
This post first appeared at https://blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2026/06/28/power-bi-directquery-mode-a-better-choice-than-you-might-think/. The author is Chris WebbWhen you configure a Denodo data connection for Entra ID SSO, users querying a semantic model in DirectQuery mode are authenticated to Denodo with their own Microsoft Entra ID identity. This post first appeared at https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Power-BI-Updates-Blog/Microsoft-Entra-ID-single-sign-on-for-the-Denodo-connector-in/ba-p/5193376. The author is kayuRead More
This post first appeared at https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Power-BI-Updates-Blog/Microsoft-Entra-ID-single-sign-on-for-the-Denodo-connector-in/ba-p/5193376. The author is kayuHow to use sensitivity labels and Protection Policies to secure your Power BI estate — and why it matters more than ever in the age of AI. This post first appeared at https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Power-BI-Updates-Blog/Protect-once-enforce-everywhere-Protection-policies-for-Power-BI/ba-p/5223932. The author is yaelbissRead More
This post first appeared at https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Power-BI-Updates-Blog/Protect-once-enforce-everywhere-Protection-policies-for-Power-BI/ba-p/5223932. The author is yaelbiss“Extreme DAX” by Michiel Rozema, Madzy Stikkelorum and Henk Vlootman Continuing my series of not-reviews of the latest Power BI-related books (and there are fewer and fewer of them being published) that I receive free copies of, here’s the second edition of a book that for some reason I missed first time around: “Extreme DAX”. […]
This post first appeared at https://blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2026/06/21/new-book-extreme-dax-2nd-edition/. The author is Chris WebbWhen enabling Microsoft Entra ID single sign-on (SSo) for Starburst (Preview) report viewers querying semantic models in DirectQuery mode authenticate to Starburst with their own Entra ID identity, to Starburst’s access policies — including row-level and column-level security rules — are evaluated against the actual end user rather than a fixed connection account. This post […]
This post first appeared at https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Power-BI-Updates-Blog/Microsoft-Entra-ID-single-sign-on-for-the-Starburst-connector-in/ba-p/5193371. The author is kayuWorkspace outbound access protection (OAP) is a workspace-level control in Microsoft Fabric that lets you constrain where the data inside a workspace can flow. With this preview, OAP support now extends to Power BI reports. The good news for report authors and admins: there’s nothing new to configure on the report itself. Protection comes from […]
This post first appeared at https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Power-BI-Updates-Blog/Workspace-outbound-access-protection-for-Power-BI-reports/ba-p/5193354. The author is kayu