One 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. […]
Level: 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 […]
Why Star Schema Matters More Than Ever in the Age of AI It was over a decade ago that Matt first posted on The Optimal Shape for Power BI Data. Throughout the years since, Matt consistently promoted this as one of the most important lessons he taught Power BI users […]
Original Post : Matt Allington, 24 Apr 2018 Background Technically you don’t need calendar tables to use Power BI, but for most reports that go beyond a simple Excel spreadsheet analysis, Calendars are an essential component of a successful Semantic Model. There are many different approaches to creating and maintaining […]
Level: Beginners Power BI has evolved significantly since Matt’s original publication of this article in 2016. While the foundational concepts remain relevant, modern features and best practices offer more secure, scalable, and collaborative ways to share content. This updated guide reflects the latest capabilities and recommendations for sharing Power BI […]
Level: Beginners Original: Feb 2016 It has been many years since Matt wrote his first take on Calculated Columns vs Measures, back in 2014 when he wrote the blog post 5 common mistakes of self taught DAX students at PowerPivotPro.com. Since then Matt expanded his ideas with the original release […]
Updated June 2024 We update this blog article regularly to keep track of how Microsoft is progressing on its strategic journey in building a world class BI platform. Gartner released the 2024 Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms in June. As expected (by us at least), Microsoft is […]
In my last article I introduced the three different connectivity modes that are available for Power BI to fetch data from a source, with a specific focus on when and where to use DirectQuery connections. In this article I am going to go deeper and introduce the modelling aspects of a DirectQuery […]
Over the last few months, I have received a number of very similar questions at either one of our Live Training courses or from a student attending one of our Ask Anything Power BI Q&A sessions. These questions all revolved around DirectQuery and were often specifically about performance issues or […]
The External Tools ribbon is a feature that has been available in Power BI Desktop since the July 2020 release. This feature should be considered essential to anyone who is regularly working in the Power BI space. In this article I recommend my top five External Tools, that I […]
At a recent training course, one of the students asked if it was possible to add two different columns on the legend of a line chart, so that when a selection is made on a second slicer the chart splits to reveal multiple lines. Given others in the class showed […]
A client recently asked me if it was possible to build a Power BI report using data from a Microsoft Form. I have come across this question a few times now, and you could be excused for thinking this would be a straightforward task. Despite the fact that Microsoft has […]
Power BI is and incredible product, yet there are still niggling issues that can frustrate and annoy the best of us (me included). Having said that, changes and improvements are happening all the time and it is easy for new features that address old issues to slip past us without […]
This is a further (fourth) update/edit to this article Power BI Golden Dataset I first wrote in Apr-17. I then updated it again in Jan-18, Jun-18 and again now in May-20 (Jason did a full review this time around). When I update my articles, I change the original post with […]
Have you ever had report consumers that just don’t read your instructions? Well, you’re not alone. Having delivered our Module 1 : Data to Dashboard training for about 4 months now, I have often been challenged during the Drill Through Reports topic, with students commenting “I’ve tried text based tooltips […]
In a recent post, Matt discussed how to extract data from complex websites with Power BI using the New Web Table Inference capability of Power Query. This article is an extension of those ideas, revealing that this amazing feature is not just limited to scraping data from static HTML websites, […]
Matt here: If you are a regular reader of my blog, you may remember that late in 2019 I advertised for a full time trainer to join my company. I have been in business for almost 6 years now and the demand for my training and consulting services has never […]
Updated: 17 Jan 2020. Updated: 22 Sep 2021. Updated: 27 Apr 2022 – Walkthrough Video Added Background This is the 3rd iteration of this Power BI Visual Based on Selection article, attempting to address some of the confusion that has emerged since I added the [Check Filtered] measure into the […]