One of the challenges I regularly encounter when working with client data is that people rarely enter information the way we wish they would. It doesn’t matter whether you’re dealing with CRM records, financial data, forms, spreadsheets, or hand-entered notes. Eventually you’ll encounter a column that looks something like this: […]
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 […]
Today I’m going to share my solution to a question I found on the MrExcel forum. It’s an interesting problem. https://www.mrexcel.com/board/threads/power-query-to-determine-consecutive-and-non-consecutive-dates.1261496/ Let me briefly explain the problem. The Problem We have the following table, which contains the source data. Each row contains a unique ID (maybe a piece of equipment) […]
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 […]
Last week I again had the pleasure of being invited by Rob Collie to be on his podcast Raw Data by P3 Adaptive. For those that are not familiar with my story, I identified Rob as a leader in the Power Pivot/Power BI space very early on (back in the […]
Level: Intermediate Why You May Want to use RLS Imagine you’ve just built a Power BI report filled with sensitive financial data. You want to start to share this data across the organisation but not everyone is allowed to see everything. The CFO should be allowed to see everything, but […]
As you may know, Microsoft has an MVP Programme where it acknowledges and rewards community leaders for their subject matter expertise and contribution to the community. There are many benefits of being an MVP including the recognition (leading to people understanding that you must be doing something right if Microsoft […]
Have you ever had a situation where you have a slicer selection that “sticks”? You make a selection in a slicer, then make some changes somewhere else, but the first selection you made “sticks” when it is no longer valid? Take a look at this animated demo below to see […]
In this article I’m going to talk about the recent change that Microsoft has made in renaming the underlying database used in Power BI from the term “dataset” to “semantic model” (or as I would call it, “semantic data model”). The Word “Semantic” Let me start by talking about the […]
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 […]
On 12th April 2023, Iman and I hosted Miguel Myers as our special guest at the Sydney Power BI User Group. Miguel is a visualisation guru from Microsoft and has worked there for many years. He has recently been assigned as the Product Manager for Visualisations in Power BI, and […]
Back in April 2022, I wrote an article called Poor Man’s Paginated Reports. That article covered an easy way to create a paginated report without having to learn how to use paginated report builder. Sometime since then, Microsoft has released the ability to create a simple paginate report online inside […]
I do a lot of Power BI model and report development; maybe you do too. There’s nothing worse than spending an hour or so developing your model only to have something go wrong and you lose your work. Things that can go wrong include: Your PC/App crashes. Power BI does […]
Microsoft has just announced the general availability (GA) of the integration of Power BI with PowerPoint. I have previously blogged about this feature here => Power BI Live Embedding. With the recent GA announcement comes a significant improvement over the public preview version. Power BI Single Visual Embedding in PowerPoint […]