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: 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 […]
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a selection in a slicer, then make some changes somewhere else, but the first selection you made “sticks” when it is no longer valid?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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
The Power BI Matrix visual is similar to an Excel Pivot table, however there are quite a few limitations in the Matrix. In the Power BI Matrix below I have put the product categories on Rows, Calendar Year on Columns and the measure [Total Sales] on Values. At this point, […]
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 […]
Way back in 2019, I was fortunate enough to meet Jeffrey Wang while at the MVP summit in Seattle. Jeffrey is one of the fathers of the DAX language and as such he is a hero of mine. I sat through some presentations and discussions, and Jeffrey mentioned an idea […]
I love the Power BI community. There are so many great things that the community does. They help each other (think the Power BI community forum) and they also build fabulous third party external tools to enhance Power BI. Measure Killer This week I am sharing a brand new third […]
I’ve been pretty busy over the last few months. The demand for Power BI skills has never been stronger, and my company is super busy. I haven’t written a blog article for a while, but I wanted to take a bit of time out this morning to talk about the […]
Readers of my blog may have read this previous article from Roland where he covered an introduction to dataflows. In this new article, Roland is going to share some ideas about using the new field parameters. If you haven’t subscribed to Roland’s YouTube Channel yet, I highly recommend that you […]
I have many reasons for sharing content online. The main reasons are that I like sharing what I know, but also that I want to document how to complete a task for future reference. My article today ticks both of those boxes. How Many Employees by Period I’m calling this […]
The May 2022 version of Power BI Desktop includes a very interesting and useful feature – Field Parameters. Today I will show you how to use this new feature illustrating with 3 (no, wait, 4) use cases – Chart Elements, Chart Axis, Table Contents and Permanent Ad hoc Hierarchies. How […]
What?! Exploding Measures I hear you say. Exploding, expanding, use which ever word you like; what I mean is when you want to remove any refence to a measure INSIDE another measure. Example Consider the 3 measures below. Total Sales = SUM(Sales[ExtendedAmount]) Total All Product Sales = CALCULATE([Total Sales],ALL(Products)) % […]
Paginated Reports have been available in Power BI since 2019. They serve an important purpose, but they are not easy for the average business user to learn, plus they require Power BI Premium to use. In my blog and video today, I will show you how you can use Excel […]
I always tell people in my training classes that the best way to become good at using Power BI is to get plenty of practice. Best case scenario, you would do something at work that will help you succeed in your job and hence you will get paid to learn. […]
This is a further article in my series where I share with you what I have learnt about the InfoRiver custom visual. As good as Power BI is, it will take Microsoft many more years to make it fully featured. Microsoft Excel is 37 years old, and I can assure […]
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 […]