Power BI gets a lot of love – and it deserves it. But under the hood you will probably know that there are 2 technologies that are the true work horses that prepare the data for use. Those 2 products are Power Query and Power Pivot. Power Query is the […]
Matt Here: I first met Ivan via Twitter when he was living in Russia, and then in person when he moved to Australia to live in Sydney with his family. Ivan is a talented Power BI professional and I have learnt many things from him over the last few years. […]
Level: Intermediate Last week I presented a webinar with Chuck Sterling (from Microsoft) on the topic of Time Intelligence. This was a YouTube broadcast event that anyone could join live, however it has also been recorded and can be watched at any time (see below). This article is a follow […]
Power Query for Excel has developed at a striking pace over the last few years making it hard to keep up with the changes. Over several iterations, the Queries and Connections pane has been called various names, and the behaviour has changed a few times too. Depending on the version […]
Where has Matt been? Before teaching you how to pass an Excel parameter to Power Query, I’ll have a few words. Regular readers of my blog may have noticed I have been missing in action over the last month. I have been super busy with the PUG World Tour, delivering […]
Level: Intermediate Sometime late in 2016 Microsoft deployed a new “Combine” feature in both Power Query for Excel (Get and Transform) and also in Power BI Desktop (Get Data). The new capability makes it easier to combine multiple copies of similar workbooks into a single table without hand coding M Functions, […]
I was reading a blog by David Eldersveld last week where he was talking about his entry in the Microsoft Data Insights Summit Data Analytics Challenge. I originally was too busy to enter however I was inspired by his article and thought I should prepare an entry albeit with only […]
2 fabulous new updates again in the April update of Power BI Desktop. Here is my quick review so you can see how great these things are. Quick Measures Quick measures are designed to help you get started with DAX, without knowing any DAX! OMG I will be out of […]
Level: Intermediate I was helping a user on http://community.powerbi.com this week. The user had a list of service desk tickets for multiple customers and the requirement was to identify when a customer opened a second new ticket within 7 days of closing a previous ticket. This is not an uncommon scenario […]
Level: Beginners Edit: Sep 2019 There are many best practices for Power BI. I know these things so intuitively now that it is very easy to forget how I incrementally learnt these things along the journey. Most of these things are not “right” vs “wrong” – they are more often […]
Today I am combining a few techniques to show how to build a robust cleansing approach for your data using Power Query. This article will demonstrate the following Power Query techniques Joining tables (Merge Query) Self Referencing tables Adding Custom Columns Sample Data I am using some sample data as […]
Level: Intermediate Last week I shared how it was possible to easily create an online survey using Excel for O365. Once such a survey is created, the data can be imported into PowerBI.com and used to create a simple report. The biggest issue with directly connecting to OneDrive like I showed […]
Level: Intermediate [Edit: April 2019] Microsoft made the PDF Connector in Power BI generally available in April 2019. This is another instance to show that Microsoft is listening to the community to add or improve the Power BI features. The PDF File connector will appear under the File category in the […]
Level: Beginners If you want to learn new skills using a new tool, then you simply must practice. One great way to practice is to weave the new tool into you daily problem solving. If you have something meaningful to do with the new tool, then you are much more […]
Level: Beginners I got this dreaded Dropbox email recently as shown below. I needed to clear out some of the files I have loaded in Dropbox so I didn’t have to upgrade my account. It occurred to me that I could make this process a lot easier by using Power […]
Level: Beginners One of the great challenges Microsoft has faced with its “new” suite of Self Service BI tools (particularly Power Pivot) is that most people that could benefit from the holy trinity (Power Pivot, Power Query and Power BI) don’t even know these tools exist, let alone how the tools […]
I have been on holidays taking a much needed break from work, so it has been very quite on my blog over the last few weeks. But I am back now! I woke up this morning to a very pleasant surprise – Microsoft has delivered the long waited for Query […]
Level: Advanced Power Query I am in the process of finalising some action items after a great Power BI, Power Pivot and Power Query training course in Melbourne. During the training we looked at a scenario for one of the attendees where they needed to combine data from multiple Excel files into […]
Level: Intermediate There was an interesting question this week on http://powerpivotforum.com.au asking if there was a smarter way to user Power Query over multiple identical web pages to scrape the data in a single query. I have been meaning to blog about this for a while, so it is a […]
Level: Intermediate I spent a lot of last week helping to configure Power BI in preparation for go live for a client. One of the important things to do when designing a Power BI solution is to make sure you have a good design for your user security access. Today […]