Today Microsoft announced that it is now supporting icon sets to be used for conditional formatting in Power BI. This feature has been available in Excel, like forever, and it great to see it available now in Power BI. Set Up Power BI Conditional Formatting Using Icons I have a […]
Level: Intermediate Pareto Analysis is a statistical technique that applies the Pareto Principle to data. This is more commonly known as the 80:20 Rule. The Pareto Principle is based on the presumption that a relatively small number of inputs (20%) have most impact on the results/output (80%). The 80:20 rule […]
I was doing some online shopping last week and saw a price slicer with a histogram to show the concentration of price points. I thought it was pretty cool, so decided to see if I could build this in Power BI. I came up with a solution that works, and […]
There was a new feature released in the June 2019 version of Power BI Desktop that I really like and I think warrants some explanation and review. The new feature allows you to pre-filter a slicer so that it only contains a subset of values that would otherwise appear in […]
Level: Intermediate There was an announcement made a few weeks ago by Microsoft that nearly slipped under my radar. I don’t always read the more technical announcements because I don’t have a highly technical background. Luckily I read this particular announcement as it contained a nugget of gold that is […]
Level: Intermediate I was delivering some training last week for a customer in Sydney and the participants had an interesting problem where they needed to be able to report on a rolling time window. Think of it a bit like Rolling 12 Months Sales, or average weekly sales over a […]
It is very common to need to transform data from one “shape” to another “shape” before it can be used inside Power BI for analysis (although many beginners don’t realise this). One such example is shown below, where the data in the table on the left hand side needs to […]
I blogged about the various ways to use Measure tables and Measure Sub Folders in Power BI a few weeks back. I discussed why measure tables may be required, and also a few reasons why you may choose not to use a measure table. I also mentioned some alternatives to using […]
Level: Intermediate – I have had a couple of requests for help during my live training classes and online training classes on how to build a Six Sigma Control Charts in Power BI. Now I am not professing to be a Six Sigma black belt, but I do know how […]
I often get asked about how to create measure tables during my Power BI course classes. This post will discuss the merits of measure tables versus storing your measures in the table where the data comes from. What is a Measure Table? A measure table is a dedicated table used […]
I had an interesting question from one of my book readers and I thought it would make a good blog article. There are many ways of solving this problem, and I blogged about solving a similar problem Fill Table with Last Survey Result using DAX here. The solution I am providing in […]
Way back in Oct-2016, Microsoft released a feature in Power BI Desktop that makes the process of creating groups much easier for the average user. I was reminded of this feature by an article by Reid Havens a couple of months ago. I blogged about various other ways of doing […]
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 […]
Just a short post today to share with you a permanent fix to something that has been annoying me (maybe you too – but then again I am easily annoyed 🙂 ). Edit: read the comments below from Amir Netz from Microsoft where he explains why this change was made […]
Level: Intermediate There is a concept in the DAX language called “Syntax Sugar”. Simply put, the developers have created simplified versions of more complex formulas to make it easier for people to learn and use the DAX functions. Here are a couple of examples. Total Sales Syntax Sugar = SUM(Sales[ExtendedAmount]) […]
One of the things I like about my live, online training courses is that I get to hear great questions from the trenches from people learning DAX and Power BI. Last week, John asked me how to apply conditional formatting with a Text field (not a numeric field). I knew […]
I was trying to clean up my hard disk drive on my PC the other day. I use a program called WinDirStat to show me graphically what is taking space (as an aside, this is great software and you can download it here). After running the software I noticed that […]
I woke up Saturday morning to a lot of chatter and blog articles about an announcement that Microsoft made at SQL Bits. Microsoft is adding “Calculation Groups” to the DAX language. There are a number of blogs already that talk about the announcement, including Chris Webb and The Italians, but […]
I was answering a question for a student in one of my online training courses this week. The question was, “Do you know of a way in power query to efficiently extract YYYY-MM from a Date column?” This can be done ‘manually’ with multiple steps including: Extract the Year into […]
Updated Feb 2019. This is an edited version of my original article which first appeared on my site in Feb 2016. The rate of change in the tools available to a Business Analyst has never been faster than it is today. The market is changing so quickly that many Business […]