Power BI on Hat Full of Data

Microsoft Fabric – Direct Lake and User Permissions

Fri, 07 Nov 2025 19:40:06 +0000

Direct Lake is the best way to build a semantic model on data in a Lakehouse or a Warehouse. We can then use Power BI to build reports and possibly even a make a Workspace App to deliver those reports to the business. So what permissions do the business users need to view those reports? This post will explore using Direct Lake and User Permissions to make sure everyone can see data in the reports.

IMPORTANT

This is the simplest method of fixing permissions so someone can view a report using direct lake. If your lakehouse or warehouse contains data they should not have access to this is not the method to use.

Scenario

For this post I have built the following :

Workspace that has a workspace app built and up to date.
Lakehouse_Report connected to a semantic model, Lakehouse_Model, that has a direct lake connection to a lakehouse, Permissions_Demo_Lakehouse
Warehouse_Report connected to a semantic model, Warehouse_Model, that has a direct lake connection to a lakehouse, Permissions_Demo_Warehouse
Both the Warehouse and Lakehouse contain one table, Projects with 10 rows of data. Both reports show this in a chart.

I have given one user, Dan, Vistor access to the workspace and I’ve given the Project team security group access to the workspace app.

Both reports work fine for me as the workspace owner. The report is direct lake and user permissions are admin.

Viewing Reports as Dan

Viewing the report as Dan is an example of a report that is direct lake and user permission is viewer. Dan can see the warehouse data but he cannot see the lakehouse data.

Viewing Workspace App as Sam

Viewing the report as Sam, who is a member of the Project team security is an example of a reports that are direct lake and user permission is app only. Sam cannot see either the lakehouse or the warehouse report charts.

Permissions

Whenever data is not coming through for some but not others it is usually an issue with permissions somewhere. Everyone can see the report, they get the headings. The connection is direct lake into the semantic model we need to look at user permissions where the data lives, the lakehouse and the warehouse.

Each item in the workspace has permissions. By default permissions are inherited from the workspace. There are two fixes to do. The first is Dan’s access to the lakehouse and the second is project team access to both lakehouse and the warehouse.

Fix Dan’s Lakehouse Access

In the workspace, click on the three dots on the lakehouse. Then from the menu select Manage permissions. This shows a list of the people with access and the Role which gave them that access. We can see Dan has Read and ViewOutput

Read only gives the user permission to connect to the lakehouse, it does not let them see the data. Neither does ViewOutput. I’d love to find documentation as to what ViewOutput allows but I’ve not found it yet. I will update this post when I do.

Click on the three dots at the end of permissions and select Add ReadAll. Now when Dan looks at the reports the Lakehouse one will work. Sometimes it takes 10-15 minutes for the permissions to work..

Fix Sam’s Access via the Workspace App

Sam gains access to the workspace app through being a member of the Project Team security group. The security group is not mentioned in the permissions of the lakehouse or warehouse. If you go look it is listed in the permissions of the semantic model as App.

In the lakehouse permissions, click on +Add user. In the Grant people access dialog add the user group or people into the box. Decide if you are emailing them and add a message, I’m not emailing anyone an auto generated email! I have not ticked any of the additional permissions. Then click Grant.

This will give them Read access. Then as we did for Dan, click on the three dots and click Add ReadAll and this.

Warehouse permissions are slightly different. Dan has Read and ReadData permissions which gives enough access for him to view the report. So we can use the same process as on the lakehouse and duplicate those permissions. Note that in the Grant people access dialog no additional permissions were ticked.

And after a few minutes when Sam refreshes the Workspace App they can see the reports both working.

Note!

The permissions given do mean that if Sam now has access to run SQL against the Warehouse but not the Lakehouse which is behind the semantic model so any row level security in the model will not apply. They do allow Sam to explore the data in both the semantic models.

Resources

The reason I wrote this blog post was I couldn’t find a resource to show the simple fix of manage permissions. Lakehouse sharing and permission management – Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn is the closest I got.

Conclusion

Giving someone access to the whole lakehouse or warehouse could be dangerous. This post gives the simplest of fixes assuming the report viewer is allowed to see all the data with a report that is direct lake and user permissions are read only in the workspace or app only.

With new security features now available we can make the permissions fix more complex requirements. Handling Direct and User permissions needs careful consideration and should be discussed as part of your data governance.

Microsoft Fabric Quick Guides

Create a Lakehouse
Load CSV file and folder
Create a table from a CSV file
Create a Table with a Dataflow
Create a Table using a Notebook and Data Wrangler
Exploring the SQL End Point
Create a Power BI Report
Create a Paginated Report

Power BI – Use ISINSCOPE to improve a Matrix

Mon, 22 Sep 2025 09:07:40 +0000

I recently had a request for totals in a Matrix to be shown for some columns and not for other columns. My solution was to use ISINSCOPE in a Matrix to work out which level of the matrix to choose what to return.

Scenario

At an event you sell tickets. So for the Cheese and Wine evening we can see 62 tickets are sold so we expect 62 people. BUT some tickets are for multiple people such as Family Ticket is 2 adults and 3 children so the 55 tickets sold for the Christmas Fayre means very little as a Family ticket is 5 people and a Group ticket is 10. So total tickets for more than one ticket type does not make sense and is misleading.

So I’d like the Tickets Sold measure to not show a value on rows combining the ticket types, ie the total rows on this matrix.

Determining the Ticket Type Rows

The first step is to determine which rows are the ticket type rows and which rows aren’t. For this we can use the DAX function ISINSCOPE.

For demo purposes I created a measure that returns a true or false using the function ISINSCOPE. We can see it returns true on the ticket type lines but not the event or total lines. If we want to show all the layers we could look at all the fields in the matrix in a measure. Make sure you start with the lowest level first, so in my case Ticket Type.

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Scope =
SWITCH (
 TRUE (),
 ISINSCOPE ( Tickets[TicketType] ), "Ticket Type",
 ISINSCOPE ( Event[Event Name] ), "Event",
 "Total"
)

As you can see, using the above measure we can tell which level of the matrix a value is on. So we only need to return total tickets if the ticket type is in scope and we can return nothing on other levels.

Final Measure

We can use a simple if statement based on the ISINSCOPE for Ticket Type. That works really well and the customer were partly happy.

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Tickets Sold =
IF (
 ISINSCOPE ( Tickets[TicketType] ),
 SUM ( Bookings[Qty] )
)

Next Request

Once we showed that could be done they wanted to combine the 2 columns of numbers. The request was to not have a separate Total Sales column but to show the Total Sales value as in the total row for each event and the grand total at the bottom. For this we wrote a new measure called Event Sales.

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Event Sales =
IF (
 ISINSCOPE ( Tickets[TicketType] ),
 SUM ( Bookings[Qty] ),
 SUMX ( Bookings, Bookings[Qty] * RELATED ( Tickets[Price] ) )
)

We can see in the matrix above the money value appears in the total rows and the number of tickets in the ticket type rows. But they are all formatted the same so it is not clear what the numbers mean.

Adding Dynamic Formatting

This is not going to be a full description of dynamic formatting, that needs its own post. For the Event sales measure we select Dynamic formatting. In the formula we use the same pattern as the measure for the two different formats.

Resources

Microsoft Learn ISINSCOPE – https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dax/isinscope-function-dax
DAX Guide ISINSCOPE – https://dax.guide/isinscope/
Hat Full of Data Dynamic Formatting – Its coming!
Microsoft Learn Dynamic Formatting – https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/create-reports/desktop-dynamic-format-strings
SQLBI – https://www.sqlbi.com/articles/introducing-dynamic-format-strings-for-dax-measures/

Conclusion

Adding ISINSCOPE into your repertoire of functions opens up lots of possibilities. For the start of this post it removed a confusing total, in the development of that Matrix it added an extra dimension to a measure. Be careful to not make it too confusing, I know some will dislike the one column having two values in it.

Power BI – Counting Active records easily

Mon, 15 Sep 2025 16:58:48 +0000

Recently in a few Power BI projects and training courses we’ve needed to create a measure for counting active records based on start and end dates for a time period. This has varied from active projects, active employees to active contracts. All of them have had the common feature of start and end dates.

Scenario

Task	Start	End
A	01-May	20-May
B	15-May	15-Jun
C	5-Jun	25-Jun
D	20-Jun	20-Jul
E	10-Jul	25-Jul
F	25-Jun	15-Jul

We have 6 tasks A-F. We want to know how many tasks are active in June. In the list in table above and shown in the image the 2 that don’t count are task A, that finishes before June starts and task E that starts after June finishes. I have a separate calendar table called Calendar.

Understanding the logic of the filters needed is important when writing a measure. For a task to be active in a period, the task must finish after the start of the period and the task must start before the period ends.

DAX Code for counting Active Records

In DAX we are going to use CALCULATE function to apply the above filters. _MinDate and _MaxDate give us the start and end of the period.

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Active Tasks = 
VAR MinDate = MIN('Calendar'[Date])
VAR MaxDate = MAX('Calendar'[Date])
VAR Result = 
 CALCULATE(
 COUNTROWS(Tasks),
 Tasks[Finish] >= MinDate,
 Tasks[Start] <= MaxDate
 )
RETURN Result

This code does not rely on any relationships between the tasks and calendar tables. If there is a relationship that is altering the calculation a CROSSFILTER function can be used to set the relationship to None.

It can be used in a chart to show 3 active tasks in May, 4 in June and back to 3 in July.

This is a simple example of using CALCULATE and creating a useful measure. One I’ve taught a few times and promised to document.

Resources

Conclusion on Counting Active Records

Yes this is another post on me being lazy to answer a question I end up answering lots. Understanding how you can use CALCULATE and how to work out the right filters for your logic is the crux of understanding quite a bit of DAX. Something I am still learning every day still working on.

Power BI – Improve a card with SVG

Tue, 29 Jul 2025 11:00:32 +0000

The not so new card in Power BI, introduced in 2023, includes some lovely features. The first is the simplest of adding multiple values and having cards laid out evenly in a row in a single visual. The second awesome feature adding an image to a card with SVG.

Starting Point

This report is visualising web site views per year. In the report there are three measures, Views, Views YTD LY and Growth. In the picture above we can see views have gone down by 19% but its not very visual and takes up three cards. This post is to walk through changing that first card to show an arrow indication growth direction and the %. Something similar to the cards shown below for 2 different time periods. I am no graphic designer but these cards tell the story more effectively in my opinion. See the bottom of the post for the even prettier version.

Create the SVG Measure

Before we can create a card with SVG we need to write the measure that contains the SVG. So here is where we cheat and refer to post I wrote years ago, called SVG in Power BI Part 2 – KPI Shapes. This uses a measure called Growth and draws either a Green arrow pointing up or a red arrow pointing down. The final code from this blog is

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Arrow = 
// Variables to store arrow paths
var uparrow = ""
var downarrow = ""

// Select arrow to use
var arrow = IF([Growth]>=0,uparrow,downarrow)

// Insert arrow into SVG
var svg ="data:image/svg+xml;utf8," &
 ""
 & arrow & 
 ""

RETURN svg

That would create the arrow using the Growth measure, I also want to add text below the arrow. So we increase the viewBox to be 130 tall so line 11 becomes

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""

To add in the text I make use of another previously written post SVG in Power BI – Part 4 – Adding SVG Text. I create a text tag that is middle anchored to 50,130 and shows the Growth measure formatted as a percentage.

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var growthtext = "" 
 & FORMAT([Growth],"0.00%") & ""

So the final measure looks like this

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Arrow = 
// Variables to store arrow paths
var uparrow = ""
var downarrow = ""

// Select arrow to use
var arrow = IF([Growth]>=0,uparrow,downarrow)

// Add text
var growthtext = "" & FORMAT([Growth],"0.00%") & ""
// Insert arrow into SVG
var svg ="data:image/svg+xml;utf8," &
 ""
 & arrow & growthtext &
 ""

RETURN svg

Measure Data Category

As with any SVG measures you need to remember to change the Data category of the measure to Image URL on the measures toolbar or in the Model view properties pane.

Add SVG to the Card

The final part is to add the SVG measure to the card. With the card selected head to the formatting settings. Turn on the Image and then change the Image type to Image URL. The click on the fx button under Image URL to select the SVG measure we created, Arrow.

The image is there, even though you can’t see it due to it being too small. Change the size of the image to fit your card. You can change the position, alignment and spacing to fit your card. Do make sure you remember that numbers in a report will change so allow for that.

Accessibility

I know accessibility in published Power BI reports is not great, but it is made even worse by not making use of the Alt text options. So I created a measure Arrow Alt Text that will describe the image. I then click the fx button under Accessibility and use the measure.

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Arrow Alt Text = 
var ArrowText = IF( [Growth] >= 0 , "Green arrow shape pointing up ", "Red arrow shape pointing down " )
var Result = ArrowText & "with " & FORMAT([Growth],"0.00%") & " below."
Return Result

Even More Tricks

Guy in a Cube have a video that does a few more tricks to make it even prettier. Its a high speed video so expect to stop, rewind and understand all the tricks Adam uses. His shadow suggestions are great. Adding his tricks and my svg I changed the card to look like this.

References

Microsoft New Card Description

Conclusion

The new cards are very clever and in the right hands will enhance reports. Adding SVG is a great addition and I know clients who love adding their own graphics. The complexity of understanding which formatting features are available depending on if you pick one series or All is frustrating but that perhaps is a separate post all together.

Power BI – Calculation Groups aren’t scary

Tue, 15 Jul 2025 16:09:30 +0000

Let’s start by being honest, calculation groups scared me. I had read the brilliant articles, seen the demos and walked away going “hell no!”. Then in a training session a client asks for a visual that really really should be done with a calculation group, so I had to sit down and get my head around them. This post is not to replace any of the superb articles that cover the details, those are referenced below. This post is my notes to remind future me how they work and that they aren’t scary, honest!

YouTube Version

Scenario

The visual requested was similar to this wating to show multiple measures with time intelligence applied. So the example I’ve used is a UK Weather report based of met office data publicly available. The row labels, e.g. Avg Rainfall, are all measures that have been formatted to match the data, e.g. 0 mm for Avg Rainfall. This could probably be done using a complex pile of measures but the technical debt that creates goes against even the minimalist best practice policies.

The model includes a calendar that includes a decade offset column. So if we were going to calculate the Avg Rainfall for this decade and last decade the DAX would be

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This Decade Avg Rainfall = CALCULATE( [Avg Rainfall] , 'Calendar'[Decade Offset] = 0 )

Last Decade Avg Rainfall = CALCULATE( [Avg Rainfall] , 'Calendar'[Decade Offset] = -1 )

Create a Calculation Group

With measures created and the calendar table prepared we are now ready to create the calculation group. In the report go to the Model View. Now on the Home ribbon there will be Calculation group button. Click this to start the process, the first step will probably be a warning that this will turn on the “Discourage Implicit measures” option for this model. If you are following best practices this should not be an issue.

Then on the model diagram and in the model pane on the right hand side you will see a Calculation Group has been added, with one Calculation item. Double clicking on the name of the Calculation group in the model pane will allow you to rename the calculation group, e.g, Time Intelligence. This would be good practice.

Add Calculation Items

Calculation items are the different calculations you want to include in the group. For this example I want This Decade, Last Decade and % Change. Right click on the calculation group and from the menu select New calculation item. Then a formula appears similar to when you create a column or measure. Once you add in your formula and press enter it will appear under Calculation items.

I renamed the original calculation item to All Time by double clicking on it.

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This Decade = 
CALCULATE( 
 SELECTEDMEASURE() , 
 'Calendar'[Decade Offset] = 0 
)

Add Calculation Group to a Matrix

Now we have created a calculation group we can start to create the matrix. Add a matrix to the report and add the measures. The measure names will appear as column headings. You can switch these to row headings in the visual formatting by looking under Values and then Options and turning on Switch values to rows.

After you have added the measures and switched the values to rows you can add the calculation group to the Columns area in the visual. All the calculation items appear as columns.

Formatting the calculations items

The numbers shown in the previous diagram are formatted the same as the measure formatting, e.g. Max Temp is 0.0 ºC format. This is correct for all the measures except the % Change, which should be formatted 0.00%.

Select the calculation item that needs different formatting. In the properties panel turn on Dynamic format string. Then in the Format string box enter in the format as a string, e.g. “0.00%”. You can edit in the formula bar which is slightly easier.

Sorting and Selecting Columns

The Calculation items are sorted alphabetically by default. If you change the order of one calculation item it will fix the order of all the items. So I move the % Change to the end

Also by default all columns are shown. The columns can be selected using the filters panel. In the filters panel, expand Calculation group column to show all the calculation item names. Un-select the columns you don’t want.

Resources

As with anything DAX related my first port of call is SQLBI and of course Microsoft and recent announcements.

Conclusion on Calculation Groups

Calculation groups are a very powerful addition to creating Power BI models that are not bloated with 100s of measures. I really hope they will be expanded to allow for dynamic names and some tricks to do conditional formatting.

Power BI – Create a calendar using TMDL

Wed, 11 Jun 2025 15:18:18 +0000

TMDL is short for Tabular Model Definition Language in Power BI desktop. It allows us to script definitions and changes to a Power BI model. In this post I use TMDL to quickly create a calendar for a report that includes column options such as sort by, formatting and hidden columns.

Calendar Table

Nearly every report I create includes a calendar table. Every Power BI introduction course I run I send delegates to SQLBI site to grab the code for a simple calendar. Using a few example exercises I explain column sorting for the months, hiding the columns used for sorting and formatting the date columns. Tasks we all do every new report.

Just to be clear the code I usually use comes from one of these links, in this post I’ve used the second one.

Turning on TMDL View

At the point of publishing this post (Jun 2025) TMDL view is still in preview so it need be turned on. From the File tab select, Options and settings and then Options to open the dialog. Then under Preview features put a tick next to TMDL view. This will add a new button on the top left views menu.

TMDL View

This view allows you to define tables, columns, relationships and measures. You can drag a Power BI item into the view from the data pane to see the definition. Bu this post is not to teach TMDL but to show one use of it. More information can be found at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/transform-model/desktop-tmdl-view

Adding the Calendar

Another use is to use code to create a calendar table. I created the original code by creating calendar in a report and making all the adjustments I would usually do and then dragged the calendar table onto the TMDL window. So now the code includes the adjustments mentioned at the start of this post. Then I go to a report without a calendar and paste in the code below in the TMDL view. Then click Apply. The table will appear in the Data pane but possibly with red exclamation mark. There also might be a message stating a calculated table needs refreshing. If that appears click the Refresh now button that appears.

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createOrReplace

	table Calendar
		lineageTag: a8e10f84-8296-4cf3-bda3-412811e34790

		column Date
			formatString: General Date
			lineageTag: b0b99eff-688f-4526-81d2-8afc25541413
			summarizeBy: none
			isNameInferred
			sourceColumn: [Date]

			annotation SummarizationSetBy = Automatic

		column Year
			formatString: 0
			lineageTag: 4ad002b0-e801-4457-865d-8766808bacb9
			summarizeBy: none
			isNameInferred
			sourceColumn: [Year]

			annotation SummarizationSetBy = User

		column 'Month Number'
			isHidden
			formatString: 0
			lineageTag: e14ae615-2ba5-4e4a-ad44-ff0fcb4fb3ed
			summarizeBy: none
			isNameInferred
			sourceColumn: [Month Number]

			annotation SummarizationSetBy = User

		column Month
			lineageTag: e9c8caaf-f192-4478-86bd-d811116a5ac1
			summarizeBy: none
			isNameInferred
			sourceColumn: [Month]
			sortByColumn: 'Month Number'

			annotation SummarizationSetBy = Automatic

		column 'Year Month Number'
			isHidden
			formatString: 0
			lineageTag: 9c81640a-3399-4b97-87dd-884390419cb4
			summarizeBy: none
			isNameInferred
			sourceColumn: [Year Month Number]

			annotation SummarizationSetBy = User

		column 'Year Month'
			lineageTag: a2d59320-d499-43cf-a365-44c1f33b8ed4
			summarizeBy: none
			isNameInferred
			sourceColumn: [Year Month]
			sortByColumn: 'Year Month Number'

			annotation SummarizationSetBy = Automatic

		partition Calendar = calculated
			mode: import
			source =
					
					VAR MinYear = 2025
					VAR MaxYear = 2025
					VAR BaseCalendar =
					 CALENDAR ( DATE ( MinYear, 1, 1 ), DATE ( MaxYear, 12, 31 ) )
					RETURN
					 GENERATE (
					 BaseCalendar,
					 VAR BaseDate = [Date]
					 VAR YearDate = YEAR ( BaseDate )
					 VAR MonthNumber = MONTH ( BaseDate )
					 VAR MonthName = FORMAT ( BaseDate, "mmmm" )
					 VAR YearMonthName = FORMAT ( BaseDate, "mmm yy" )
					 VAR YearMonthNumber = YearDate * 12 + MonthNumber - 1
					 RETURN ROW (
					 "Year", YearDate,
					 "Month Number", MonthNumber,
					 "Month", MonthName,
					 "Year Month Number", YearMonthNumber,
					 "Year Month", YearMonthName
					 )
					 )

		annotation PBI_Id = 0bd3b6910f2844c8b21afe01ffb36109

The report now has a calendar table matching your original calendar.

Conclusion

Being able to use TMDL will allow me to build a library of code snippets to quickly build the report elements I regularly build. This is an exciting extra tool for the toolbox. I have already started a github library of snippets I think will be useful. Not ready to make that public yet but I will.

Power BI Series

Power Query – Creating New Parameters

Mon, 06 Jan 2025 11:52:37 +0000

When fetching data into Power Query you need to use values to point you to the write the data, for example name of a database server or path to a csv file. Good practice is to use parameters for these values so your query is reusable etc. And its always our intention to go and create the new parameter later.

Missing New Parameter Option

So lets take the simplest option of connecting to a csv file on the web. I have my path so I click get data and select Web. For those that want to play along here is the path to the file I’m using.

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https://raw.githubusercontent.com/HatFullOfData/Demo/refs/heads/main/Products.csv

The dialog that appears has a box for the URL but is missing the drop down on the left that will allow me to select New Parameter. If I had already created a parameter it gives me the option but not if I have no parameters. Bizarre functionality.

Always Allow Parameters

The fix for this is to allow parameterization in data source dialogs. This can be done in the Power BI desktop options or on Power Query View ribbon for Power BI and Excel.

Once this is ticked when you now go to Get Data we get a drop down next to the text box. Now we can select New Parameter and enter in the details of the new parameter. When we click OK it returns to the first dialog with the new parameter selected.

As a side note I recommend that you always give parameters a Type rather than leaving it on Any. There are a few features such as Power BI deployment pipelines that will not work with parameters of type Any.

Conclusion

This is a really small feature, possibly doesn’t need a whole blog post. But that little drop down making the creating a new parameter that few clicks easier means I am more likely to follow my own advice and use parameters from the start.

Inherited Value in a Parent Child Pattern

Mon, 23 Sep 2024 08:03:22 +0000

In the previous post in this series we created a Parent Child hierarchy using a Dax Pattern from SQLBI. There are times it is useful to calculate an inherited value from parent item to child. The assigned to person on a User Story to be passed onto the child tasks that are not assigned to anyone, the target date of a feature to be passed down to the child user story and then onto the child tasks. The child items need to be completed before the parent target date.

Power BI and DevOps Series

This post is part of a series:

Get DevOps Data into Power BI
Add Parent Child Hierarchy using DAX Patterns
Inherited Value in a Parent Child pattern
Add conditional formatting icons the easy way

The Logic

We are going to add this as a calculated column into the work items table. If you were doing this by hand you would go through the items in the path column in reverse, looking up each target date until you found a non-blank one. In DAX we do this by creating a table of the WorkItemIDs in the path and looking up their target dates. Then we filter to only rows with target dates and take the first one.

Inherited Value DAX

Lets work through an example.

WorkItem 46 has an ItemPath of 38|39|45|46, which means it has a Path length of 4. So we start by using GENERATESERIES to create a column 1-4

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GENERATESERIES( 1 , PATHLENGTH( WorkItems[ItemPath] ), 1 )

Value1234

We put that inside a GENERATE function and use PATHITEMREVERSE to get the work item ids from the path and then LOOKUP to use that WorkItemID to get the TargetDate of each item. GENERATE function and nested VARs is one of my favourite combinations.

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VAR tabWorkItems = 
 GENERATE(
 GENERATESERIES( 1 , PATHLENGTH( WorkItems[ItemPath] ), 1 ),
 VAR tableRow = [Value]
 VAR _WorkItemID = VALUE( PATHITEMREVERSE( WorkItems[ItemPath] , tableRow ) )
 VAR _TargetDate = LOOKUPVALUE( WorkItems[TargetDate] , WorkItems[WorkItemId] , _WorkItemID )
 RETURN ROW ( 
 "WorkItemID",_WorkItemID,
 "TargetDate",_TargetDate
 )
 )

ValueWorkItemIDTargetDate1462453392024-09-094382024-11-1

Then we filter the table to rows with a TargetDate and take the first row ordered by Value. This gives us one row of data.

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VAR tabFiltered =
 TOPN( 
 1,
 FILTER(tabWorkItems,[TargetDate]>BLANK()),
 [Value],ASC
 )

ValueWorkItemIDTargetDate3392024-09-09

Finally we use MINX to extract the TargetDate of that single row. The final calculated column DAX looks like this.

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Inherited Target Date = 
// Create a table of Value, WorkitemID and TargetDate
VAR tabWorkItems = 
 GENERATE(
 GENERATESERIES( 1 , PATHLENGTH( WorkItems[ItemPath] ), 1 ),
 VAR tableRow = [Value]
 VAR _WorkItemID = VALUE( PATHITEMREVERSE( WorkItems[ItemPath] , tableRow ) )
 VAR _TargetDate = LOOKUPVALUE( WorkItems[TargetDate] , WorkItems[WorkItemId] , _WorkItemID )
 RETURN ROW ( 
 "WorkItemID",_WorkItemID,
 "TargetDate",_TargetDate
 )
 )
// Take the first row of the filtered to non-blank
VAR tabFiltered =
 TOPN( 
 1,
 FILTER(tabWorkItems,[TargetDate]>BLANK()),
 [Value],ASC
 )
// Return the Target Date
VAR Result = MINX( tabFiltered , [TargetDate] )
RETURN Result

Inherited Value Conclusion

The Parent Child pattern is very useful and adding in the inherited values adds extra possibilities. I wanted to be able to identify the child items that were making the parent items late.

References

This post builds on the last post in this series and using the SQLBI Parent Child found at https://www.daxpatterns.com/parent-child-hierarchies/.

Power BI Series

DevOps Parent Child Hierarchy in Power BI

Mon, 02 Sep 2024 08:27:43 +0000

Azure DevOps is built around the pattern than items have child items and so a backlog view will show the items in a hierarchy. When the work items some into Power BI that is not shown. So this gives me the chance to use one of my favourite resources from SQLBI, DAX Patterns and their Parent-Child pattern.

I am using the Agile process so the hierarchy is Epic – Feature – User Story – Task. I have made sure my project includes all the layers correctly. You can work around oddities but for this post we will assume all layers of the items are as we expect.

Power BI and DevOps Series

This post is part of a series:

Get DevOps Data into Power BI
Add Parent Child Hierarchy using DAX Patterns
Inherited Value in a Parent Child pattern
Add conditional formatting icons the easy way

DAX Patterns – Parent Child Hierarchy

DAX patterns comes in multiple formats, a book, a website and videos. They are written by SQLBI and have saved me hours and hours. For this post we are going to adapt the Parent-Child pattern to DevOps data. I am going to use the report built in the previous post in this series. The pattern is fully explained here https://www.daxpatterns.com/parent-child-hierarchies

Adding the Path

The pattern uses a function called path. This function takes an row id and the parent row id and walks up the path until it reaches a row with no parent. Work Items in DevOps have WorkItemID and ParentWorkItemID. So following the instructions we add a column to the WorkItems table.

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ItemPath = PATH(WorkItems[WorkItemId],WorkItems[ParentWorkItemId])

The ItemPath gives us the list of IDs in the hierarchy above the current row. It does requires the path to be complete so it might not work if you have filtered out some of the items.

Adding DevOps Hierarchy Level Columns

From the above post these are the Level 1 to Level 4 columns, we just need to swap out the right column names. We also know the the names of our levels from DevOps so we can use slightly more meaningful names, Level 1 = Epic, Level 2 = Feature etc. Add the 4 columns using the pattern below, copied straight from the SQLBI post.

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Epic = 
VAR LevelNumber = 1
VAR LevelKey = PATHITEM ( WorkItems[ItemPath], LevelNumber, INTEGER )
VAR LevelName = LOOKUPVALUE ( WorkItems[Title], WorkItems[WorkItemId], LevelKey )
VAR Result = LevelName
RETURN
 Result

Adding a Matrix

The quickest way to see the hierarchy in action is to add a matrix visual. Into the rows we put the levels of the hierarchy to whatever levels we want. Into the values I put # Work Items. It looks great we can expand the different levels and see the 72 work items split out into features etc.

But we get blank rows at the top of each section. Not to worry of course our friends at SQLBI have a solution.

Fixing the measures

In order for this to work we need to compare the maximum path length with the level being displayed. The path length we add as a column Depth to Work Items and then add a measure MaxRowDepth. Then using ISINSCOPE function we calculate the display depth in a measure called ItemBrowseDepth.

Column Added to WorkItems table

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Depth = PATHLENGTH( WorkItems[ItemPath] )

2 Measures Added to WorkItems table

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MaxRowDepth = MAX( WorkItems[Depth] )

ItemBrowseDepth =
 ISINSCOPE ( WorkItems[Epic] ) 
 + ISINSCOPE ( WorkItems[Feature] )
 + ISINSCOPE ( WorkItems[User Story] )
 + ISINSCOPE ( WorkItems[Task] )

Now we can add measures that use these values to decide if to display the row or not. The logic being we only show rows where the browse depth is less than or equal to the max row depth. So I fix the # Work Items using the example from the SQLBI Pattern.

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# Work Items =
VAR Val = COUNTROWS ( WorkItems )
VAR ShowRow = [ItemBrowseDepth] 

This now fixes the matrix to not show blank rows

![Matrix with no blank rows](image-11.png)

## Conclusion on Parent Child Hierarchy

This makes the DevOps data easy to report on. The measures roll up the data to the different levels so the total hours can be calculated etc. Handling DevOps plans with missing layers is hard work, I’ve done it where some User Stories were children of the Epic. That made the pattern clunky so I’d probably push back now and insist the DevOps plan was kept clean.

## More Power BI Posts

- [Conditional Formatting Update](https://hatfullofdata.blog/power-bi-conditional-formatting-update/)

- [Data Refresh Date](https://hatfullofdata.blog/power-bi-data-refresh-date/)

- [Using Inactive Relationships in a Measure](https://hatfullofdata.blog/power-bi-inactive-relationships-in-a-measure/)

- [DAX CrossFilter Function](https://hatfullofdata.blog/power-bi-dax-crossfilter-function/)

- [COALESCE Function to Remove Blanks](https://hatfullofdata.blog/power-bi-coalesce-function-to-remove-blanks/)

- [Personalize Visuals](https://hatfullofdata.blog/power-bi-personalize-visuals/)

- [Gradient Legends](https://hatfullofdata.blog/power-bi-gradient-legends/)

- [Endorse a Dataset as Promoted or Certified](https://hatfullofdata.blog/power-bi-endorse-a-dataset/)

- [Q&A Synonyms Update](https://hatfullofdata.blog/power-bi-qa-synonyms-update/)

- [Import Text Using Examples](https://hatfullofdata.blog/power-bi-import-text-using-examples/)

- [Paginated Report Resources](https://hatfullofdata.blog/paginated-report-resources/)

- [Refreshing Datasets Automatically with Power BI Dataflows](https://hatfullofdata.blog/refreshing-datasets-automatically-with-dataflow/)

- [Charticulator](https://hatfullofdata.blog/charticulator-simple-custom-chart/)

- [Dataverse Connector – July 2022 Update](https://hatfullofdata.blog/power-bi-dataverse-connector-july-2022-update/)

- [Dataverse Choice Columns](https://hatfullofdata.blog/power-bi-dataverse-choices-and-choice-column/)

- [Switch Dataverse Tenancy](https://hatfullofdata.blog/power-bi-switch-dataverse-tenancy/)

- [Connecting to Google Analytics](https://hatfullofdata.blog/power-bi-connecting-to-google-analytics/)

- [Take Over a Dataset](https://hatfullofdata.blog/power-bi-take-over-a-dataset/)

- [Export Data from Power BI Visuals](https://hatfullofdata.blog/export-data-from-power-bi-visuals/)

- [Embed a Paginated Report](https://hatfullofdata.blog/power-bi-embed-a-paginated-report/)

- [Using SQL on Dataverse for Power BI](https://hatfullofdata.blog/using-sql-on-dataverse-for-power-bi/)

- [Power Platform Solution and Power BI Series](https://hatfullofdata.blog/power-platform-solution-and-power-bi-part-1/)

- [Creating a Custom Smart Narrative](https://hatfullofdata.blog/power-bi-creating-a-custom-smart-narrative/)

- [Power Automate Button in a Power BI Report](https://hatfullofdata.blog/power-automate-button-in-a-power-bi-report/)

## Power BI Series

- [SVG in Power BI series](https://hatfullofdata.blog/svg-in-power-bi-part-1-svg-basics/)

- [Power BI and Project Online series](https://hatfullofdata.blog/power-bi-connecting-to-project-online/)

- [Slicers series](https://hatfullofdata.blog/power-bi-slicers-introduction/)

- [Dataflow series](https://hatfullofdata.blog/power-bi-create-a-dataflow/)

- [Power BI SVG series](https://hatfullofdata.blog/svg-in-power-bi-part-1-svg-basics/)

- [Power Automate and Power BI Rest API series](https://hatfullofdata.blog/power-automate-and-power-bi-rest-api/)

- [Power BI and DevOps series](https://hatfullofdata.blog/devops-data-into-power-bi/)

Get DevOps Data into Power BI

Tue, 27 Aug 2024 09:09:57 +0000

Azure DevOps is full of data that management want to to report on. Adding a Power BI report is an obvious way to do this. There are plenty of sample reports and Microsoft posts giving you guidance how to get DevOps data into Power BI. This post is my take on how I would build the reports. My focus is making them easy to extend and easy to point at a different organisation and project.

Power BI and DevOps Series

This post is part of a series:

Get DevOps Data into Power BI
Add Parent Child Hierarchy using DAX Patterns
Inherited Value in a Parent Child pattern
Add conditional formatting icons the easy way

YouTube Version

Microsoft References for DevOps Data into Power BI

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/report/powerbi/odataquery-connectGreat post showing you to use Visual Studio Code to write the query, test it and then use it in Power BI
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/report/powerbi/sample-odata-overviewLots of sample reports

OData Queries

We get DevOps Data into Power BI using an OData query. From the first Microsoft link above it shows the query is made up of different parts. The first part is a path and then extras that select columns, filter the data and sort the data.

The simplest form though is just the URL, that will bring through all the columns and all the rows of data. We will start with that.

Simplest Query for Work Items

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https://analytics.dev.azure.com/{Organisation}/{Project}/_odata/v3.0-preview/WorkItems?

The path includes the organisation and the project names. So we start in Power Query, by clicking on Transform data on the Home ribbon in Power BI. Then click on Manage Parameters to open a dialog. You need to add 2 parameters, Organisation and Project. Click on New to start a new parameter, enter in a name and description (yes add that description, future you will thank you), select type text and enter in the current value for the Organisation and the Project.

We could now use Get Data and select OData and build the string… But that is hard work and not easy to read! So I’ve written a template to walk you through. Click on New Source and select blank query. Click on Advanced Editor and paste in the code below.

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let
 // Path using 2 parameters
 Path = "https://analytics.dev.azure.com/" & Organisation & "/" & Project & "/_odata/v3.0-preview/WorkItems?",
 
 // URL made up of parts
 URL = Path,
 
 // Do the OData query
 Source = OData.Feed(URL, null, [Implementation="2.0",OmitValues = ODataOmitValues.Nulls,ODataVersion = 4])
in
 Source

The Path line uses the 2 parameters and points to the WorkItems. The URL line looks redundant now but will make more sense when the query has more parts. The Source line uses the URL and includes the flags recommended by the link at the top of this post to prevent throttling.

When you click OK and set up the connection if required you should get a table of data with lots of columns.

Selecting the columns

The above query gives us more columns than we want. Rather than removing the columns in Power Query we can add a select line to the query which will make the OData query faster. So we need to pick the columns we want while we can see them all. I selected and put them into a comma separated string to make up a $select string to add to the Power Query

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let
 // Path using 2 parameters and select columns
 Path = "https://analytics.dev.azure.com/" & Organisation & "/" & Project & "/_odata/v3.0-preview/WorkItems?",
 Select = "$select=WorkItemID,Title,WorkItemType,State,TargetDate,ParentWorkItemID,OriginalEstimate,AssignedToUserSK",

 // URL made up of parts
 URL = Path & Select,
 
 // Do the OData query
 Source = OData.Feed(URL, null, [Implementation="2.0",OmitValues = ODataOmitValues.Nulls,ODataVersion = 4])
in
 Source

When you finish editing the query you will get a table of the work items from DevOps.

You could add more parts to the query for filtering and sorting if required.

User and Calendar Table

DevOps has other tables including a user list and a calendar. These can be pulled through to Power BI using the same pattern.

Users

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let
 // Path using 2 parameters and select columns
 Path = "https://analytics.dev.azure.com/" & Organisation & "/" & Project & "/_odata/v3.0-preview/Users?",
 Select = "$select=UserSK,UserName,UserEmail",

 // URL made up of parts 
 URL = Path & Select,

 // Do the OData query
 Source = OData.Feed(URL, null, [Implementation="2.0",OmitValues = ODataOmitValues.Nulls,ODataVersion = 4])
in
 Source

Calendar

This includes a filter for the Year to be greater than or equal to, ge, 2023.

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let
 // Path using 2 parameters and select columns
 Path = "https://analytics.dev.azure.com/" & Organisation & "/" & Project & "/_odata/v3.0-preview/Dates?",
 Select = "$select=Date,MonthName,MonthOfYear,Year",
 Filter = "&$filter=Year ge 2023",

 // URL made up of parts 
 URL = Path & Select & Filter,

 // Do the OData query
 Source = OData.Feed(URL, null, [Implementation="2.0",OmitValues = ODataOmitValues.Nulls,ODataVersion = 4])
in
 Source

Some Modelling

Once the queries are written and loaded into Power BI desktop we are ready to do some modelling. I’m keeping it very light as I have another post coming that will implement the Parent Child hierarchy needed.

Relationships

The relationship model is only three tables, fact table WorkItems and the 2 dimension tables Users and Calendar. The relationships are

TableColumnRelationshipTableColumnUsersUserSK1 to ManyWorkItemsAssignedToUserSKCalendarDate1 to ManyWorkItemsTargetDate

Measures

I only created two measures. The first was for the total hours in the original estimate column. If we had included completed and remaining hours I would have created measures for them as well. The second one was for the count of items

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Total Hours = SUM(WorkItems[OriginalEstimate])

# Work Items = COUNTROWS(WorkItems)

Create Visuals

I kept it simple. Not all the tasks had Target dates so we could not do much via dates. So I had total hours and number of tasks and Users and Item States. I created a table and a tree map visual.

Conclusion on DevOps Data into Power BI

The above model is limited, I can’t see the structure of the project, I can’t rollup the tasks into user stories etc. It does have the data in it to get there though. The next post on adding the Parent-Child hierarchy will help.

Power BI Series

Power Automate – Create Power BI Workspace

Fri, 21 Jun 2024 20:18:44 +0000

We’ve setup the service principal, saved the details securely in Azure Key Vault and used Power Automate to fetch them securely and finally setup the permissions to allow that service principal to use the rest api. This post will finally create the flow to automatically create Power BI workspace making use of all the preparation.

This post is part of Power Automate and Power BI Rest API series.

Start the flow and get service principal details

There will be an instant flow using a manual trigger. Once the flow editor appears, expand the trigger and add a text input for the Workspace Name.

The first action will be to call the child flow that fetches the tenantid, clientid and secret. Select Get Client Tenant and Secret flow from the dropdown and then use PBI-Workspace as the prefix value.

HTTP Call to automatically create Power BI Workspace

FInally we can do the action to create Power BI workspace, for this we add a HTTP action. I’m going to break this down into 3 parts, the URI, the body and the authentication.

From https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/power-bi/groups/create-group#examples we can see the HTTP starts with POST so we pick that as the method. It also gives us the URI. To save you going to fetch it here it is

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https://api.powerbi.com/v1.0/myorg/groups?workspaceV2=True

The next part is the body. This is a very simple piece of JSON with only one field name. Get the value of name to come from the trigger input Workspace name.

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{
 "name": ""
}

The final part is the authentication. Show the Advanced Options to see the boxes to fill in. Firstly Authentication is Active Directory OAuth. Then the Authority can be left blank. Next the Tenant, Client ID and Secret are dynamic values from running the child flow action. Finally the Audience should be the following

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https://analysis.windows.net/powerbi/api

Your flow is now ready to test. Hopefully when you do this it all works and you get green ticks. But when you go to Power BI the workspace is not listed in workspaces you can see. This is because the workspace was created by the service account, so the service account is the admin, not you. So the next step is to add a workspace admin.

Add Workspace Admin

This is going to require another HTTP call. So if we look at the second example show at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/power-bi/groups/update-group-user#examples we can see we need 2 pieces of information, the workspace ID and the email address of the workspace admin.

The workspace ID must have been returned when we create Power BI workspace. If you look in the dynamic content it won’t be listed though so we need either code by hand or we use my favourite trick of Parse JSON.

Get the Workspace ID

Go to the test run you did and expand the HTTP call that created the workspace. In the Outputs section there is a Body section which will contain the JSON that was returned. Copy this JSON as this will help complete the Parse JSON.

Then return to editing the flow and add a Parse JSON action. For the content use the Body returned by the HTTP action. JSON schemas are tricky to write by hand so you can generate it from what we copied. Click on the Generate from sample to open a dialog. Paste the output body we copied earlier and click Done. The Parse JSON step will now have a schema.

Request the Admin Email

The flow might not be run by the requester of the workspace, so it makes sense to ask for the admin’s email. Add this as an extra input in the trigger.

New HTTP Request to add User

Add a new HTTP action, and I recommend renaming it. (Yes that should happen to the first one as well!). Again its a POST method and the URI needs id from the Parse JSON step slotted in. The Body is a simple JSON again. Code for both of these can be copied from below. The authentication is exactly the same as the previous HTTP step.

URI

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Body

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{
 "emailAddress": "",
 "groupUserAccessRight": "Admin"
}

Conclusion to Create Power BI Workspace

You should now have a complete flow that when run asks for Workspace Name and Admin Email and creates a workspace with the admin added.

This is the MVP of the solution. There are obvious additions such as approvals, notifying the new admin and other various extras that should be included. They may get blogged, lets see.

Power BI Series

Allow the use of Power BI Rest APIs

Mon, 17 Jun 2024 18:13:23 +0000

In the first 3 posts of this series we created Service Principal, stored the details in Azure key Vault and created a flow. We have one more step to do, we need to allow the use of Power BI Rest APIs in our tenancy and then we will be ready to actually set up the automation for creating workspaces.

This post is part of Power Automate and Power BI Rest API series

Find the Setting

This setting can be found in the Admin portal for Power BI under Tenant settings, you need to be a Power BI admin. If you search for Fabric API you’ll find it quickly. If you click the enabled toggle to on it will give you 2 options. The entire organization would allow the use of Power BI Rest APIs by anyone if they had the right credentials, this would not be good practice. So I recommend selecting Specific security groups. This means the service principal needs to be a member of a security group.

Tenant settings can be found at https://app.powerbi.com/admin-portal/tenantSettings

Create Security Group

To create a security group you will need the right level of security in Entra, in many organisations you will not. Go to https://entra.microsoft.com/ and click Groups on the left hand menu. Make sure you are looking at All Groups and then click New group.

The group type should be Security. Enter in a Group name, please follow any naming conventions you should be following. I highly recommend putting in a group description, future you will thank you. Click on No members selected to open the Add members pane. Search for the name of the service principal and tick next the name. Then click Select to close the pane.

No members will now be updated to 1 member, so you can now click Create.

Back to the setting to allow the use of Power BI Rest APIs

Now we have the security group setup we can change the setting to allow the use of Power BI Rest APIs. Back into Power BI admin portal and find the setting.

Enable the setting and select Specific security group. Then add your security group into the box, the search is pretty good in my experience. The click Apply.

Finally!

We have now ticked all the boxes, done all the prep to write a flow to create a workspace. The next post will be my final post in this series! (Well for now as I already have a few ideas for taking it further.)

Power BI Series

Use Power Automate to Fetch Secrets from Key Vault

Wed, 29 May 2024 08:34:09 +0000

Once you have stored security details in Azure Key Vault as described in the previous post in this series (Create Azure Key Vault to store Tenant ID, Client ID and Secret) you need a way to fetch secrets when you need them. Power Automate connector for Azure Key Vault includes the Get Secret action. This post shows you how to build a reusable child flow to fetch secrets.

This post is part of Power Automate and Power BI Rest API series.

Flow design

The flow we are going to create will be called by other flows, so is a child flow. The flow will have one parameter of the prefix of the ClientID and Secret store in the Azure Key Vault. If you have completed the previous post this would be PBI–Workspace. It will return 3 values, TenantID, ClientID and Secret which will be secured

Because we are using child flows we need to create our flows inside a solution. I recommend creating a solution for these group of flows. I don’t want to make this blog post even longer so please go google creating Power Platform solutions.

Setting up the Trigger

For a child flow we use a instant flow. Type in a descriptive name and select the trigger Manually trigger a flow. When you are in the flow editor, expand the trigger and add an input for the prefix. Adding hint text will help you and other users remember what the input is about.

Adding Actions to Fetch Secrets

The flow is reasonably simple with three repeating actions to fetch secrets. Add an action and search for Key Vault and select it. Then from the list select Get Secret. If this is the first time you have connected to a Key Vault you will need to type in the key vault name and click Sign in. Be aware that every key vault has its own connection.

The action has a very simple drop down. For the TenantID action you can just select it from the drop down. For the ClientID and Secret we want to the prefix value from the trigger so that this flow is reusable. So for the ClientID and Secret select Enter custom value. Then use the dynamic value Prefix followed by -ClientID and -Secret.

Securing the Secret Value

The secret value should be kept secret. So the Action output needs securing. Click on the ellipse (3 dots) on the Get secret – Secret action. Turn on the toggle for Secure Outputs and then click Done at the bottom of the dialog.

This could be done on ClientID as well if required. Each action that has a security setting applied will show a padlock. When a flow run execution is looked at the value of the secret will not be available.

Returning the Values

The final part for this flow is to return the values. And for this flow to run as a child flow it must have a respond action. Click on add action and search for the Power Apps connector. It only one has one action Respond to a Power App or flow. Add three outputs to return TenantID, ClientID and Secret.

Handling the Connections

When an instant flow runs the connections are usually based on who clicked the start on the flow. This does not work for a child flow, so a connection must be selected that will be used for when it runs.

The changes need to be made from the flow details page, save and click the blue arrow in the top left to get there. Click on Edit in the Run only users box. When the pane appears, under connections used select a connection under Azure Key Vault. A message will appear to state users only get access in this flow, click OK to close it and then click Save to save the changes.

Testing the flow

When you first write a child flow I suggest you write an instant flow to test it. The Run a Child Flow action only is available if your flows are in a solution. In order to protect the secret value you also need to protect the outputs of the Run a Child flow action.

This tests that the flow runs a child flow and returns values even though we can’t see them.

Conclusion

We now have an app that can fetch secrets, we’ve secured the authentication details and now written a flow to securely retrieve those values. Next step is to make sure Power BI will allow us to do this.

Power BI Series

Create a Power BI Service Principal Profile

Sat, 17 Feb 2024 18:18:23 +0000

For Power Automate to use the Power BI Rest API it needs a service principal profile. This is created by creating an app registration that has the right permissions. This allows an app, e.g. Power Automate, to establish a trust relationship with the Microsoft identity platform. This is done using Entra Admin Center (previously known as Active Directory)

This post is part of the Power Automate and Power BI Rest API series

Create App Registration for Service Principal

Navigate to https://entra.microsoft.com/. Then in the menu expand Identity and under that Applications. Finally click on App Registrations to open the list of App Registrations. It defaults to list registrations owned by you.

Click on New registration to start creating your App registration. Enter a name for your application, remember to make clear as over time the list will grow. Leave rest of the options as default and press the Register button.

Change App Registration Ownership

It is recommended that you add owners to the registration. Click on Owners, then click on Add Owners and select the owners. App owners and administrators can view and edit app registrations.

Adding API Permissions

Permissions need to be given to the App Registration based on what you want to do. The Power BI Rest API documentation at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/power-bi/groups/create-group states you need Workspace.ReadWrite.All.

Click on API Permissions and then click on Add a permission. When the list of APIs appear, select Power BI service. Then select Delegated permissions and from the list of permissions select Workspace.ReadWrite.All. It is good practice to only add the permissions you need.

			## Adding a Secret

The final step in App Registration is to add a secret. This will be required by anyone using the app registration.

Click on Certificates & secrets, then click on New client secret. Enter in a description, I chose to keep the default 6 months expiration. Click Add to finish creating the secret.

Once the list appears you must copy the secret value. This is the only chance you get.

Important Information

You will need the Secret value copied from the last section and the Tenant ID and Client ID. The final 2 values can be found by clicking on Overview. These values especially the secret need to be kept secure. So the next post is how to create an Azure Key Vault to store the values.

Conclusion

Understanding how App Extensions and Service Principals work is very useful not only for Power BI Rest api. The Microsoft Graph api can also be accessed using a service principal but that is a whole different series.

Power BI Series

Power Automate and Power BI Rest API

Thu, 15 Feb 2024 14:28:37 +0000

The Power BI Rest API provides the ability to create a workspace. Power Automate includes an action to make a HTTP call, i.e. a Rest API. So we should be able to get a flow to create a workspace. So that was my goal. Writing the first flow and getting it to work involved so many little steps I had to write blog posts so I would remember the steps.

Power BI Rest API Documentation

The documentation refers to workspaces as groups and can be found at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/power-bi/groups/create-group. It states that the API can be called by a service principal profile and the required scope is Workspace.ReadWrite.All.

Other Settings

You also need to make some changes to Power BI tenant settings as well and I’d recommend creating a security group and using Azure Key Vault to store the credentials. That would make a very long blog post so I’m breaking it down into separate posts.

Create a Power BI Service Principal Profile
Create Key Vault to store Tenant ID, Client ID and Secret
Write a flow to fetch the Key Vault Values
Update Power BI Settings and Create a Security Group
Write a flow to create the workspace
Extras for the workspace

Final Power Automate Flow

The final flow, after post 5, fetches the Service Principal credentials using a child flow, then uses HTTP action to create the workspace and with a bit of parse json action magic uses another HTTP action to change the permissions.

The above flow has flaws, no error handling, no checking the workspace name is allowed and no notifying the admin they have a new workspace.

Next Steps

This is a simple example of using Power Automate with Power BI rest API to perform some admin tasks. This could easily be extended to include other boring admin tasks.

Power BI Series

Power Automate Button in a Power BI Report

Mon, 07 Aug 2023 20:39:39 +0000

You can add an action to a Power BI report by adding a Power Automate button. The button will trigger a flow to run and perform actions. You add data to be used in the flow. In this post I will show to use a flow to add a row to a table that the report is connected to.

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Problem Definition

The report is connected to a table in a database that contains the start times of sections in a bike ride. The section times are used to for calculations and colouring charts. There are three measures that calculate the values to put in a new row of data. I want a Power Automate button to insert a row into my database table.

Add a Power Automate Button

From the Insert ribbon tab in Power BI desktop, we select the Power Automate visual. It’s right down the bottom under Other. This will add you a visual that includes instructions. The first step is adding data to the visual that will get passed into the flow. I have added my three measures.

Creating the flow

After you add the data, the next step creates the flow. Click on the … link on the top of the visual and select Edit. This will open a window in Power BI desktop showing you templates and any existing flows that you have.

In the top left, select New and select Instant cloud flow. Then the window moves to give you Power Automate flow editor inside Power BI desktop. Be aware it will be using the credentials you logged into Power BI with.

Then you can click New step and add your actions. In this example I am using SQL Server connection Action to insert a row to a table. I populate the Server name, Database name and Table name. Then the table fields appear. When I click in ActivityID, the first field the Dynamic content shows me the fields available including values I added to the Power Automate button.

When I click on Power BI data Selected Activity ID, measure from my report, it populates the box and it also puts the action into a Apply to each. This is because the values are sent to the flow in a table. When writing the flow it knows its a table so assumes it could be multiple values so therefore adds the apply to each.

There are multiple ways to handle this and convert that table into just three values, or we can accept we know the Apply to each only ever get a single row. Add a comment in your documentation to save future confusion.

Save and Apply the Flow

When you have completed your flow. You need to add a name in the top left. Then click Save and then click Save and Apply. Yes you need to click both!

After you click Save and Apply you should get a success message in a green bar. Then you can click Back to Report in the top left.

The visual in your report will now have changed to be a blue button. And you can test it out. In Power BI desktop you need to Ctrl + click, when you publish you can just click the button.

Formatting the Button

Similar to other Power BI visuals formatting can be applied. The blue isn’t a theme colour so I recommend selecting a theme colour so it will change with themes. You also can tweak padding, shadows and the text to make it look part of the report. I could not find a way to change the arrow icon.

Flow Environments

A Power Automate flow lives in an Environment and developers usually get to select which environment and get to put flows into solutions ready to go through a development life cycle. When writing that flow in Power BI desktop you do not get a choice on environment. It goes into Default environment and therefore cannot be put through any development lifecycle.

One workaround / hack exists. Thank you to James Reeves who pointed it out in a LinkedIn Post. It works currently but its a hack and should be treated as such.

Flow Permissions and licences

When the flow runs it runs as the user who clicks the button. This means firstly the user must have access to the flow, so don’t forget to share it and if like in my example it uses premium connectors the user needs the right licences.

Conclusion

Adding a way to react to the data and do write is great and Power Automate does it pretty well. There are some missing features though, I’d like to select environment for the flow and be able to select a flow from the solution I’ve added the Power BI report to. And then include that in the solution lifecycle management.

Power BI Series

Power Automate – Get data from a Power BI dataset

Tue, 11 Jul 2023 16:05:12 +0000

Power BI datasets contain a rich useful data resource that would be really useful in a Power Automate flow. In this post we will walk through how to get data from a Power BI dataset and then email that data. This is just one example of how you could use data fetched from a Power BI dataset behind a report.

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Starting the Flow

In this example we want to send a monthly quick summary. So I started by creating a scheduled email, repeated every month. After I enter the flow name and change the repeat to every month rather than the default every minute! Now I can press Create, which after a few moments creates a flow with the recurrence step.

Fetch Data using a Power BI step

Click on New step to start the process. In the search box type in Power BI and click on the Power BI tile when it appears. Now you can search the Power BI actions. In the search box enter in query and this will filter to 2 actions. The action we want is Run a query against a dataset.1

When the step appears, I select the Workspace and Dataset I am interested in. The query text is expecting a DAX statement. Don’t worry you don’t have to write the DAX by hand, we can get Power BI desktop to do it for us.

Writing the Query Text

Power BI desktop can write the query text for you. You need to open the Power BI report or a report connected to the dataset. On a blank page add a table visual. Populate the table with the data you want to use in Power Automate remember to apply the correct filters. I also recommend you remove totals unless you want the totals row in your data.

In my example the table shows Total Sales and Sales Growth for products in the previous month, using Offset Month column from my calendar.

After creating the table, on the Optimize ribbon tab click on Performance analyzer2. When the pane appears on the right hand side, click on Start Recording. Then you click on Refresh Visuals. This tool is usually used for analysing how long each visual takes to refresh and part of that is to provide the query being run.

Expand the Table line by clicking on the +. Then click on Copy Query. Now you can return to the flow in Power Automate and paste the query into the query box.

Sending the Email

The final part of this process is to create the email to send the details. The Power BI step returns an array of the rows of data. The Send an Email action would like this array converted into a html table. So we need 2 actions, create HTML table and Send an email. I am not going to make the table or email pretty. That is a separate post!

Testing the flow

I would test as I added each action to the flow, even on a short flow. Obviously once completed I’d test again.

Resources

The report used for this example can be found on my GitHub

Power BI Report – https://github.com/Laura-GB/DemoData/raw/main/Sales%20Data.pbix
Excel file https://github.com/Laura-GB/DemoData/raw/main/Sales%20Data.xlsx

Conclusion

Remember its Power Automate not Power Integrate. So yes you can load a long list into Power Automate but this is not a good tool to load large quantities of data into a new system. This is a brilliant feature though that unlocks data in a dataset for an automation process.

Power BI Series

SVG in Power BI series
Power BI and Project Online series
Slicers series
Dataflow series
Power BI SVG series
Power Automate and Power BI Rest API series
Power BI and DevOps series
The other action I have no idea how it works and have yet to find any documentation [↩]
In earlier versions of Power BI it was on the view ribbon [↩]

Power BI – Creating a Custom Smart Narrative

Fri, 07 Jul 2023 12:15:53 +0000

Power BI desktop includes the Smart Narrative visual. This will summarise a page or visual in your report for you. Often though the summary it produces is not the summary you would have written. This post will show you how to write your own custom smart narrative that updates and filters exactly the same as the standard smart narrative.

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What is the Smart Narrative?

With a report open in Power BI desktop, you can add a standard Smart narrative by selecting Smart Narrative from the Insert ribbon. It will create text based on the visuals on that page. It doesn’t support all visuals and although can be very good it is very generic.

More instructions and information can be found at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/visuals/power-bi-visualization-smart-narrative

Create your own custom smart narrative

The smart narrative is a text box with some generated text added. The clever part is adding values to that text box.

Start by adding a text box to your report. Position it and start to add some text.

When you want to add a dynamic result to the text click on the Value button on the Text box ribbon. Describe what you would like to calculate. If the dialog offers suggestions as to what you mean click on the correct one. When you click Save, the value will be entered into the text box.

Formatting to numbers could be applied when creating a text box value. Weirdly you cannot use the same name for values in different text boxes unless you copy and paste the text box then its fine. The values cannot transfer into any other visual either, use measures for that.

Reviewing the Values

When you added values to your custom smart narrative you hopefully remembered to name them. This helps when you go to review the values. Click on Review to list the values. You can click on edit on any value to confirm what question you asked, rename or apply extra formatting

Resources

The report and the data source used in this blog post can be found on my Github

Power BI Report – https://github.com/Laura-GB/DemoData/raw/main/Sales%20Data.pbix
Excel file https://github.com/Laura-GB/DemoData/raw/main/Sales%20Data.xlsx

Conclusion

Know your audience, does a summary paragraph work for them? If it doesn’t then stick to visuals that work for them. Some clients love a description others just prefer a batch of cards showing the same values.

Power BI Series

Power Platform Solution and Power BI – Part 3

Mon, 22 May 2023 22:17:42 +0000

In Part 1 we added Power BI to the Power Platform solution and then in Part 2 we added a dashboard. This is post we will embed the report into a form and filter the report to match the context of the form. For this we will use the Accounts form and filter the expenses report to only show the expenses related to one account.

Series

YouTube Version

Embed the report into a form.

In my Power Platform solution, the Accounts table has one form included. When I edit the form I can see that I previously added a tab for expenses. On that tab there is an empty section, ready to insert the report.

In the left hand side menu, select components and expand Power BI. Drag and drop Power BI report into the blank section. An pane appears asking lots of questions regarding showing various parts. For now leave all of them as default and click Done. The unfiltered report should appear.

Filtering the embedded report.

The report needs to be filtered to only show the expenses of the selected account. With the report selected you will get the properties pane showing on the right hand side. Expand Components and click on Power BI Report. In the pane that appears, same as before find JSON filter string. You need a JSON string to put in the Static value.

The filter we are going to apply is straight forward match the account id on the form with the account id in the report. We need 3 bits of information

Power BI Report table name – Account
Power BI Report column name for the account id – AccountID
Dataverse logical column name for account id – accountid

You must get the case and of course the spelling right. We then insert these into a json string. The whole string must be on one line, no returns and tabs to make it pretty. Below is an image to explain the parts and below that is the code I used.

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{"Filter": "[{\"$schema\":\"basic\",\"target\": {\"table\":\"Account\",\"column\":\"AccountID\"}, \"operator\":\"In\",\"values\":[$a],\"filterType\":1}]", "Alias": {"$a": "accountid"}}

When editing a form in Dataverse, the form is in new record mode so if you have the filter right the report should filter to nothing. When it is working click Done and Save and Publish your form.

Testing the form

Make sure you test your form. Open your app, open an account and look at the expenses and the report. If your report is a direct query report you should be able to add a new record and the report update.

Conclusion

The three posts combined gives us the building blocks to include Power BI in our Power Platform Solutions. I’m hoping more Power BI artefacts such as dataflows also get included in time. There will be future posts, let me know what you want me to do.

Here are the resources I usedAbout Power BI in Power Apps Solutions – Power BI | Microsoft Learn

Power BI Series

Power Platform Solution and Power BI – Part 2

Sat, 20 May 2023 19:08:20 +0000

Intro – Add a Dashboard

In Part 1 we added a Power BI dataset and report to a Power Platform Solution. In Part 2 we will create a dashboard and add it to the model driven app.

Series

YouTube Version

Create the Dashboard

In the solution click on +New and select Dashboard and then Power BI embedded. When the pane on the right hand side loads, enter in a name for your dashboard. Then make sure Power BI report is selected and select your report from the drop down.

Add the Dashboard to the App in the Power Platform Solution

After the dashboard has been added, you can add the dashboard to a model driven app. Edit the app by clicking on the name of it in the Power Platform Solution. Then click on Add Page and the New page dialog appears. On the first page select Dashboard and then click Next. Then on the next page, select your report, probably at the bottom of the list. Finally click Add to add the dashboard to your app.

Note

At the time of publishing there is a small bug that the report doesn’t show correctly in edit mode but if you publish all customisations it fixes it in play mode. Remember this feature

Testing the Report

As with any addition to a development you should test the report works. In my example the report is a direct query. So my test is check the dashboard, then add a new expense record and then return to the dashboard to check the new record is showing.

Conclusion

For some projects this is enough, an embedded dashboard in the model driven app. The next post will be to add an embedded report into a form.

As in Part 1 here are the resources I’ve used

About Power BI in Power Apps Solutions – Power BI | Microsoft Learn

Power BI Series

Power Platform Solution and Power BI – Part 1

Fri, 19 May 2023 08:26:43 +0000

Power BI reports can be an important part of a Power Platform solution. Microsoft has added a new feature to Power Platform Solutions to add a Power BI dataset and report. Then you can add the Power BI report in as a dashboard or as an embedded report in a form and add context filtering. Part 1 will cover adding the Power BI dataset and report to the solution.

Series

YouTube Version

Preparation

For this post I have a Power Platform solution already. I have a Power BI report connected to the environment and published to a workspace.

Add Power BI to Power Platform Solution

First task is to add the Power BI report to the solution. Start by clicking on Add Existing and from Analytics selecting Power BI report. This will bring the underlying dataset in as well. Then click on From Power BI which will show you a workspace drop down*.

From the drop down, we select the right workspace and then the right report. Then we click on Add.

It takes a while for the dataset and report to be added. Behind the scenes a new workspace is created and the report is copied to there. If you don’t have permission to create a workspace you will get errors.

Checking the New Workspace

I recommend that you check the workspace. Check the credentials in the dataset and refresh the dataset and finally make sure the report opens and shows data. Remember to setup a refresh schedule if your report needs it.

Note the message across the top telling you that this is a workspace connected to a solution and the workspace icon is the Power Apps icon.

Finishing the connection part

The report is connected to this environment’s Dataverse. When the solution is exported and imported the report needs to be connected to the new environment’s Dataverse.

In the solution, I clicked on the three dots and selected Edit. Then a pane will appear on the right. Then select Yes from for the existing connection question and click Save.

Conclusion and Resources

Congratulations, you now have a solution that includes a Power BI report.

This is just Part 1. The future parts will cover adding a dashboard and an embedded report. Here are the resources I have used.About Power BI in Power Apps Solutions – Power BI | Microsoft Learn

Power BI Series

Using SQL on Dataverse for Power BI

Wed, 26 Apr 2023 16:55:19 +0000

SQL (Structured Query Language) has been used to get data in and out of databases for decades. Dataverse is a database. So lets use SQL on Dataverse to fetch data into a report. This can simplify our queries and make a direct query report easier to write.

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Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio

There are multiple tools available to write and test your SQL, for this post I am using SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), which is a free tool from Microsoft. You can download SSMS from

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/ssms/download-sql-server-management-studio-ssms

After you have downloaded SSMS, you can start it. Then you need to login to the specific environment. A dialog should pop up to fill in or you can click Connect. The Server type is Database Engine. The server name is in the url path from running a model driven app.

For this post the authentication I am using is Azure Active Directory – Password. So I also supply a User Name and Password. Then you can click Connect.

When connection has completed, the Object Explorer pane will show the hierarchy of items. Expand Databases to find your environment database and then expand that database and Tables to see the complete list of tables. Expand the table to see the list of columns.

Write your first query

This post is not to teach you SQL. There are plenty of sites to do that. Here are some very simple queries to get you started. For our first query, we will write a query to fetch a list of accounts. Click on New Query and a blank page appears. In here we can type a simple query to list all accounts. Click Execute to run the query and see the results.

SQL Code

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Select
	accountid as AccountID,
	name as "Account Name",
	industrycodename as Industry,
	statecode,
	statecodename
from
	dbo.account

Filtering the data

The previous example includes an account that is not active. Contoso Pharmaceuticals has a statecode of 1 and statecodename of Inactive. For this example we are going to filter to only show the active records. The active records have 0 in the statecode column. The WHERE clause applies the filter. The statecode and statecodename columns can be removed.

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Select
	accountid as AccountID,
	name as "Account Name",
	industrycodename as Industry
from
	dbo.account
where
	statecode = 0

Using SQL on Dataverse in Power BI

Now we have an SQL statement we can use it in Power BI. Start POwer BI and then click Transform data to open Power Query. Then we create a parameter by clicking Manage Parameters and then click New and fillin in the details. The current value should be the environment path you used earlier.

Now you have the parameter we can create the query. Start by creating a blank query by clicking New Source and then Blank Query. Then on the Home ribbon click Advanced Editor and paste in this code. I have adapted a pattern created by Scott Sewell.

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let
 Dataverse = CommonDataService.Database(Environment, 
 [CreateNavigationProperties=false]),
 SQL = "Select
	 accountid as AccountID,
	 name as ""Account Name"",
	 industrycodename as Industry
 from
	 dbo.account
 where
	 statecode = 0",
 Source = Value.NativeQuery(
 Dataverse,
 SQL,
 null,
 [EnableFolding=true]
 )
in
 Source

Note 1 – the CreateNavigationProperties and EnableFolding are important flags to help with performance. Scott Sewell explains both topics in these posts.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/speedtip-enablefolding-option-dataverse-native-sql-power-sewell/https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/stuck-evaluating-dataverse-source-power-bi-try-speedtip-sewell/

Note 2 – If your SQL includes any ” you will need to double them up inside the string. In this example the ” is needed as the column Account Name has a space in it’s name.

For other queries you just replace the SQL = step with a different SQL statement. You can add further transformations if you need them into Power Query. Remember to rename your query to a clear name.

Permission to Run a Native Database Query

SQL is a powerful language. On some databases, not Dataverse, it can edit or delete the data. So Power Query will check the first time it runs any query. A message in a yellow bar appears stating Permission is required. When you click Edit Permission, a dialog appears showing you the query and you can click the Run button. Then the data will appear.

Loading into Power BI Desktop

Now you have a query that loads data you can load it into Power BI desktop by clicking Close & Apply on the home ribbon. Before it will load the data it will ask you to set the storage mode. For this post I am selecting DirectQuery. This means the data is live and data security is applied using the report viewer’s security. (See publishing to get this 100% right)

It will ask you confirm running the query again, just click Run. Once the data has loaded we add relationships if required, measures and visuals into the report. Be aware direct query will need to refresh and so will be slightly slower.

Publishing

Once you have completed the modelling and visuals, you can publish the report. You need to check the credentials of the report. Even if credentials look okay, confirm the viewers credentials are used. In the workspace, open up settings of the dataset. Under Data source credentials click on Edit credentials. Authentication method should be OAuth2 and select the appropiate security level.

If you are using direct query then tick the bottom option so that report viewers credentials get used to fetch the data. Security within Dataverse is now applied to your report.

Click Sign in and complete the sign in to now make your report ready for the report consumers.

Conclusion

Dataverse is a great data source for business apps and being able to report on the data in there is important. Building a simple efficient pattern to do this is important. Hopefully this post helps get you there.

Power BI Series

Power BI – Embed a Paginated Report

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 19:24:23 +0000

Within a Power BI report you can embed a paginated report. Values can be passed to the paginated report to populate parameters. The paginated report can be exported by a report consumer.

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Paginated Report

For this post we are going to use a paginated report connected to restaurant sales data. The report shows daily total dishes sold and takings. It uses 2 parameters, StartDate and EndDate to filter the report.

Prepare Measures for Parameter Values

The Power BI report in this example uses the same data source of restaurant data. It doesn’t have to. The report requires 2 parameters. The easiest way to fill these vales would be to create measures. We create 2 measures to define the date range.

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StartDate = MIN('Date'[Date])

EndDate = MAX('Date'[Date])

Embed a Paginated Report

In a report in Power BI desktop drop down the visual selection from the Home or Insert ribbon. Then select the Paginated Report visual from the Other group.

When the visual appears, click on the Build Visual button to display the data options. Add the measures to the visual. Then click Connect to report button to select the report.

The next dialog shows all the paginated reports you have access to and includes a search box. Select the correct report and then click Set Parameters. Add the relevant measures from the dropdown. The current values of the measures will appear next to each measure.

Click See report to see the report. In this report there is also a chart showing sales per week.

Filtering the Paginated Report

When a filter is applied that changes the measures used as parameters, a Apply changes button appears. Clicking this will filter the report.

We can remove Click on the report and click the format button. Then tick the Auto-apply. Now when the measures change the report will refresh immedeatly.

Exporting the Report

After the Power BI report is published, consumers can view it from the workspace or workspace app. When viewing the report the viewer can click on Export and select a format. Then all pages will download as a single file.

The toolbar at the top of the report allows the viewer to navigate the pages. We can open the report with the current filters applied by clicking Open Report.

Restricting Viewer Options

When designing the report you can add restrictions to the embedded Paginated report from the format pane. We can hide the complete toolbar, or remove access to export, navigate pages and viewing the report alone. We can restrict exporting or the different export formats.

Conclusion

This was a very simple example with 2 simple parameters. The paginated report could have optional parameters with default values and could accept multiple values. The tricky part there is setting up the paginated report rather than embedding it.

One great option would be to use bookmarks to save the common parameters.

Power BI Series

Power BI – Clear all Slicers Button

Sat, 25 Mar 2023 16:34:22 +0000

The March 2023 Power BI update included a new button, Clear All Slicers. This allows you very quickly add a reset on a report for the slicers. It partly replaces the previous method explained in https://hatfullofdata.blog/power-bi-resetting-slicers-with-a-bookmark-button/

YouTube Version

Adding the Button

Head to the Insert ribbon and under Buttons select “Clear all slicers”. Nothing else needs to be done, although I would recommend formatting the button. The button will reset slicers to have no filters applied.

Formatting

The default styling for this button does not include a border. My opinion, which is potentially wrong, is there should be a border of some sort.

The March 2023 update also included formatting updates. So to access the formatting pane of the button you might need to click the ellipses (…) on the button and select Format.

In the format pane on the right of the screen look for Button Style. In that section you will find Text and Border. You can change and format both the display text and the border details.

Word of Caution

The button to reset slicers back to no filter. You need to be clear what that excludes. It will not remove filters applied by clicking on a visual and will not change a slicer that has a single select. You will need to use the previous method linked above to achieve that.

Conclusion

For most reports this is a great addition. Too many reports with lots of slicers do not include a quick obvious way to reset the report filters. Combined with an apply all filters button this will greatly assist on filtering and unfiltering a direct query report.

Power BI Series

Power BI Adoption in Your Business

Sat, 18 Mar 2023 18:07:15 +0000

So you’ve found Power BI, you’ve created amazing reports that answer every question your business has. Yet when you look at the stats your reports are not being looked at. People are still returning to the old spreadsheets and creating their own pie charts. What has gone wrong with your Power BI adoption?

You might have adopted Power BI but your business hasn’t. You need to take your business on the Power BI adoption journey. No they don’t need to learn M and DAX, but they do need to understand how they can view reports and how to use them. This post is to go along with a set of videos looking at ways to deliver the reports to your business report consumers. Click on the pictures to view the videos.

Report Delivery

Workspaces are not user friendly, you need to find the workspace and then the report etc. So what options are there for delivering the report to where the viewer already is. Here are four videos to get you started

My favourite update for 2022 was being able to embed a Power BI report into PowerPoint with full functionality. This bring Power BI into the meeting without any fuss, window switching. Embedding is fast and simple assuming everyone has licenses and access.

For outside the meeting but still in the areas your users work embedding in a SharePoint page could be the answer. If your users are working every day in SharePoint then this is the obvious place to embed your report.

Most Office workers use MS Teams for almost everything. So its obvious to pin that Power BI report into the relevant Teams channel for everyone to be able to quickly find it when they are working in that channel.

When you have a complete report suite that should be delivered together then a Power BI App is your best option. Using Audiences you can tailor the experience based on the viewer. This is my second favourite update from 2022.

Report Experience

The average manager does not believe they have time to learn the complexities of how a new report works. So you need to make the transition easy. Give the 5 minute tour, listen to feedback and show them how to make it work for them.

When a report covers multiple teams and slicers give users the specific results they need, show them how to use Personal Bookmarks. Now the report view is under their control and its quick and easy.

When that multi-team report is exposing data too widely then Row Level Security should be considered. This is the simplest version. Another post will take this further.

Old habits die hard

Excel is here to stay, do not make your Power BI adoption project a battle you cannot win. As much as Power BI can do much of the reporting that Excel does there are times when exploring the data in Excel is the best option. Showing your users how to connect Excel to a Power BI dataset will at least make sure the data they have in Excel should be the same as the data in Power BI.

With the proper controls users can pull data from a Power BI dataset into a Pivot Table or into a table. However much you’d prefer they didn’t, they will want the data in Excel. So let them do it, with it controlled by you.

Conclusion

In order for your reports to be used, trusted and promoted across the business you need to deliver them. Hopefully you have a few more ideas now on how you could do that. Please let me know if you have any other ideas to add to the list.

Power BI Series

Export Data from Power BI Visuals

Sun, 05 Mar 2023 22:52:49 +0000

Excel has been the backbone of finance departments for decades. Almost every company has multiple spreadsheets that are business critical. Many Power BI adoption programmes have aimed to reduce the reliance on such spreadsheets. But we may still need to export data from Power BI into an Excel spreadsheet as old habits die hard and Excel is an amazing tool and Power BI will never replace it completely. This is one possible option and I will cover creating pivot tables from a dataset in another post.

YouTube Version

Export data from a visual

When viewing a report in the Power BI Service, the viewer can click on the three dots usually in the top right of the visual. When the menu that appears, they can click Export data. (See Admin and Report Settings sections if its not there) Then it will display a dialog giving potentially multiple ways to export data.

Different options will be available based on the visual selected and the report options. The details for each option will be covered.

Data with current layout

This option is only available on Table or Matrix visuals. It creates an Excel file with almost exactly the same layout. The file is a pure export and does not include a refresh.

Summarized Data

Assuming the admin and report creator have allowed export, this option is available for most visuals. When selected it has three possibilities. The live connection is only available if you have contributor or higher access, i.e. its not available if you have Viewer access.

Excel with live connection, 500,000 row max.Live connection means the data can be refreshed at a future time.
Excel, 150,000 row maxExport without refresh.
CSV file, 30,000 row maxCSV cannot include a refresh.

Underlying Data

This option is only available if the report creator has enabled it. (See Report Setting Options below) It exposes more columns than summarized. In this example it exports all the columns from the fact table, the 2 columns from the dimension table used and the measure used.

Applied Filters in Export Data

When the data is exported, the exported data will be filtered with the report filters applied. Then the filter details are included in Excel files. CSV files will be filtered but will not include the details.

Report Setting Options

A report creator can control if report readers can export data from the report. These settings are found under File – Options, CURRENT REPORT – Report settings. Then look under Export data. The first option is the default and will allow Data with Current Layout and Summarized data. When option 2 is selected, underlying data export is enabled as well. Option 3 disables all exports from this report.

Admin Options

Power Admins have ultimate control over this feature. There are 3 features they can restrict, enable or disable. These options are Export to Excel, Export to csv and Users can work with Power BI datasets. Disabling the third option will disable files having a live refresh.

Also by using security groups, you can restrict any of these features to limited users across the tenancy.

Data Export Conclusion

Educating users in good practice on using these features will help your strong Excel users feel more comfortable. I can understand companies restricting parts of this, but I would hope it is not just a blanket ban hoping this will speed up adoption of Power BI. In my experience it will just make some people more stubborn. Stubborn workarounds will be shadow IT and increase your technical debt.

Resources

The UK Weather pbix file is on my github site – https://github.com/Laura-GB/DemoData#video-and-blog-resources

Power BI Series

Power BI – 5 Stars SVG

Sat, 25 Feb 2023 22:57:38 +0000

In the Feb 2023 Power BI Update they introduced image width in a table formatting. This means SVG images now don’t have to be square, so we can now do rectangle images. So I ported Stars SVG code I had in my Power Apps series and added this post to my Power BI SVG series

For this post we are using a table of events that have a rating score. I want to add a visual version of the rating to the table visual.

Resources for this post and video can be found at https://github.com/Laura-GB/DemoData/

YouTube Version

Draw 1 Star SVG

The first step is a measure to draw a single star. That starts with the SVG essentials similar to previous examples and the basic star shape. We need to remember to change Data Category the measure is an Image URL under data category and then add it to the table

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Stars = 
// svg essentials
VAR svg_start = "data:image/svg+xml;utf8,"
VAR svg_end = ""
// star shapes
VAR Star1 = ""

RETURN
svg_start & Star1 & svg_end

The default image size will be too big. In the formatting for the table, change the image size. I’ve used 30 px, pick a size that works for you.

Draw 5 Stars SVG

In order to draw 5 stars in a row the view box needs to be expanded to fit them all in. So the svg_start needs to change to 500 100. This will mean that the above width will also need to change. One star is 30 px, so 5 stars will need a width of 150 px.

Then we need to draw 5 stars in a row. We can use GENERATESERIES to create a table with numbers 0,100..400 so we can draw a star at 0,0 and 100,0 etc. That can be used inside a CONCATENATEX to create 5 groups. Each group will use a transform, translate to position each star.

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Stars = 
// svg essentials
VAR svg_start = "data:image/svg+xml;utf8,"
VAR svg_end = ""
// star shapes
VAR Star1 = ""
VAR Star5 = CONCATENATEX(
 GENERATESERIES(0,400,100),
 "" & Star1 & ""
)
RETURN
svg_start & Star5 & svg_end

Grey Star Outlines

The first layer of stars is outline stars so we need to put the 5 stars in a group with a white fill and 1 point black outline.

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Stars = 
// svg essentials
VAR svg_start = "data:image/svg+xml;utf8,"
VAR svg_end = ""
// star shapes
VAR Star1 = ""
VAR Star5 = CONCATENATEX(
 GENERATESERIES(0,400,100),
 "" & Star1 & ""
)
// Defs

// Coloured Stars
VAR GreyStars = "" & Star5 & ""
RETURN
svg_start & GreyStars & svg_end

Define Clip Path

The gold stars need clipping to match the rating score. 5 stars is 500 wide so a rating of 2 needs the gold stars clipped at 200, and 3.5 at 350 etc. We use variable ClipWidth to store this. To clip an image we use the and tags. The clipPath includes an id so it can be used later. The clipped area is a rectangle from with a height of 100 and a width of ClipWidth.

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Stars = 
// svg essentials
VAR svg_start = "data:image/svg+xml;utf8,"
VAR svg_end = ""
// star shapes
VAR Star1 = ""
VAR Star5 = CONCATENATEX(
 GENERATESERIES(0,400,100),
 "" & Star1 & ""
)
// Defs
VAR ClipWidth = [Avg Rating] * 100
VAR Defs = "
 
 "
 
// Coloured Stars
VAR GreyStars = "" & Star5 & ""
RETURN
svg_start & GreyStars & svg_end

Draw Clipped Gold Stars

The last step is to draw the 5 gold stars using the clip path. So we use another group, apply a fill of gold and the clip path. The clip path name

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Stars = 
// svg essentials
VAR svg_start = "data:image/svg+xml;utf8,"
VAR svg_end = ""
// star shapes
VAR Star1 = ""
VAR Star5 = CONCATENATEX(
 GENERATESERIES(0,400,100),
 "" & Star1 & ""
)
// Defs
VAR ClipWidth = [Avg Rating] * 100
VAR Defs = "
 
 "

// Coloured Stars
VAR GreyStars = "" & Star5 & ""
VAR GoldStars = "" & Star5 & ""
RETURN
svg_start & Defs & GreyStars & GoldStars & svg_end

Conclusion

The width addition to images in tables and matrix opens up lots of possibilities to use images in tables. There are lots of ideas for visuals to add to a table or matrix.Kerry Kolosko has some brilliant templates to get you started at https://kerrykolosko.com/portfolio/

Power BI Series

Power BI – Take Over a Dataset

Thu, 24 Nov 2022 14:24:00 +0000

A published dataset in the Power BI service is owned by one account, often a person. People change jobs, move projects so that dataset is no longer part of their job. So another accounts need to take over that dataset so the connected reports can get refreshed data. This post will walk you through the simple steps with a few words of caution along the way.

YouTube Version

Initial Dataset

Click the three dots on a dataset and select Settings. At the the top of the Settings window we can see AmyA currently has control of the Account report dataset. So this account, DanJ cannot edit scheduled refreshes, edit parameters etc. If Amy’s account gets deactivated then the refreshes will fail.

Perform Take over

Before Dan clicks Take over it is very important to make sure Dan has access to the data sources that this report uses. If Dan does not have access and continues, they could break the connections and therefore break the refresh on this report.

When Dan clicks on the Take over button, it displays a warning message.

When Dan clicks Take over the stored credentials are deleted so the credentials will show an error. In this example there is only one data source so only one set of credentials. Click on Edit credentials for each set of credentials and login or enter credentials.

Once all the credentials have been updated Dan can now configure everything on the dataset. If Amy looks at the dataset they will be able to see Dan has completed the take over. You must have at least Contributor access to the workspace to do this.

Take Over – Word of Caution

There is no undo. If you do not have credentials for the data sources used in the dataset the refresh will no longer work for import sources and the whole report won’t work for direct query reports. So I highly recommend doing this before your report builder leaves the company and a full handover is completed.

Power BI Series

Power BI – Connecting to Google Analytics

Tue, 22 Nov 2022 09:24:52 +0000

When I started my WordPress blog I added a Google Analytics plugin. This allows me to track visitors to my blog. So now I have a few years worth of data to load into a Power BI report. Power BI has a Google Analytics connector. This blog post is to walk through building a simple report on my blog visitors.

YouTube Video

For those who prefer a video guide.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdvAq-B6ZWg

Creating the connection to Google Analytics

In Power BI desktop the connector can be found under Get Data > More and then Online Services.

The connector relies on a third party, i.e. Google. Therefore Power BI shows a message warning the connector user that Microsoft can’t guarantee the connector will always work correctly. Google will also confirm that its okay for Power BI to connect to your Google Analytics.

Selecting Fields

When the connection is established the Navigator dialog lists all the fields grouped in folders. The fields have two types, Dimensions and Measures. Every report must include at least one of each. For this example I select from the Time folder, Date and Month of Year as the dimensions. Then from the Page Tracking folder I select the measure Pageviews. Finally I click Load to get the data into my report.

Quick Chart

A quick column chart, using Month of Year and Pageviews shows the page views over the past few years.

Adding more fields from Google Analytics

Google analytics has many more dimensions and measures to explore. After you click on Transform and return to Power Query you can see the applied steps. My first attempt to add more dimensions to the query was to click on the cog next to Added Items. This gives you can error so you cannot just modify that step.

The error is not a problem. Instead of modifying the existing step, the easiest method to add new dimensions is to add a new step. On the Cube Tools – Manage ribbon, click on Add Items. For this example I added the following:

Geo Network

Continent

Country
Platform or Device

Browser

User

Users

After adding the new items, I return to the report and add slicers and more visuals.

Power BI Series

Power BI – Switch Dataverse Tenancy

Tue, 01 Nov 2022 12:47:36 +0000

Connecting to Dataverse with Power BI to report on the business data is becoming easier and more common. One difference with connecting to Dataverse is there are two connectors involved. One to list the available environments and the second to connect to the data. Occasionally you need to change to point to a different tenancy which means changing the first connector to switch Dataverse tenancy.

YouTube version

Starting Point

When I click Dataverse on the Home ribbon the navigator shows me where I last connected. I need to connect to a different tenancy for this report.

Switch Dataverse Tenancy

You need to change the login for the Dataverse login. From the Home ribbon, click the down arrow on Transform data and select Data source settings. In the Data source settings dialog select Global permissions. Then select Dataverse and select Edit Permissions.

In the Edit Permissions dialog click on the Edit button. This will prompt you to login to the different tenancy. If you do not have a Privacy Level selected I recommend you select one, often Organizational will fit most data sources. It will depend upon your company’s policy.

Result

Now when I click on the Dataverse button I get the list of environments on the different tenancy.

The Dataverse connector is only used to populate the Dataverse Navigator window. Switching the tenancy will not break any other reports. If all you do is report from one tenancy you will never have to do this. Though I’ve been asked to explain this multiple times.

Power BI Series

Power BI & Dataverse – Choice Columns

Sat, 24 Sep 2022 19:24:07 +0000

Choices and Choice Column Introduction

When a choice column is created in a Dataverse table the developer can either select a pre-made list of choices or create a custom list of choices. In a Power BI model it helps to add the dimension table of those values.

The difference between a choice and choices column is how many choices can be picked. A choice column only allows one choice and a choices columns column allows multiple values to be added. So if we take dish from our menu then the menu section, eg starter, main, side would be a choice but the allergens such as gluten, dairy etc could be a choices column.

Choice Column in Power BI

When the table is loaded into Power BI there are two columns for the choice column. The first column is the number that refers to the choice in the choices list and the second column is the value from the choice list. The limitation of using the name column is only selected values will in your data and it will slow down the refresh of the data.

Choices Column in Power BI

When the table is loaded into Power BI there is a single column for the choices column. This column contains numbers separated by commas. Each of these numbers refers to a choice in the choices list. Using the Dataverse connection, there is no easy to get the choice values.

Using the Web API to get choice lists

Choice are part of the table and columns definition and one of the four paths exposed is Global Option Set Definitions. Choices and Options are the same thing in this context. Microsoft give us the path on this page

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/developer/data-platform/webapi/use-web-api-metadata

The path given is

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[Organization URI]/api/data/v9.0/GlobalOptionSetDefinitions

If you navigate to that url in your environment you will get JSON data. Then exploring the JSON we can find the Name of the choice list. Expanding Options we get the Value which matches the values in the choices column in our table. Expanding Label and then UserLocalizedLabel we get the Label value.

Using the Web Connector to link to the JSON we can connect. Power Query decides to expand everything for you. I deleted all the steps except Source and expanded only the columns I needed.

Before I add the list I create a parameter called Environment to store the path to the my Dataverse environment, eg orgdaae212f.crm11.dynamics.com.

Then this code gives you the list of all the choice lists in your environment. I save this as one query which is not loaded and then I add referenced queries for each choice list that I want to include in my report.

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let
 Source = Json.Document(Web.Contents("https://" & Environment & "/api/data/v9.0/GlobalOptionSetDefinitions")),
 value = Source[value],
 #"Converted to Table" = Table.FromList(value, Splitter.SplitByNothing(), null, null, ExtraValues.Error),
 #"Expanded Column1" = Table.ExpandRecordColumn(#"Converted to Table", "Column1", {"Name", "Options"}, {"Name", "Options"}),
 #"Expanded Options" = Table.ExpandListColumn(#"Expanded Column1", "Options"),
 #"Expanded Options1" = Table.ExpandRecordColumn(#"Expanded Options", "Options", {"Value", "Label"}, {"Value", "Label"}),
 #"Expanded Label" = Table.ExpandRecordColumn(#"Expanded Options1", "Label", {"UserLocalizedLabel"}, {"UserLocalizedLabel"}),
 #"Expanded UserLocalizedLabel" = Table.ExpandRecordColumn(#"Expanded Label", "UserLocalizedLabel", {"Label"}, {"Label"}),
 #"Changed Type" = Table.TransformColumnTypes(#"Expanded UserLocalizedLabel",{{"Name", type text}, {"Value", Int64.Type}, {"Label", type text}}),
 #"Renamed Columns" = Table.RenameColumns(#"Changed Type",{{"Name", "Choice List"}, {"Value", "Choice Value"}, {"Label", "Choice Name"}})
in
 #"Renamed Columns"

Result

After you add the above code, you get a table of all the options available. Then using reference and a filter and the choice dimension tables can be created.

Conclusion

Its not pretty, its not clean and I’d prefer a straight forward connector. It works for now though and until there is another method that works this is the method I’ll use. If there is another method please correct me via the comments below and I’ll correct my post!

Power BI Series

Power BI Dataverse Connector – July 2022 Update

Thu, 01 Sep 2022 16:33:32 +0000

In the July 2022 Power BI update, they updated the Dataverse connector. The connector now uses the display names from a Dataverse table. Dataverse columns have internal name and display names and previously the display names were not available.

YouTube Version

For those who prefer a video version.

New Connection

Let’s start with a brand new Dataverse connection. When you click on the Dataverse button the dialog appears as before. When you select a table it still shows the internal names of the columns.

When you click Transform and Power Query opens it still shows the internal names. So I select a few columns and then click Close and Apply. When the data appears in Power BI desktop it now shows the display names. If a column does not have a display name such as statecodename it shows the internal name.

Power Query and Power BI Desktop views

When I experimented I found that even if you renamed the columns within Power Query the name within Power BI desktop did not change. And if you changed the name in Power BI desktop it did not push back into Power Query as it does with other connectors.

Exploring with Tabular Editor

Opening the model in Tabular Editor 2 we can see that the column has two names. So the source column has a different value to the Name property.

Updating an Existing Model

I created a Power BI model in an earlier version of Power that used the old Dataverse connector. It contains the Account table with columns renamed in Power Query and a measure to count the Account table records.

Report before refresh

When I opened the file in the July 2022 version of Power BI with the new Dataverse Connector, it looked unchanged. When the report is refreshed in Power BI desktop the connector is updated. The column names change and measures update and still work.

Report after refresh with updated column names

Exceptions

If the table from Dataverse is transformed using a reference the display names do not come through. I have not explored all the combinations as to which break the new update so please be aware.

Conclusion on Dataverse Connector

The update to the dataverse connector makes this connector work differently to other connectors. This update works well if all the transformation does is reduce the columns and filter the rows. This will work for many reports.

Power BI Series

Power BI Charticulator Resources

Mon, 27 Jun 2022 08:26:01 +0000

Creating custom visuals using the Charticulator visual in Power BI is not 100% intuitive. So here are some links to some Charticulator resources I’ve used to skill up and some resources I’ve created.

Microsoft’s Resources

Charticulator was created by Microsoft Research and is Open Source. So they have some great Charticulator resources to help you get started.

Charticulator Website – https://charticulator.com/
Microsoft’s Announcement – https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-the-new-charticulator-visual-public-preview/
Microsoft’s GitHub of Resources – https://github.com/microsoft/charticulator
Research Team Video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EZq4QolNy4

Blogs and Videos

One great resource to help me get started was the tutorials by Burning Suit. They’ve even written an brilliant book on the topic. Also other content creators have videos and blogs all with some great ideas and different ways to get you started.

BurningSuit – https://www.burningsuit.co.uk/charticulator-in-power-bi-1/
And their book – https://www.burningsuit.co.uk/our-book-introducing-charticulator-for-power-bi/
Paul Turley’s Slide Deck – https://sqlserverbi.blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/can-you-say-charticulator-paul-turley.pdf
Enterprise DNA Video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORKTLUAFXnI
RADACAD’s Introduction Video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtyxTNnEvnw

My Charticulator Resources

How I learn new topics is by creating content to share. So I’ve created a blog post and a few videos. I need to create more and they are coming.

Simple Chart Post – https://hatfullofdata.blog/charticulator-simple-custom-chart/
Simple Chart Video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7YtRPnoc7M
Grid Chart – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hb56crKEJN4
Heat Map – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kz2b1tchFJo

Conclusion

After reading this, please let me know if this was useful. Then please point out the links I’ve missed out. There are other great custom visual options out there and Charticulator has its place amongst the great ones.

Power BI Charticulator Simple Custom Chart

Fri, 07 Jan 2022 10:24:29 +0000

In late 2021, the Charticulator visual was added to Power BI desktop. This post walks through creating a Charticulator Simple Custom Chart. The chart will show the drink preference split of 20 office colleagues. The steps assume you already have connected to the data. The data is available for download or direct connection here:

https://hatfullofdata.blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Drinks.xlsx

Charticulator Series

This series will build a number of different visuals using the Charticulator visual in Power BI desktop. Each post will include links to data sources, sample Power BI reports and any related YouTube videos.

Simple Chart
Exporting and Importing Templates
Allowing Export of Templates

YouTube Video

It’s coming!

Adding the Charticulator Visual

The Charticulator visual is a custom visual so needs to be added. In the visualisations pane, click on the three dots and then click on Get more visuals. Search for Charticulator. Then click on the icon to see the full description. Click Add to add the visual to this report.

Start creating Charticulator Simple Custom Chart

Add the Charticulator visual to a report page. This visual needs the count of the people who prefer a drink. So I created a measure that counts the rows.

Next I add Drink field and People Count measure to the Data of the visual. Once you have data added you can create the visual. So click on the three dots on the visual and select edit.

When the Charticulator pane appears, click Create Chart. Then the Charticulator editor window appears.

Creating Charticulator Simple Custom Chart

The Charticulator editor window has different areas. We are going to start by working with the Glyph area to define the shapes that will appear in the plot area.

Adding Shapes

The chart is made of a rectangle per drink with a width that corresponds to the number of people who prefer that drink. From the toolbar make sure the Marks button shows a rectangle and then drag the rectangle into the glyph area. The glyph area should now have a rectangle in it and the plot area 3 rectangles, one for each row of data from the three drink types.

The 3 rectangles in the plot area are all the same size. We want the width to be linked to the people count value. Make sure you still have the shape selected. Then click on the link button next the Width box and select People Count. The plot area rectangles will now be different widths.

Next we want the rectangles to be different colours. Further down the attributes pane there is a Fill property. Click on the link and select Drink. You can change the colours here as well if you want to.

The final step before me move on to text is to remove the gap between the rectangles. This is a property of Plot Segment. Start by selecting the PlotSegment1 in the Layers. Then scroll down the Attributes to find Gap. Reduce the Gap value down to 0.

Adding Text

A good alternative to adding a legend to a chart is to add labels. We are going to add 2 text objects to show the drink name and the people count. Drag a text item, show by A, into the glyph area. Keeping Text1 selected, we can update the attributes. Make the following changes

Link the text to Drink
Increase the Font size if required
Change the Anchor Y to be bottom
Change the color to be white

Note you can click on Glyph title to minimise that section of the pane to see more Attributes.

Add another text object. Make very similar changes except link the Text to the People Count and the Anchor Y link to be Top so that the number is under the drink.

Formatting Numbers

When you link a numeric column to a text object the calculation includes the formatting for the number. In the example below the second pair of {} includes the formatting. f = fixed point notation and the .1 means show 1 decimal place, so {.2f} would show 2 decimal places etc.

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${avg(`People Count`)}{.1f}

You can change this to {.0f} to show no decimal places or you can use {d} which is decimal notation, rounded to integer. This notation is called d3 and more information can be found here.

https://github.com/d3/d3-format#format

Changing Plot Size

By default the chart is 600 x 400. This would make the chart very square. Click on the Chart layer and reduce the height. You can also reduce the margins to make the chart fill more of the area.

Finishing the Charticulator Simple Custom Chart

Finish editing the chart by clicking on Back to report. Click on Save to save your changes to the chart. Be aware as you re-size the chart the font size is fixed.

Conclusion

This is the first post in a series on creating charts using the Charticulator visual. I will be looking at creating templates and how to create custom visuals. On the bottom of every post I will be including useful references. If I’m missing any please reach out

Resources

Power BI Series

Refreshing Datasets Automatically with Power BI Dataflows

Sun, 29 Aug 2021 18:58:12 +0000

I have a report, Open Issues, that has a Power BI dataflow as a data source. If I just use scheduled refreshes, my options are limited. I need to be refreshing datasets automatically after the dataflow has finished so my reports are up to date as soon as possible to avoid a situation where I schedule the dataflow to refresh at 10am and the next slot available might be 10:30am, for example. This can be done using Power Automate.

Create a flow in Power Automate

Head to Power Automate at https://flow.microsoft.com/and click on Create on the left hand side menu. The flow will be triggered by the dataflow refresh finishing. This means it is automated so click on Automated cloud flow.

A dialog appears asking for details of the flow. You need to enter in a name for the flow. Then in the search box enter in power to find relevant triggers. Select When a dataflow refresh completes and click Create.

After you click Create the flow editor appears with the trigger already added. For Group Type select Workspace. Then you can select the workspace name for Group. Then you can select the Dataflow.

We then need to refresh the connected report dataset. So we click New step. In the Choose an operation dialog, we type dataset into the search box. This will find you the action Refresh a dataset. We click on the action to add it to the flow.

Then you need to select the Workspace and Dataset in the action. The flow is complete, so we can click Save.

Testing the Flow

The flow triggers when the dataflow finishes refreshing. If we refresh the dataflow that will test the flow. I clicked refresh on the dataflow at 3pm and it triggered the flow which then refreshed the dataset.

In the workspace we can see the date and time of the refreshes and if the flow has worked correctly the dataset should be refreshed just after the dataflow. If you look at the history of the flow runs there should be a matching flow run just after the dataflow finished refreshing.

When refreshing datasets automatically fails

It is worth pointing out that if the dataset refresh fails the flow will not reflect that and will show succeeded in the flow runs. So it is worth checking that the dataset can refresh successfully.

Conclusion

This idea can be extended to refresh multiple datasets over multiple workspaces that are connected to the dataflow. This simplifies the process of scheduling refreshes. It also could allow for notifications to interested report owners to be told of the refreshes etc.

Power BI Series

How much does that report cost the business?

Tue, 06 Jul 2021 15:04:41 +0000

In nearly every business across the world, staff give reports to managers. How many people assess the report cost? The reports will show how well or badly the business is performing. Accurate reporting is important in every organisation. Management needs to be able to make data-driven decisions.

Every report comes with a cost. Is the report worth that cost? Could there be improvements in the process to lower the report cost? The biggest cost is probably the effort from the report builders. In this post I am not covering how to make a report useful, I am just looking at the report cost.

When I teach intro to Power BI I use a diagram to show the effort split. Far too often getting access to the data and transforming it into a structure you can model takes up more time than anything else.

Report Building Effort

In an ideal world the above diagram would be wrong. Anyone can access the data they need, it is all easy and quick and the data is well structured so only needs the very basic transformations. If that is the case, superb, well done. If you are guessing that is the case, please do go and ask your report builders, you might be surprised at the effort they put in.

Get

In so many companies the above diagram is accurate and it doesn’t have to be. So let us look at the “Get” stage. Often the process of getting access to the data is hard work and involves politics galore and the bigger the company the worse it is.

Is there a process of requesting access to company data? Is there a self-service data option? Are the limitations on who is allowed to connect properly governed? Do your staff even know how to find the required raw data?

In one company there were 2 options, option one pay a yearly £10K per daily csv extract or option two extract the data in 10,000 rows blocks manually once you’ve worked out the queries you need to run. The option of connecting to an actual database wasn’t even an option. Its not a huge surprise they picked the 10,000 block extract option. So there were hours wasted every week of people extracting many blocks of data and sticking it back together. The hours were being done by highly skilled engineers who had better things to do.

In another company the report builder wasn’t actually allowed access to the data but was asked to create a report. So shared screens, remote control and lots of faff and a report was built, every change involved the same games. All in the name of security.

When I suggested the engineers time was worth more than 10K or pointed out the security was already broken, they shrugged their shoulders. No-one thought the management would or could do anything.

Transform

Once you have access to the data, how much transformation is required to make the data usable?

Let us start with a story. In this company big bookings are done on accounts, so the account needs to be recorded for discounts to be applied and account managers to get commission. The box to fill in the account name is free text and the business locations are across the world so the names are foreign to some. You can imagine the variations in spelling. So, every month the reporting team spend days refining their transformation routines to cope with new variations. Account managers spend hours doing multiple checks to make sure they have all their account booking assigned to them.

All it needed was a drop down box. The booking system design team and the reporting team were in no way connected except by very senior management and no-one was telling them. So every month the hours were wasted and the account managers stressed. Before you assume this is a small company in 2019 their turnover was 21 billion dollars.

This is one small example, I could bore you with hundreds of stories as could many of the data community. Badly captured data, extracts that are impossible to work with, constantly changing data structures are daily problems for report builders and often its due to a lack of big picture planning and people un-aware that data is used in a report.

It only takes 20 minutes

My final story is from a company which had daily stand-ups on every production line. They were an important part of how that business functioned. There were a few charts produced daily and when I asked about them the reply came back “It only takes 20 minutes”.

So over the 5 day week that’s 100 minutes which isn’t bad and was easily absorbed. Now take a step back. That factory site had 12 production lines, now that becomes 1200 minutes, which is 20 hours. That is half a week. The reports were almost identical except filtered to a different production line, but they were all built separately and slightly different so not 100% comparable. Then you find out rolled up versions of the report were produced for every level of management.

Across that production site I worked out there was roughly 0.75 of a person being used to build that report. Was that a good use of that headcount?

Telling the management the report cost

I was the external consultant being brought in to help. It was often assumed that the problem was a lack of skills. The problem was usually a lack of communication and an assumption that management wouldn’t fix it. When I had the opportunity to ignore the internal politics and talk to the senior management, things often got fixed. Even the grumpiest manager cares about time being wasted on pointless tasks. Sometimes it takes an external consultant to point out the obvious and reduce the report costs.

So managers please do the following :

Look at the reports, if you don’t need them say so.
If reports need changes, please say so. People like to hear changes because it means you value their work.
Find your reports builders, no not their manager, find the actual builders. Ask if there is anything that could make it easier that you could initiate. Ask what their biggest challenge is, could you fix it?
Is work being repeated? Do three of your team give you the same report just filtered differently? Perhaps you could facilitate a joint effort.

And report builders please do the following :

Record the actual time it takes, including all the extras you forget and the problems you had last month.
Talk to your report readers and ask for feedback, let them know the challenges.
If ignored, brush up your CV.

Last Word

The stories given in this post are just a very small sample of the issues I have seen that increase report cost. The solutions to fix many of the boring problems were not complex, they just required someone to to step back, ignore company politics and look at the bigger picture.

There are plenty of reporting challenges that cannot be fixed easily, that is where skilled data engineers and report builders do the magic they do. Copying and pasting data from one system to another or pressing that extract button every 3 minutes for 2 hours or manual typing in the list of 1000 exchange rates for this month is not that magic they love. Someone will offer them a better job with more chances to do data magic, and now your report cost just got much higher.

Power BI Series

Power Query – Dynamic Data Source and Web.Contents()

Tue, 04 May 2021 13:01:31 +0000

This is the first post in a series to create a Star Wars report. This post handles the issue of using a parameter as the url in a web Power Query. This type of data source is referred to as a Dynamic Data Source. It will not refresh in the Power BI service unless you do some tricks.

Star Wars Series

Starting on May 4th a series using Star Wars data had to be done. Its based off an api that has some great data that is paged in 10 row blocks. I’m looking to create complete report from queries to modelling to visuals and theme etc.

The data comes from https://swapi.dev/api/

Handling Dynamic Data sources
Fetching number of pages
Using next page url

Fetching Data

I started by looking at the people table. In a new Power BI report I select Web from Get Data and use the url https://swapi.dev/api/people/ and click OK. This throws you straight into Power Query where is has created a few steps to get you a table of data.

It only gives 10 rows of data, which does include the url to the next 10 rows and also how many rows there are in total. So I use a technique I’ve blogged about before and create a URL parameter, change the source step to use the URL and then convert the query into a function.

Look here for more details https://hatfullofdata.blog/power-query-fetch-web-data/

Test Refresh

Then as a test I invoke the function to fetch the first 10 rows into a table, close and apply Power Query and then publish my report to the Power BI service.

Then I do the important test, does it refresh? When I click on refresh it fails, and when I click on the small red triangle it gives an error stating the dataset uses a dynamic data source and these can’t be refreshed.

Part of the error includes a URL https://aka.ms/dynamic-data-sources , so I go and look at the web page. And it explains how you can identify if you have a dynamic data source that won’t refresh by looking in the Data source settings in Power Query. Sure enough, when I look, it gives a message which I now know means a dynamic data source so refresh won’t work. I assume hand-authored queries means dynamic data sources.

This doesn’t tell me how to to fix it though. So off onto the internet I go and search around my favourite Power Query bloggers and sure enough Chris Webb comes up trumps with a few posts.

The second post was the one I used the most in modifying my query. It also includes searching for cow data, which I think is superb!

Removing the Dynamic Data Source

So the Web.Contents used in the source of my function needs the base url to stay the same and then any dynamic parts put into the options. The base url must be a valid web address you can authenticate to as anonymous and the shorter the better as it makes the function more flexible. I delete the invoked function query and the function from my report.

So for the Star Wars data the base url is – https://swapi.dev/api

The people part and the page=1 can be added in as part of the options. So the new solution has 2 parameters, TableName and PageNum and they are both text. Then we have to edit the source step by hand to write the second parameter of Web.Con (the whole hand-crafted fix to get rid of hand-crafted error is just amusing). The options are a record so put inside square brackets [ .. ]. The query is another record so is a nested [ .. ].

Web.Contents options allow for two things to be set, a relative path, eg People and query parameters eg Page=1. APIs are fussy so make sure you get the case right in the query part. This is my final code for the Source step. (This is the reason I blog, so in 6 months time I know I have a working example piece of code.)

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Source = Json.Document(Web.Contents("https://swapi.dev/api/",
 [
 RelativePath=TableName,
 Query=[page=PageNum]
 ]
 )),

Then I right click on the query and create a function. Invoking this function creates a table ready now to close and apply back into Power BI desktop. I publish and try a refresh and YES! it works. I now have a function that will take a table name and page number and give 10 rows of data.

In the next post we will use this function to get all the data for a table.

Power BI Desktop Connecting to Dataverse

Wed, 07 Apr 2021 08:46:05 +0000

Dataverse is a secure flexible data storage solution that is part of the very popular Microsoft Power Platform family. So connecting to Dataverse is an obvious request. Dataverse was previously known as Common Data Service. This post is from getting very frustrated mid-hackathon and trying to connect to Dataverse and just getting an odd error.

If you want to learn more about Dataverse you can find more information at Microsoft Dataverse documentation

Finding the Environment Domain

To connect to Dataverse you need the environment domain. This can be found by going to Power Apps. Then open a model driven app and look at the address bar in your browser. The domain is the XXXXX.crmX.dynamics.com part.

Connecting to Dataverse

In Power BI desktop Dataverse is one of the connectors found on the Home ribbon and found in the drop down under Get Data. If you are looking in the dialog it comes under Power Platform. Here is where you put the Environment domain of your Dataverse.

Use the domain without the https:// and without the / after it. If this is your first time connecting it will ask you to login and then will offer you the list of tables available in your Dataverse environment. I strongly advise transforming the tables to remove the columns you don’t need from your Dataverse tables.

You can connect to Dataverse using DirectQuery if you must. Often its not required and makes the report slow to edit. Yes I have opinions 😊.

Weird Error

If you include the https:// or the final / or any other extras in the environment domain it will take ages to try and connect and then will come back with an error. The error refers to trying to connect to SQL server which will confuse users.

Power BI Series

Paginated Report Resources

Sun, 21 Mar 2021 18:39:32 +0000

Important Update!

On 14th Nov 2022 Microsoft announced that Paginated reports will no longer require premium capacity and can be created with a Power BI Pro license.

Here is a link to the article https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-support-for-paginated-reports-in-power-bi-pro/

Introduction

Here are resources to help you learn how to use Paginated reports. You will need a premium capacity or Premium per user license. If you have any extra resources or questions please reach out to me on Twitter @Laura_GB.

Install Report Builder

Install from the Microsoft Store if you can or download

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=58158

Power BI Series

Power BI – Reactor – Last Year’s Sales

Sun, 31 Jan 2021 22:49:25 +0000

This post is to support my virtual session at London Microsoft Reactor on 1st Feb 2021. The session is an introduction to Power BI using sales data for 2020 from an imaginary gift shops.

YouTube Recording

Resources

The Excel file used as the data can be found at:https://hatfullofdata.blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Sales.xlsx

The background image used in the demo can be found at:https://hatfullofdata.blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Gift-Background.png

The page from SQLBI used to create the calendar table can be found at:https://www.sqlbi.com/articles/creating-a-simple-date-table-in-dax/

Useful Resources Mentioned in the Session

Create a calendar in Power Query by Radacad.https://radacad.com/create-a-date-dimension-in-power-bi-in-4-steps-step-1-calendar-columns

Guy in a Cubehttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFp1vaKzpfvoGai0vE5VJ0w

Chris Hamill’s Backgroundshttps://alluringbi.com/2020/05/05/themeable-backgrounds-for-power-bi/

Next Session

The next session will be 22nd Feb 2021, when we will look at UK population data. Closer to the date you’ll be able to find joining instructions at https://www.meetup.com/Microsoft-Reactor-London/

London Reactor Posts

Power Query – AI Insights Error

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 22:09:52 +0000

AI Insights in Power Query is a great Premium feature in Power BI. An AI Insights Error can occur if you are not fully aware of the settings you need to check. This foxed me for 2+ hours today. So I hope this post helps someone not waste the 2 hours like me.

From the Add Columns ribbon I selected Text Analytics and then in the Text Analytics I selected Extract key phrases, but this is true for any of the AI functions.

It thought for a while, and I assumed it was processing. And then it gave this error. I tried every combination of what I could do to get rid of the error.

The issue is when you do an AI function it creates a data source with a Public privacy level. So if your data that you are analysing has a different privacy level you get the error above.

Fixing Privacy Levels

This issue has a really quick fix once you realise what it is caused by. On the home ribbon in Power Query, click on Data source setting. This opens the Data Source setting dialog box.

Click on each data source and click on Edit Permissions. Change the privacy level to be the same, I use Organizational usually.

When you have checked all your data sources you can click close in the Data Source Settings dialog and refresh your data to get rid of the error.

Conclusion on AI Insights Errors

This is a classic case of when you know the cause it’s easy to fix. I hope it helped.

Power BI – Reactor – Christmas Carol Text analysis

Mon, 14 Dec 2020 14:58:39 +0000

This post is to support my session at London Microsoft Reactor. The session series have all been introduction to Power BI. This session uses some Christmas Carol song lyrics and then using some AI premium tools to analyse the text.

YouTube Recording

Resources

The Excel file used as the data can be found athttps://hatfullofdata.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Christmas-Carols.xlsx

The background image and theme file can be found athttps://hatfullofdata.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Christmas-Carol-Background.png https://hatfullofdata.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Christmas-Carol-Theme.zip

Theme file is zipped for security reasons (WordPress had its reasons apparently).

London Reactor Posts

Power BI Dataflow – Create Dataflow from Export

Sat, 28 Nov 2020 23:15:04 +0000

There are times when you need to copy a dataflow from one workspace to another workspace. Power BI service provides a simple way to export the definition as a json file and then import.

Dataflow Series

This post is part of a series on dataflows.

YouTube Version

Export dataflow as json file

In the workspace of the original workspace, click on the three dots next to the dataflow and select Export json. When the file is ready a message will appear in the top right.

Create dataflow from json file

In the destination workspace click on the New dropdown and select dataflow. From the options then displayed select Import Model. Select a your json file. Once the json file has imported a message will appear in the top right.

Although your dataflow has been created you are left on the dataflow creation page. You need to return to the workspace to see your new dataflow.

Check Credentials

The dataflow will not have refreshes setup as that is not part of the model. It is also recommended that you confirm that the credentials are correctly loaded. If you the dataflow is from another user or another tenancy you will need to re-login each credential.

To check the credentials you need to click on the three dots next to your new dataflow and select Settings. In settings, expand Data source credentials. If any of the credentials have a cross next to them click on Edit credentials to re-login.

Conclusion

Part of my work is to build dataflows to assist people fathom the depths of Microsoft Project data. The ability to export a dataflow means I have been able to transfer a solution between different teams across the company.

Power BI Series

Power BI Dataflow – Refresh History

Mon, 23 Nov 2020 16:20:50 +0000

You can find out which entity took the longest to refresh or which entity caused the error in a failed refresh by looking at the refresh history of your dataflow in the Power BI workspace.

Dataflow Series

This post is part of a series on dataflows.

YouTube Version

Refresh History List

In the workspace, click on the three dots next to the dataflow and from the menu select Refresh History. This will open a dialog that has a row for every refresh.

Every refresh will show when it happened, how long it took and if it completed or failed. In the above image we can see the last 2 refreshes failed but the 4 previous refreshes completed.

Refresh History Files

The details of the refresh for each entity that loads from the dataflow can be found by downloading the csv file. You can download the csv file for a refresh by clicking on the down arrow on the right of each refresh row.

Calculating the Refresh Time

Excel will happily open the CSV file. The first column might say Invalid Date this is due to the Power BI service trying to treat a dd/mm/yyyy formatted date as mm/dd/yyyy. I have reported the issue to Microsoft.

A simple calculation of (End Time – Start Time) will give you the duration in days so in this example I then multiplied it 246060 to give seconds. Adjust the calculation to minutes or hours to fit your durations.

Showing Errors

If you download the file of a failed refresh you will either get a single line why the whole refresh failed or details of which entity failed. there are occasions when the error is not clear, for example the second one shown.

In the first example the sales entity has failed due to a problem with the “Qty” column. This causes the other entities’ refreshes to be cancelled.

Conclusion

The Refresh History is an important part of understanding how a dataflow is performing. Hopefully at some point there will be an API to fetch the history directly, last time I looked there wasn’t.

Power BI Series

Power BI Dataflow – New Diagram View

Sat, 21 Nov 2020 22:32:08 +0000

In November 2020 a new diagram view was introduced to the online Power Query editor. The new feature produces a brilliant diagram of how the queries and parameters relate within the dataflow.

Dataflow Series

This post is part of a series on dataflows.

YouTube Version

Displaying Diagram View

When editing your dataflow, click on the View ribbon tab and select Diagram View. The diagram view will appear between the ribbon and the formula bar.

Object Types Shown in Diagram View

The entities with a blue border are loaded entities, i.e. listed when connecting and the entities with a grey border are not loaded, so they refresh but are not exposed to the report builder. Parameters and functions have a relevant symbols in the top left and a grey border.

Query Steps Preview

If you hover your mouse pointer over the step counter, it will display a list of the query steps.

Expanding Display View boxes

In the top right corner of each query and function box there is a double-headed arrow button. Click this button to expand the query and show all the steps. The button is a toggle to switch between collapsed and expanded views.

If multiple queries are expanded, you can collapse all query boxes by using the toolbar in the bottom right of the canvas. It has collapse all and expand all buttons.

Displaying Step Names

By default an expanded query displays step labels, i.e. the name of the action being applied. You can display the names of the steps by clicking on arrow below Diagram view button and selecting Show step names.

Related queries can be highlighted using the model diagram button in the top right of the query box. It will highlight all related objects blue or grey based on their borders. In a complex dataflow this can be useful to understand the complexities.

Adding Steps

When a query is selected and expanded it displays a plus sign. Clicking on the plus button displays a list of possible steps to add, it will be based on the column you have selected. There is a search box to assist in finding the right step.

Clicking on the three dots in the top right hand corner offer multiple query steps to add to the query plus some other options.

Conclusion

Diagram view is a great addition to the online dataflow editor. Diagrams are a great way to explain a structure and this should help explain transforms within a dataflow. Personally I doubt I will be using the plus button to add steps, but then I am not the target audience.

Power BI Series

Power BI Dataflows – Endorsement as Promoted and Certified

Sat, 21 Nov 2020 20:55:18 +0000

Inform your users as to which dataflow to use by using Endorsement. This allows you to label a dataflow as promoted or certified.

Dataflow Series

This post is part of a series on dataflows.

YouTube Version

Before Endorsement

When a report builder selects dataflow as the data source, the list of dataflows only shows the title of the dataflows. It gives no indication of the last refresh date or owner so if there are similar names your report builders could easily pick the incorrect dataflow.

In the above example there is Biscuits and Biscuit Data and no information to help a report builder decide which dataflow is the correct one.

Adding Endorsement

Endorsement has to happen in workspace. Click on the three dots next to the dataflow and select Settings. In settings, expand the Endorsement section to see three options.

None – default setting with no endorsement.
Promoted – this level can be added by the dataflow owner.
Certified – this level can only be added by owners who have been given permission by the tenancy admins. Details of how an admin can add be found in Endorse a dataset post.

Once you have selected the level, click Apply to save it.

After Endorsement

Now when a user selects dataflow as their connector they will see the same list of dataflows but they will be tagged as Promoted or Certified.

Conclusion

When someone has done the hard work to create a dataflow to assist the users in building reports it is important to let your users know which dataflow is the one to use.

Power BI Series

Power BI – London Reactor – Tea & Biscuits Session

Sun, 15 Nov 2020 23:07:36 +0000

This post is to support my virtual introduction to Power BI session for London Reactor on 16th November 2020.

Resources

Tea Production – https://teahow.com/where-is-tea-grown/Favourite Biscuit – https://hatfullofdata.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Biscuit-Data.xlsx

The biscuit data is fictitious using randomly generated names and random selection of biscuits.

Session Recording

London Reactor Posts

Power BI – Scheduled Refresh for your Dataflow

Mon, 09 Nov 2020 17:45:23 +0000

Most dataflows needs to have scheduled refresh setup so that the data will be up to date ready for the reports connecting to it. This post walks through the basic steps to set up the refresh.

Dataflow Series

This post is part of a series on dataflows.

YouTube Version

Setup Scheduled Refresh

In the workspace containing the dataflow, there is no Next Refresh on the dataflow. Therefore the dataflow will not refresh automatically.

Click on the three dots on the dataflow row, they appear when your mouse hovers over the row. Select Settings from the options.

Expand Scheduled refresh.
Click on the toggle to turn on scheduled refresh.
Select refresh frequency, daily means every day, weekly means you can select which day of the week.
Select your time zone.
If you have selected weekly, select days.
Click on Add another time and enter the hour, minutes and am or pm for every time you want the refresh to happen.
Leave the tick so you you will be notified if the dataflow refresh fails.
Click Apply.

Once the above has been completed, we can now return to the workspace. The dataflow now has a Next Refresh date and time for next Wednesday at 8:30am.

Conclusion

It always fascinates me how people are not confident in setting up the refreshes of datasets and dataflows. Hopefully this quick simple guide will give enough confidence to setup the refreshes to happen without people logging into Power BI to refresh the dataset or dataflow manually.

Power BI Series

Power BI – Create a Dataflow for Reusable Transforms

Tue, 03 Nov 2020 14:18:01 +0000

This post is a quick guide to create a dataflow and connect to a dataflow. Dataflows are a great way to give your report writers reusable data source that includes any complex transformations required and doesn’t require unique data logins for every report writer. It just requires access to the workspace that contains your dataflow.

Dataflow Series

This post is part of a series on dataflows.

YouTube Version

Create a Dataflow

Staring in the workspace online in the Power BI service, click on New and then select Dataflow.

In the next screen click on Add new entities button to start creating your dataflow.

The next screen lists all the data sources supported for dataflows. Select your data source. There is a search box in the top right if required. In this example I selected SQL Server database, although I could have picked Azure SQL Server.

As soon as you click in the data source, you will be prompted to enter in connection settings. When complete click Next to continue.

You will then be prompted to select the tables or views to add to the dataflow. You can see previews if that helps. When ready select Transform data button.

This will open an online version of Power Query. Add the transforms you need to each query. When you have finished click Save & close to finish creating your dataflow.

It will then prompt you for a name for your dataflow and an optional description.

Refresh the Dataflow

Although you saw data in the dataflow as you were building it, its not there until you refresh. You get a message for a short while when you save it asking if you want to refresh in the top right hand corner. If you miss that you can return to the workspace and when you hover your mouse point over the dataflow the refresh icon appears.

Connect to a Dataflow

A report, in Power BI desktop, can connect to the dataflow as a data source. Click on Get Data to open the dialog, click Power Platform to filter the options and then select Power BI dataflows. Click Connect to start the connection to dataflows.

When the Navigator dialog appears, expand the correct workspace and dataflow to select the tables. Click Load to load the data into your report. You can click transform to add extra transformations into your data if required.

Note on Refreshes

If a report is based on a dataflow, the dataflow needs to refresh before the report refreshes. Care needs to be taken on setting refreshes to co-ordinate correctly.

Conclusion

Dataflows are a great part of the data reporting structure that can reduce the hit on databases, reduce the number of accounts accessing the data and give the report writers clean well structured data to build their reports on.

Power BI Series

Power BI – Reactor – Use AI Visuals to Analyse Titanic Data

Mon, 12 Oct 2020 14:50:28 +0000

This is a post to support my session at the Reactor on 12th October 2020. The session was aimed at newcomers to Power BI and the AI visuals. Below is a link to the video on Reactor’s YouTube channel

Data Sources

The session uses 2 data sources, the passenger list for the Titanic and an Excel file to add some extra information such as port locations.

https://hatfullofdata.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/TitanicLocations.xlsx

https://hatfullofdata.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/titanicdata.csv

Transformations

The passenger list data requires some transformations to make it easier to work with. The two main skills demo’d are Column by Example and Selecting columns. These are covered in these 2 videos.

Page Background

In order to make page layout easy I use page backgrounds created in PowerPoint. This idea I got from Chris Hammill’s brilliant blog post found at https://alluringbi.com/2019/10/21/background-concepts-for-power-bi/

AI Visuals

In this demo I use 3 AI visuals Key Influencers, Decomposition Tree and Smart Narrative. Here are videos to help you get started with those visuals.

London Reactor Posts

Power BI – Reactor – Weather Report Resources

Wed, 02 Sep 2020 21:43:14 +0000

Thank you everyone who attended my virtual session at the London Reactor on Wednesday. Here are links to resources I used for the presentation.

Weather Data

The met office very usefully provides data in a text format for stations across the UK. The first link is to the summary page that gives a map link to all the stations. The second link is to Whitby’s station data.

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/historic-station-data

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/pub/data/weather/uk/climate/stationdata/whitbydata.txt

I have typed up the list of station with Latitude and Longitude values into an Excel file which can be accessed here

Background

Chris Hamill has written a great post on designing backgrounds for reports that make a report load quicker and make it easier to read.

https://alluringbi.com/2019/10/21/background-concepts-for-power-bi/

Calendar

SQL BI team have a huge range of videos and blog posts on many DAX topics. The example we used in this session was creating a simple calendar using code from this page..

https://www.sqlbi.com/articles/creating-a-simple-date-table-in-dax/

Turn Off Time Intelligence.

Another great source of educational material on Power BI is is Guy in a Cube. One recent video explains the reason to turn off the Time Intelligence.

Drill Through Button

During the presentation a question was asked regarding drill through. I mentioned the possibility of using a drill through button but I did not have enough time to demonstrate. Here is a video to explain the feature.

Resources

The final Power BI report files with the other resources can be found here.

YouTube

As soon as the Reactor posts the video the link will be added here.

London Reactor Posts

Power BI – Import Text Using Examples

Sat, 22 Aug 2020 22:22:45 +0000

Import text using examples was introduced in the 2020 August update for Power BI. It writes the Power Query steps to transform a non-tabular text file into a table.

YouTube Version

https://youtu.be/6h7g-CwkeVg

Enabling the Feature

At the point of writing this blog post this feature is still in preview. The feature is enabled in File – Options in Preview features. It will like most features move to being enabled for everyone at some point.

Example Import text using Examples

For this example I have a very simple text file as shown in first picture in this post. It contains the details of journeys on different days. So when I select Get Data – Text/CSV and select the file, the dialog that shows a preview of the data in the file has a new button.

When the button is clicked a new dialog opens a dialog box with a data preview showing and an empty table. This means we need to enter in some answers into the table so a pattern can be calculated how to transform the data. When you start to type in a value it will suggest possible values.

A column is renamed by double clicking on the column title and entering a new name.

With only one value it cannot calculate the pattern required. When I have added more values it can determine the pattern. It often needs less values in future columns. In this example 2 dates were needed for the first column and then only one value for the remaining columns.

In the above example the Distance column was only part of the row of data. It calculates the ways to split the data. After this and all the columns have been added, we click Transform Data to see the Power Query steps that the import feature have been written.

Looking at the Power Query

So the magic behind this new feature is it writes a 10+ step query for you with a pretty good pattern for doing this. So the 5 steps after the source are working out how many rows make a block of data and grouping that data into one block. The next chunk of steps are splitting that block into separate columns.

How does import text using example decide the block length?

This for me is the clever part. Step three where it adds the conditional column is the crucial step. So I looked at three slightly different versions of the text file to see how it changes.

Example 1

In this example each of the blocks start with a date, which means the line starts with a number. Step 3 uses a test to see if in position 0 there is a number. So for this example, we could have as many rows as we liked in a block as long as the first row is the only row starting with a number.

Example 2

In this example the blocks start with the word “Date”. Step 3 looks for the line starting with “Date” as the first line. This is pattern is a great one as it works fine for different length blocks as long as the only lines starting with “Date”.

Example 3

In this example there is no easy way to identify the top row of the data. This means the only pattern it can determine is by length of the block so it guesses 4. This works if the data is in same length blocks.

Conclusion

I like the new import text using examples feature and I can see places where it will get used. I hope it gets progressed to recognise more patterns and be more flexible. When it works it stops the report writer needing to put together the Power Query steps to do the transform.

Power BI Series

Power BI – Q&A Synonyms Update

Sat, 15 Aug 2020 17:53:05 +0000

Q&A is a great tool for report readers to ask questions regarding the data behind the report. The natural language interpretation is improving all the time and can be improved by using Q&A synonyms. The July 2020 Power BI update added a new way to add synonyms to a report.

YouTube Version

Without Q&A Synonyms

On report I have added a Q&A button to allow a report reader to open a dialog to ask a question. Different people will use different terms for the same thing. A word that is not recognised will be underlined in red.

Adding a Q&A Synonym by a rename

A synonym is an alternative word with the same meaning. In the example report the table is called Products with a Product Name column, but the products are toys. Therefore “Toy” in the context this report is a synonym of “Product”.

The July 2020 update introduced a new method to add a synonym to the report. When a field is renamed in the visualisation pane a suggested synonym term is created.

With the suggested synonym term created the natural language interpretation will now understand Toy means Product Name. When the question is asked using Toy the question using Product Name will be suggested.

After a few moments it will quickly show you a slight alternative with what question the current result is. It will also underline the word Toys in a orange dotted line.

Modifying Q&A Synonyms

The Q&A setup button is on the Modelling ribbon tab. When the dialog opens, click on Field Synonyms to see the synonyms. Expand the relevant table and you will see the synonyms applies to each column.

In my example you can see Toy has been added to the Product Name column in the suggested terms. This means alternative questions will be offered if Toy is used in a question.

Click the X to remove a term. When you click the + the term will be promoted to a Term. Visually it will move to the left.

Re-asking the Question

Once the Q&A synonym has been promoted to a term rather than a suggested term, you no longer get another question offered.

Conclusion

Q&A is an under used feature in Power BI. As report writers we assume we know best, and our report consumers’ questions have all been answered. We should add Q&A buttons, educate our users in how to use it and then collect the stats on questions asked, but that is for another blog post!

Power BI Series

Power BI – Endorse a Dataset as Promoted or Certified

Sat, 01 Aug 2020 13:47:21 +0000

Connecting to an existing dataset is highly recommended if the data is the same. In order to encourage report builders to select the right datasets you can endorse a dataset as promoted or certified.

YouTube

Connecting to a Dataset

When a report writer looks at a workspace they can see the datasets available in that workspace. When the report writer goes to Power BI desktop and selects Power BI datasets they are given an alphabetical list of datasets from all the workspaces they have access to.

There are two types of endorsement, promoted which any dataset owner can apply and certified that only selected people can apply. These datasets will appear at the top of the list of datasets when connecting.

Endorse a Dataset as Promoted

In the workspace, click on the ellipse menu on the dataset and select Settings. The last option in settings is Endorsement, expand this to see the options. Click on Promoted and click apply.

Enabling Certification

By default users cannot endorse a dataset as certified. This is more restricted to keep the certified label use limited to datasets that have been checked. The Certified option will be greyed out for most users.

If you are a Power BI Admin you will be able to set up who can certify a dataset in the Admin Portal. From any dataset in the Power BI website, click on the three dots in the top right of the window, select Settings and then Admin portal.

In the Admin Portal, select Tenant settings and then scroll down to find Certification. Expanding that section reveals a toggle button enable Certification. Once enabled, you can select who it applies to by entering in a security group. Click Apply to save your changes. It can take up to 15 minutes for the changes to take effect.

Note : A company that has guidance on certification of a dataset, can add the url to that guidance in the documentation page box. Any dataset owner can then click on Learn more to see your company guidance.

Endorse a Dataset as Certified

In the workspace, click on the ellipse menu on the dataset and select Settings. The last option in settings is Endorsement, expand this to see the options. Click on Certified and click apply.

Updated Connecting to a Dataset

Now when a report writer, from Power BI desktop, wants to connect to a dataset they will be offered certified datasets, then promoted datasets, with all other datasets listed afterwards.

Conclusion

One dataset to maintain and refresh is the best option, so anything that gets users to connect to the correct dataset is a great idea. Two levels of endorsing works quite well. Dataset owners promote their own datasets. Companies certify datasets that they have checked out.

Power BI Series

Power BI – Gradient Legends

Sat, 25 Jul 2020 21:11:21 +0000

Introduction

In the July 2020 update to Power BI Microsoft introduced a new feature of Gradient Legends to help annotate the colours used in a colour scale conditional formatting. When conditional formatting is applied to a visual it is important to make sure the reader of the report understands what the different colours on the report mean. Is purple good? Is orange ok?

YouTube Version

Adding Conditional Formatting

In this chart we have Turnover plotted for every month as a bar chart. The sales manager now wants to colour each bar based on the profit margin.

They select the chart and select the format section of the visualization pane. Under data colours they click the fx button next to the colour to open the conditional formatting dialog box.

Then the sales manager changes the field selected to the measure already setup of Profit Margin. They then can change the colours for the minimum and maximum values before pressing OK to apply the formatting.

View Legend

Not all visuals have the legend turned on by default. The legend can be turned on in the visualizations pane.

Changing Values in Gradient Legends

The min and max values will be calculated based on the data. These can be adjusted by returning to the conditional formatting dialog box, via visualizations pane and data colours and clicking on the fx button.

Then for the min and max values change from Auto to custom for the value and type in the values. If a plotted value is below the minimum it will be the minimum colour and the same is for maximum. In this example we have just gone to the nearest 5%.

Adding a middle colour

A mid-way third colour can added to the colour scale and that will update the legend to match.

Return back to the conditional formatting of the column colour and tick the diverging box. This will now add a third colour. After you click okay, the legend will now be updated to show all the values.

Conclusion

For those who use colour scale conditional formatting this is a great addition to make their story on the dashboard crystal clear. Adding gradient legends is crucial to annotate charts clearly.

Power BI Series

Power BI – Introducing Sync Slicers

Wed, 15 Jul 2020 08:50:19 +0000

How many reports have duplicate slicers across the pages and the report reader has to re-apply the slicer values on each page? This post covers what the sync slicers feature in Power BI is.

Slicer Series

This series will cover different topics regarding slicers.

Slicers Introduction
Resetting Slicers with a Bookmark Button
Cascading Slicers
Hierarchy Slicer
Sync Slicers
Clear all Slicers Button
Relative Date Slicer

YouTube Version

Sync Slicers Pane

On the View ribbon tab there is a Sync Slicer button which will show the Sync Slicer pane. When you click a slicer it will list the pages and show which pages already contain that slicer. In the Example shown below the ShopName slicer is on the Summary and Turnover pages but not on the Volume page.

Sync Slicers

In the above example, if the slicer on the Summary page is set to Daisy Delights the slicer on the Turnover page will not change. This is due to no ticks in the sync column.

When the two pages have ticks next to them the slicers will sync. This means that selecting one shop on Summary will select the same shop on the Turnover page.

Copy Slicers

In the example above the Volume page does not have the Shop slicer. If the sync tick is selected the Volume page will be filtered using the slicer from the other pages.

When the view slicer is ticked, a copy of the slicer with exactly the same formatting and position will be placed onto the Volume page.

Deleting the slicer from the page will stop the page being synced with other pages.

Advanced Options

The advanced options really confused me. So a google search found me a great video from Reid at Havens Consulting explaining what they mean.

Adding the same group name to each slicer, makes the slicers sync which fields they contain and the filters applied. I highly recommend watching the above video to see a full explanation.

Conclusion

Sync slicers is a great feature for reports that contain multiple pages and slicers are used cater for different people.

Power BI Series

Power BI – Personalize Visuals

Fri, 10 Jul 2020 19:49:35 +0000

In the May 2020 Power BI Desktop update they introduced the idea of allowing a reader of a report to personalize visuals and bookmarking these changes. This post walks through how to enable it for a report and how to enable and disable for each visual.

YouTube Version

Turning On Personalize Visuals

At the point of writing this blog post personalise visuals is still in preview so you need to head to File – Options & Settings – Options, and then from the Options dialog select Preview Features and turn on Personalize Visuals. This may require a Power BI restart.

Secondly you will need to turn on personalising visuals for your current report. So in Options, under Current File select Report Settings. The last option in there is Personalize Visuals, you need to tick Allow report readers to personalize visuals.

Adjusting Individual Visuals

By default, once Personalize Visuals has been turned on in a report, all visuals in the report can be personalised. You can disable it on any visual by selecting the visual, then looking under Format and searching for person and turning it off.

Personalize Visuals in a Published Report

To personalize a visual in a published report, click on the personalize button in the visual header.

The then Personalize pane will open up next to the visual and the chart type and fields used can be changed. A reader will not be able to change the formatting of the visual.

Saving Personalisations as a Bookmark

Any changes made to visuals in reports can be saved as a personal bookmark. In the top right hand corner of the browser window click Bookmarks and then Add a personal bookmark. Enter in the name of the bookmark and click Save.

Access the list of bookmarks by clicking on the drop down in the top right hand corner.

One great way to give feedback to a report designer would be to show them the personalizations you’ve done to their report. If you have person to share you can click the Share button at the top of the report.

Enter their details and add a message if required. Tick Include my changes and then click Share. They will receive an email giving them a link that includes the changes you made to the visuals.

Conclusion

This feature is great when different report readers want to adjust what the original designer did or different charts to be tried out. I know designers who will not want anyone to change anything and designers who perhaps will be more tolerant.

Power BI Series

Reactor – Power BI Introduction Resources

Mon, 22 Jun 2020 14:08:28 +0000

This post is to support my virtual session at London Reactor on 22nd June. It will include the recording and links to the data source and the final Power BI Report.

Link to Recording will go here….

Data Used at Reactorand Final File

Data in a single Excel File

Final PBIX File

Links to great Resources

London Reactor Posts

Power Apps – Embed a Power BI Chart

Sun, 31 May 2020 12:57:14 +0000

This post covers how to embed a Power BI chart from a published report into a Power App, handling a tile that doesn’t appear and then filtering the embedded chart.

YouTube Video

Creating the Chart Tile

The report must be published to a workspace that the app users will have access to. When you open in the Power BI service in the visual header is a pin, clicking this will prompt to “Pin” your visual to a dashboard.

When the dialog appears select either an Existing dashboard or a New dashboard. If you are using Themes do remember to select Keep current theme on the left hand side. Click Pin to finish pinning your chart to the dashboard.

When the visual has been pinned you will get a notification in the top right of the browser window with a button to navigate you to the dashboard. The dashboard can also be found in the workspace list. On the dashboard you can see the pinned tiles.

Embed a Power BI Chart

Within your Power App, from the Insert ribbon under Chart, select Power BI Tile. This will open a pane to select the Workspace, Dashboard and Tile. When selected the chart will appear in your app.

Fixing the missing Chart

When I first did this no charts appeared. So a few google searches later I found Power Apps is looking for a title to be set. All of my charts had altered titles. When I tried a chart that just had the automatic title, it worked. A little more digging and I found you can set the title of a tile on a dashboard. Just opening the editor and pressing Apply fixed the problem.

If you have a missing chart try the following:Open the dashboard. On the tile that Power Apps does not see, in the top right hand corner are 3 dots, click to open an options menu. From the menu select Edit details.In the Tile details pane click Apply.Save and refresh your Power App and try re-adding your tile.

The above fix has worked for every problem I’ve had so far. Please add comments if it doesn’t work for you.

Filtering the Chart

Power BI is powerful because charts can be sliced easily. When you only have a single chart from a report you don’t have the option to include slicers and filters. If you examine the Power BI control in Power Apps you will see the TileUrl property for the control is a long url.

An extra parameter can be added to this url to filter the chart. The filter is written as an OData filter. You need to know the table and field names to write the filter. In this example if I look back in the Power BI report in Desktop I can see the Colour field is from the Toys table.

So the filter string to filter to Red will be:

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"&filter=Toys/Colour eq 'Red'"

The colour could come from a drop down or a variable. Remember to include the single quotes needed around the filter value. Also spacing is important so don’t add any extras!

Conclusion to Embed a Power BI Chart

Embedding a Power BI Tile is a great addition to a Power App but it does have limitations. The dataset behind the Power BI report will need to be refreshed to reflect any changes and refreshed are limited to 8 times a day or 48 times in a premium workspace.

Power Query – Replace Values for Whole Table

Wed, 15 Apr 2020 15:40:57 +0000

Today’s challenge was to replace the values on all the columns in the query when I know the columns will change so I don’t want to name them.

Quick Answer

For those who don’t want the long explanation. Do replace values on at least one column to get the replace step. In the example below the previous step is #’Changed Type’ and the columns are Jan 20 and Feb 20.

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= Table.ReplaceValue(#"Changed Type",null,0,Replacer.ReplaceValue,{"Jan 20", "Feb 20"})

Remove the {…} section and replace it with Table.ColumnNames(Previous Step)

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= Table.ReplaceValue(#"Changed Type",null,0,Replacer.ReplaceValue,Table.ColumnNames(#"Changed Type"))

Longer Answer

Replace values is a powerful tool for coping with null values and errors. When you select multiple columns and select Replaces values a step is written in that includes a list of column names, eg {“column1″,”column2″,”column3”}. If your data structure changes that step will either break because a column is missing or will not include a new column.

The function Table.ColumnNames(StepName) returns a list of column names from the named step. To see this result and filter the list right click on a step and select Insert Step After. Edit the new step to be Table.ColumnNames(StepName)

The list of column names can be filtered, even though there is no drop down arrow. Right click on the value to remove and select Remove Item.

If I then rename this step to ColumnNames I can then use that step name in a replace step.

Note

Yes the Replaced Value step is refering to a calculation that comes after it (yup its wacky). If you reorder the steps by dragging them Power Query will decide to change the code so steps refer to the new previous step.

References

Microsoft Docs Table.ColumnNames

Power BI – COALESCE Function to Remove Blanks

Fri, 03 Apr 2020 09:27:01 +0000

Introduction

This post walks through a simple use of the coalesce function to prevent a measure returning a Blank. The example used is a simple measure.

YouTube Version

Measure

The above image shows a card that displays the Total Sales measure and due to slicer selections on the page it returns a blank. The measure is a simple SUMX calculation of Transactions[Qty] * Related Products[Price].

Adding Coalesce

Coalesce function can take multiple parameters. It evaluates the first one, if that returns a value it returns that value, if it returns a blank the function moves onto the next parameter and continues until it finds a non-blank value. If all the calculations return a blank the function returns a blank.

In this example we would like the Blank to be replaced with zero. In other measures you might want it to be another value. So we wrap the whole calculation in a coalesce function.

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Total Sales = 
// Return 0 if blank
COALESCE (
 SUMX ( Transactions, Transactions[Qty] * RELATED ( Products[Price] ) ) ,
 0
)

The card now shows a zero value. The Measure was also formatted to be a currency, so we get £0.00.

Conclusion

This is just a simple example of how the coalesce function can improve the output from measures. The zero could be a string such as “No Sales” or could be an alternative calculation followed by a zero if both calculations returned a blank.

Power BI Series

Power BI – Introducing the Hierarchy Slicer

Wed, 25 Mar 2020 19:45:03 +0000

Does your data include a hierarchy? We often can end up with multiple slicers to walk the hierarchy taking up valuable screen. This post does a quick walk through using the new hierarchy slicer.

Slicer Series

This series will cover different topics regarding slicers.

Slicers Introduction
Resetting Slicers with a Bookmark Button
Cascading Slicers
Hierarchy Slicer
Sync Slicers
Clear all Slicers Button
Relative Date Slicer

YouTube Version

Adding a Hierarchy Slicer

Add a slicer from the visualisation pane and add the top level of the hierarchy, for example ProdRange from my products table. A tick list will appear just as previously.

The add the next level down of the hierarchy into the Field box under the top level field. The slicer will now have down arrows that can be clicked to expand to show the next level down of the hierarchy.

NoteIn March 2020 you need to activate the Hierarchy Slicer in File – Options – Preview features and then save and restart Power BI. When this visual is not in preview you won’t have to.

Multiple layers can be added to the hierarchy. Of course the usability of the slicer needs to be considered when adding many layers.

Formatting a Hierarchy Slicer

This slicer can still be formatted as a drop down or changed to be single select. The single select allows a whole level of the hierarchy to be selected such as the whole year or a whole month.

Using Search

When search is turned on in a tick list the search returns the terms plus the parents or children of the items returned.

Conclusion

The Hierarchy slicer is a great addition to Power BI and I am sure will replace groups of multiple slicers in many reports.

Power BI Series

Power BI – Reset Slicers with a Bookmark Button

Mon, 09 Mar 2020 12:11:00 +0000

When your report has a bunch of slicers and charts that can also add filters to the page resetting back to no filters can be painful. So we need a quick way to reset slicers. This post walks through the steps of creating a bookmark and the using that bookmark to reset the page by clicking a button.

Slicer Series

This series will cover different topics regarding slicers.

Slicers Introduction
Resetting Slicers with a Bookmark Button
Cascading Slicers
Hierarchy Slicer
Sync Slicers
Clear all Slicers Button
Relative Date Slicer

Introduction

This post will walk through the stages to add a reset button to a report. It comes in 2 parts, firstly create a bookmark that removes filters and then to add button that applies the bookmark as its action.

YouTube Version

Create Bookmark

Bookmarks include the current status of slicers on the current page. So the first job is to clear all the slicers and make sure to selections on charts is filtering the data.

From the View ribbon, select Bookmarks
Click on the Add button and a bookmark will appear.
Double click on the bookmark to rename it

The bookmark can be tested by selecting some options on the slicers and then clicking on the bookmark name and the slicer options should be cleared.

You can now close the Bookmarks pane.

Adding Reset Button

A bookmark action can be added to a Button, Shape or Image. Select one from the Insert ribbon tab. In the format of the button / shape / image click the Action to be on, change the Type to be Bookmark anf the Bookmark to be the bookmark you created.

When viewing the report in Power BI desktop you need to hold the CTRL key when you click the button. In the Power BI Service, i.e. where your report is published you will not need the CTRL key.

You can add a message into the the Tooltip to assist your report consumers.

Updating Bookmarks

When you add new slicers or reformat your slicers it is always a good idea to update your bookmarks. Open the bookmarks pane from the View ribbon tab. Click on the … next to the bookmark name and select Update.

Conclusion to Reset Slicers

It is important that your report is easy to use. Adding a button so you are able to reset slicers is a good step towards that.

Power BI Series

Power BI – Slicers Introduction

Fri, 06 Mar 2020 11:17:56 +0000

Slicer Series

This series will cover different topics regarding slicers.

Slicers Introduction
Resetting Slicers with a Bookmark Button
Cascading Slicers
Hierarchy Slicer
Sync Slicers
Clear all Slicers Button
Relative Date Slicer

Power BI reports can be made more flexible using simple slicers to allow your report consumers to slice and dice the data down to what they are interested in. This post will look at the various options for formatting slicers in different ways.

YouTube Version

YouTube version

Simple Slicer

Click on the slicer from Visualizations pane to add a slicer to your report.

Then you need to drag in the value you would like to slice by, for example Shop Name. Your slicer is now ready to use.

You can select a single value in the slicer just by clicking. You can select multiple items by holding down the Ctrl key. To clear the slicer click the eraser icon in the top right.

Selection Options

Our slicer tick list can be tweaked in various ways to make the report fit different requirements. These options can be found in Formatting (click on the paint roller) and Selection Controls.

Single select will turn the selection boxes into round radio buttons. Only one item can now be selected and there is always one item selected, i.e. you can no longer select all.

Turning off Multi-select with CTRL will no longer require the ctrl key to be selected to select multiple options. This does mean you need to un-select items to remove filters. This is great for touch screens. You also get little ticks in the boxes.

Show “select all” adds an option at the top of the list that will toggle turning them all on or off. Showing the “Select all” is great for when report readers will want all excluding one. Some report readers find the concept of selecting none gives you all a hard one to get their head around.

Button Slicers

When there are only a few options in a list can be effective to change from a list to buttons. This option is not the most intuitive but easy to find when you know how.

Select Format – General and change the Orientation from Vertical to Horizontal and you get buttons!

When a list of options is long the tick list takes up too much screen space and becomes hard work to use. So we can change a tick list into a drop down.

In the top right hand corner of the slicer box there is a drop down, which only shows when your cursor is over the slicer. On a simple list slicer this drop down offers List or Dropdown. Selecting Dropdown will reduce the list into a smaller drop down.

Adding Search

When a slicer has lots of options it can be useful to add a search box to the slicer. The most common place to add this is probably the drop-down but it can be added to almost any slicer.

Click on the three dots at the top of the slicer window, or the the bottom if your slicer is at the top of the page! Select Search. This will add a search box to the top of the slicer options and will filter the options to match any text.

Range Slicer

Dates and numbers don’t work well for a list so when you add a number or date column to a slicer it will default to a range slicer. This slicer has two handles that allow you to modify the range selected.

Clicking the top right drop down will offer Between, Before and After as different range options as well as converting to List or Dropdown.

Conclusion

There are many options for slicers, you need to know your audience and which slicers they will prefer. So make sure it is obvious to your users what they are filtering. If you need slicers to filter slicers take a look at Cascading slicers.

Power BI Series

Power BI – Connecting to Project Online

Tue, 21 Jan 2020 12:22:15 +0000

I have spent 12 months working with a client building a Power BI report as part of their roll out of Project Online. This post walks through connecting to Project Online to visualise the data in Power BI. And the full series will document the stages and lessons learned in the past 12 months.

Power BI and Project Online Series

Connecting Power BI to Project Online data
Reducing columns returned by Project Online
Adding Relationships into Project Online Data

Connecting to Project Online

Navigate to your Project Online site. It will have a URL similar to:

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https://mycompany.com/sites/MyProjects/default.aspx

Start Power BI Desktop, which will open a new report.From the home ribbon click “Get Data” and find and select OData.

It will prompt you for a url to the data. From the above url, replace default.aspx with _api/projectdata/. My example url becomes:

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https://mycompany.com/sites/MyProjects/_api/projectdata/

If required sign in with the correct details, it probably is an organizational account you need and click Connect.

From the long list of tables select the tables you need. For the start of this series I’m going to just import Projects, Tasks and TimeSet. TimeSet is the calendar table.

Click Load ready to build your report.

Missing Data

When you edit a project in project online it prompts you to check in when you close.

But when you go load the data into project your updates will not be visible. If you have only checked in a project the whole project will be missing. You need to publish the project for the data to be visible within Power BI.

The Publish button can be found on the Tasks ribbon when editing the schedule of your project. (Why is it not on the Project ribbon? Another mystery!)

Conclusion

The Project Online database is huge and can contain a fascinating source of data. Due to a company being able to add extra columns and select which parts of project they use connecting to Project online can create useful reporting to enhance Project.

Power BI Series

Power Query Functions – SQL Procedures

Sun, 06 Oct 2019 17:25:02 +0000

This is the fourth post in my series regarding writing custom functions in Power Query. This post describes how to create a function that will execute an SQL procedure, passing in a parameter.

This series is to support my sessions at Data Relay 2019 and will cover the topics in the session.

Stored Procedure

My database contains a very simple procedure that given a cost center returns all the expense records.

It can be run with the following SQL

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EXECUTE dbo.GetExpenses @CostCenter="B01"

Create Initial Query

The initial query will excute a procedure with a fixed parameter being passed to the procedure using the SQL in the previous section.

Add a new source of SQL Server. Fill in the Server and Database and then click on Advanced options to reveal the SQL statement box where you enter the SQL statement to execute the procedure.

Click OK to and then Transform Data to edit the query. When the query opens it has only one step called Source.

Create Parameter and Function

After creating the query, we need to create a parameter to store the value to pass into the procedure. So from the Home ribbon tab select Manage Parameters – New Parameter. You need to give the parameter a name and the type Text and lastly a value.

Then we need to edit the Source step of the query to use the above parameter. Remember to get the number of ” correct, you need 2 ” if the ” is inside a string.

When you alter the query you might get a prompt asking for permission to run the query. For now let it run the query, further on in this post I will discuss this further.

After we have included the parameter into the query it is ready to be converted into a function, just as we have done in previous posts. Right click on the query and select Create Function, then enter in a name for the function. As before the query and parameter get moved into a group with the new function.

This function can now be invoked on a table of cost centers to give all the related expenses.

Changing Security

When you invoke the query you will get a prompt asking for permission to run a native database query. This is a caution to warn you that some SQL is being run which could makes changes to the database.

When you click on Edit Permission you will be shown the SQL that is going to be executed, so you can check it carefully.

This request for permission can be turned off. Click on File and then Options, and then Security. The first option in the dialog is regarding Native Database Queries, by default the require approval is ticked. Be aware this changes it for all queries.

Conclusion

SQL procedures are a great way to make use of the dba to build the queries you need to fetch the data using your parameters. Obviously this will require many biscuits for the dba. I think there is plenty of scope for functions that execute an SQL procedure.

Resources

I am not the first, and hopefully not the last to write blog posts on writing functions in M for Power Query. Here are a list of the resources I found useful. (If you know of any good ones I’ve missed please let me know!)

Power Query Functions – Fetch web data

Sat, 05 Oct 2019 17:33:54 +0000

This is the third post in my Custom functions in Power Query series. Often web based data is split across multiple pages using the url to select the data. This post describes how to build a function that populates the parts of the url so multiple pages can be used to fetch web data can be combined.

This series is to support my sessions at Data Relay 2019 and will cover the topics in the session.

Initial Query to Fetch Web Data

We start the whole process by fetching data from one page of the web site. for my example in this post I am going to use data from Formula 1 racing. The page I am using as my initial page if for the first race in 2019 in Australia. The url is

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https://www.formula1.com/en/results.html/2019/races/1000/australia/race-result.html

I’ve used table by example to extract the data I need. (There is a blog post coming cover table by example.) So I end up with three step query.

Adding First Parameter to Web Query

The next step is to replace parts of the url with parameters in the Source step. If we look at the url it has three parts that could be made into parameters. The Race Year, Race Number and Race Name. For the the first race in 2019 the values would be :

RaceYear – 2019
RaceNumber – 1000
RaceName – Australia

The first parameter needs to be created before you change the Source step. From the Home ribbon tab, select Manage Parameters, New Parameter. Then you need to enter in a name for the parameter, a type of text and the current value. The type has to be text for the parameter to get included in the next step. Finally click OK to create the parameter.

Now we can start to change the source step in the query. Start by clicking on the cog wheel of the Source step which will open a dialog. Then click on Advanced to give the option to break the URL into parts. You can click on Add Part to add extra rows. The first drop down allows offers Text or Parameter. If you don’t get the drop down on the left it means you don’t have any text parameters.

Adding Extra Parameters

Earlier I stated that the url had three parts that could be put into parameters. We can create and add the new parameters inside the From Web dialog. Click Add Part to add a new row. From the new drop down select New Parameter and enter in the details of your new parameter, remember they need to be text.

When you have finished adding new parameter and breaking the url up, click OK to save your changes. Check you still get the correct data from your query.

Creating Function from Query

We now have a query that can fetch web data which we now need to use to build a function from it..

Right click on your query and select Create Function. Type in a name for the query.

The query and the parameters are all moved into a group and a function is created. If any changes are required in the function, the changes need to be made to the query. If changes are made to the function it will break the link with the query.

Fetch web data from Multiple pages

I have a list of races with year, number and name in an Excel file which I load into a new query. In order for the function to work the RaceYear and RaceNumber columns need to be text.

From the Add Column click Invoke Function. Type in a New column name and select the function in the drop. Then the parameters for the function will appear. Change the first drop down for each parameter to Column Name and select the column.

When you click the OK button the function will run for every row of the table. This will create a column that contains tables. Click on the icon in the top right of the new column. In the dialog box that appears it will show the columns in the table. I un-ticked the Use original column name as prefix to keep the column names short,

After OK is clicked the column of tables is replaced by the three columns from the table.

Conclusion

If your data is web based this provides an efficient method of fetching web data into one table only using a few queries and a function.

Resources

Power Query – Multi-step Function

Sun, 29 Sep 2019 17:28:40 +0000

This is the second post in my Writing Functions in M series. This post describes how to build a multi-step function in M to allow for a more complex function. We will create a parameter to base the calculations on and then build a function.

This series is to support my sessions at Data Relay 2019 and will cover the topics in the session.

Introduction

In the first post of this series we built a different functions and all of them were a single step calculation. Some functions need to be made up of multiple steps. The example we will use in this example is to calculate the next working day based on Saturday and Sunday being non-working days.

In simple terms the calculation is simple, if today is a Friday add 3 days, Saturday add 2 days, otherwise just add one day. I realise this could be done with a nested if, I’m using this example as a nice easy one to walk through.

Creating a Parameter

In order to make writing functions easier we create parameters to store the values passed into our multi-step function. This function will only require a single parameter to store the date which we want to calculate the next working day.

From the Home ribbon tab, select Manage Parameters and the New Parameter. Then enter in a name for the parameter, e.g. ThisDate and select a Type, e.g. Date. Finally add in a Current Value and press OK.

Calculation Steps

Now we can start creating the function in with a blank query which I have renamed to NextWorkDay. This first step I am going to make equal to the parameter we created, ThisDate. (Remember the = , I have forgotten it too many times)

The first calculation step I am going to add is to calculate the day of the week of the given date. This can be done from the ribbon tab DateTime Tools. Select Date – Day – Day of Week and a new step gets added using the function Date.DayOfWeek.

Rename the step just added to something shorter, e.g. WeekDay.

The next step will be to calculate how many days to add to the date. You can add a new step by clicking on the fx next to the formula bar.

We use an If statement based on the previous step. There is no quick way to add this so you will need to type in formula. The editor does now have intellisense so you should get some assistance in typing in names.

Using the logic described in the second paragraph of the introduction the complete formula is

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= if WeekDay=4 then 3 else 
 if WeekDay=5 then 2 
 else 1

And I rename the step to be DaysToAdd to make the next step easier and it should return 1,2 or 3. You can click on any step and see the result, for example clicking on Source gives you the date.

So the final step is to use Source and DaysToAdd to calculate the next working day. We use the function Date.AddDays which requires 2 parameters, a date which is Source and the number of days to add which is DaysToAdd.

We can change the date in the parameter ThisDate to test different dates and check the calculation logic. Now we are ready to convert this to function.

Creating the Multi-step Function

Power Query includes a quick method to convert a query that uses a parameter into a function.

Right click on the NextWorkDay function and from the menu select Create Function. Enter in a name for the function in the Create Function dialog and press OK.

This will move both NextWorkDay query and ThisDate parameter into a separate group with the new function. If you want to edit the function you need to edit NextWorkDay and it will update the function fnNextWorkDay. You can edit the function directly but it will break the connection with NextWorkDay so debugging will be harder and is not recommended.

Using your Multi-step Function

The function can now be used in any query in your report by clicking Invoke Custom Column from the Add Column ribbon.

Conclusion

The quick Create Function ability makes creating and editing the functions much easier. It makes building functions worth doing and not a huge development process.

Resources

Power Query – Custom Handwritten Function

Fri, 27 Sep 2019 17:50:43 +0000

Introduction

In this post I will write a simple custom handwritten function to perform a calculation based off a parameter. We will then expand that function to include data types and optional parameters.

For those who are new to programming a function is a piece of code that returns some data, which could be a single value, record or table of data. If you ever need to duplicate a calculation more that twice then it is worth considering writing a function.

This series is to support my sessions at Data Relay 2019 and will cover the topics in the session.

The Hello World function

Every programming 101 course includes some sort of Hello World function as the introduction. I would hate to break tradition.

In Power Query we add a Blank Query and we get a blank formula bar. Enter in the following code.

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= () => "Hello World"

When you press return the blank query will be converted into a custom function. It gains an fx in the Queries list. It can be renamed in the Query Settings just like a query.

The function can then be used to create a column in a table. From the Add Column ribbon tab, click Invoke Custom Function. Enter in a name for the new column and select the new function from the list.

This will add a column to your data. This example is a pretty useless example of just Hello World but tradition has been done and we are now ready to move to the next stage.

Adding a parameter to our Handwritten Function

The Hello World function just returned one value, which has a very limited use. So now we will add a parameter to our function and use that value to change our result to include that message.

Parameter definitions go between the brackets in the definition. I’ve updated the function to be this code and on pressing return will now have details of the parameter required.

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= (GuestName) => "Hello " & GuestName

If the function is being used anywhere you will need to modify the function. You can either remove and re-add the function or click the cog wheel on the relevant step. There are two possible windows you will get on clicking the cog wheel.

Editing a working custom function column

Editing a custom function column that returns an error

Your table will now show the result of your updated handwritten function.

Data Types

I can feel my degree lectures turning in their graves as the above function has no data types specified. You can find many online references as to why adding data types into code is good practice, for this post please accept it is good practice and good practice usually leads to cleaner and faster code.

The fnHelloWorld has a parameter that is text and it returns some text. So we can adjust the code with “as text” after the GuestName parameter and also after the ). It won’t change the function much but it will in the long term be a great habit to adopt.

Quick Look at If

One of the most used constructs in programming in any language must be the if statement. In order to help you build quick easy functions it is worth noting the syntax.

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if [TEST] then [TRUE RESULT] else [FALSE RESULT]

So here is a very simple example of a function that calculates a delivery cost based on if the value is over 100 the delivery is free.

Optional Parameters

Last topic in this post is to make parameter optional and handling when it is not provided. Optional parameters must be the last parameters defined in your function.

So in my example I’m going to add a column that calculates tax based on the value and the optional tax rate. If no tax rate is given 20% is assumed.

The parameters have to be withoutTax value followed by taxRate as the taxRate is optional. We can test for no taxRate being given by testing for taxRate = null. So our function is

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= (withoutTax as number, optional taxRate as number) as number => 
 if taxRate = null then 
 withoutTax * 0.1 
 else 
 withoutTax * taxRate

Adding a tax column to example data shows how Alex’s tax rate is null so the tax is calculated at 10% and Jo’s tax is calculated at the given rate of 20%.

Conclusion on Handwritten Functions

These are very simple examples of functions but even these can save hours of repeating calculations. When your data has the same cleanup calculations being done to your data over many queries this allows for one function to be used repeatably.

Resources

SVG in Power BI Part 7 – Using a Theme File to add SVG Icons

Tue, 13 Aug 2019 13:01:24 +0000

Series

This is part of a series on using SVG in Power BI. The series supports my session at Power BI Days in Mechelen, Belgium in April 2019.

Introduction to SVG Basics
KPI Shapes in Power BI
Filling up with colour using SVG in Power BI
Using Text in SVG
Using SVG Rotate to create a dial in Power BI
SVG Icons in Conditional Formatting
Using a Theme to add SVG Icons
Feb 2023 Update - 5 SVG Stars

As part of the July 2019 update there were changes to conditional formatting and I covered the use of SVG based measures to add icons in part 6 of this series. In this post I am going to cover adding to or swapping the built in icons using a theme file and some SVG.

Overview of Theme Files

Theme files are a JSON file with instructions for formatting your visuals. The formatting can include colours, fonts and now icons. Details of how to construct and use a theme file can be found in the links below.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/desktop-report-themes

https://powerbi.tips/tools/report-theme-generator-v3/

Adding New SVG Icons

Icons is a new section for the theme file. It is at the same level as the name. You need a name, url and description for the icon. I can see no evidence of the name or description being used. Please correct me if I am wrong.

The url can be SVG code in a similar format to the measures from previous posts. So in this example my first icon is a red quarter of a circle. Below is the SVG code for the shape.

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data:image/svg+xml;utf8,

A simple theme file to create one extra icon would look like

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{
 "name": "New Icons",
 "icons": {
 "complete025": {
 "url": "data:image/svg+xml;utf8, ",
 "description": "25% Complete"
 }
	}
}

This adds a single icon to the icons available in conditional formatting. It will be listed at the end of the icon list.

I then expanded the list of icons to cope with 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% going from red through amber to green.After applying the the theme to my report I created conditional formatting rules to a table to use my new icons.

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{
 "name": "Percent Icons",
 "icons": {
 "complete025": {
 "url": "data:image/svg+xml;utf8, ",
 "description": "25% Complete"
 },
 "complete050": {
 "url": "data:image/svg+xml;utf8, ",
 "description": "50% Complete"
 },
		 "complete075": {
				"url":"data:image/svg+xml;utf8, ",
				"description":"75% Complete"
		 },
 "complete100": {
 "url": "data:image/svg+xml;utf8, ",
 "description": "100% Complete"
 }
 }
}

Conclusion

Adding a few extra icons to report is great. I am concerned that adding lots of complex icons will just make the report slow.

In Microsoft’s announcement they say you can replace existing icons using a theme file. For this you need the resourceKey for the icons. I have not been able to find a list of icons and the example they give didn’t work for me.

SVG in Power BI Part 6 – New Icon Conditional Formatting

Tue, 06 Aug 2019 10:37:05 +0000

Series

This is part of a series on using SVG in Power BI. The series supports my session at Power BI Days in Mechelen, Belgium in April 2019.

Introduction to SVG Basics
KPI Shapes in Power BI
Filling up with colour using SVG in Power BI
Using Text in SVG
Using SVG Rotate to create a dial in Power BI
SVG Icons in Conditional Formatting
Using a Theme to add SVG Icons
Feb 2023 Update - 5 SVG Stars

In July 2019 Power BI Desktop update they included new conditional formatting on table and matrix to include icons. These icons can be defined using SVG which is pretty cool. So this is a new post in my Power BI SVG series looking how we can use SVG icons in conditional formatting.

Quick Overview of Icon Conditional Formatting

Once you have added a table or matrix visual to your report you can in formatting in the Conditional Formatting Section turn on Icons. This will immediately add icons to the selected column. In the example below icons were added to Turnover column.

Clicking on Advanced controls link opens options behind the selection of icons. The default rules are for 3 icons at

In this post though I’m looking at using SVG to define and select the icon. So I will not be using rules but will be using a measure. The example is going to be based on a measure written in a previous post, KPI Shapes in Power BI The measure decides on an up or down arrow based on another measure called Growth.

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Arrow = 
// Variables to store arrow paths
var uparrow = ""
var downarrow = ""

// Select arrow to use
var arrow = IF([Growth]>=0,uparrow,downarrow)

// Insert arrow into SVG
var svg ="data:image/svg+xml;utf8," &
 ""
 & arrow & 
 ""

RETURN svg

The arrow is in its own column and doesn’t resize with font sizes. With the Icon update we can add the icon to any column.

Select your table visual
In visual format, expand Conditional Formatting
Select the column and turn on Icons
Click on Advanced Controls
Change Format to Field Value
Change Based on Field to the measure, eg Arrow
Click OK

Conclusion

Icons update is an exciting one and much needed. It cuts out the need for SVG for many, which is great. Now with a little SVG we can add some conditional formatting without having to add the extra column.

Power BI – DAX CrossFilter Function

Sat, 27 Jul 2019 07:59:23 +0000

In this post I am continuing my campaign against bi-directional relationships. This is an introduction of the CROSSFILTER function, which can be used to simulate the bi-directional relationship in a calculation.

The Problem

Yesterday I posted regarding Cascading Filters and removing the need for bi-directional joins to filter slicers. Another reason I’ve seen users using the bi-directional filter is to do a calculation.

Using the same example as yesterday, see the link above, I created a measure to count the number of products.

Then added a card to count the number of products. With no filters applied it shows 7 products which matches the table and the slicer.

Selecting Daisy Delights from the Shop slicer, the table reduces to 5 rows, and after yesterday’s post, the Product slicer also reduces to 5 rows, but the Product Count card still shows 7.

The big bad bi-directional join would be one method to solve this, but that is not good practice and I’m not suggesting that.

CROSSFILTER Function

The CROSSFILTER function can be used within a CALCULATE function to specify a direction for relationship to be used between 2 tables. The options for the directions are None, One or Both. So I use this in the measure

Now when I select Daisy Delights on the report, the measure shown in the card changes to 5. The card value matches the other filtered elements.

Conclusion

Keeping data models as simple is vital to allow for reports to be kept maintained in the future. CROSSFILTER function is a great addition to the options for calculating measures.

Microsoft’s documentation can be found at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dax/crossfilter-function

Power BI – Cascading Slicers

Fri, 26 Jul 2019 08:00:23 +0000

In this post I will look at filtering one slicer based a selection in another slicer a.k.a. cascading slicers. June 2019 Power BI Update included an update to allow a slicer to be filtered based on a measure, which means that you no longer need to use bi-directional relationships.

Slicer Series

This series will cover different topics regarding slicers.

Slicers Introduction
Resetting Slicers with a Bookmark Button
Cascading Slicers
Hierarchy Slicer
Sync Slicers
Clear all Slicers Button
Relative Date Slicer

Problem Overview

My simple example is a report showing sales of a product in different shops. The example report contains three tables, Products, Shops and Sales and I’ve related the tables as shown below.

Note the relationships show using arrows that Products can filter Sales and Shops can also filter Sales, and Sales cannot filter either Shops or Products. So I create a report with 2 slicers, a table showing product sales and a card showing total sales.

If I use the Shop Name slicer to filter to Daisy Delights the card and table filter to only show the sales of the 5 products that Daisy Delights sell. BUT the slicer of products does not get filtered.

Creating the Measure

So we want to create a measure to indicate if there are sales records. My initial reaction was to create a boolean (True / False) measure using ISEMPTY on the Sales table something similar to

Puzzled I went looking, and of course the best site SQLBI gave me the answer to use. The links I used were:

https://www.sqlbi.com/articles/syncing-slicers-in-power-bi/

https://www.sqlbi.com/articles/check-empty-table-condition-with-dax/

That measure would be True if Sales records exist and False if no Sales records exist. Sadly this measure doesn’t work as a slicer filter so we need to convert the True and False to numbers 1 and 0, the fastest way to do this INT function. So the above measure becomes

Filtering the Slicer

We then need to add the measure to the slicer filters. I select the slicer and drag the measure into the filter pane. I then set the operator to is and the value to 1. Then I click Apply Filter and the list of products is now filtered to only 5 products. The Product slicer is now a cascading slicer and will filter based on shop selected.

Conclusion to Cascading Slicers

Even though I would prefer to use the boolean filter as that makes logical sense to me, this is a cool update and it reduces those nasty bi-directional filters.

Power BI – Using Inactive Relationships in a Measure

Thu, 25 Jul 2019 09:54:02 +0000

In this post I will show a simple example of how to use an inactive relationship between two tables in a measure. The example I will use is a list of tasks with start and finish dates. The request is for how many tasks start per week and how many finish per week to be plotted on a column chart.

YouTube Version

Data Setup

The data for this report is a list of tasks in an Excel spreadsheet with an Task Id, Task Name, Start Date, and Finish Date columns. I have also added a calendar table with a Date column and a Start of Week column.

In the relationships view I drag Date from Calendar onto Start Date in Tasks and a 1 to many relationship appears as expected. That will allow me to count the tasks starting.

I also want to be able to count the finishing tasks, so I need a relationship to Finish Date from the calendar as well. So I drag the Date from Calendar onto Finish Date in Tasks. A relationship appears but this time it is dotted, which shows it is not the active relationship.

If you look in Manage relationships it will list both relationships but only one will be ticked as Active.

Creating the Measures

Now the relationships have been setup we can create the two measures to do the 2 different counts.

The first measure is the simplest and will use the active relationship between Calendar[Date] and Tasks[Start Date]. It is just a count of the Tasks Id column.

For the second measure to count the number of tasks finishing we need to use the other other relationship. We can do this by using the Calculate function and the UseRelationship function. The UseRelationship function allows you to use an inactive relationship by specifying the two related columns. It must be an existing relationship in the model.

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Tasks Finishing = 
 CALCULATE(
 COUNT( Tasks[Task ID] ),
 USERELATIONSHIP( 'Calendar'[Date], Tasks[Finish Date] )
 )

We can now add these measures to a column chart to get a plot to compare starting to finishing tasks.

Conclusion

The USERELATIONSHIP function is a powerful addition to your creating measures tool-set. It does have some restrictions and these are detailed in the official documentation at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dax/userelationship-function-dax

Power BI – Data Refresh Date

Tue, 09 Jul 2019 07:55:29 +0000

In this post I will walk through adding a data refresh date on a report page. This is a vital part of the report as it will show the report consumers when the dataset was last refreshed and so how up-to date the report is.

We need a date that will only get updated on a refresh so it needs to be defined in Power Query. So under Get Data select Blank Query and Power Query editor will open.

Into the formula bar enter the following and press return.

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=DateTimeZone.UtcNow()

The = and () are vital, I spent a good 30 minutes one late evening wasting time due to missing out the brackets. You will get a result of the time in UTC.

The next step is to convert the answer into Table, so click on To Table on the DateTime Tools – Transform ribbon.

Rename your query and the column and change the type of the column to Date/Time/Timezone and you now have a table with a single row of a refresh date in UTC.

After you select Close & Apply you will be able to add the Refresh UTCDate to a card to show the data refresh date.

Conclusion to Data Refresh Date

This date will only show the date of the last refresh, this does not validate your data as being accurate if you have some other processes happening to prepare the data outside of the Power BI environment.

Power BI – Conditional Formatting Update

Thu, 13 Jun 2019 19:26:40 +0000

The June 2019 update for Power BI included a few updates for conditional formatting, for visual backgrounds, titles, cards and gauges. This post is my take on the updates and on how I prefer to do the logic behind choosing a colour.

Full details of the June 2019 update can be found at https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/power-bi-desktop-june-2019-feature-summary/

Applying Conditional Colour Formatting

This update added to the places conditional colour formatting can be applied. In every place, the method of applying it is the same, the trick is working out which visuals will let you do what.

When you look at a visual’s formatting properties, right click on a colour selector. If Conditional Formatting appears then you can add rules if nothing appears then you can’t.

When it is applied, the colour is shown as Fx symbol.

List of Locations

Visual	Section	Property
Most Visuals	Title	Font color
Most Visuals	Title	Background color
Most Visuals	Background	Color
Stacked Bar Chart	Data colors	Default color*
Clustered Bar Chart	Data colors	Default color*
Stacked Column Chart	Data colors	Default color*
Clustered Column Chart	Data colors	Default color*
Line and Stacked Column Chart	Data colors	Default color*
Line and Clustered Column Chart	Data colors	Default color*
Scatter Chart	Data colors	Default color*
Treemap	Data colors	Advanced Controls
Funnel	Data colors	Default color
Gauge	Data colors	Fill
Card	Data label	Color
Card	Category label	Color
Table	Conditional Formatting	Background Color
Table	Conditional formatting	Font color
Matrix	Conditional formatting	Background Color
Matrix	Conditional formatting	Font color
Matrix	Conditional formatting	Data bars

Methods of Applying Conditional Formatting

There are three methods of applying conditional formatting: color scale, rules, and field value.

Colour Scale

Rules

Field Value

Colour Measures

One of my issues with Color scale or Rules is you cannot use multiple column values or measures in the colour choice. Field Value gives a work around for this by allowing you to use a Measure.

I have a very simple example of a list of Stores which have a Target and Sales value. So I create a measure that calculates a colour string based on Sales and Target using an IF function.

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SalesColour = IF(
 SUM(Sales[Sales]) >= SUM(Sales[Target]), 
 "#006400", // Green
 "#BF0000" // Red
)

I then used Field Value conditional formatting to format a gauge fill.

Conclusion

Conditional formatting is getting there but it is still limited, and we have been spoiled by Excel. I expect more updates will come and I will need to update the table above.

SVG in Power BI – Part 5 – Using SVG Rotate

Sat, 08 Jun 2019 21:36:23 +0000

Series

This is part of a series on using SVG in Power BI. The series supports my session at Power BI Days in Mechelen, Belgium in April 2019.

Introduction to SVG Basics
KPI Shapes in Power BI
Filling up with colour using SVG in Power BI
Using Text in SVG
Using SVG Rotate to create a dial in Power BI
SVG Icons in Conditional Formatting
Using a Theme to add SVG Icons
Feb 2023 Update - 5 SVG Stars

In this post I will introduce the possibilities that SVG rotate gives. This post will walk through creating a dial. This post will be done in 2 stages, first a simple dial and then add colours.

Simple Dial

We will start with a simple dial, made up of an arch with a line to indicate a percentage.

The arch is made using a path which combines 2 arcs to make an arch. The arch is then nested in a group element that applies a fill.

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Simple Dial = 
// svg essentials
 var svg_start = "data:image/svg+xml;utf8,"
 var svg_end = ""
// arch shape
 var svg_arch = ""
// light blue arch
 var svg_blue_arch = "" & svg_arch & ""
return
 svg_start & svg_blue_arch & svg_end

We now need to add a line that will move based on a measure called Score using SVG rotate. So I start by calculating the rotation angle and drawing a line that matches the bottom left of the arch and then rotate it centered on the center point of the arch.

The rotation will be 0 to 180 degrees and the measure Score is a percentage so the calculation is [Score] * 180.

The line is drawn from 0,50 to 20,50 and then a transform is applied of a rotate which has 3 parameters, angle to rotate, x and y for the centre of the rotation. So the bottom part of my measure becomes

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// light blue arch
 var svg_blue_arch = "" & svg_arch & ""
// draw line and rotate
 var svg_rotate = [Score] * 180
 var svg_line = "- "
return
 svg_start & svg_blue_arch & svg_line & svg_end

Show the Value

To make it very obvious what value is shown I’m going to add the value of the Score measure. The centre of the arch is 50,50 so I’ll put the middle of the text at 50,40. I used the FORMAT function to apply a percentage, “0%”, format to the score. (See the previous post in this series to look at SVG text)

The bottom part of the measure now becomes

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var svg_line = ""
// Show Score value
 var svg_score = ""&FORMAT([Score],"0%")&""
return
 svg_start & svg_blue_arch & svg_line & svg_score & svg_end

Adding Colours

For this I researched being able to draw parts of an arch. In order to do that I would need to calculate the end points of each arch, which was possible but involved way more mathematics than I was willing to re-learn. My days of using Cos, Sin and Tan have long gone.

So I the trick I used was to draw the arch upside down out of sight and rotate the arch around into view. Different coloured arches can be rotated into view to show different colours.

To draw the arch up the other way I just changed 2 values in svg_arch variable. When drawing an arc in SVG the 5th number after the A specifies which way round the to reach the final point. So the svg_arch variable becomes.

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// arch shape
 var svg_arch = " "

Then we add a coloured arch rotated for each part of the gauge. In my example I am going to show Green upto 100%, Amber starts at 75% and Red at 50%. So the complete measure code now is

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Coloured Dial = 
// svg essentials
 var svg_start = "data:image/svg+xml;utf8,"
 var svg_end = ""
// arch shape
 var svg_arch = " "
// coloured arches
 var svg_green_arch = "" & svg_arch & ""
 var svg_amber_arch = "" & svg_arch & ""
 var svg_red_arch = "" & svg_arch & ""
// draw line and rotate
 var svg_rotate = [Score] * 180
 var svg_line = ""
// Show Score value
 var svg_score = ""&FORMAT([Score],"0%")&""
return
 svg_start & svg_green_arch & svg_amber_arch & svg_red_arch & svg_line & svg_score & svg_end

Conclusion to SVG Rotate

This post ended up being longer than I expected so my series will expand to make use of a table to store the colour values in another post and drawing a clock into another post.

SVG in Power BI – Part 4 – Adding SVG Text

Tue, 21 May 2019 23:13:44 +0000

Series

This is part of a series on using SVG in Power BI. The series supports my session at Power BI Days in Mechelen, Belgium in April 2019.

This is the fourth post in my series on using SVG in Power BI introducing adding SVG text and actually solves one of the niggles I had with doing KPI figures in Power BI. I didn’t get to do this part as part of my session which started this series. Here is the list of posts.

My niggle was the KPI visual. It is a fast way to have a red or green measure displayed. BUT, it requires a trend axis even if you don’t want one and it includes a tiny red exclamation mark or green tick. So I wanted the red / green and the goal shown with no trend or ticks and exclamation marks.

Simple Text Element

SVG Text elements need an x and y attributes to position the text and a style attribute that uses CSS notation to choose font properties. The example below has the word Hello where the bottom lower left corner is at 20,60.

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Text Measure = 
// svg essentials
 var svg_start = "data:image/svg+xml;utf8,"
 var svg_end = ""
// text element including a style tag
 var svg_text ="Hello"
return
 svg_start & svg_text & svg_end

Aligning SVG Text

If I am going to replace the KPI visual I need to place a number centred in the SVG graphic. The default alignment is the x and y are the bottom left. This can be changed using the text-anchor attribute for the text element; it can be set to start, middle or end.

Below is an example of the string ABC being aligned start, middle and end.

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Text Measure = 
// svg essentials
 var svg_start = "data:image/svg+xml;utf8,"
 var svg_end = ""
// text element including a style tag
 var svg_text1 ="ABC"
 var svg_text2 ="ABC"
 var svg_text3 ="ABC"
return
 svg_start & svg_text1 & svg_text2 & svg_text3 & svg_end

My KPI Visual

To replace the KPI shown at the start of this post I want a number in the middle of the square showing the measure, bottom left the goal and bottom right how close to the goal we were.

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My KPI = 
// svg essentials
 var svg_start = "data:image/svg+xml;utf8,"
 var svg_end = ""
// 3 text elements, actual, goal and % close
 var svg_Indicator =""
 & FORMAT([Total Sales],"#,##0") & ""
 var svg_goal = "Goal"
 & ""
 & FORMAT([Target Sales],"#,##0") & ""
 var svg_close =""
 & FORMAT([KPI Close],"0%") & ""
return
 svg_start & svg_Indicator & svg_goal & svg_close & svg_end

Format function is used to format the number into comma, #,##0 and percent, 0% formats.

The last part is to colour the number based on the Indicator reaching the target. This was covered in Part 2 of this series so I’ll just give the final code.

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My KPI = 
// svg essentials
 var svg_start = "data:image/svg+xml;utf8,"
 var svg_end = ""
 
// calculate colour for element
 var ind_colour = IF([Total Sales]"
 & FORMAT([Total Sales],"#,##0") & ""
 var svg_goal = "Goal"
 & ""
 & FORMAT([Target Sales],"#,##0") & ""
 var svg_close =""
 & FORMAT([KPI Close],"0%") & ""
return
 svg_start & svg_Indicator & svg_goal & svg_close & svg_end

My KPI in a Table

One advantage of the SVG text KPI over the KPI visual is it can be embedded within a table. The total line will work as long as the number measures work.

Conclusion

Adding SVG text to a visual does make the visual more informative and the above example makes conditional formatting and data layout possible in a table.

SVG in Power BI – Part 3 – Fill SVG Icon with Colour

Mon, 29 Apr 2019 22:30:35 +0000

Series

This is part of a series on using SVG in Power BI. The series supports my session at Power BI Days in Mechelen, Belgium in April 2019.

Introduction to SVG Basics
KPI Shapes in Power BI
Filling up with colour using SVG in Power BI
Using Text in SVG
Using SVG Rotate to create a dial in Power BI
SVG Icons in Conditional Formatting
Using a Theme to add SVG Icons
Feb 2023 Update - 5 SVG Stars

In this post we will introduce using icons and filling the icon with colour to show a percentage value.

Getting Icon Code

You can download icons from lots of web sites. Search for SVG icons or ask your marketing teams for company graphics as SVG. If you are using Office 2016 or above the icons in PowerPoint can be saved as SVG files. Icons can be found on the Insert ribbon and once inserted on a slide, right click and save as a picture.

Once you have the SVG icon take a look at the SVG code. There will be an open tag with lots of attributes then one or more elements and then a closing tag . You need to do a search replace the double quotes into single quotes, e.g. and its long so I save it into a measure.

Draw 2 Elephants

We are going to draw 2 elephants, one grey and one coloured one on top. The coloured one we will clip to size to show it being filled up.

Next task is to create a measure in our report. Inside the measure we create 2 variables, one to store the svg start and one for the svg end. As a quick test we return the concatenation of the variables and the previous created measure to draw our icon.

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Elephant Measure = 
// svg essentials
 var svg_start = "data:image/svg+xml;utf8,"
 var svg_end = ""

return
 svg_start & [EleSVG] & svg_end

1

If you use the custom visual Image from Cloud Scope you can add the measure and the icon will be shown in Power BI.

In order to draw a grey and red elephant we will nest the elephant in a group tag and give the element properties that the nested elements will inherit.

I add 2 more variables one for the grey elephant and one for the red one. and tweak the return to use the new elephant variables. It will draw both elephants but they are exactly over each other so you only see the red one.

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Elephant Measure = 
 // svg essentials
 var svg_start = "data:image/svg+xml;utf8,"
 var svg_end = ""

 // Coloured Elephants
 var grey_ele = "" & [EleSVG] & ""
 var red_ele = "" & [EleSVG] & ""

return
 svg_start & grey_ele & red_ele & svg_end

Clip the Red Elephant

We now want to only show a percentage of the red elephant based off a percentage measure, e.g. work complete. For this we need to create a clip-path. A clip-path defines which part of the shape will be visible. So in this case it will be a rectangle starting at 0,0 and will be height = 100 and width = percentage measure * 100.

So we create a variable to calculate the width and then a variable to store the defs tag that contains the clip-path. The red_ele variable is then tweaked to include a reference to the clip-path and the return is changed to include the defs variable.

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Elephant Measure = 
 // svg essentials
 var svg_start = "data:image/svg+xml;utf8,"
 var svg_end = ""

 // defs
 var clip_width = [Work Complete] * 100 
 var defs = "
 
 "

 // Coloured Elephants
 var grey_ele = "" & [EleSVG] & ""
 var red_ele = "" & [EleSVG] & ""

return
 svg_start & defs & grey_ele & red_ele & svg_end

Now we have 2 measures, one that calculates a percentage and one that shows that percentage in colour.

Filling from the bottom up

The above example fills from the left. It is the easiest to calculate but if someone was asked to draw this idea they would probably fill in the colour from the bottom up.

Our icon is in a square which goes from 0,0 and is 100 wide and 100 tall. If we wanted to show 25% full the clip path would need to be 0,75 and 100 wide and 25 tall. So 2 values change the height is 25 = 100 * 25% and the starting y is 75 = 100 – height.

So to fill from the bottom I need to change the defs

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Elephant Measure = 
 // svg essentials
 var svg_start = "data:image/svg+xml;utf8,"
 var svg_end = ""

 // defs
 var clip_height = [Work Complete] * 100 
 var clip_y = 100 - clip_height
 var defs = "
 
 "

 // Coloured Elephants
 var grey_ele = "" & [EleSVG] & ""
 var red_ele = "" & [EleSVG] & ""

return
 svg_start & defs & grey_ele & red_ele & svg_end

Conclusion

This gives us a quick visual measure to show a percentage using an SVG icon.

SVG in Power BI Part 2 – KPI Shapes

Sun, 28 Apr 2019 21:59:41 +0000

Series

This is part of a series on using SVG in Power BI. The series supports my session at Power BI Days in Mechelen, Belgium in April 2019.

Introduction to SVG Basics
KPI Shapes in Power BI
Filling up with colour using SVG in Power BI
Using Text in SVG
Using SVG Rotate to create a dial in Power BI
SVG Icons in Conditional Formatting
Using a Theme to add SVG Icons
Feb 2023 Update - 5 SVG Stars

In this post I will show to use SVG to create simple KPI Indicators. In this example I have very simple data of a list of 5 shops with Turnover and Costs. I have added a measure for Profit Margin as a percentage.

Create SVG Measure

We shall start with a simple SVG image of a dot and show how to create an SVG measure to use in a table.

Create a measure to store the SVG in a string.

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RedDot = "<svg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' viewBox='0 0 100 100'> 
 <circle cx='50' cy='50' r='40' fill='red' /> 
 </svg>"

Prefix the SVG with code to declare that it is an SVG image.

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RedDot = "data:image/svg+xml;utf8," &
 "<svg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' viewBox='0 0 100 100'> 
 <circle cx='50' cy='50' r='40' fill='red' /> 
 </svg>"

On the Modelling ribbon tab, change the measure’s data category to Image URL.

Insert measure into a table. You will need to turn off the totals to make the total line not show svg code. I will fix this in a later post.

Change to be Reactive

The above example puts a red dot on every line. We will now adapt the measure to change the colour depending upon the measure Profit Margin measure to make this into a KPI shape.

We use a variable to store the colour and its value comes from an IF statement.
We insert the colour into the SVG statement
We return the SVG

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KPI Dot = 
// Calculate the colour
var colour = IF([Profit Margin]>0.25,"Green","Red")
// Insert colour into SVG
var svg = "data:image/svg+xml;utf8," &
 "<svg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' viewBox='0 0 100 100'> 
 <circle cx='50' cy='50' r='40' fill='" & colour & "' /> 
 </svg>"

RETURN svg

Up and Down Arrows

The above example changed a colour which is okay but it would be better if we could also change the shape of the icon. For this example I use another measure of Growth which compares Turnover to previous turnover. If the Growth is positive I want to display a green up arrow and if negative a red down arrow.

Set up variables for an up and down arrow
Select which arrow to use
Insert the arrow into the svg
Return the svg.

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Arrow = 
// Variables to store arrow paths
var uparrow = "<path d='M10 90 L50 10 L90 90 Z' fill='green' />"
var downarrow = "<path d='M10 10 L50 90 L90 10 Z' fill='red' />"

// Select arrow to use
var arrow = IF([Growth]>=0,uparrow,downarrow)

// Insert arrow into SVG
var svg ="data:image/svg+xml;utf8," &
 "<svg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' viewBox='0 0 100 100'>"
 & arrow & 
 "</svg>"

RETURN svg

Conclusion

This gives an introduction of using SVG within Power BI to create KPI shapes. There is lots more that could be done with SVG and this series will continue to add more features using svg.

SVG in Power BI - Part 1 SVG Basics

Mon, 22 Apr 2019 17:23:04 +0000

Series

This is part of a series on using SVG in Power BI. The series supports my session at Power BI Days in Mechelen, Belgium in April 2019.

Introduction to SVG Basics
KPI Shapes in Power BI
Filling up with colour using SVG in Power BI
Using Text in SVG
Using SVG Rotate to create a dial in Power BI
SVG Icons in Conditional Formatting
Using a Theme to add SVG Icons
Feb 2023 Update - 5 SVG Stars

This post introduces the very basics of SVG. If you already know SVG, move along to my second post in this series.

SVG Basics

Before I get into the technical details of what SVG is, let me explain why SVG images are important. If you enlarge many image formats enough, they become fuzzy and pixelated. Because an SVG image is made up of lines and shapes defined by points, sizes, and colours, you can stretch them as big as you like and they stay sharp.

SVG stands for Scalar Vector Graphics, which is an XML-based markup format that can contain two-dimensional vectors.

Elements can be defined with an opening tag and a closing tag, for example <svg>...</svg>, or in a single self-closing tag, for example <rect ... />.

Example

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<svg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'
 viewBox='0 0 100 100'>
 <circle cx='50' cy='50' r='40' fill='red' />
</svg>

The above example defines an area where the top-left is 0,0 and the bottom-right is 100,100. It contains a red circle with center at 50,50 and radius 40.

If an SVG statement contains more than one element, they are layered with the first item at the back and the last item at the front.

SVG Paths

The previous example drew a circle, and you can draw rectangles with <rect ... /> as well. The next step from SVG basics is drawing more complex shapes. For this, you need to define points, curves, and arcs. One method is the path element.

In a path element you can move the pen, draw lines, arcs, and curves. Below is a simple example that draws a green triangle.

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<svg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'
 viewBox='0 0 100 100'>
 <path d='M10 90 L50 10 L90 90 Z' fill='green' />
</svg>

SVG Icons

Lots of icons available on the web are written in SVG and many can be downloaded. Be aware of copyright and always give credit where credit is due.

If you have PowerPoint you can insert icons onto a slide and save as a picture, which gives you SVG code.

SVG Resources

This has been a very short introduction to SVG. There are plenty of resources to assist in composing SVG creations.

W3Schools

W3Schools is a great resource to get started in SVG. The reason I return again and again is the Try It Yourself button, which gives a simple place to test your SVG.

Jenkov’s SVG Tutorial

This is a great site for learning different parts of SVG and how it works, including videos.

Conclusion

This was a brief introduction to SVG. It is a language worth understanding the basics of, and hopefully through this series you will find a new way to visualize your data.

Power BI on Hat Full of Data

Microsoft Fabric – Direct Lake and User Permissions

IMPORTANT

Scenario

Viewing Reports as Dan

Viewing Workspace App as Sam

Permissions

Fix Dan’s Lakehouse Access

Fix Sam’s Access via the Workspace App

Note!

Resources

Conclusion

Other Posts that might Interest

Microsoft Fabric Quick Guides

Power BI – Use ISINSCOPE to improve a Matrix

Scenario

Determining the Ticket Type Rows

Final Measure

Next Request

Adding Dynamic Formatting

Resources

Conclusion

Power BI – Counting Active records easily

Scenario

DAX Code for counting Active Records

Resources

Conclusion on Counting Active Records

Power BI – Improve a card with SVG

Starting Point

Create the SVG Measure

Measure Data Category

Add SVG to the Card

Accessibility

Even More Tricks

References

Conclusion

Power BI – Calculation Groups aren’t scary

YouTube Version

Scenario

Create a Calculation Group

Add Calculation Items

Add Calculation Group to a Matrix

Formatting the calculations items

Sorting and Selecting Columns

Resources

Conclusion on Calculation Groups

Power BI – Create a calendar using TMDL

Calendar Table

Turning on TMDL View

TMDL View

Adding the Calendar

Conclusion

More Power BI Posts

Power BI Series

Power Query – Creating New Parameters

Missing New Parameter Option

Always Allow Parameters

Conclusion

Inherited Value in a Parent Child Pattern

Power BI and DevOps Series

The Logic

Inherited Value DAX

Inherited Value Conclusion

References

More Power BI Posts

Power BI Series

DevOps Parent Child Hierarchy in Power BI

Power BI and DevOps Series

DAX Patterns – Parent Child Hierarchy

Adding the Path

Adding DevOps Hierarchy Level Columns

Adding a Matrix

Fixing the measures

Column Added to WorkItems table

2 Measures Added to WorkItems table

Get DevOps Data into Power BI

Power BI and DevOps Series

YouTube Version

Microsoft References for DevOps Data into Power BI

OData Queries