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Category: Power BI

Passing Selections from Visuals to Translytical Task Flows

Jon Vöge sends along some data:

A common misconception about Translytical Task Flows is that the only way for you to parameterize and pass user inputs to the User Data Function, is through Slicers in Power BI.

That is not true at all.

In fact, one of the most powerful ways of integrating Task Flows into your Power BI reports, is by allowing user selections made in visualisations in your report, flow through to your task flow.

Read on to see how you can do this.

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Week-over-Week Calculations in Power BI without DAX

Boniface Muchendu wants to avoid DAX for this calculation:

Power BI visual calculations provide a simplified way to perform time-based comparisons like week-over-week (WoW) analysis without writing complex DAX. Power BI’s time intelligence functions are powerful, but they can become challenging when working with custom calendars or unique business logic. If you’ve ever struggled with calculating WoW performance, this post will show you how to streamline the process using visual calculations.

Read on to see how. Though one thing to keep in mind is that it says week-over-week, but that assumes you have data for each week. I don’t believe this solution would cleanly handle gaps in data, so that would be something you’d want to do beforehand.

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Community Resources for Power BI and Microsoft Fabric

Chris Webb highlights some community efforts:

There are a lot of really cool free, community-developed tools and resources out there for Power BI and Fabric – so many that it’s easy to miss announcements about them. In this post I thought I’d highlight a few that came out recently and which you might want to check out.

Click through for several good resources, and there are a couple of additional ones in the comments as well.

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Sorting a Visual by a Field Not on the Visual

Nikola Ilic does a bit of sorting:

Recently, I was dealing with a Power BI report where the client had a very specific requirement – to sort the data in the visual based on a particular field from the semantic model. The only “issue” was that this particular field wasn’t part of the visual. So, while figuring out how this can be accomplished (because, yes, everything can be accomplished when the client needs it, hehe), I decided to write it down and share it with everyone who might find it useful.

Nikola successfully uses machine trickery to solve the problem.

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Power BI Dataflow Gen1 and Connecting to SQL DB

Koen Verbeeck lays out a warning:

I’m in the progress of migrating some legacy stuff at a client, and in their Power BI environment there are still quite some Power BI dataflows Gen1. I had migrated an Azure Synapse Dedicated SQL Pool to an Azure SQL DB (much cheaper for their volume of data), and in the dev/test environment all dataflows were switched correctly to the new database.

However, in production, the dataflows only wanted to connect to the Azure SQL DB production database through a gateway. Weird, right? 

Click through for a rundown of the issue, as well as another one Koen ran into regarding Azure Data Lake Storage.

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Using the DAX FILTER Function

Ben Richardson digs into a function:

If you’ve ever tried to build a measure that needed more filtering power than a basic slicer, you’ve probably hit a wall.

That’s where DAX’s FILTER function comes in.

While visual filters and slicers work great for basic scenarios:

FILTER gives you row-level control to create sophisticated calculations that respond dynamically to your business logic.

Click through for an explanation of the function, as well as several examples of how it works.

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Using Dropdowns in Translytical Task Flows

Jon Vöge isn’t content with slicers:

When building Translytical Task Flows for Power BI / Fabric, you’ll quickly come head to head with a few limitations:

  • They won’t work in Embedded scenarios
  • They won’t work with PBIR and PBIP formats
  • They natively only support inputs coming from the three new slicer types: Text, Button and List Slicers (all of which are in preview at the time of writing).

Read on to see how you can partially get around the third limitation.

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Using the Tabular Object Model via Semantic Link Labs

Gilbert Quevauvilliers does a bit of connecting:

In this blog post I am going to show you how to use the powerful Semantic Link Labs library for Tabular Object Model (TOM) for semantic model manipulation.

The goal of this blog post is to give you an understanding of how to connect using TOM, then based on the documentation use one of the functions.

Don’t get me wrong the documentation is great, but when implementing it, it works a little differently and I want others to know how to use it, so it can automate and simplify some repetitive tasks.

Read on for the instructions and some of the things you can do with the Semantic Link Labs library in Microsoft Fabric.

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Troubleshooting Power BI Report Performance

Ben Richardson speeds up a report:

Slow Power BI reports waste time and frustrate users.

The slowdown often comes from hidden issues in the data model, DAX, visuals, or refresh settings.

This guide shows you how to find the cause, fix it, and keep reports running smoothly.

Read on to see some of the built-in tooling for performance optimization, as well as more information on these four common issues.

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