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Category: Power BI

Translating Datasets in Power BI Premium

Kasper de Jonge shows how you can translate data in Power BI datasets if you’re using Premium:

One request that comes up a lot is to be able to provide translations for the tables and columns of your model (especially here in Europe). Up until now this was not possible in Power BI as there was no UI for it. The new XMLA read/write feature changed all of this. As you probably know in SSAS Tabular this is already possible. The new XMLA endpoint makes any Power BI dataset into a SSAS tabular model with most of its functionalities. So how do you use it in Power BI and add translations? In this blog post I will walk you through it.

Click through for a demo.

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Using Cognitive Services in Power BI without a Premium Subscription

Marc Lelijveld and Kathrin Borchert show how we can take advantage of Cognitive Services and Power BI without having to pay for Power BI Premium:

Recently, I was presenting my session about AI Capabilities for Power BI to make AI Accessible for Everyone for the Virtual Power BI Days Hamburg. A great event organized by Kathrin Borchert. Part of my session was about the Artificial Intelligence capabilities offered as part of Power BI Premium. A day later, Kathrin came up with a great idea how you can leverage these AI capabilities without the need for Power BI Premium.

I was directly enthusiastic about that idea since I thought about this in the past as well. Back then, there were some blockers which are sorted now. I asked Kathrin if she was open for co-authoring this blog and she immediately agreed.

Click through for the technique. Basically, it’s a trade-off between simplicity and cost.

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Detecting and Changing Multiple Columns’ Data Types with Power Query

Imke Feldmann has a quick tip for us:

Very often, when you expand a column in Power Query that contains a table or some records, the expanded columns will lose their types (like Chris Webb has described here for example). Or you might just have accidently deleted a “Changed Type”-step.

Did you know there is actually a superfast and easy way to do it?

Read on to see how you can change the data type for multiple columns all at once.

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Color Band by Group in Power BI

Marco Russo and Alberto Ferrari show how we can change color alteration to switch from row to row and instead go from group to group:

The background color of the rows depends on Sales[Order Number]. The background color switches between white and light gray every time the order number changes, so all the rows of the same order have the same background color and can be easily identified. You cannot obtain this visualization by only using a Power BI style, because the coloring of a row depends on the actual data in it. You can achieve this goal by using the conditional formatting feature in Power BI. You can set the background color of a cell according to the value of a measure. Therefore, you need a DAX formula that returns two values: one for the white rows and one for the gray rows. The value returned by the measure must alternate between those two values with each consecutive order number.

Read on for an example of how you can do this.

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Progressive Disclosure in Power BI

Prathy Kamasani takes us through the implementation of a design idea in Power BI:

In the above example, I used a pattern to show details using action from the Card. When a user clicks on a card, the report will show details related to Card. It sounds straightforward, but it involves a lot of work using Power BI Functionalities: Buttons, Bookmarks, Sections, Grouping and Page Size.

There are few aesthetics I paid attention in this Report Page which are key for any landing page. Usually, a Landing page helps users to navigate around the Power BI Model, so it is important to highlight those navigation steps. In the above model, I used Buttons, labels and Images for navigation hints.

I like this for some uses, like giving analysts a chance to dive into the data. For an operational dashboard, I don’t like it very much unless the cards at the top alone provide me enough information to know whether I need to take an action; otherwise, it loses one of the most important concepts of a dashboard, glanceability.

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Using SQL Server Scalar Functions with Power Query

Erik Svensen shows that you can call user-defined scalar functions in SQL Server from Power Query:

Currently I am working with a project where we extract data from a SQL server – some of the business logic is built into scalar value functions (documentation).

Now the magic of PowerQuery enables us to reuse these functions within PowerQuery and Query Folding is supported – more about this at the end of this post.

My initial reaction is “That way lies madness” but in moderate doses, I could see this as a valuable second-best option for teams pulling data into Power BI.

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Building a P&L Statement with Power BI

Matt Allington has the need for some financials:

A few weeks ago, Danielle Stein Fairhurst from Plum Solutions contacted me and asked if I would speak at her financial modelling meetup group (a topic of my choice related to Power BI). I decided to speak about creating a P&L using Power BI and DAX. I first learnt how to do this way back in 2015 when I met Derek Rickard. I was still fairly early on my DAX journey at the time and certainly didn’t have any experience with financial accounting using DAX. Derek shared with me how he built his P&L using Adventure Works. I have used these principles many times to help customers, and I thought it would be a great time to pass on that knowledge, and the skills I have learnt along the way on my blog.

Click through for a video and the measures used.

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Aggregations in Power BI Desktop

Jeroen ter Heerdt tries out aggregations in Power BI Desktop:

Aggregations bring me back to the good old SSAS Multidimensional days. The days that I invariably built the aggregations tree the wrong way around, SSAS would complain, I would scream and eventually give in.

You can imagine that I was curious but skeptical when I tried aggregations in Power BI Desktop. I was afraid of ending up in the same hate-but-need relationship that I had with SSAS multidimensional when it came to aggregations.

The good news? It is not like that. At all. Once you have aggregations working, they are great.

The not so good news? It took me longer than I am willing to admit getting them working – primarily due to data types and creation of the aggregated table. More details in this blog post.

Read on for the full story.

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Sentiment Analysis with Power BI

Teo Lachev takes us through two options available for sentiment analysis with Power BI:

Cognitive Services is an Azure PaaS cloud service that supports text analytics and image recognition. It’s automatically included in Power BI Premium or Embedded capacities (make sure that AI workloads are enabled in the capacity settings). If you organization doesn’t have Power BI Premium or Embedded, you can provision Cognitive Services in Azure (requires an Azure subscription) and then write a custom Power Query function to invoke its APIs, as demonstrated by this tutorial. If you provision Cognitive Services outside Power BI Premium,  you’ll be charged per transaction. In the case of Power BI, the number of transactions equates to the number of rows in your table. So, if you refresh five times a table with 1,000 rows and calculate the sentiment polarity score for each row, you’ll be charged for 5,000 transactions.

Read on for the full report on each option.

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