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Category: Power BI

Running Totals In Power BI With M

Imke Feldmann gives us a reason to use M to calculate running totals:

Today I want to share a scenario where a running total calculation in the query editor saved a model that run out of memory when done with DAX:

Problem

The model couldn’t be refreshed and returned out of memory error with a calculated column in the fact table of over 20 Mio rows (from a csv-file). A running total should be calculated for each “JourneyID”, of which there were over 1 Mio in the table itself. This rose memory consumption during refresh by over 300 % – until it finally errored out:

Click through for the solution.

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Power BI: Datasets, Reports, And Dashboards

Eugene Meidinger teams up with Bert Wagner to teach Power BI using a food metaphor:

A Power BI Dataset is a series of Power Query queries that have been shaped in a DAX model. Each dataset can combine different files, database tables and online services all into one tabular model.  In our cookie analogy, these are all different “ingredients”.

Unlike SSRS, a dataset in Power BI does not represent a single table or query of data. A dataset should be considered more like a “flavor” of data used to accomplish a specific type of reporting: financial, operational, HR, etc. So in our analogy, the dataset is the “raw dough”.

So in Power Query, you are going to have a set of queries which each combine a data source with a usually linear set of transformations.

The pie chart cookie is the first one I would have eaten, if only to eliminate it.

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Integrating Power Query And Microsoft Flow

Chris Webb shows us how to take data from SQL Server and send it via Power Query through Microsoft Flow to create a CSV:

The Power Query/Flow integration is still in Preview and I found a few things didn’t work reliably: for example the first few times I ran my Flow I got errors saying that it couldn’t connect to the Azure SQL Database, even though it clearly could while I was designing the query, but that error went away after a while. What’s more it only works for SQL Server data sources right now and I really hope that it is enabled for all the other data sources that Power Query can connect to, especially Excel. These are just teething troubles though, and it’s clear that this is going to be revolutionary for Power Query and Flow users alike!

Click through for an example.

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Enabling Preview Features In Power BI

Jeanne Combrinck walks us through how to enable Power BI preview features:

Every month PowerBI releases new features. Some of the features are in preview mode and unless you turn it on you don’t get to use the preview features. This post explains how to turn them on.

Firstly you need to have the latest version of PowerBI to get the latest features. You can download it here.

Click through to see the remaining steps.  There are some interesting preview features that I’d expect to make it to the general product in the next few months.

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Managing Power BI Dashboard Releases

Jesse Gorter gives us a couple examples of process for releasing Power BI dashboard changes in a corporate environment:

Corporate BI is the ‘one version of the truth’ data that must be governed and tested. The report on top of that might need to be governed too. So any changes to the model or the report (or both) need to go through some testing before it can be accepted. Hence DTAP & Power BI.

Let’s explore a case where an organization has a HR department with a manager and a data analyst. Those two make the reports and decide what they want to publish to their target users: HR employees. A developer creates the datamart and the Analysis Services Tabular model cube on which they create Power BI reports. For the first version, they create a pbix file and upload it to Powerbi.com. What happens when the business wants the report or the model changed?

Read on for two potential solutions.

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Power BI Report Layouts

Jeanne Combrinck shows us an easy method of creating Power BI layouts:

PowerBI has this great functionality where you can go and download preset layouts which make your PowerBI reports stand out more. There is a nice trick to doing this yourself.

You can create layouts in PowerPoint and then save them as images. Then insert them into your PowerBI report as an image and send the image right to the back.

Click through for an example of this in action.

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Quartiles In DAX

Dustin Ryan shows us how to calculate quartiles using DAX:

To calculate the quartile, we’re going to use the PERCENTILEX.INC DAX function. The PERCENTILEX.INC function returns the number at the specified percentile. So for example, if I had numbers 0 and 100 in my data set, the 25th percentile value would be 25. The 50th percentile value would be 50 and the 75th percentile value would be 75, and you can figure out what the 100th percentile value would be.

Dustin shares an example with his NFL data set and also walks us through a couple of tricky situations.

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Dashboard Conversations In Power BI

Teo Lachev points out something pretty new to Power BI:

I’ve noticed that the dashboard conversations are now available. Just open a Power BI dashboard and click the Comments menu. This will open a Comments pane when you can post comments related to the entire dashboard. You can also post comments for a specific tile by clicking the tile ellipsis menu and then choosing “Add a comment”. You know that a tile has comments when you see the “Show tile conversations” button that floats on the tile. Clicking this button brings to the Comments pane to see and participate in the discussion.

Click through for an example of what this looks like.

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Network Analysis With Python In Power BI

Tori Tompkins shows us how to use the NetworkX package in Power BI:

The data I used was created to demonstrate this task in Power BI but there are many real-world network datasets to experiment with provided by Stanford Network Analysis Project. This small dummy dataset represents a co-purchasing network of books.

The data I loaded into Power BI consisted of two separate CSVs. One, Books.csv, consisted of metadata pertaining to the top 40 bestselling books according to Wikipedia and their assigned IDs. The other, Relationship.csv, was an edgelist of the book IDs which is a popular method for storing/ delivering network data. The graph I wanted to create was an undirected, unweighted graph which I wanted to be able to cross-filter accurately. Because of this, I duplicated this edgelist and reversed the columns so the ToNodeId and FromNodeId were swapped. Adding this new edge list onto the end of the original edgelist has created a dataset with can be filtered on both columns later down the line. For directed graphs, this step is unnecessary and can be ignored.

Once loaded into Power BI, I duplicated the Books table to create the following relationship diagram as it isn’t possible to replicate the relationship between FromNodeId to Book ID and ToNodeId to Book ID with only one Books table.

Read on for an example using this data set.

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Power BI Without Active Directory

Ginger Grant shows us how we can expose Power BI dashboards without needing users to have Power BI or Active Directory accounts:

There are many companies which would like to provide Power BI reports which would allow customers to interactively work with their data, but they don’t want to create Power BI accounts for customers as that can be a lot of work from an administrative standpoint.  For the same reason, these customers are not added to the corporate network which means they are not added Active Directory.  For example, if Desert Isle SQL contracts with Acme Corporation to create a custom conference display, Acme might want to show me a report showing when the components were purchased, when they were modified and when the order is in process and when the order is completed.  How do I show a Power BI report containing information? From an application design perspective data from all of the customers should be stored in the same place and Desert Isle SQL should only see their orders when logging in to Acme’s site.

Ginger also covers a bit about the licensing cost of going down this route.

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