Category: Power BI

Matt Allington walks through his process of how he creates measures in Power BI:

Killer Tip 1: Create Good Test Data

The first thing I did was to replicate the test data shown above.  As I have mentioned many times, good quality test data is essential to getting a quick correct answer to your problem.  The data from the OP looked pretty good as it had covered the relevant scenarios (1 ID had just blue, 1 ID had blue and red, several IDs had no blue – this is good test data).

Starting out with good test data is vital—it helps you clarify exactly what it is you want, and if you come up with edge cases, you have the makings of a good test workbench to ensure that your code actually works, and not just in the simplest scenario.

Callum Green shows how to build up a URL based off of multiple parameters, scraping data from a page for each permutation of parameters:

The sections highlighted in red are the parameters and sit in between some of the hard-coded URL text

Code Breakdown:

–          Text = http://www.boxofficemojo.com/monthly/?page=

–          Parameter = [Page]

–          Text = &view=calendargross&yr=

–          Parameter = [Year]

–          Text = &month=

–          Parameter = [Month]

–          Text = &p=.htm

This is a rather clever solution, and if your parameters are functionally dependent (unlike this example, where it was a simple cross join of the three domains), you can still use the solution the same way; you just need to populate your parameter combination table differently.

Matt Allington shows us how to implement conditional formatting in Power BI:

Conditional formatting is one of the easiest ways to turn tables of boring data into a visual that almost makes the numbers jump out at you on a page.  There is nothing worse than looking at pages and pages of numbers and then trying to find insights from those numbers.  Conditional formatting helps you format your tables (and matrices) of data so that the patterns and outliers in the data are easier to spot at a glance.  Take a look at the before and after images below and see how much easier it is to see the variations in performance.

It turns out to be pretty easy, so check it out.