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Category: Power BI

Appending Data In Power BI

Published 2017-01-31 by Kevin Feasel

Ginger Grant shows that data sets don’t need to be exactly the same for Power BI to combine their contents:

Recently I worked on a Power BI project where I needed to merge data provided in spreadsheets. The spreadsheets came from different vendors and while they contained mostly the same data, the columns were not in the same order. I wanted all of the data to reside in one table. In Query, that means that I wanted to Append the data. The files which I were merging were very wide, and I missed the fact until after I was done that some of the columns were in different order. Power BI is smart enough to figure out the order on its own. I didn’t need to change the order of the columns at all, as long as they have the same column names. Here’s an example using three different files.

That’s a sign of a smart tool.

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Hierarchical Data Cleansing With Power BI

Published 2017-01-30 by Kevin Feasel

Cedric Charlier has started a series on dealing with hierarchical data in a not-so-hierarchical format:

To load this Excel file in Power BI, I’ll just use standard functions and define a first table “Source” that won’t be enabled to load in report.

My next task will be to create a table (or dimension) with the different questions. I also want to include a hierarchy in this dimension: I should be able to browse the questions by categories and sub-categories.

Let’s create a new table named “Question” by referencing the “Source” table. Then remove the other columns than A and B.

The curse of Excel is that it’s so easy to build a data set in strange ways that make it hard to integrate later.

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SSRS Log File Location Change

Published 2017-01-30 by Kevin Feasel

Wolfgang Strasser points out that SSRS log files are in a new directory structure for vNext:

The log files can be found in the Logfiles directory (it was the same directory also for the older versions). In SSRS vNext there more different log files..

The logging information seems to be splitted into multiple log files – if you want for example dig into the Power BI on-premises logging I propose to have a look at the RSPower*.log files.

This happens every once in a while, so it’s good to know when the log files move somewhere else.

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Sampling Data Lake Data

Published 2017-01-27 by Kevin Feasel

Alex Whittles shows how to use U-SQL to sample data to read in Power BI:

The answer is sampling, we don’t bring in 100% of the data, but maybe 10%, or 1%, or even 0.01%, it depends how much you need to reduce your dataset. It is however critical to know how to sample data correctly in order to maintain a level of accuracy of data in your reports.

Option 1: Take the top x rows of data
Don’t do it. Ever. Just no.
What if the source data you’ve been given is pre-sorted by product or region, you’d end up with only data from products starting with ‘a’, which would give you some wildly unpredictable results.

Option 2: Take a random % sample
Now we’re talking. This option will take, for example 1 in every 100 rows of data, so it’s picking up an even distribution of data throughout the dataset. This seems a much better option, so how do we do it?

Read on for a couple of sampling methods.

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R Visuals In Power BI

Published 2017-01-25 by Kevin Feasel

Ryan Wade ties ggplot2 visuals into Power BI:

The package that we are going to use to develop our custom visualization is ggplot2. The ggplot2 package is arguably the most popular data visualization package in R. It is based on the “grammar of graphics” concept that was created by the statistician, Leland Wilkinson. The ggplot2 package allows you to approach creating charts and graphs in the same manner that Bob Ross approached painting trees in the forest. With ggplot2 you are able to start with a blank canvas and add layers upon layers via short code snippets that builds on each other until you end up with the desired visualization.

The pbix file that is being used in this blog can be found here: http://bit.ly/2jwoCyP. The GentleIntroToR_ChartExample.pbix file contains an example of using R to create a box plot chart that shows the distribution of player scores for the L.A. Lakers. Chiclet slicers were added that allows you to filter by division and/or opponent. The R visualization was created in four steps.

Check out the PBIX file.

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Streaming Data To Power BI

Published 2017-01-23 by Kevin Feasel

Sacha Tomey builds a quick Powershell script to feed streaming data into Power BI:

Peter showed off three mechanisms for streaming data to a real time dashboard:

  • The Power BI Rest API
  • Azure Stream Analytics
  • Streaming Datasets

We’ve done a fair bit at Adatis with the first two and whilst I was aware of the August 2016 feature, Streaming Datasets I’d never got round to looking at them in depth. Now, having seen them in action I wish I had – they are much quicker to set up than the other two options and require little to no development effort to get going – pretty good for demo scenarios or when you want to get something streaming pretty quickly at low cost.

Click through for more details and a sample script.

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In-House Power BI

Published 2017-01-19 by Kevin Feasel

Paul Turley reports that the bits to publish a Power BI report to SSRS are in the latest vNext preview:

“Power BI reports in SQL Server Reporting Services: January 2017 Technical Preview now available”  This feature addition will allow Power BI reports to be published to a local SQL Server Reporting Services server, entirely-on-premises without using the Power BI cloud service.

The January 2017 Technical Preview can be downloaded from: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=54610

Reza Rad shows us installation and deployment:

We are in a world that rapidly running towards cloud. Your files are in Dropbox, or OneDrive these days, Your photos uploaded to a cloud storage, your emails are all backed up in a cloud backup media, and I’m in this thinking that in next few years, we might eat our food from a cloud kitchen! However there are still businesses and companies who require some on-premises solutions, and as long as a requirement exists, there should be an answer for it. Power BI for On-Premises bring the power of self-service, interactive reports of Power BI to these businesses. Power BI for On-premises is a great big step towards utilizing better data insight in all environments.

This will probably help more companies than you might think—Power BI is really useful as a reporting tool, but it can be hard getting sign-off to go to Azure.

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Sankey Bar Charts

Published 2017-01-12 by Kevin Feasel

Devin Knight continues his custom visuals series:

In this module you will learn how to use the Sankey Bar Chart Power BI Custom Visual.  The Sankey Bar Chart is used to show a flow of data between different stages of a process.

It’s an interesting mix of sankey, bar chart, and funnel.  In other words, you may only have one thing you can use it for, but it’ll be a really good use.

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Sorting By Column In Power BI

Published 2017-01-12 by Kevin Feasel

Reza Rad explains how to sort a column by another column’s value in Power BI visuals:

Problem happens when you want a Text field to be ordered based on something different than the value of the field. For example if you look at above chart you can see that months ordered from April to September. This is not order of months, this is alphabetical order. If you change the sorting of visual, it will only change it from A to Z, or Z to A. To make it in the order of month numbers you have to do it differently.

Read on for the solution.

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