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Category: Power BI

Making a Power BI Matrix Visual Look Nicer

Published 2026-05-06 by Kevin Feasel

Valerie Junk pretties up a visual:

Many Power BI developers view tables and matrix visuals as the enemy. They dislike building them, and often think, “the user is just going to export this to Excel anyway.”
But here’s the thing: tables and matrix visuals have an important business case, and sometimes a well-structured table communicates data far better than any chart would.

There’s also something we don’t talk about enough: trust. BI developers often assume users trust our data, but that’s rarely true. Many users have been burned before by incorrect data or unreliable tools. Providing a matrix visual for row-by-row verification is a powerful way to rebuild trust.

That said, a matrix visual that looks like default Power BI formatting isn’t doing you any favors. 

And they’re probably going to export it to Excel anyhow. Them’s the breaks.

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Filtering DAX Measures through Slicers

Published 2026-05-05 by Kevin Feasel

Marco Russo and Alberto Ferrari provide a deeper answer:

A very common request by Power BI newbies is, “How can I use a slicer to filter a measure rather than a regular model column?” The most common answer to this question is, “You cannot filter a measure through a slicer”. The answer is entirely correct because there is no such thing as “filtering a measure”. However, elaborating on the why gives us a good way to explain not only what is wrong with the question, but also how to further reason about the requirements needed to obtain a working solution.

This blog post is an example of how challenging it can be to answer a beginner’s question, where the immediate answer is “No, you can’t do that” but the underlying problem is solvable.

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Connecting Semantic Models to Data Sources via Binding Hints

Published 2026-05-04 by Kevin Feasel

Chris Webb shares a note:

Did you know that you can configure your Power BI semantic model so that it automatically binds to a data source connection when you publish?

To illustrate how to do this, I created an Import mode Power BI semantic model in Power BI Desktop connected to the Products table in the ContosoSales sample database in the Azure Data Explorer help cluster. Anyone can connect to this source, you just need a Microsoft Account to authenticate.

Click through for the code and some additional tips.

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Choosing between Power Apps and Translytical Task Flows

Published 2026-05-01 by Kevin Feasel

Nicky van Vroenhoven gives the standard consulting answer:

I think I have gotten this question at least five or six times in the last few months, and with Translytical Task Flows reaching GA in the March 2026 Power BI update, I expect it to come up even more. So let me write it down once and for all.

The question usually sounds something like: “We want users to be able to add comments or update values in their Power BI report. Should we use Power Apps or this new Translytical Task Flows thing?”

My honest answer is: it depends 😆, but the decision is simpler than you might think.

Click through for the decision criteria.

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Unmaterialized Columns in Power BI

Published 2026-04-28 by Kevin Feasel

Teo Lachev has ideal columns:

Coming back from a long vacation, I’ve almost missed this interesting Power BI enhancement: Power BI unmaterialized calculated columns. Normally, I avoid the traditional DAX calculated columns for a variety of reasons, such as confusion about where business logic is applied, limited support across storage modes (for example, Direct Lake doesn’t support them), longer refresh times, etc. This not to say that calculated columns can’t be useful, such as in the case where you need to flatten a parent-child hierarchy. But unmaterialized calculated columns could open interesting scenarios that go beyond content translation to other languages mentioned by Microsoft in the April 2026 update.

Click through to learn what unmaterialized columns are and how they work.

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User-Context-Aware Calculated Columns in Power BI

Published 2026-04-22 by Kevin Feasel

Nikola Ilic digs into a new feature:

A few weeks ago, I was sitting in a session at FabCon Atlanta. It was an amazing session about Direct Lake semantic models and various optimization tips and tricks, delivered by true masters, Christian Wade and Phil Seamark (both from Microsoft). Among many fantastic topics, the one that immediately caught my attention was the new feature that Christian Wade introduced: User-context-aware calculated columns.

Although we all know that DAX calculated columns are the “last island” in what are considered recommended data modeling practices (“Roche’s Maxim”, etc.), this one still stood out for me as something that might be super useful in certain scenarios.

Read on to see how it works and scenarios in which it could be useful.

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Refresh Warnings now Available in Power BI History

Published 2026-04-20 by Kevin Feasel

Chris Webb tells us don’t panic:

Since March 2026, Power BI semantic models have started showing warnings in their Refresh History in the Service. This has scared a few people but in fact all that is happening is that errors which were there all along and which don’t prevent refreshes from completing are now being flagged. Documentation on this feature can be found here but let’s see an example of the type of errors that can cause these warnings.

Click through for that example.

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Pre-Filtering Power BI Reports with URL Filters

Published 2026-04-17 by Kevin Feasel

Ben Richardson takes you to the right place:

Most Power BI users share reports one of two ways: they send the full report URL and ask people to filter it themselves, or they build separate reports for each team and spend the next year maintaining them.

Neither approach is ideal. Which is why URL filters are a great third option!

By appending a short query string to a report URL, you can control exactly what a reader sees the moment they open the link.

All without touching the underlying report, without duplicating it, and without relying on your readers to set up their own filters correctly.

This guide covers how URL filters work, how to write the syntax correctly, and where they will save you time.

Ben does cover the limitations around URL filters as well. This sounds like its best-case scenario is when there is another application that can serve Power BI URLs.

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Tracking Changes in Power BI Semantic Models

Published 2026-04-16 by Kevin Feasel

Jens Vestergaard wants to know who moved his cheese:

Semantic models do not have version control. Not really. You can store .pbip files in Git, and Tabular Editor gives you a .bim file you can diff, but neither of those workflows answers the simplest question a team asks after an update cycle: what changed?

I do not mean “which file was touched.” I mean: which measures were modified, which columns were added, which relationships were removed, and what exactly is different in the DAX expression that someone edited last Tuesday. That is the question I kept running into, and the one I built this notebook to answer.

Click through to learn how.

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Improving Line and Trend Charts in Power BI Reports

Published 2026-04-16 by Kevin Feasel

Ruben Van de Voorde shares some tips:

Line charts plot a metric along an ordered axis. Usually that axis is time, which is why they’re the first thing most people reach for when the X axis is a date. They show direction, speed and rhythm in a way that tables and bar charts don’t. That ordering is the key requirement: for unordered categories like regions or product types, connecting the points implies a sequence that isn’t there, and a bar chart is the clearer choice.

Power BI makes line charts easy to build: pick a date column, pick a measure, maybe split by a category, and you are done. The result is technically correct, but maybe not as clear as it could be. This article walks through the most common ways a line chart falls short and how to fix them.

There’s a lot of solid advice and good examples in here.

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