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Category: Power BI

Restoring Large Power BI Premium Backups

Published 2023-01-23 by Kevin Feasel

Gilbert Quevauvilliers has a hefty backup:

When using Power BI Premium or Premium Per user you get the option to backup the database, there can be occasions when you try and restore the backup and it fails.

The reason that it could fail is because when a restore happens it can consume additional memory which would take you up and over the memory limit.

Below I will explain a new option which allow this to restore successfully!

Gilbert includes a copy of the error message and one new option in the post.

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An Overview of the Power BI REST API

Published 2023-01-20 by Kevin Feasel

Reza Rad takes a look at Power BI’s API:

You can interact with the Power BI objects in the Power BI Service through a set of APIs called Power BI REST API. The Power BI REST API can help automate tasks, build tools that work with Power BI, the configuration of Power BI outside of the platform, and embed Power BI into a third-party application. In this article and video, I’ll explain REST API, why it is useful, and a few examples.

Click through for the video and explanation.

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Building a Power BI Audit Log

Published 2023-01-19 by Kevin Feasel

Reza Rad analyzes Power BI logs in Power BI:

Power BI dashboard and reports come with a usage metric, which you can see how users used this content. There is another report for usage metrics across the entire tenant, which you can see if you have access to the Power BI Administrator account under Admin Panel in the Power BI Service. However, what if you want to create your own detailed usage metrics report across the entire tenant? How if you want to see across all workspaces in the tenant, how was the consumption of reports and dashboards? Who created reports, who are users of them, in which workspace these are located and etc. This information is not easily accessible in the Power BI Service. In this article and video, I will show you how to extract the Audit log from Office 365, export it into text files, and create a Power BI report from it, or in other words, How to create your custom usage metrics report across the tenant. If you like to learn more about Power BI, read the Power BI book from Rookie to Rock Star.

Click through for a video as well as the full blog post.

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Debugging DAX Measures in Power BI

Published 2023-01-17 by Kevin Feasel

Marco Russo and Alberto Ferrari bust out the oscilloscope:

Finding errors in DAX measures has always been difficult because a single DAX measure produces different results in different cells of the same report, and we do not have a direct way of executing the code step by step in Power BI. This article describes four techniques to find an error in a DAX formula: we start with variable manipulation that does not require any external tool, and then we see how to leverage features available in DAX Studio, DAX Debug Output, and Tabular Editor 3.

Do check this out, especially if you spend a lot of time writing DAX code.

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Using Power BI Powershell Cmdlets

Published 2023-01-17 by Kevin Feasel

Reza Rad explains the value of the Power BI Powershell cmdlet set:

Power BI has a set of PowerShell Cmdlets that help automate part of the operations with Power BI. However, PowerShell is not a commonly familiar technology. In the world of Power BI, we are used to working with graphical options and settings provided in the tools and the service. However, using commands provided for Power BI in a command/scripting tool such as PowerShell can be an excellent asset for a Power BI administrator, architect, and developer. In this article and video, you will learn about the PowerShell Cmdlets for Power BI, what they are, how they can be helpful, and examples of using them.

There are more modules than I expected there to be and Reza does a good job of walking through them.

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Avoiding Dynamic Data Sources Error with OData.Feed

Published 2023-01-16 by Kevin Feasel

Chris Webb avoids an error altogether:

In my last post I showed how, in many cases, you can avoid the “dynamic data sources” error with OData data sources by taking advantage of query folding. That’s not always possible though and in this post I’ll show you how you can use the Query option of the OData.Feed function to do so instead.

As always, Chris provides some nice detail and good examples.

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Reviewing the Power BI Admin Portal

Published 2023-01-13 by Kevin Feasel

Reza Rad looks at administrative options:

In the world of Power BI, there are some configurations in the Desktop tool and some on the Service. One of these critical configurations is the Tenant Settings of the Power BI administrator panel. Tenant settings have a list of highly important configurations across your Power BI tenant. If you miss configuring the settings properly, it may result in leaking the data, authorizing people who should not be authorized to see reports and many other catastrophic scenarios. In this article and video, you will learn the configurations available in Tenant settings and the recommended options for each. If you want to learn more about Power BI, read the Power BI book from Rookie to Rock Star.

Click through for a video, as well as a detailed description of what’s available in the admin portal.

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Saving Time in Power BI

Published 2023-01-12 by Kevin Feasel

Allison Kennedy shares a few tips:

I myself still refer back to that blog post whenever I start a new project where there isn’t a date table already in the data source. Below are a few of my other favorite resources that I visited most frequently in 2022.

Click through for the list of posts and the helpful tips they contain therein.

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A Report of 2022’s Best Power BI Features

Published 2023-01-11 by Kevin Feasel

Nicky van Vroenhoven goes the extra mile:

Last night we had a work meeting at Powerdobs, with a few presentations about business updates, new joiners in the coming months and Power BI projects. I had the pleasure of closing the evening with a presentation on Power BI.

So I decided to do a presentation on my favourite additions to Power BI over the past year. But instead of doing a regular PowerPoint presentation, I decided to do an all-Power-BI presentation. It was very well received and I was encouraged to share it here!

Click through for the embedded report. Great job by Nicky to put this together.

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Multi-Language Support for Power BI

Published 2023-01-10 by Kevin Feasel

Marc Lelijveld supports several languages:

In case you’re working in an international company, you might have to deal with multiple languages and cultures at the same time. As not in all countries and businesses, it is common that everyone speaks and communicates in English all day, it can be relevant to support other languages for your Power BI solution. But what do you do? Should you start duplicating your entire solution and translate all elements to a different language? Or develop your entire solution in the corporate native language, like Dutch or German?

In this post I will elaborate on using translations in Power BI, to automatically translate your Power BI model meta data to different cultures. Besides the meta data, I will also elaborate on aspects like visual titles and translating the data itself. Happy translating!

Click through for one way to solve this problem.

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