A Fine Slice Of SQL Server
I think this is the most exciting thing to happen in DAX since the introduction of variables. Why? Well we all know that writing DAX can be hard, and part of why it’s hard is that it’s hard to debug.
Read on to see how EvaluateAndLog() makes life easier, as well as a couple links to Jeffrey Wang’s blog for further detail.
Dan English puts together a workflow:
Being able to do a data driven report subscription with Power BI and Paginated reports is a common request we hear from many customers. Let’s say you want to send a PDF version of a report to each of your store or department managers using a set of parameter values specific to each person. In the Power BI service that is not an option, but using Power Automate you can do this.
In this post I will be using a Paginated report that is referencing data in an Azure Analysis Services database and I will be referencing an Excel file that I have in OneDrive for Business which includes the needed information for the data driven subscription with 2000 records. The Paginated report is in a workspace backed by a Power BI Embedded A-SKU (A4 – equivalent of a P1 SKU) for testing purposes and the AAS tier is an S1 (100 QPU).
Read on to see how.
Comments closedChris Webb continues a series on using Power Automate to call the Power BI Enhanced Refresh API:
If you’ve read part 1 or part 2 of this series you’ll know how you can create a Power Automate custom connector to call the Power BI Enhanced Refresh API and get fine-grained control over your refreshes. In this post I will take a look at the two parameters in the Enhanced Refresh API for datasets that use incremental refresh: applyRefreshPolicy and effectiveDate. They are documented here but, as always, some worked examples are helpful to really understand how they work.
Click through to see how these parameters work.
Comments closedTomaz Kastrun takes out the trash:
Sample Powershell script for deleting datasets in all workspaces. These datasets are visible in Admin console under Datasets for every workspace.
Click through to see which Powershell module you’ll need, as well as to get a helpful script.
Comments closedBarney Lawrence votes None of the Above:
Field Parameters are one of my favourite recent additions to Power BI. The ability to turn a single chart into potentially dozens changes the way we think about putting variations of visuals on the page. It was a real wow moment for a client recently when I showed how field parameters for 5 fields and 5 measures could produce a single report page that replaced 25 of their existing reports.While they theoretically don’t allow you to do much that you couldn’t previously with a disconnected slicer and a lot of DAX they build it faster and without the need to get heavily in to coding DAX. Anything that lowers the difficulty bar for users trying to make the most out of Power BI is a good thing in my book.
There are a couple of issues Barney has with them as they stand now but there are workarounds.
Comments closedErik Svensen shares a useful function:
Yesterday I posted an image of some PowerPoint VBA code on LinkedIn and Twitter and a lot of people have asked for a copy of the code.
So I have made a Power Point file with the code included and a small instruction on how to use it.
Click through for the code and instructions.
Comments closedMatt Allington integrates a Power BI report into PowerPoint:
I first blogged about this back in October 2021 when Microsoft announced live Power BI embedding was coming to PowerPoint. Believe it or not, the ability to embed Power Pivot reports into PowerPoint was one of the first features delivered by Microsoft way back in 2014 or 2015. It used to be possible with the first release of Power Pivot for Excel and SharePoint Enterprise Edition. Sometime after releasing this feature, Microsoft refocussed its efforts away from Power Pivot/SharePoint Enterprise and started to re-build again from scratch as a new standalone BI app known to us today as Power BI. It then took another 7 years for this PowerPoint feature to be returned. It’s here now, so let me cover what it is and how you can use it.
I’d joke about how much of an atrocity this is but it really isn’t. Thinking about how many meetings get derailed by the person trying to leave PowerPoint, struggling to open another application, having things fall apart, and then going back to the slide deck (inevitably from the beginning rather than the current slide), this is a good idea.
Comments closedMarco Russo and Alberto Ferrari do a bit of comparative analysis:
Many article ideas come from questions we receive from our customers and readers, and this article is no exception. The requirement is to analyze the sales volume before and after a selected time period, to a specific customer segment. In this case we define the segment as the brand that the customers have purchased in the past. For example, considering the customers who purchased Contoso-branded products in February 2018, what is the Sales Amount of Contoso and other products sold to those same customers 180 days before and after February 2018?
Read on to find out.
Comments closedErik Svensen does a bit of magic:
Let’s imagine I have a query with a column called Reportid – and I want to create another query with the unique values from the column.
Normally I would create a new blank query and than reference the column with – queryName[ColumnName]
And then there are a bunch of other steps which eventually lead you to the result. Or you can go straight to easy mode. That sounds like a pretty good idea to do instead.
Comments closedMarco Russo explains a difference:
We recently updated SUMMARIZECOLUMNS on DAX Guide by adding an example that clarifies the difference between a filter applied to SUMMARIZECOLUMNS and a filter applied to CALCULATETABLE.
Read on for an example of how summarizecolumns() normally works but how things might change a little bit when you introduce calculatetable() to the mix.