Press "Enter" to skip to content

Category: Power BI

Choosing Fields to Hide in Power BI

Published 2025-06-26 by Kevin Feasel

Reza Rad has something up his sleeve:

To tidy up your Power BI solution, there are some options, and one of them is hiding fields from the report view. This option, although simple, has a significant impact on making your Power BI solution very tidy and clean and easier to maintain. However, you might wonder what are fields that have to be hidden in Power BI? In this article, I will explain how to hide a field in report view, and then what are fields which are a good candidate for this option. If you like to learn more about Power BI. Read Power BI book from Rookie to Rock Star.

The very short answer is, hide things that business users won’t (or shouldn’t) care about. Reza gives much more guidance on the topic.

Based on the comments section, this appears to be a re-post from several years ago, but still worth reading because the content is evergreen.

Comments closed

Writeback Options in Power BI

Published 2025-06-25 by Kevin Feasel

Jon Vöge comes continues looking at Power BI writeback:

This blog has previously covered the basics of native Microsoft Fabric / Power BI write-back with Translytical Task Flows.

In my first post on the subject, we created a simple Comment/Annotation solution, allowing the user to input free text comments on Data Points directly in Power BI.

However, Translytical Task Flows do not only support Free Text as an input type for the users of your reports. All of the new & updated Power BI Slicer visuals work with Translytical Task Flows, and we can use List and Button slicers for users to add categorical data to our task flows too.

Read on to see these other options in action.

Comments closed

It’s Always Permissions (or DNS)

Published 2025-06-24 by Kevin Feasel

Kristina Mishra takes us through troubleshooting a problem:

Ah, you’ve setup a deployment pipeline and let your people know it’s ready for them to do the thing. Everything looks fine on your end, so you shoot off a message to the group and go about your busy day. (Nevermind your Test environment was set up 4 months ago, Production 3 days ago, and Development was replaced 2 months ago with a new Development environment because your region changed.) You’ve added all the permission groups to each environment and added your “contributors” as Admin to the deployment pipeline (no comment), so everything should be grand.

Famous last words, indeed.

Comments closed

Creating a Power BI Date Picker without Custom Visuals

Published 2025-06-23 by Kevin Feasel

Boniface Muchendu lets users pick the date:

Many users need the ability to select a single date not a range to filter their entire report. While Power BI’s default slicer shows a long list of dates or uses relative filters like “Today” or “Yesterday,” these options can be limiting.

Additionally, relying on the filter pane often isn’t ideal for dashboards meant for end users, especially when the pane is hidden or locked. An on-screen date picker provides a more intuitive and controlled experience.

Read on to see how.

Comments closed

Exfiltration Opportunities in Power Query

Published 2025-06-23 by Kevin Feasel

Oscar Martinez lays out the risks:

Data exfiltration is the act of moving sensitive data outside a trusted environment without authorisation. In the context of Power Query (the data transformation engine behind Excel, Power BI, dataflows, etc.), this means an insider could use a Power Query script to siphon data from secure sources (like databases) out to an external destination. Microsoft defines data exfiltration as the movement of sensitive business data outside a trusted boundary, whether intentionally or unintentionally.^1

Click through to learn more about what is possible, as well as practical tips on how to reduce this risk.

Comments closed

Farewell, SSRS

Published 2025-06-20 by Kevin Feasel

SQL Server Reporting Services is done-zo:

Starting with SQL Server 2025, Microsoft is consolidating all on-premises reporting services under Power BI Report Server (PBIRS). No new versions of SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) will be released. PBIRS becomes the default on-premises reporting solution for SQL Server.

You can expect more information about specific editions when SQL Server 2025 is in General Availability (GA).

This article outlines the implications of these changes for you as a customer, and addresses any questions you might have.

The article claims that Power BI Report Server is a superset of SSRS. That might actually be so, but there’s a nagging part in the back of my brain saying that there are things we can do in SSRS that we can’t in PBIRS and that this won’t be the smooth transition that the article claims. But it’s been long enough since I’ve worked on SSRS in earnest to be able to say with certainty whether it’s the case.

H/T Blake McNeill.

1 Comment

Power BI Model Analysis via INFO Functions in DAX

Published 2025-06-12 by Kevin Feasel

Reza Rad is leading this interrogation:

There are many DAX functions for covering day-to-day business-related calculations using measures and calculated columns. However, there is also a set of functions that can be helpful to the BI team and developers in gaining insights from the Power BI model itself. The insights can include things such as the number of both-directional relationships, the dependency of the calculations, the list of columns in tables, etc. These functions are in the category of INFO functions in DAX. Let’s see what they are and how they work.

Click through for a list, as well as how you can make use of them.

Comments closed

The Role of Padding in Power BI Reports

Published 2025-06-12 by Kevin Feasel

Elena Drakulevska explains why padding is so important between visuals in Power BI reports:

Now that we’ve all learned to love rounded corners, let’s talk about another quiet champion of good design: padding.

You know, that tiny bit of space inside your visuals that keeps content from being awkwardly pressed right up against the border, with no room to breathe. Yeah. That.

The ideal here is to have densely informative visuals that have sufficient padding to make it easy for a viewer to move between them.

Comments closed