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Category: Power BI

Applying Forecasts with Known Seasonal Behavior in Power BI

Published 2022-05-30 by Kevin Feasel

Imke Feldmann begins a series on seasonality in Power BI:

Please note, that the monthly variation I am using in this example is taken from an existing table and not derived by statistical methods like the Excel FORECAST.ETS.SEASONALITY function. Here, we simply apply an existing distribution to expected future sales, but I will cover forecasts using those statistical methods in upcoming blogposts.

Todays starting point is a request to calculate how many sales to expect until the end of the year and then distribute the expected sales according to a list of monthly %, which are all different, because there is an expected seasonality in the sales:

Click through to see how this all works.

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End-to-End Analytics with Power BI Datamarts

Published 2022-05-27 by Kevin Feasel

Katy Young explains the value of Power BI datamarts:

A datamart can be thought of as a subject-specific data warehouse, often containing data related to one domain or line of business within an organization. Because datamarts are often aligned to a particular business use case, analysts don’t need to write complex queries over large volumes of data as they would against a more traditional data warehouse. This reduces time to insight for organizations and promotes self-service analytics by making structured data accessible to exactly the people who need it.

Read on for more information.

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Power BI Datamarts

Published 2022-05-26 by Kevin Feasel

Reza Rad has a four-parter on datamarts in Power BI. First up is the simple question:

One of the newest additions to the Power BI components is the Datamart. Power BI Datamart is more than just another feature, it is a major milestone where the development of Power BI solutions will be revolutionized based on that. This is a feature that helps both citizen data analysts and developers. In this article and video, I’ll explain what is a Power BI datamart, how it helps you in your Power BI implementation, and why you should use it?

Next up, how do you create one?

In the previous article, you learned what is a Datamart and the use cases of that in a Power BI implementation. In this article and video, you will have your first experience with Datamarts and learn through an example about what it is and how it works in detail. The interesting thing in all the steps below is that you just need a web browser to build the datamart.

Thirdly, we have datamart components:

What is a Power BI Datamart underneath? Can you connect to the database generated by Power BI Datamart? how the Dataset associated with the Datamart can be used? Is there a linage view? In this article and video, I’ll explain These and you will learn about the components of a Power BI Datamart. If you are new to Power BI Datamarts, this article explains what it is and its use cases and this article gets you through the Datamart editor and your first experience with it.

Reza rounds out this series of videos with how datamarts fit into the broader Power BI ecosystem:

Power BI Datamart is integrating well with other components of the Power BI ecosystem (such as workspaces, sharing, deployment pipelines, endorsements, sensitivity labels, etc). In this article and video, I’ll explain how Power BI works with other features and services in Power BI implementation. If you are new to Power BI Datamarts, this article explains what it is and its use cases and this article gets you through the Datamart editor and your first experience with it. You can also learn about the components of the Power BI Datamart from this article.

Click through for four videos hitting the high points.

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Counting Employees by Period with DAX

Published 2022-05-24 by Kevin Feasel

Matt Allington solves a common problem:

I’m calling this article, “How many employees by period”. Staff come and go for different reasons. In some companies, the number of staff can change over time. The principles used in this article can also be used in other instances.  There can be staff moving in and out of departments, on and off of projects, etc. The technique can also be used to work out how many staff were on leave, how many off sick, how many tickets were open in a support queue, or any other concept that has a start and end date in a transactional table.

Read on for Matt’s answer but be sure to check out the comments as there are some other good solutions in there.

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Object-Level Security in Power BI

Published 2022-05-23 by Kevin Feasel

Chris Webb checks out Object-Level Security:

If you have sensitive data in your Power BI dataset you may need to stop some users seeing the data in certain columns or measures. There is only one way to achieve this: you have to use Object Level Security (OLS) in your dataset. It’s not enough to exclude those measures or columns from your reports or to hide them, because there will always be ways for enterprising users to see data they shouldn’t be allowed to see. However the problem with OLS up to now is that it didn’t play nicely with Power BI reports and so you had to create multiple versions of the same report for different security roles. The good news is that there’s now a way to create one report connected to a dataset with OLS and have it display different columns and measures to users with different permissions.

And then watch as Chris combines Row-Level Security with Object-Level Security to make it nicer for users but probably a mess for maintainers.

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Forcing Color Scheme by Data Element

Published 2022-05-23 by Kevin Feasel

Reza Rad forces a particular color scheme in Power BI:

You can set the color in every visual in Power BI easily. You can also set the color of multiple visuals at the same time using Themes. However, what if you want to set the same color for the same data point? For example, You want the Gender Female to be always colored Orange in all the charts and visuals. In Power BI, as of now, you cannot set a data point color. However, there is an easy solution for that, which I explained in this article and video.

Click through for the answer. Generally I’d say something along the lines of “instead of doing this, just have one color and take advantage of cross-filtering to highlight the element people care about.” But if you do have a multi-measure categorical set with a small number of categories, color can be a differentiator and at least this helps you keep consistent colors across visuals.

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Power BI Field Parameters

Published 2022-05-19 by Kevin Feasel

Matt Allington throws one in for free:

The May 2022 version of Power BI Desktop includes a very interesting and useful feature – Field Parameters. Today I will show you how to use this new feature illustrating with 3 (no, wait, 4) use cases – Chart Elements, Chart Axis, Table Contents and Permanent Ad hoc Hierarchies.

Read on to see how to use this preview feature in Power BI.

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Managing Power BI Tenant Settings

Published 2022-05-18 by Kevin Feasel

Melissa Coates takes us through tenant settings management in the Power BI Service:

The tenant settings in the admin portal of the Power BI Service are incredibly important. The tenant settings include a wide-ranging number of things that significantly affect the user experience. It’s really important to manage the tenant settings effectively.In this post I’m going to talk about the process you should go through for reviewing and specifying your tenant settings.

The following is a high-level overview of what’s involved:

Read on for a helpful image as well as a flow of what to think about before you act.

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Adding Dynamic Hierarchies in Power BI

Published 2022-05-18 by Kevin Feasel

Kristyna Hughes makes use of the Tabular Object Model:

Power BI hierarchies are a powerful and easy way to enable end users to dig deeper into their visuals and data. While hierarchies can be a useful resource for self-serve analytics, maintaining hierarchies can be a pain as new levels get added or removed. Thankfully, if you have Power BI premium you can use the XMLA endpoint to add code into existing .NET applications to dynamically add or remove levels from hierarchies as they are created/removed in your application.

Unfortunately, while we can manipulate, add, and delete hierarchies and their levels, visuals already containing the hierarchy will not be automatically adjusted with any new levels/ordinals.

In spite of that limitation, click through to check out what you can do.

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