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Category: Power BI

Renaming a Power Query Column Based on Position

Published 2020-11-11 by Kevin Feasel

Ed Hansberry shows how to deal with renaming columns whose names regularly change:

The easiest way to rename a column in Power Query is to do it the same way you do in Excel – just double-click it and rename it. Sometimes though the column you are renaming can have different names with each refresh, so this method won’t work. We can use a List in Power Query to make this dynamic. Consider this very simple example:

You receive this file every day, and the column name starting in Row 6, Column B, constantly changes. We are going to extract that date and make it a column, as it should be, and then rename both columns regardless of what they are called.

Read on for the process.

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Dynamic M Parameters and Multi-Select

Published 2020-11-09 by Kevin Feasel

Chris Webb shows off a method for handling multi-select using dynamic M parameters:

Even though the documentation for dynamic M parameters does mention how to handle multi-select in the M code for your Power Query queries, I thought it would be useful to provide a detailed example of how to do this and explain what happens behind the scenes when you use multi-select.

Click through for that explanation and example.

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Querying Data Lake Files in Power BI through Synapse Analytics

Published 2020-11-09 by Kevin Feasel

Wolfgang Strasser shows us how to integrate Azure Synapse Analytics and Power BI:

Sometimes however, would not it be nice to access the data lake in Direct Query mode – to get the most up to date information for every report view? I would say: yes … but how can you achieve this? The options natively provided by ADLS Gen2 and Power BI are not sufficient to solve this requirement. But: there are options to achieve this and, in this post, I would like to show you the possibilities using Azure Synapse Analytics to build a query layer on top of a ADLS Gen2 storage account.

Click through for a step-by-step walkthrough.

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Triggering a Refresh with Power BI’s API

Published 2020-11-05 by Kevin Feasel

Martin Schoombee continues a series on automating Power BI deployments:

At times you may want to refresh a Power BI dataset from outside the portal, either on-demand or as part of another process (think DevOps for instance). In those cases the API provides the ideal mechanism to do so. Just remember that you are still limited to 8 refreshes a day if you don’t have a Premium workspace, and using this method will not work beyond the number of allowed refreshes. You also cannot count on the API to return a useful error message in that case.

Read on to see how.

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Testing Format String Expressions

Published 2020-11-05 by Kevin Feasel

Gilbert Quevauvilliers shows us a neat way to check that the Format String Expression for a calculation group works:

Currently the only way to create and or edit the Format String Expression is in Tabular Editor. Whilst I love Tabular Editor it does not have any DAX Intellisense.

I kept on editing the Format String Expression and I honestly must have had to edit it 4 times and it still was wrong.

Below is a quick tip on what I did to make sure my Format String Expression was valid and would indeed work!

Read on to see how.

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Geospatial Analysis with Azure Data Explorer

Published 2020-11-04 by Kevin Feasel

Chris Webb continues along a theme:

Since last week’s blog post about dynamic M parameters generated so much interest, this week I thought I’d give you another example of something cool you can do with them when you’re using Azure Data Explorer (ADX) as a DirectQuery source in Power BI: geospatial analysis.

Let’s say you work for a chain of supermarkets and want to use Power BI see what other competing stores are close to one of your stores.

Read on for the rest of the story.

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