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Category: Power BI

partialBatch Commit Mode in Power BI API

Published 2024-05-13 by Kevin Feasel

Chris Webb provides an explanation:

I have always wondered what the partialBatch option for the commitMode parameter in the Enhanced Refresh API does exactly. There is some documentation here and here but I was curious to find out more as part of the research I’m doing for my ongoing series on Power BI refresh memory errors, in case it was useful for reducing overall memory usage (spoiler: it may be). In this post I’ll share what I found out after running some tests.

Read on for the demonstration and explanation, as well as tips on when you might want to use it.

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Max Offline Semantic Model Size Error

Published 2024-05-06 by Kevin Feasel

Chris Webb continues a series on Power BI semantic model memory errors:

In the Power BI Service, Import mode models are stored offline and paged into memory only when they are needed – for example because someone runs a report that uses the model as its source. As discussed in my last post, though, there’s a limit on the amount of memory that a model can use which varies by the size and type of capacity you’re using using. There’s also an extra complication in that Import mode models are stored offline in a compressed format that means the Power BI Service doesn’t know exactly how much memory will be needed if the entire model needs to be held in memory. As a result there is an additional limit enforced on the size of the offline copy of Import mode models to ensure they don’t use too much memory when they are eventually paged in.

Read on to learn more about this setting and what it looks like if you trigger the error.

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Filtering a Visual by a Measure via a Slicer in Power BI

Published 2024-05-02 by Kevin Feasel

Meagan Longoria solves a problem:

Have you ever wanted to filter a visual by selecting a range of values for a measure? You may have found that you cannot populate a slicer with a measure. But you can do this another way.

I have a report that shows project expenses and budgets. I want users to be able to filter the list of project to only those which have expenses within my selected range. I also have 2 other slicers for project budget and percent of budget used, but let’s just focus on the expense amount slicer.

Read on to see how.

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Adding GIFs to Power BI Reports

Published 2024-04-30 by Kevin Feasel

Riqo Chaar adds a bit of motion to cards:

This article will describe the process behind adding GIFs to card visuals in Power BI. The GIFs we will create in this article will be as follows: animated arrows, looping only once, displaying the direction of movement relating to a particular value between the current period and the previous period. These GIFs work extremely well as a visual aid, highlighting key information quickly to users, without any overstimulating effect due to a single loop being used.

This article was inspired by a video from the YouTube channel, How to Power BI.

Click through for the article. I’m pretty well on the fence about this: adding GIFs is not something I would think to do, primarily because of the distraction factor. Even so, it’s still good to know that it’s possible.

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Power BI Model Size and Memory Usage

Published 2024-04-30 by Kevin Feasel

Chris Webb lays out the limitations:

You probably know that semantic models in Power BI can use a fixed amount of memory. This is true of all types of semantic model – Import, Direct Lake and DirectQuery – but it’s not something you usually need to worry about for DirectQuery mode. The amount of memory they can use depends on whether you’re using Shared (aka Pro) or a Premium/Fabric capacity, and if you’re using a capacity how large that capacity is. In Shared/Pro the maximum amount of memory that a semantic model can use is 1GB; if you are using a capacity then the amount of memory available for models in each SKU is documented in the table here in the Max Memory column:

Read on to learn more.

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Legacy Power BI Apps Going Away

Published 2024-04-29 by Kevin Feasel

Nicky van Vroenhoven shares a public service announcement:

In case you missed the official blog post 2 months ago, I suggest you read my blog post 🙂

Or if you want you can refer to the official blog here: Announcing the retirement of legacy Power BI Apps (pre-audiences).

Already on March 6, 2023(!), Power BI apps with multiple audiences went Generally Available.

Read on for more information, with the note that these things will disappear soon—May 1, 2004 is the date of retirement.

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Exporting and Sharing Power BI Reports in Fabric

Published 2024-04-25 by Kevin Feasel

Sandeep Pawar distributes PDFs like candy:

With the proposed solution below, you will be able to :

  • Export a Power BI report, or a page of a report or a specific visual from any page as a PDF, PNG, PPTX or other supported file formats
  • Apply report level filters before exporting
  • Automate the extracts on a schedule
  • Save the exported reports to specific folders
  • Grant access to individual folders in the Lakehouse

Click through for the solution.

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Comparing Cumulative Values for Events across Different Periods

Published 2024-04-23 by Kevin Feasel

Kurt Buhler performs comparative analytics:

In a previous article about format strings, we showed an example of how format strings can improve visualizations. The visualizations in that article compared the performance of a company’s marketing videos on a streaming platform to the average of all their videos released that year. In this article, we explain how to conduct this analysis yourself in DAX, where you compare series that occur in different periods.

Click through for an explanation, both in video and in blog form.

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Enterprise Agreements and Transitioning from Power BI P SKUs to Fabric F SKUs

Published 2024-04-22 by Kevin Feasel

David Eldersveld talks licensing:

To facilitate a smooth transition from Power BI to Fabric (new capabilities), Microsoft ensured customers could access these new Fabric workloads as well as Copilot for Power BI on their existing Power BI Premium capacity P SKUs.

However, with the introduction of Azure-billed pay-as-you-go and annual reservation F SKUs for Microsoft Fabric, Microsoft recently announced the eventual retirement of the Power BI Premium per capacity SKUs that needs to consider an organization’s Enterprise Agreement (EA) timing.

Read on to learn more, especially if you currently have a Power BI Premium P1 (or higher) SKU.

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