Power BI field parameters are a new feature in Power BI Desktop, and it’s one of the best of the past months. In short, Power BI field parameters allow you to easily switch between dimensions attributes or measures in a filter. Previously, you had to do all sorts of DAX wizardry to make this happen, […]
Tag: power bi
Azure Function with PowerShell and the Power BI REST API
In this blog post I’m going to show you how you can create an Azure Function that will interact with the Power BI REST API. I choose PowerShell as the programming language because in my opinion it was a bit easier to authenticate with the Power BI service. For the development environment, I’m using Visual […]
DirectQuery to Power BI Datasets
A new feature has been added to the Power BI Desktop toolset and it’s a very nice one. The official name is “DirectQuery for PBI datasets and AS”. It allows you to create a connection to an existing model (either Analysis Services or a Power BI dataset) and link tables from that model into your […]
STAR SCHEMA ALL THE THINGS
The title says it all, but I’ll explain it anyway. When building a data model that will be used for analysis by human beings, always create a star schemas. Or multiple star schemas connected with conformed dimensions. Why? Because it’s the most intuitive and user-friendly interface. Because remember, your data model is the user interface […]
Small Multiples in Power BI
In the December 2020 release of Power BI Desktop, a long-awaited feature was added as a preview: small multiples (also known as trellis chart). A feature request for this chart type has been made since 2015! Small multiple charts are a set of charts of the same type on a grid, allowing you to easily […]
Speaking at SQLSaturday Vienna 2021
I’m thrilled to announce I’ve been selected to speak at SQLSaturday Vienna. Actually, it’s on Friday 15th of January, so don’t get fooled by the name. I’m bringing the session Self-service BI – Why Data Modelling Is Still Important, which is a beginner level talk about why you should pay attention to the data model […]
SUMX returns incorrect results with duplicates
Okay, the title of this blog post could also have been “SUMX returns unexpected results with duplicates”. The results only seem incorrect because an incorrect assumption might have been made. Let’s dive into the issue with an example. The Problem Suppose we have employees entering timesheet data. An employee can work on multiple projects in […]
Refresh Power BI Dataset using Logic Apps
A recent blog on the Power BI website announced the availability of a preview component in Microsoft Flow, which allows to easily refresh a specific dataset. This is good news, because in reality Azure Logic Apps are under the hood of Flow, so this means the refresh capability is now also available in Logic Apps. […]
What’s in the pipeline for Power BI?
If you’re interested in Power BI (or the Power platform in general), you might be interested in checking out the release overview guides of “2019 release wave 2” for these products: https://dynamics.microsoft.com/en-us/business-applications/product-updates/#overview-guides-and-videos Interesting stuff ahead! (I like they’re doing something with data lineage, which is about time)
Connect to Power BI Report Server with SSMS
Sometimes you want to connect to a report server instance using Management Studio, for example to create a new security role or modify an existing one. Recently I tried to log into our newly installed Power BI Report Server (March 2018 edition). I was greeted with the following error: The Reporting Services instance could not […]