More than Excel BI
There are several undocumented DAX formula bar keyboard shortcuts in Power BI Desktop. For instance, you can comment or uncomment portions of your code, go to a specific line of code, and do other things. Some of the keyboard shortcuts are more useful than others — this blog post lists all that I am aware of. Continue reading “DAX formula bar keyboard shortcuts in Power BI Desktop”
In some cases, it may be necessary to separate a Power BI report from its dataset. For example, you may want to have multiple reports based on a single dataset, or you may have upgraded to Analysis Services. Currently, Power BI Desktop does not provide a simple way of switching from imported data to Live Connection or DirectQuery, but there are some workarounds. Continue reading “Switching from imported data to DirectQuery or Live Connection in Power BI”
In May 2018, the drillthrough capability of Power BI has got its own section in the Filters pane, which reflects two enhancements:
In this blog post, I am discussing these enhancements. Continue reading “Enhanced Drillthrough in Power BI”
At the moment, Power BI has two visuals that support two Y axes: the line and stacked column chart, and the line and clustered column chart. In the May 2018 release of Power BI Desktop, there is going to be an important enhancement to these charts (as well as the various line visuals): we will be able to set the line stroke width to zero (this can already be done in Power BI service). In this blog post, I am going to show two use cases for it. Continue reading “Combo charts with no lines in Power BI”
Currently, Power BI does not have a built-in feature that enables you to switch between hierarchy levels with a slicer. While some field wells let you use a hierarchy, others, such as Legend, do not. In this article, I am showing a way to choose a hierarchy level dynamically. Continue reading “Dynamic hierarchies in Power BI”
The November 2017 release of Power BI Desktop contains a new M function: Function.From. Here is the function’s description from the official documentation: Continue reading “New M function: Function.From”
There is a new DAX function coming soon to Power BI Desktop: COMBINEVALUES. It concatenates an unlimited number of values with a delimiter. You can already use the function by connecting to a dataset in Power BI service and creating report-level measures. Continue reading “New DAX function: COMBINEVALUES”
Row-level security is an important part of many data models. In this article, I am showing a way to selectively grant “all” access with dynamic row-level security and only one role. For example, we can let a CEO see the whole data model, but a department head will be able to see their department’s data only. This article presents a more flexible approach in cases where using an organizational hierarchy and PATHCONTAINS would be inappropriate. Continue reading “Configuring “all” access with dynamic row-level security”
DAX, originating in Power Pivot, shares many functions with Excel. As of 2017, some of the functions, such as SLOPE and INTERCEPT, exist in the latter but not in the former. The two functions can be used for a simple linear regression analysis, and in this article I am sharing patterns to easily replicate them in DAX. But first, why would you want to do such analysis? Continue reading “Simple linear regression in DAX”
A colleague of mine has recently asked to provide him a background image from a Power BI Desktop file I have had shared with him previously. Because sometimes the original images are lost and only preserved in .pbix files, I figured a quick blog post about extracting the images would be useful. Custom themes too can be extracted in the same way. Continue reading “Extracting images and themes from Power BI Desktop files”