Azure Weekly - Power BI Weekly #239 - 2nd January 2024
Power BI Weekly Newsletter Issue #239
powered by endjin
Welcome to the 239th edition of Power BI Weekly, and the first of 2024! In this newsletter we're covering all content since the last edition, so don't worry - there are no gaps in our timeline. We've had a couple of small announcements that crept in shortly after the last newsletter. The first of which is the new Custom messaging for Power BI App Access Requests, which allows you to add additional information such as why a user may not currently have the correct access, and/or the steps they need to go through to receive access. The second
announcement is that the DAX query view has introduced new INFO DAX functions, exposing the underlying TMSCHEMA
DMVs as DAX functions. This, in my humble opinion, is a HUGE win for report documentation. No longer do you need to enter the depths of your XMLA endpoint to retrieve information about expression definitions, descriptions etc - it's all at your fingertips with a bit of DAX code. And no duplication necessary - coupled with visuals such as the new and improved smart-narrative text box, more bits of information can be data driven, rather than living in duplicated static text on your report page!
A bit of additional HUGE news came out of a live stream Reid did with Jeffrey Wang a few days ago. While discussing DAX Query Best Practices and Historical Context, Jeffrey mentioned that we'll soon be able to use the SUMMARIZECOLUMNS
function within DAX measures, a limitation which I'm sure many of you, like me, will have come across since Power BI's inception. The barriers to using the powerful and
intuitive table function (that's used almost ubiquitously behind-the-scenes in Power BI) will be removed, and I can't wait. Great news to start 2024 (even if it's not quite available yet!)
If you have any content you'd like to contribute to the newsletter, please tweet @PowerBIWeekly or ping an email to PowerBIWeekly@endjin.com.
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@edfreeman_ | @endjin
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Data Prep
Covering: Power Query (M), Dataflows, Data connectors, AI Insights
- Chris Webb (@cwebb_bi) discusses Power Query Nested Data Types In Excel
- On the Towards Data Science blog, Salvatore Cagliari (@TDataScience) discusses Converting a Flat Table to a Good Data Model in Power Query
- On the Excel Basement YouTube channel, Excel Basement (@ExcelBasement) describes How to Calculate Hours Worked for Employees & to Summarize in Power Query
- Reid Havens (@HavensBI) talks about Improving Merging & Appending Power Query (Queries) with Ken Puls
- Pat Mahoney (@mahoneypa) describes Generating lists of random numbers from normal/gaussian distributions with Power Query
- Melissa de Korte describes how to Clean Your Data Like A Pro
- James Andrew (@MatadorSoftware) describes Developing Data Models In The Real World
- On the SQL Server Central blog, Additional Articles blogs about Connecting to SQL Server Data with Power BI vs Tableau
Data Modeling
Covering: DAX (Measures & Calculated Tables/Columns), Relationships, Analysis Services, Composite models
- On the Power BI blog, Zoe Douglas (@MSPowerBI) writes that DAX query view introduces new INFO DAX functions
- On the SQLBI blog, Marco Russo (@marcorus) shares a few articles: Using join functions in DAX, writes about What happened in the DAX world in 2023 and talks about Replacing relationships with join functions in DAX
- Reid Havens (@HavensBI) walks through Revisiting Common Calculation Group Patterns in Power BI and discusses DAX Query Best Practices and Historical Context with Jeffrey Wang
- On the Power BI community blog, Sam Kumar (@inogic) blogs about Calculation Groups in Power BI
- Ilya Rzhevskiy (@ilya_sb1) describes how to Split Budget into Ratios via DAX
- Also on the Power BI community blog, Dennis Carriere talks about Embracing TMDL Functionalities in Power BI and Preparing for General Availability
- On the Purple Frog Systems blog, James Snow (@PurpleFrogSys) explains How to manage relationships in Power BI Service
- Andrei Khaidarov writes Comparing ALL/ALLNOBLANKROW with DISTINCT/VALUES: A Data Function Analysis
- On the Learning Science YouTube channel, Learning Science explains How to move measures from one table to another table in Power BI and best practices
Report Authoring and Interactivity
Covering: Layout and formatting, Visualizations, Interactivity, Themes, Mobile reports, Dashboards
- Bas Dohmen (@HowToPowerBI) explains how to Build a Vertical Timeline in Power BI
- Davide Bacci shares a Force Directed Network Graph (Deneb)
- Chandeep Chhabra (@chandeep2786) describes Targets vs Actuals Chart in Power BI
Deployment, Security and Operations
Covering: Workspaces and Apps, Template Apps, Deployment Pipelines, Gateways, Security, Sharing, Licences, Admin operations, Developer Tooling
- On the Power BI blog, Jadelyn Ray (@MSPowerBI) announces Custom messaging for Power BI App Access Requests
- On the SQL Server Central blog, Dennes Torres (@Dennes) blogs about Source Control with GIT, Power BI and Microsoft Fabric
- Pat Mahoney (@mahoneypa) shares a few videos: Custom or Weekly Partitions With Power BI Incremental Refresh, Custom Paginated Report Subscriptions With Power Automate and Custom Multi-Report Subscriptions with Power Apps and Power Automate
- On the Microsoft BI Tools blog, Joost van Rossum (@ssisjoost) explains how to Give Power BI access to Synapse Serverless SQL Pool
General
Covering: Cross-topic announcements & feature summaries, Whitepapers, Community events, Learning Resources & Certifications, Podcasts, Sample reports, End-to-end walkthroughs
- On the Power BI blog, Saveen Reddy (@MSPowerBI) shares an update: The Power BI Desktop December Update is now available for download
- On the BIFocal podcast, John White and Jason Himmelstein (@bifocalshow) present Episode 271 - Power BI December 2023 Feature Summary
- Chris Webb (@cwebb_bi) highlights Project Sophia: An AI-Powered Business Research Canvas
Useful Links
- Power BI Maturity Scorecard - 97% of the Fortune 500 are using Power BI. Only 20% of analytics deliver business value. How do you score?
- Azure Weekly - Interested in Azure? Sign up to our sister newsletter Azure Weekly to receive all the week's Azure news
- M language reference - Official Power Query M Reference
- PowerQuery How - Alternative M Language Reference created by Rick de Groot, including improved function explanations, code formatting, practical examples and further reading
- DAX Studio - Useful open source tool for executing and analyzing DAX queries, founded by Darren Gosbell
- DAX Guide - Your go-to reference on the DAX language, created by the SQLBI team
- Power BI Visuals Reference - An exhaustive list (as of Sep. 2018) of all Power BI native & custom visuals, placed into separate categories, again created by the SQLBI team
- Report Theme Generator - A handy report theme generator created by the Power BI Tips and Tricks team
- Power BI Theme templates - Detailed Power BI Theme templates for all the native visuals, created by David Eldersveld
- Power BI from Rookie to Rock Star - Free, detailed eBook to get up and running with Power BI, written by Reza Rad
- Power BI Architecture diagram - An informative Power BI Architecture diagram, created by Dustin Ryan
- Power BI Whitepapers - A list of official Power BI whitepapers, covering Security, Premium deployment, Advanced Analytics and more
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