Power BI Weekly Newsletter Issue #298

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Data Prep

Covering: Power Query (M), Dataflows, Data connectors, AI Insights

• On the Data Bear blog, Boniface Muchendu (@DataBearLTD) blogs about Understanding the Include in Refresh Feature in Power Query
• Rick de Groot (@Rickmaurinus) explains How to Return a Data Type as Text in Power Query M (Step-by-step Guide)

Data Modeling

Covering: DAX (Measures & Calculated Tables/Columns), Relationships, Analysis Services, Composite models

• On the Data Bear blog, Boniface Muchendu (@DataBearLTD) explains how to Migrate Your Power BI Semantic Models to Direct Lake and explains How to Add a Calculated Column to Power BI Direct Lake Models
• Marco Russo (@marcorus) blogs about Account receivable aging in Power BI
• Chandeep Chhabra (@chandeep2786) talks about Excel Users Struggle with These Calculations in Power BI – Here’s the Fix
• Justin Martin (@dax_noob_justin) covers Fabric Tools: DAX Performance Testing
• On the Power BI community blog, Kumail Raza writes about Understanding TMDL in Power BI: A Game-Changer for Data Modeling

Report Authoring and Interactivity

Covering: Layout and formatting, Visualizations, Interactivity, Themes, Mobile reports, Dashboards

• On the Power BI blog, Shannon Lindsay (@MSPowerBI) announces Power BI DataViz World Championships | 2 Weeks Left to Compete
• On the Excel Basement YouTube channel, Rahim Zulfiqar Ali (@rahimzulfiqar) describes How to Create MTD / QTD / YTD Time Intelligence Slicer & Dynamic Title in Microsoft Power BI and talks about Visual to Show Both Values & Percent | Data Labels | Column or Bar Chart
• Valerie Junk (@porcubi) describes Using Error Bars to Visualize Targets in Power BI and writes about Conditional Formatting Button in Power BI
• On the Learning Science YouTube channel, Learning Science (@learn_scitech) blogs about Power BI Visual Calculation Magic - Conditional Formatting
• Sarah Gendron (@lecfomasque) covers Maximisez l’interactivité de vos rapports Power BI avec les visuels Questions et réponses (Q&A) [French]

Deployment, Security and Operations

Covering: Workspaces and Apps, Template Apps, Deployment Pipelines, Gateways, Security, Sharing, Licences, Admin operations, Developer Tooling

• On the Power BI community blog, Vivienne Vereen describes Fabric Capacity Scaling and Power BI - What happens when Power BI model guardrails are exceeded?
• Stephanie Bruno (@StephTBruno) presents Ep. 7 - Semantic Link and Semantic Link Labs
• Philipp Lenz (@lenz_philipp) writes about Error when using a Power BI Embedded app via the Power BI Embedded Onboarding Tool

General

Covering: Cross-topic announcements & feature summaries, Whitepapers, Community events, Learning Resources & Certifications, Podcasts, Sample reports, End-to-end walkthroughs

• Bernat Agulló Roselló (@AgulloBernat) covers Making a Report Bilingual: The Full Story (Part 2)
• On the Data Bear blog, Boniface Muchendu (@DataBearLTD) blogs about February 2025 Power BI Update: Monitoring Hub, Copilot, Visual Calculations

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