Category: Azure

Azure, Business Intelligence - BI, Microsoft Fabric, Power BI, Power BI Desktop, Power BI Premium Capacity, Power BI Service

Integrating Power BI with AzureDevOps (Git), part 1: Cloud Integration


Power BI is a powerful tool for creating and sharing interactive data visualizations. But how can you collaborate with other developers on your Power BI projects and ensure quality and consistency across your reports? In this series of blog posts, I will show you how to integrate Power BI with Azure DevOps, a cloud-based software development and delivery platform. We can integrate Azure DevOps with Power BI Service (Fabric) as well as Power BI Desktop.
The current post explains how to set up Azure DevOps and connect a Power BI Workspace.
The next blog post will explain how to use it on your local machine to integrate your Power BI Desktop projects with Azure DevOps.

A brief history of source control systems

Before we dive into the details of Power BI and Azure DevOps integration, let’s take a moment to understand what source control systems are and why they are essential for any software project.

Source control systems, also known as version control systems or revision control systems, are tools that help developers manage the changes made to their code over time. They allow developers to track, compare, and roll back changes when necessary and collaborate with other developers on the same project.

There are two main types of source control systems: centralised and distributed. Centralised source control systems use Client-server approach to store all the code and its history in a single server, and developers need to connect to that server to access or modify the code. Examples of centralised source control systems are Microsoft’s Team Foundation Server (TFS) which rebranded to Azure DevOps Server in 2018, IBM’s ClearCase, and Apache’s Subversion.

On the other hand, distributed source control systems use a peer-to-peer approach, allowing each developer to have a local copy of the entire code repository, including its history. Developers can work offline and sync their changes with other developers through a remote server. Examples of distributed source control systems are Git Software and Mercurial, which takes us to the next section. Let’s see what Git is.

What is Git, and why use it?

Git is one of the world’s most popular and widely used distributed source control systems. It was created by Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, in 2005. Git has many advantages over centralised source control systems, such as:

  • Speed: Git is fast and efficient, performing most operations locally without network access.
  • Scalability: Git can easily handle large and complex projects, as it does not depend on a single server.
  • Flexibility: Git supports various workflows and branching strategies, allowing developers to choose how they want to organise their code and collaborate with others.
  • Security: Git uses cryptographic hashes to ensure the integrity and authenticity of the code.
  • Open-source: Git is free and open-source, meaning anyone can use it, modify it, or contribute to it.

While Git is pretty good, it has some disadvantages compared with a centralised source control system. Here are some:

  • Complexity: Git has a steep learning curve, especially for users who are new to distributed version control systems. Understanding concepts such as branching, merging, rebasing, and resolving conflicts can be challenging for beginners and sometimes even seasoned Git users.
  • Collaboration challenges: While distributed version control systems like Git enable easy collaboration, they can also lead to collaboration issues. Multiple developers working on the same branch simultaneously may encounter conflicts that need to be resolved, which can introduce complexities and require extra effort.
  • Performance with large repositories: While Git performs pretty well on most operations, it can get abortive when working with large repositories containing many files or a long history of commits. Operations such as cloning or checking out large repositories can be time-consuming.

What is Azure DevOps, and what does it relate to Git?

Azure DevOps is Microsoft’s cloud-based platform providing a set of tools and services for software development. It encompasses a range of capabilities for managing, planning, developing, testing, and delivering software applications. Azure DevOps offers:

  • Azure Boards: A tool for planning, tracking, and managing work items, such as user stories, tasks, bugs, etc.
  • Azure Repos: A tool for hosting Git repositories online, which is the main focus of this blog post.
  • Azure Pipelines: A tool for automating builds, tests, and deployments.
  • Azure Test Plans: A tool for creating and running manual and automated tests.
  • Azure Artifacts: A tool for managing packages and dependencies.

Azure DevOps also integrates with other tools and platforms, such as GitHub, Visual Studio Code, and now, Power BI. This takes us to the next section of this blog post, Integrating Power BI with Azure DevOps.

How to integrate Power BI with Azure DevOps

Now that we understand what Git and Azure DevOps are let’s see how we can integrate Power BI with Azure DevOps.

Integrating Power BI with Azure DevOps has two different integrations. Cloud integration and local machine integration have the following requirements.

Prerequisites

To follow along with this tutorial, you will need:

  • In the cloud:
    • An Azure DevOps Service
    • A Power BI account with one of the following licenses to enable Power BI Workspace integration with Azure DevOps.:
      • Power BI PPU (Premium Per User)
      • Premium Capacity
      • Embedded Capacity (EM/A)
      • Fabric Capacity
  • On your local machine:
    • The latest version of Power BI Desktop (June 2023 or later)
    • Either Visual Studio or VS Code

As stated earlier, this post explains the Cloud integration partTherefore, we require to have an Azure DevOps Service and a Power BI account with a Premium licencing plan in order to integrate Power BI with Azure DevOps.

In the following few sections, we look into more details and go through them together step-by-step.

Continue reading “Integrating Power BI with AzureDevOps (Git), part 1: Cloud Integration” →
Azure Analysis Services, DAX, Power BI, Power BI Desktop, Power BI Desktop RS, Power Query, Quick Tips

Quick Tips: Adding Leading Zero to Integer Values (Padding) with DAX and Power Query

Quick Tips: Adding Leading Zero to Integer Values (Padding) with DAX and Power Query

There are some cases that we want to add a leading zero to a digit, such as showing 01 instead of 1, 02 instead of 2 and so on. We have two options to do this in Power BI, doing it in Power Query or doing it with DAX.

Adding a Leading Zero in Power Query

The first method is doing it in Power Query using the Text.PadStart() function.

Here is how the syntax of the function:

Text.PadStart(text as nullable text, count as number, optional character as nullable text)

And here is how the function works:

Text.PadStart(input string, the length of the string, an optional character to be added to the beginning of the string util we reach to the string length)

For example, Text.PadStart("12345", 10 , "a") returns aaaaa12345 and Text.PadStart("1", 2 , "0") returns 01.

Let’s create a list of integer values between 1 to 20 with the following expression:

{1..20}
Creating a List of Integer Values Between 1 to 20 In Power Query
Creating a List of Integer Values Between 1 to 20 In Power Query

Now we convert the list to a table by clicking the To Table button from the Transform tab:

Converting a List to a Table in Power Query
Converting a List to a Table in Power Query

Now we add a new column by clicking the Custom Column from the Add Column tab from the ribbon bar:

Adding a New Column to a Table in Power Query
Adding a New Custom Column to a Table in Power Query

Now we use the following expression in the Custom Column window to pad the numbers with a leading zero:

Continue reading “Quick Tips: Adding Leading Zero to Integer Values (Padding) with DAX and Power Query” →
Azure Analysis Services, Data Visualisation, Dataflows, DAX, Excel, Power BI, Power BI Desktop, Power BI Desktop RS, Power BI Service, Power Query

The Story of my Book, “Expert Data Modeling with Power BI”

Expert Data Modeling with Power BI
Expert Data Modeling with Power BI

In 2020, the world celebrated the new year with many uncertainties. Well, life is full of uncertainties, but, this one was very different. The world was facing a new pandemic that never experienced before. The first COVID19 case in New Zealand was confirmed in February 2020. In March 2020 the entire country went to lockdown for the first time. The world was experiencing a massive threat changing everyone’s lives. I was no different. Every day was starting with bad news. A relative passed away; a friend got the virus; the customers put the projects on hold etc. Nothing was looking normal anymore. You can’t even go to get a proper haircut, because everyone is in lockdown. This is me trying to smile after getting a homemade haircut. I bet many of you have done the same thing.

Soheil's Homemade Haircut
Soheil’s Homemade Haircut

One day, I checked my email and saw a message from Packt Publishing. They wanted to see if I am interested in writing a book about Power BI. That was a piece of good news after a long time. I always wanted to write a book about Power BI. Indeed, I attempted for the first time in 2016, but I couldn’t manage to get my ducks in a row to grasp the publishers’ attention.

I was not unfamiliar with writing books; indeed, I wrote my first book back in 2006 about Multimedia Applications in Persian. One of my passions in life is listening to music. And CDs were the most accessible music source with high-quality sound. I recall I saved money for some months, and I bought a Discman to listen to the music on the go. But CDs are rather bulky, and you could not have many of them in your pocket. So the next project was to save even more money to buy an MP3 player. But, converting Audio CDs to MP3 without compromising a lot on the sound quality was a real challenge for many people. And, that was my motive to write my first book in Persian to share my little knowledge with everyone. 

Continue reading “The Story of my Book, “Expert Data Modeling with Power BI”” →
Azure, Business Intelligence - BI, Data Catalog, Power BI, Power BI Governance, Purview, Self-Service BI

Power BI Governance, Good Practices: Setting up Azure Purview for Power BI

Power BI Governance, Good Practices: Setting up Azure Purview for Power BI

Microsoft newly announced a piece of very exciting news that Azure Purview now supports Power BI. This is massive news from a data governance point of view. Azure Purview is the next generation of Azure Data Catalog with more metadata discovery power and the ability to use sensitivity labels. After reading the news, I immediately decided to set up my test environment and give it a go. I followed the steps mentioned in this article on the Microsoft documentation website but I faced some difficulties to get it to work. And here we are, another blog post to help you to set up the Azure Purview for Power BI.

Note: In this blog post I am not intending to explain what Azure Purview is. You can find heaps of useful information here.

Creating an Azure Purview Resource

We first need to have an Azure subscription, if you don’t have, don’t worry, you can start your Azure free trial subscription here. The following steps explain how to set up Azure Purview for Power BI:Login to the Azure Portal

  1. Click Create a resource button
Creating Azure Purview resource in Azure Portal
Creating Azure Purview resource in Azure Portal

2. Type in Purview in the search box

3. Click Azure Purview

Searching for Purview resource in Azure Portal
Searching for Purview resource in Azure Portal

4. Click the Create button

5. Select your Subscription

6. Select a Resource group or Create new if you don’t have any

7. Type in a name in the Purview account name text box

8. Select the Location

9. Click Review + Create (if you require to do more configurations click Next:Configuration > button)

Creating Azure Purview Account
Creating Azure Purview Account

At this point, Azure validates the configurations and requirements. You may get an error message like below:

Continue reading “Power BI Governance, Good Practices: Setting up Azure Purview for Power BI” →