Category: DAX

Business Intelligence - BI, DAX, Power BI, Power BI Desktop, Power BI Documenter, Power Query, Self-Service BI

Empower Your Story Telling Data Visualisation in Power BI with Colour Coding

Colour Coding in Power BI

This post has been waiting in my blogging list for a while and now this is my last post in 2019. I wish you all have a wonderful year ahead.

In this post I discuss a very important aspect of data visualisation; Colour Coding. I believe, colour coding is one the most powerful and efficient ways to provide proper information to the users. We learnt as human being that the colour can tell a lot about things. For instance, we look at green grass, if it is light green we immediately understand that the grass is quite fresh and healthy. When she gets a bit yellowish, we know that she’s perhaps thirsty. When it gets brown it is probably too late.

Another perfect example is traffic lights. When it is green, everyone is happy, when it is yellow, everyone is racing to pass the junction, well, I’m just kidding, some people tend to pass the yellow light while everyone knows they have to stop when traffic light is yellow right?? And… when it is red, we have to stop. Enough saying about colour coding and its affects on our lives on a day to day basis. Let’s talk about colour coding in Power BI and quickly get to more exciting stuff.

So… colour coding in Power BI, well, we could colour code from the day first that Power BI born, but, perhaps not in a way that I’m going to explain in this post. Conditional formatting is also around for a while now. In this post I show a technique that we can implement in Power BI to use a consistent colour coding across the whole report.

Here is a report without colour coding:

Power BI Report without Colour Coding
Power BI Report without Colour Coding

And now look the same report that is colour coded:

Colour Coded Power BI Report
Colour Coded Power BI Report

Let’s get into it.

Getting Started

In this technique we’ll follow the steps below:

  • We jump online using some awesome free colour palette websites to generate the colours we’d like to use in our reports
  • We copy the HEX values and paste into Power BI (via Enter Data)
  • We define a range of numbers to identify the ranges that our values will fall into. I personally use percentage, but it might be something else in your case
  • We then define some measures to pick a specific colour for the measures we want to colour code
Continue reading “Empower Your Story Telling Data Visualisation in Power BI with Colour Coding” →
Business Intelligence - BI, DAX, Good Practices, Power BI, Power BI Desktop RS, Power Query

Good Practices: Always Display the Reporting Environment

Good Practice: Always Display the Reporting Environment

When you work on real-world projects in power BI, you would probably have different environments Like DEV, UAT, Pre-Prod and Prod. It is important for you and your audience to know what the data is coming from. Am I looking at Dev or UAT data or I am actually looking at real data in Production environment. You may have asked or been asked with a question like “Where the data is coming from?”. It is important to know how trustworthy the data you’re analysing is. In this post I show you an easy way to show the environment your Power BI report is connected to.

How It Works

To display the environment name you use query parameters, then you reference that parameter, turn it to a table and add columns to show the environments accordingly. Easy right?

Read more about query parameters from a list output here.

Depending on your scenario the implementation might be slightly different, but the principals are the same. In this post I use a SQL server database. Therefore I need to Parameterise server name. in real world you may also need to parameterise the database name. Again, if your case is quite different, like if you get data from Excel, then the Excel path can be different for different environments. Let’s dig-in.

  • Open Query Editor
  • Click “Manage Parameters”
  • Click “New”
    • Enter “Name” and “description”
    • Tick “Required”
    • Select “Text” in “Type”
    • Select “List of values” in “Suggested Values” and type in server names for different environments
    • pick a “Default Value” and “Current Value”
    • Click OK
Creating new parameter in Power BI Query Editor

So far you created a new parameter that can be used to get data from a SQL Server data source.The next steps show you how to use that parameter to show the environments in your reports.

Continue reading “Good Practices: Always Display the Reporting Environment” →
Azure, Azure Analysis Services, BISM Tabular, Business Intelligence - BI, DAX, Power BI, Power BI Desktop, Power BI Service, Quick Tips, Self-Service BI, SQL Server, SQL Server Analysis Services - SSAS, SQL Server Management Studio - SSMS

Quick Tips: Export Power BI Desktop and Power BI Service Model Data In One-Shot with DAX Studio

Exporting Model Data to CSV or SQL Server in One Shot

Update 2021 March:

You can now export the data direct from Power BI Desktop using my tool, Power BI Exporter. Read more here.

In some of my old posts, which are the most popular ones, I explained how to Export data Power BI Desktop or Power BI Service data to different destinations like CSV, Excel and SQL Server. In this quick tip I explain a very easy way to export the model data as a whole to either CSV or SQL Server with DAX Studio.

Daniil from XXL BI well explained this method, but I’d rather quickly explain how it works and add some more information.

After release 2.8 of DAX Studio, you can now quickly export the whole model to CSV and SQL Server in one shot.

Enabling Export All Data in DAX Studio

  • Open DAX Studio
  • Click “File”
  • Click “Options”
  • Click “Advanced”
  • Tick “Show Export All Data button”
DAX Studio Export Power BI Model Data Settings

Export Power BI Model Data to CSV

DAX Studio Export Power BI Model Data to CSV
Continue reading “Quick Tips: Export Power BI Desktop and Power BI Service Model Data In One-Shot with DAX Studio” →
Azure, BISM Tabular, Business Intelligence - BI, DAX, Excel, Power BI, Power BI Desktop, Power BI Embedded Capacity, Power BI Premium Capacity, Power BI Service, Self-Service BI, SQL Server, SQL Server Analysis Services - SSAS, SQL Server Management Studio - SSMS, Tableau Desktop

What Does XMLA Endpoints Mean for Power BI and How to Test it for Free?

Test Environment from Power BI XMLA Endpoint

XMLA endpoint connectivity for public preview has been announced late March 2019. As at today, it is only available for Power BI Premium capacity users. This sounds like a massive restriction to a lot of people who don’t have a Premium capacity, but they’d love to see how it works. In this article I show you an easy way to get your hands to Power BI XMLA endpoint as quick as possible. Before I start, I’d like to simply explain what XMLA endpoint is and what it really means for Power BI users.

Power BI is Like Onion! It has layers!

Generally speaking, Power BI has two different layers, presentation layer and data model layer. Presentation layer is the visual layer, the one you make all those compelling reports and visualisations. The data model as the name resembles, is the layer that you make your data model in. This layer is the one you can access it via XMLA connectivity.

In a Power BI Desktop file, you can see both layers:

Different layers of Power BI

How XMLA Relates to Different Layers in Power BI?

As you may have already guessed, XMLA is only related to the data model layer and it has nothing to do with the presentation layer. So you may connect to a data model, browse the data model, import data from the model to other platforms like Excel and so forth.

XMLA Is Not New!

Seriously? Yes, seriously. It is not new. It’s been around for many years and perhaps you’ve already used it zillions of times. Whenever you’re connecting to an instance of SQL Server Analysis Services, either Multidimensional or Tabular from any tools like SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), Power BI Report Builder, Excel, Tableau, etc…, you’re using XMLA connectivity indeed.

Power BI is an Instance of SSAS Tabular

It is true. Power BI runs a local instance of SSAS Tabular model. So, whenever you open a Power BI Desktop file (PBIX), Power BI creates a local instance of SSAS Tabular model with a random local port number that can be accessed on your local machine only. When you close the file, the local instance of SSAS Tabular is shut down and its port number is released.

I first revealed the fact that you can connect to the underlying data model in Power BI Desktop from whole different range of tools like SSMS, SQL Server Profiler, Excel, etc… on Jun 2016. So, we indeed were using XMLA to connect to Power BI data models for a long time. We can even take a step further to import our Power BI data models into an instance of SSAS Tabular. In that sense, we are literally generating XMLA scripts from Power BI to create the same data model in SSAS Tabular. How cool is that?

Sooo… What is new then?

Continue reading “What Does XMLA Endpoints Mean for Power BI and How to Test it for Free?” →