Power BI Weekly

Issue #133 - 16th November 2021

This week we've been given the Power BI November 2021 Feature Summary, where the main announcement (which might seem insignificant on the surface, but is actually a huge feature improvement) is the New Format Pane (Preview). With this update: the pesky double scrollbars are gone, there's a clear separation between generic and visual specific settings, there's now a global "revert all settings to default" button (particularly useful when applying a new theme to an existing report), and many other improvements. Other features in the feature summary include Page and Bookmark navigators (to speed up custom navs you may currently create while telling your data stories) and loads of data connectivity improvements (including a new Azure Synapse connector and a Google Sheets connector). Exciting stuff! Elsewhere, we've been told about the availability to connect to Snowflake and Azure Databricks via VNet data gateways, enabling a more desirable way (arguably) to connect to network restricted instances of those services.

🛠️ Data Prep

Chris Webb (@cwebb_bi) covers Power BI/Power Query Data Privacy Settings And Errors Caused By Nested Values
Daniil Maslyuk (@DMaslyuk) talks about SWITCH and SWITCH(TRUE… in Power Query
Rick de Groot (@Rickmaurinus) explains How to use List.Generate to make API Calls in Power Query M and blogs about List.Generate in Power Query: Tutorial with Easy Examples
Matthew Peterson (@mattpetersonbi) discusses Appending Data In Power Query Editor
On the MSSQLTips site, Koen Verbeeck (@Ko_Ver) writes What is Power Query?

🧩 Data Modeling

Darren Gosbell (@darrengosbell) writes that DAX Studio 2.17.2 released
Patrick Leblanc (@GuyInACube) describes Flexibility with Days Since calculations in Power BI
Adam Saxton (@GuyInACube) presents Let’s talk REAL-TIME in Power BI with SQLBI and their new PbiPushTools (Nov 13, 2021)
On the SQLBI blog, Alberto Ferrari (@FerrariAlberto) describes How to enable the Single Value option in a Power BI slicer, and shares a few tutorials: AND, OR, NOT, TRUE, FALSE – DAX Guide, CONTAINSSTRING, CONTAINSSTRINGEXACT – DAX Guide and HASONEVALUE – DAX Guide
Antriksh Sharma (@AntrikshShar) describes How to connect Excel to Power BI and SSAS, and on the Enterprise DNA blog, shares a few blogs: Tabular Editor 3 – A Productivity Tool For Power BI, Create Measures Using Tabular Editor 3 and Calculated Table And Column In Tabular Editor 3
Ruth Pozuelo Martinez (@CurbalEN) talks about DAX Fridays #214: Create DAX calculations on ranges taken from a slicer!!
Reid Havens (@HavensBI) talks about New feature for Power BI Side Tools with Didier Terrien - a DAX Template Generator for Your Reports
On the Visual BI blog, Anaga Mani walks through Implementing Object-level Security in Power BI
Chandeep Chhabra (@chandeep2786) describes how to Switch Between Calendar and Fiscal Year – Power BI
Lars Schreiber (@SchreiberLars) writes Vorjahresvergleiche auf Tagesebene mit DAX im Falle von Schaltjahren [German]
On the RADACAD blog, Reza Rad (@Rad_Reza) covers ConcatenateX in Power BI and DAX: Concatenate Values of a Column
Hima Bindu Marri (@sivahimabindu) describes What is Dax and why is it so important

📊 Report Authoring and Interactivity

On the Power BI blog, Roseanne Levasseur introduces the New Format Pane (Preview)
On the RADACAD blog, Reza Rad (@Rad_Reza) shares KPI Visual in Power BI Explained
Adam Saxton (@GuyInACube) describes how to Review Performance Analyzer in this Power BI Report from Smart Power BI
Mimoune Djouallah (@mim_djo) explains how to Analyse Big Spatial Dataset using hex bin maps in Power BI
On the Towards Data Science blog, Truett Bloxsom describes How to Dynamically Change Dimensions within a Power BI Visual
On the Tessellation Tech blog, Gavin Pedersen writes about Slicers vs. Filters: The Difference and When to Use Them in Power BI
Bas Dohmen (@HowToPowerBI) shares a few videos: Bar chart to Gantt chart in Power BI, Matrix chart to Gantt chart in Power BI and Expand all visuals at once in Power BI + Bonus Custom Date Periods Slicer
On the Marquee Insights blog, Treb Gatte (@tgatte) writes about Power BI Goals – How to Implement Series and writes about Power BI Goals – First Look at Nov 2021 Updates
On the Purple Frog Systems blog, Jon Fletcher explains How to create a toggle button in Power BI
On the Learning Science YouTube channel, Learning Science discusses the Rotating Tile in Power BI Rotating Card in Power BI

🚀 Deployment, Security and Operations

On the Power BI blog, Arthi Ramasubramanian Iyer (@ArthiRamasubra1) announces Snowflake and Azure Databricks Connectivity via VNet data gateways
Andy Cutler (@MrAndyCutler) discusses Connecting Power BI to Azure SQL Database using Private Endpoints
Gilbert Quevauvilliers (@GilbertQue) writes about I cannot connect to Azure Storage to back up my Power BI Premium Per User/Premium

🌐 General

On the Power BI blog, Jeroen ter Heerdt (@jeroenterheerdt) shares the Power BI November 2021 Feature Summary
The Power BI team (@MSPowerBI) shares Learn about deployment pipelines integration with Azure DevOps
On the CSG Pro blog, Melissa Coates and Matthew Roche present a Power BI Adoption Roadmap Q&A Session
Reid Havens (@HavensBI) and talks about When is Something a Best Practice? It Depends! (with Ruth Pozuelo Martinez)