Power BI Weekly

Issue #138 - 4th January 2022

Welcome to the 138th edition of Power BI Weekly, and the first edition of 2022! Happy New Year to everyone, and I hope those of you who celebrate Christmas had a lovely festive period. Many of us will be glad to see the back of 2021, which, in the outside world, didn't always provide us with the best of circumstances. However, that didn't deter the Power BI team, with a whole load of brilliant features reaching GA throughout the year, including (but not limited to):

with many, many more exciting features arriving in Preview. I won't further rehash content from old newsletters though - if you've recently joined us, I suggest you set aside some time to at least review the editorials from the past newsletters to get caught up on the latest movements in the Power BI ecosystem.

This week's edition is a bit of a bumper edition (given the lack of newsletter last week). The articles to look out for this week include Imke Feldmann's article showing Black Scholes Option (/Derivative) Pricing with Power Query, Bernat Agulló describing Calculation Groups and Conditional Formatting, and Pat Mahoney providing a tip on Nested Visuals in Charticulator.

🛠️ Data Prep

Chris Webb (@cwebb_bi) covers Power BI DirectQuery Query Labels For SQL Server-Related Sources
Nicky van Vroenhoven (@NickyvV) shares a Power Query Trick: Remove Only Leading/Trailing Zeroes From Text
Matthew Roche (@SQLAllFather) writes Into the Date Dimension
Sam McKay (@_EnterpriseDNA) describes The Fastest Way To Create A Comprehensive Date Table Within Your Power BI Models
Rick de Groot (@Rickmaurinus) explains how to Create Date Table or Calendar in Power Query M Complete Guide and discusses List.Generate in Power Query - Tutorial with Easy Examples
Brian Julius discusses Power BI Buried Treasures: Modulo and Integer-Divide and introduces the Atomic Function Challenge - Discover A Multitude Of DAX And M Functions
Imke Feldmann (@TheBIccountant) shares Excel NORM.DIST function in Power Query and Power BI, writes about Black Scholes Option Pricing with Power Query in Power BI and writes about the Excel NORM.INV function in Power Query and Power BI
On the Tessellation Tech blog, Ahmed Ansari describes How to Parameterize Data Sources in Power BI

🧩 Data Modeling

On the SQLBI blog, Marco Russo (@marcorus) writes about What happened in the DAX world in 2021
On the SQLBI blog Alberto Ferrari (@FerrariAlberto) introduces wholesale and retail execution in composite models and walks through Understanding the interactions between composite models and calculation groups
Also on the SQLBI blog, Alberto Ferrari (@FerrariAlberto) talks about EARLIER, EARLIEST – DAX Guide, ABS, SIGN – DAX Guide and ODD, EVEN – DAX Guide
Paul Turley (@paul_turley) describes Hybrid Tables, Incremental Refresh and Table Partitioning in Power BI
Bernat Agulló (@AgulloBernat) writes about Calculation Groups and Conditional Formatting: yes, it's possible
On the Enterprise DNA blog, Sam McKay (@_EnterpriseDNA) discusses Power BI DAX Measures For Events In Progress
Arnaud Gastelblum (@LazySna1l) writes about Your data model first
On the CSG Pro blog, Kevin Arnold (@kevarnold) describes Improving your DAX skills with DAX.do
Antriksh Sharma (@AntrikshShar) talks about TOTALMTD vs CALCULATE & DATESMTD in DAX
Pat Mahoney (@mahoneypa) talks about Simple Model, Simple DAX - Line Time Example
Hima Bindu Marri (@sivahimabindu) covers the Difference between Implicit and Explicit measures in Power BI
Antriksh Sharma (@AntrikshShar) talks about Reverse TOPN Based On Dates Selected In Slicer
On the Towards Data Science blog, Peter Hui covers Power BI Modelling —tips and tricks
Mimoune Djouallah (@mim_djo) compares Power BI Vertipaq Vs Snowflake Vs BigQuery BI Engine

📊 Report Authoring and Interactivity

Soheil Bakhshi (@biinsightnz) shares a Power BI 101, Report Authoring Tools
On the Power BI community blog, Lucien Wang explains How to use the slicer on the column
On the MSSQLTips site, Scott Murray describes Power BI Zoom and Focus and discusses Power BI New Navigation Features
On the Power BI Tips and Tricks blog, the Explicit Measures podcast team (@PowerBITips) talks about Power BI Themes
Marcus Wegener (@PowerBIler) describes how to Display images from Business Central in Power BI
Reid Havens (@HavensBI) talks about Integrated Sparklines for the Native Matrix and Table Visuals in Power BI
Dhruvin Shah (@DhruvinShah16) describes How to add Sparklines in Power BI Tables and Matrix Visualization
Pat Mahoney (@mahoneypa) discusses Charticulator - Nested Visuals Tip
Adam Saxton (@GuyInACube) talks about Another Power BI optimization tool – Report Analyzer
Bas Dohmen (@HowToPowerBI) discusses Page and Bookmark Navigation Menu in Power BI, talks about Treemap Slicer in Power BI, shares a series of videos: The Ultimate Page Navigation Part 1 - Clean menu + icons, The Ultimate Page Navigation Part 2 - one trick endless possibilities - shapes and formatting and The Ultimate Page Navigation Part 3 - Shadow and Glow
On the Learning Science YouTube channel, Learning Science writes about New Format Pane in Power BI and discusses Text Box Formatting in Power BI - New Feature Text box super/subscript and bulleted lists
Urish Arora explains How to Create a Dashboard from Within Power BI Service, explains how to Customize, Export, Import Power Bi Themes through the Power BI Desktop UI and explains how to Create a Report using Excel Data in Power BI Workspace
On Le CFO Masqué, Sophie Marchand (@Mon_Cher_Watson) writes Power BI : Bonifiez vos rapports avec des boutons [French]

🚀 Deployment, Security and Operations

Chris Webb (@cwebb_bi) describes how to Monitor Power BI Queries And Refreshes With DirectQuery On Log Analytics, Part 1: Creating A Dataset
Philipp Lenz (@lenz_philipp) writes about Continuous Deployment of Power BI Reports with PowerShell and Azure DevOps and Continuous Deployment of Azure Analysis Services Cubes – Part 1
Matt Allington (@ExceleratorBI) explains Do I Need a Power BI Premium Per User Licence?
Adam Saxton (@GuyInACube) talks about Making sense of the Power BI Premium Gen2 Metrics App
Olivier Travers (@otravers) explains How to Use LastPass with Power BI Desktop
Urish Arora talks about Publishing Power BI Report to the web and writes about Embedded Power BI Tiles in Dynamics 365 CRM Dashboards

🌐 General

On the BIFocal podcast, John White and Jason Himmelstein (@bifocalshow) present Episode 215 - Firing on all Synapses with Kim Manis and Episode 216 - Power BI December 2021 Feature Summary