Power BI Weekly
Issue #293 - 28th January 2025
This week there have been a couple of interesting announcements - the first is that you can now use Power BI Embedded with Direct Lake Mode (Preview), bringing the benefits of Direct Lake models to your custom applications. We've also been told that we can now Add Copilot Summaries to Power BI email subscriptions (Preview), (hopefully) helping provide a brief overview of the data that's been subscribed to. Elsewhere this week, Reid Havens has hosted John Kerski who has shown how you can Auto-magically Check For Broken Visuals in Power BI using the Playwright automation software in conjunction with Azure DevOps. Finally, Zoe Douglas has shared a thorough DAX query 101: Get and analyze data with EVALUATE, FILTER, SELECTCOLUMNS, SUMMARIZE, SUMMARIZECOLUMNS, ORDER BY, TOPN, START AT, and {table constructors}, using the DAX Query View to drive most of the examples.
🛠️ Data Prep
- Andy Forrester shares some advancements from his Power BI QA and CP Drag Add In for MS Project
- On the RADACAD YouTube channel, Reza Rad (@RADACAD_COM) discusses Power BI Append in Power Query Things You Need to Know
- On the Learning Science YouTube channel, Learning Science (@learn_scitech) describes Appending tables in Power Query: Difference between 'Append Queries' and 'Append Queries as New'
- On the Power BI community blog, Anmol Malviya describes how to Import Multiple Excel Files in Power BI
🧩 Data Modeling
- On the Prologika blog, Teo Lachev (@tlachev) blogs about TMDL View in Power BI Desktop
- Lars Schreiber (@SchreiberLars) covers Top-Produkte und "Andere" mit Power BI darstellen [German]
- Chandeep Chhabra (@chandeep2786) talks about The Most Important DAX Functions You Must Know in Power BI
- Chris Webb (@cwebb_bi) writes about Why DAX Is Better Than MDX For Bulk Extracts Of Data From Power BI
- On the Excel Basement YouTube channel, Rahim Zulfiqar Ali (@rahimzulfiqar) explains How to Create a Custom Fiscal Year Date Table in Power BI (July to June Example) Dimension Table
- Nadim Abou-Khalil covers Mastering Direct Lake Mode in Microsoft Fabric: Optimization Guide - direct lake mode
- Parul Sagar (@parulsagar) writes about Mastering Calculation Groups in Power BI
- Zoe Douglas (@MSPowerBI) provides a DAX query 101: Get and analyze data with EVALUATE, FILTER, SELECTCOLUMNS, SUMMARIZE, SUMMARIZECOLUMNS, ORDER BY, TOPN, START AT, and {table constructors}
📊 Report Authoring and Interactivity
- On the Power BI community blog, Suparna Babu describes How to show slicer selected values in Power BI Reports
- On the Business Intelligist blog, Nikil Prabhakar discusses Power BI Slicer Armageddon: Which One Reigns Supreme?
- Reid Havens (@HavensBI) talks about Auto-magically Checking For Broken Visuals in Power BI (with John Kerski)
- Ignacio Barrau (@ignacho_07) covers [PowerBI] Usando Iconos y código SVG [Spanish]
- Valerie Junk (@porcubi) explains how to Unclutter your Power BI Report - Create a Grid Layout
🚀 Deployment, Security and Operations
- On the Power BI blog, Nirupama Srinivasan (@MSPowerBI) announces Add Copilot Summaries to Power BI email subscriptions (Preview)
- On the Fabric blog, Hasan Abo Shally introduces Introducing Power BI Embedded with Direct Lake Mode (Preview)
- On the Power BI community blog, David Zenisek describes how to Host Fabric capacity workspaces with premium items to external users (organizations)
🌐 General
- Eugene Meidinger (@sqlgene) writes about Microsoft Fabric Guidance for Small Businesses