Power BI Weekly
Issue #294 - 4th February 2025
Just the one update this week, which is a set of updates to the "Microsoft Fabric Copilot to write DAX queries" feature in Power BI Desktop. We've been told that Copilot now takes into account object descriptions, synonyms and sample values in order to influence the generated output (which apparently hasn't been the case up until now). As we know, adding descriptions and synonyms to (i.e. documenting) your model is a recommended practice, and now there are tangible benefits of doing so - so you have no excuse now! (Unless of course you don't have a large enough capacity to benefit from Copilot anyway...)
Aside from that update this week, we've had a new article from Alberto Ferrari describing the Differences between ALL and ALLCROSSFILTERED (the latter being a function I've somehow never had to use myself!), Anmol Malviya has written a succinct blog about how to Create Pareto Chart In Power BI, and Roland Szirmai has provided and interesting alternative to the out-of-the-box underlying data export, with Smarter Excel Exports with Power Automate - How To Track Power BI Data Extracts.
🛠️ Data Prep
- Chandeep Chhabra (@chandeep2786) describes 7 Mind Blowing Power Query Functions (Beyond the User Interface)
- Rick de Groot (@Rickmaurinus) talks about Replacing Multiple Substrings in Power Query M
- On the Power BI community blog, Mohammad Farhan Jeelani describes Unpivoting vs. Splitting by Delimiter: When to Use Each and Why It Matters
🧩 Data Modeling
- On the Power BI blog, Zoe Douglas (@MSPowerBI) writes about Microsoft Fabric Copilot to write DAX queries in Power BI update
- On the SQLBI blog, Alberto Ferrari (@FerrariAlberto) talks about Differences between ALL and ALLCROSSFILTERED
📊 Report Authoring and Interactivity
- Bas Dohmen (@HowToPowerBI) describes how to Chart Switch in Power BI No Bookmarks
- On the Power BI community blog, Anmol Malviya explains how to Create Pareto Chart In Power BI and writes about Different Ways To Display Hyperlinks In Power BI Tables
- On the Learning Science YouTube channel, Learning Science (@learn_scitech) talks about Multi line Data Labels for Power BI Visuals (Column, Bar & Line) charts | Extended labels in PBI
- Valerie Junk (@porcubi) describes how to Change the Background Color or Image in Power BI and talks about Unicorn and Star Rating in Power BI
- Reid Havens (@HavensBI) describes Fixed-Window Charting in Power BI: Auto-Adjusting Calendar Periods
🚀 Deployment, Security and Operations
- Chris Webb (@cwebb_bi) covers Limit The Impact Of Expensive Power BI Queries On Your Capacity By Reducing The Query Timeout
- Paul Turley (@paul_turley) blogs about Setting up a GitHub Repo and Power BI Project
- Valerie Junk (@porcubi) describes how to Endorse Fabric and Power BI items - Promote, Certified & Master Data
- On the RADACAD blog, Reza Rad (@RADACAD_COM) explains how to Refresh Power BI Semantic Model After Dataflow Automatically
- Roland Szirmai (@BILAnalytics) talks about Smarter Excel Exports with Power Automate - How To Track Power BI Data Extracts