Power BI Weekly Issue 40: 7th January 2020
Welcome to the first edition of Power BI Weekly in the 20s! Happy New Year to everyone, and Happy Christmas to those celebrating it today! What a year it was last year for Power BI. So many huge announcements crammed into 12 months - here's my pick from each month:
- January: Personal Bookmarks in the Power BI Service
- February: Use Power BI API with service principal
- March: Power BI open-platform connectivity with XMLA endpoints public preview
- April: New Workspace Experience General Availability
- May: Design custom navigation for Power BI apps
- June: AI Premium Workload, Cognitive Services and Azure ML general availability
- July: New Filter Experience for Power BI Reports
- August: Announcing custom branding for your organization
- September: Power BI mobile app’s new look
- October: Automated Machine learning in Power BI general availability
- November: Large models in Power BI Premium public preview
- December: Power BI Activity Log
And that's only a subset of them... I'm sure there'll be even more this year, as Power BI grows day by day!
One final official announcement in 2019 not covered by the last newsletter is that the On-premises data gateway December 2019 update is now available. Otherwise, there have only been a couple of announcments this year so far. There's been a notification that The new Power BI filter pane goes live in all reports in April 2020, and Imke Feldmann has suprised us with a new Power BI Cleaner tool, a perfect utility to tidy up your data models.
Here's to a new year of Power BI-ing!
Data Prep
Covering: Power Query (M), Dataflows, Data connectors, Analysis Services
- On the RADACAD blog, Reza Rad (@Rad_Reza) describes how to Change Excel Source in Power BI to OneDrive for Business – No Gateway Needed and explains how to Refresh Power BI Queries Through Power Platform Dataflows: Unlimited Times with Any Frequency
- Matthew Roche (@SQLAllFather) provides a Power BIte: Power Platform dataflows
Data Modeling
Covering: Relationships, Calculated Columns, Calculated Measures, Calculated Tables, DAX
- On the SQLBI blog, Marco Russo (@marcorus) evaluates What has happened in the DAX world in 2019
- Chandeep Chhabra (@chandeep2786) covers Setoff Invoices from Receipts – DAX Challenge
- On the Power BI community blog, djerro123 talks about Filtering and slicing either a multivalued column or multiple columns, a different approach
- Barrett Studdard (@Data_Stud) writes about Sliced Aggregates in Power BI
- On the Enterprise DNA blog, Sam McKay (@_EnterpriseDNA) shares a number of blogs: Find Top Customers Using RANKX In Power BI, Dynamic Segmentation: How To Segment Customers Into Groups Using Advanced DAX, Creating Forward Forecasts in Power BI Using DAX, Find Your Top Products For Each Region in Power BI Using DAX, Updated Mastering DAX Calculations Course Now Officially Launched, Analysing Customer Trend Using DAX In Power BI, How To Evaluate Clusters in Your Data Using DAX Technique in Power BI, Counting Customers Over Time Using DISTINCTCOUNT In Power BI, Calculate Rolling Totals Using DATESBETWEEN In Power BI, Implementing The Pareto 80/20 Principle in Your Power BI Analysis, Inventory Management Insights with Power BI: Comparing Stock To Sales, Evaluating Customer Margin Contraction Using Power BI and Power BI Analytics: Run Scenario Analysis On Average Order Size
Report Design and Visualizations
Covering: Report layout and formatting, Mobile reports, Native & Custom visuals, R & Python integration, Visual interactions, Report Themes
- Soheil Bakhshi (@biinsightnz) explains how to Empower Your Story Telling Data Visualisation in Power BI with Colour Coding
- Chris Webb (@cwebb_bi) writes about the Performance Overhead Of Using Power BI Custom Visuals
- On the Enterprise DNA blog, Sam McKay (@_EnterpriseDNA) writes about Data Visualization with Power BI: How To Add Commentary to Your Reports in a Dynamic Way and blogs about Finding Patterns In Your Data Using Internal Logic in Power BI
- David Eldersveld (@dataveld) provides a Data Color Reference for Power BI Themes as of December 2019 and provides A Primer for the Microsoft Power BI Color Picker
- Carl de Souza (@carldesouza) explains how to Create, Update and Share Power BI Themes through the Power BI Desktop UI
- On the Power BI Community blog, Amit Chandak (@amitchandak78) writes about HR Analytics - Active Employee, Hire and Termination trend
Data Exploration
Covering: Dashboards, Quick Insights, Q&A, Filters, Bookmarks, Drill-through
- The Azure updates team highlights that The new Power BI filter pane goes live in all reports
- David Eldersveld (@dataveld) writes about the Exclusive Power BI Quest II: The Quest for Power
- Phil Seamark (@PhilSeamark) describes how to Use Bookmarks to lazy-load Power BI Visuals
Deployment, Security and Operations
Covering: Apps and App Workspaces, Template Apps, Datasets, Gateways, Security, Sharing, Licences, REST APIs, PowerShell cmdlets, .NET SDK
- On the Power BI blog, Arthi Ramasubramanian Iyer (@ArthiRamasubra1) highlights that the On-premises data gateway December 2019 update is now available
- Brett Powell (@BrettPowell76) writes about the Power BI Activity Log Integration
- Parv Chana (@parvchana) explains how to Implement Row Level Security based on business rules in Power BI
- On the Microsoft BI Tools blog, Joost van Rossum (@ssisjoost) describes how to Schedule start & stop of Azure Analysis Services Az
- James Serra (@JamesSerra) discusses Azure Synapse Analytics & Power BI concurrency
- Carl de Souza (@carldesouza) describes How to Call the Power BI REST API from Postman
General
Covering: Public service announcements, Cross-topic feature summaries, Power BI Overviews, Upcoming webinars/events, Power BI Certifications
- On the RADACAD blog, Reza Rad (@Rad_Reza) provides the Power BI Helper December 2019 Feature Summary
- Imke Feldmann (@TheBIccountant) describes how to Tidy up Power BI models with the Power BI Cleaner tool
- On the Power BI blog, Sujata Narayana shares a Happy New Year from Power BI Desktop!
- Kasper de Jonge (@kjonge) talks about Power BI and the year 2019 in review
- Also on the RADACAD blog, Reza Rad (@Rad_Reza) shares a report What should be your Salary in 2020 if you work with Power BI?
- Jen Stirrup (@jenstirrup) blogs about Moving from Business Intelligence to Analytics
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