Power BI Weekly Issue 99: 2nd March 2021
This week there's been an influx of announcemnets. Probably the most sought after being the Power BI February 2021 Feature Summary - the first Power BI feature summary this year! The updates include a new Search Bar in Desktop, new connectors, new visuals and many other updates. Announced separately was the General Availability (GA) of the Power BI connector for Databricks, which includes AAD auth and SSO in DirectQuery mode, and the public preview of Object-Level Security in Power BI - a great new feature to give you finer-grained control over your data models in Power BI. Also shared this week:
- Power BI Developer community February 2021 update
- On-premises data gateway February 2021 update is now available
- What's new with ArcGIS for Power BI
- Earlier versions of Analysis Services client libraries will retire on 30 June 2021
Elsewhere this week, Alberto Ferrari has written a comprehensive couple of blogs, helping us understand Circular Dependencies in DAX and how to avoid circular dependencies. Patrick Leblanc has spoken about Why Power BI loves a Star Schema, talking us through the guidance written on the Microsoft docs with some practical examples. Finally, Ruth Pozuelo Martinez has described a simple way to filter a table to show only most recent date by group in Power Query - a useful trick for slowly changing dimensions whereby only the latest record for each group is required.
Data Prep
Covering: Power Query (M), Dataflows, Data connectors, AI Insights
- On the Power BI blog, Kay Unkroth announces General Availability (GA) of the Power BI connector for Databricks
- On the RADACAD YouTube channel, Reza Rad (@Rad_Reza) describes Power BI Quick Tip: the Formula Bar in Power Query and shares the recording: Accessing API and web service data using Power Query - by Chris Webb
- On the Power BI Community blog, Steve de Peijper shares some Power M code to read Netatmo API data, on the Power BI community blog, describes how to Dynamically Detect Column Types with Power M and explains how to Generate sample data
- Krešimir Ledinski (@Exceed_ltd) describes How to process multiple folders with a single PowerQuery script
- On the MSSQLTips site, Kenneth A. Omorodion explains how to Create Calendar Table Using Power Query M Language
- Patrick Leblanc (@GuyInACube) shares the INSANE AMAZING Power Query tip to quickly change data sources in Power BI and Excel
- Gilbert Quevauvilliers (@GilbertQue) writes about Power Query – Continuous Week on Week Comparison
- Ruth Pozuelo Martinez (@CurbalEN) describes How to filter a table to show only most recent date by group in Power Query
- Jarret Moore walks through Addressing Irregular Data Formats - Problem Of The Week #6 (Power Query Solution)
- Andy Cutler (@MrAndyCutler) shares the Data Saturdays Pordenone Session: Harnessing Azure Synapse Analytics Serverless SQL Pools in Power BI Dataflows.
Data Modeling
Covering: DAX (Measures & Calculated Tables/Columns), Relationships, Analysis Services, Composite models
- On the SQLBI blog, Alberto Ferrari (@FerrariAlberto) describes Understanding Circular Dependencies in DAX and covers Avoiding circular dependency errors in DAX
- Ilya Rzhevskiy (@ilya_sb1) talks about Formatting Calculated Items of Calculated Groups in Tabular Editor
- Ruth Pozuelo Martinez (@CurbalEN) presents DAX Fridays! #199: Using curly brackets in DAX expressions?
- On the Power BI community blog, Steve de Peijper shares DAX & Power BI file to calculate and display the Area of a Polygon. and describes how to Use Dynamic SVG for Debugging or Teaching DAX
- On the Tessellation Tech blog, Spencer Baucke (@JSBaucke) walks through Creating a Measures Table in Power BI
- Bas Dohmen (@HowToPowerBI) discusses Variables in Power BI
- Reid Havens (@HavensBI) writes about an Easy Technique for Improving DAX Measure Testing and discusses Creating External Tools for Power BI with Marc Lelijveld
- Hima Bindu Marri (@sivahimabindu) explains how to Calculate Running Totals in Power BI using DAX
- Sam McKay (@_EnterpriseDNA) talks about This Year VS Last Year Time Comparisons & Differences In Power BI
- Mudassir Syed Rashid Ali explains how to Avoid Unpivoting Columns With Calculation Groups - DAX Tutorial
- On the CSG Pro blog, Mark Beedle (@markbdi) describes How to Build a Star Schema Data Model
- Patrick Leblanc (@GuyInACube) describes Why Power BI loves a Star Schema
- Sam Fischer provides Top 5 tips to reduce your Power BI data model size
- Parv Chana (@parvchana) writes about Comparing Selected Client With Other Top N Clients
- The Azure updates team highlights that Earlier versions of Analysis Services client libraries will retire on 30 June 2021
Report Authoring and Interactivity
Covering: Layout and formatting, Visualizations, Interactivity, Themes, Mobile reports, Dashboards
- On the Power BI blog, Will Thompson (@Will_MI77) blogs about What's new with ArcGIS for Power BI
- Parker Stevens (@PowerBIElite) describes how to Dynamically Highlight Line Chart Series in Power BI
- On the Power BI community blog, Amit Chandak (@amitchandak78) describes Conditional formatting the Pie Visual
- On the Data Bear blog, Mariska Oosthuizen covers Combo charts in Power BI
- David Eldersveld (@dataveld) talks about Looking Beyond Tables in Power BI
- On the Enhansoft blog, Leonard Suares (@SuaresLeonard) writes about Slicer and Filter Conflict
- On the Purple Frog Systems blog, Joe Billingham discusses Power BI Drill Through using Multiple Data Points
- On the SQL Shack blog, Ben Richardson discusses Working with Power BI report themes
- On the Excel Basement YouTube channel, Rahim Zulfiqar Ali (@rahimzulfiqar) explains how to Add Trend Line to Scatter Chart
- On the RADACAD YouTube channel, Reza Rad (@Rad_Reza) shares a Visualization Tip Change to Filter instead of highlight Control the Interaction in Power BI
- Dhruvin Shah (@DhruvinShah16) explains how to Apply Gridlines and Background Color in Small Multiples and talks about the Search bar in Power BI Desktop
- Sam McKay (@_EnterpriseDNA) describes Creating Multi-Threaded Visualizations Within Power BI Reports
- Mara Pereira (@maraft_per) explains how to Edit your data directly from Power BI using PowerApps
- Also on the Excel Basement YouTube channel, Rahim Zulfiqar Ali (@rahimzulfiqar) writes about Small Multiples in Power BI and talks about Clustering in Microsoft POWER BI - How To Cluster Your Data in Seconds
- On the Power BI Community blog, Janey Guo describes how to Use conditional formatting to mark the same aggregated value in the same row in the matrix
- Also on the Power BI community blog, Anand writes Easy As Insights — Part 1: Taming Power BI Maintenance — Insights Template
Deployment, Security and Operations
Covering: Workspaces and Apps, Template Apps, Deployment Pipelines, Gateways, Security, Sharing, Licences, Admin operations, Developer Tooling
- On the Power BI blog, Amit Shuster (@ShusterAmit) shares the Power BI Developer community February 2021 update
- Also on the Power BI blog, Ogbemi Ekwejunor-Etchie announces the public preview of Object-Level Security in Power BI
- Also on the Power BI blog, Arthi Ramasubramanian Iyer (@ArthiRamasubra1) highlights that the On-premises data gateway February 2021 update is now available
- Philipp Lenz (@lenz_philipp) explains how to Orchestrate schedule refreshes in Power BI and describes how to Run an Azure Automation runbook with PowerShell to get data from the Power BI REST API
- Brett Powell (@BrettPowell76) writes Common Power BI Admin Scripts Part 1
- Just Blindbæk (@justblindbaek) discusses Extracting Power BI metadata with Data Factory (part 1)
- Dhruvin Shah (@DhruvinShah16) describes how to Automatically Send Power BI Report as PDF or PPT format in Email
- On the Power BI community blog, Nithya Mallapu writes about Access Database Refresh fails with Data source Undefined Error in Power BI Service and discusses OLE DB or ODBC error while connecting to Amazon Athena from Power BI Desktop using ODBC connector
- On the CSG Pro blog, Rachel Dyer (@rachelrdyer) talks about Thinking Enterprise and Adoption with Power BI
- Marcus Wegener (@PowerBIler) writes about Die Größe der Power BI-Vorlagen Datei optimieren [German]
General
Covering: Cross-topic announcements & feature summaries, Whitepapers, Community events, Learning Resources & Certifications, Podcasts, Sample reports, End-to-end walkthroughs
- On the Power BI blog, Jeroen ter Heerdt (@jeroenterheerdt) shares the Power BI February 2021 Feature Summary
- On the BIFocal podcast, John White and Jason Himmelstein (@bifocalshow) share Episode 180 - Interview with Melissa Coates and share Episode 181 - Power BI February 2021 Feature Summary
- The Knee-Deep in Tech team (@KneeDeepinTech) share Podcast episode 143
- On the Power BI community blog, Priscilla Camp (@ITDataDiva) blogs about DA-100: Analyzing Data with Microsoft Power BI – Tips to help you succeed
- On the Excel Basement YouTube channel, Rahim Zulfiqar Ali (@rahimzulfiqar) explains How to Prepare and Pass DA-100 Exam
- Adam Saxton and Patrick Leblanc (@GuyInACube) present Power BI tips from the Pros – LIVE (Feb 27, 2021)
- Kasper de Jonge (@kjonge) shares Kasper On BI on developing Power BI & life of a Microsoft PM with Kim Manis
- Jayant Kumar Kodwani writes about Analyzing and Visualizing Sentiments from Unstructured data
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