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Wise Owl Blogs - Home (page 1 of 20)
Showing blogs 1-20 (out of 399)
Changes introduced in the June 2019 Power BI update
Posted by Andy Brown on 14 June 2019
Although there aren't many changes this month, the ones that there are of unusually high quality. The new look to Power BI is welcome (even if it does mean we have to rewrite all of our courseware), and we're looking forward to using the new conditional formatting options and visual header tooltips.
Why the Excel range name conflict dialog box appears, and how to avoid looping
Posted by Andy Brown on 14 June 2019
When you're copying worksheets containing range names, Excel can detect conflicts and take you into a seemingly endless loop of Yes/No dialog boxes. This blog explains why this happens, and how to get out of the loop!
A table-valued function in SQL to split a comma-delimited list
Posted by Andy Brown on 11 June 2019
If you're creating Reporting Services reports using multivalue parameters and stored procedures, you'll find this function to split a list of values into a single-table column useful.
New features introduced in the May 2019 update of Power BI
Posted by Andy Brown on 20 May 2019
There's not much new in this month's update. The Performance Analyzer is a great idea, for working out which bits of your report are running slowly, but all of the other changes are minor (as you'll see if you read this blog!).
Creating complex custom date periods in calendar tables using calculated columns
Posted by Sam Lowrie on 17 May 2019
This blog shows how to create custom date periods within a date table for 28 day cycles, but the principles shown could be applied to create any custom date periods.
Creating a calendar or date table in Power BI using built-in calendar functions
Posted by Sam Lowrie on 17 May 2019
Learn how to create a basic date table in Power BI, using either the CALENDAR or CALENDARAUTO functions, and also learn how to then add custom columns of your own.
Modelling a fixed or variable custom financial year in Power BI
Posted by Sam Lowrie on 17 May 2019
Whether your financial year ends on a fixed date every year or on the first Monday in June, this blog will show you how to incorporate it into your calendar table.
Wise Owl have found one SQL structure which slows down code more than any other
Posted by Andy Brown on 13 May 2019
If your stored procedures or SQL queries are running slowly, don't bother looking at correlated subqueries, cursors, functions or any of the other usual culprits. There's one SQL syntax which Wise Owl have found to be an order of magnitude worse than any other, as this blog shows.
Changes made to the main Office applications from Office 2016 up to May 2019
Posted by Andy Brown on 10 May 2019
To prepare the way for the start of a monthly Office update on this website, this long blog lists the changes made to Access, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint and Word between the release of Office 2016 and May 2019.
A new booking system for Wise Owl public courses!
Posted by Andy Brown on 09 May 2019
We've introduced a new online booking system for our public course places, although only 50% of people (chosen at random) will see it. This blog explains the reasoning behind the new system, and the benefits it offers.
The five biggest OOH! moments on an Excel training course.
Posted by Andy Brown on 09 May 2019
All trainers live for that moment when someone's face lights up, as they learn something new which will change their working life for the better. This blog lists the 5 biggest such OOH moments from our Excel training courses. How many of these tips do you know?
A summary of the main new features in Visual Studio 2019 for BI developers
Posted by Andy Brown on 08 May 2019
Visual Studio 2019 has a different look (particularly for creating new projects), but Wise Owl can't see any compelling reason to upgrade.
Changes that BI developers can expect from SQL Server 2019
Posted by Andy Brown on 08 May 2019
SQL Server 2019 is not out yet (it's scheduled for release in the second half of 2019), but this blog shows what changes you can expect to see.
Mapping stored procedure parameters to SSRS parameters
Posted by Andy Brown on 02 May 2019
This blog explains why you might want to use the PARAMETERS tab in the Dataset Properties dialog box in SSRS.
The April 2019 update to Power BI has many good features, as this blog explains
Posted by Andy Brown on 18 April 2019
The April 2019 update to Power BI introduces a new concept: the ability to make the value of a property dynamic. Other welcome new changes include M Intellisense, data profiling in query editor and cross-report drill-down.
A new acronym for the order of SQL keywords
Posted by Andy Brown on 29 March 2019
Someone has finally won our competition to think of a better acronym for the order of keywords in SQL, we're pleased to announce.
The March 2019 update of Power BI allows you to create multiple table layouts
Posted by Andy Brown on 21 March 2019
In addition to all of the wonderful new features in the March 2019 Power BI update that I blogged about yesterday, you can also create multiple database relationship diagrams (or layouts).
Read about the many new features introduced in the March 2019 update
Posted by Andy Brown on 20 March 2019
This is the biggest single update for some time, introducing the new modelling view, tooltip styling, single-select slicers and much more besides.
Getting Started with Power BI Report Server
Posted by Andrew Gould on 19 March 2019
Power BI encourages you to publish reports to an online service so that you can share your beautiful reports with the world. If you'd rather keep them a secret you can use Power BI Report Server to deploy your reports to an on-premises server, as this blog series shows you.
The mysteries of context transition explained
Posted by Sam Lowrie on 25 February 2019
Context transition happens when a DAX function creates filter context within row context, or vice versa. This blog explains what context transition is, and shows which DAX functions make use of it.