Power BI blogs from Wise Owl (page 1 of 2)

A summary of the changes for the September 2017 update to Power BI Desktop

Posted by Andy Brown on 12 September 2017

The September 2017 Power BI Desktop update introduces ribbon charts, a feature to explain the increase or decrease for any chart point and a drill-through feature allowing you to temporarily switch to a summary page.

Loading live web data into Excel without writing VBA code to scrape HTML

Posted by Andy Brown on 21 August 2017

Need to get tables of data into Excel from a website? There's no need to write lots of VBA code to scrape the site - just use Power Query to create a live link to the relevant page(s).

Changes made in August 2017 to Power BI Desktop

Posted by Andy Brown on 14 August 2017

A quiet month, after the frenetic activity of the July update, sees lots of small changes to matrices, tables and charts, but no single big update.

The July 2017 Power BI Desktop updates, including new table and matrix visuals

Posted by Andy Brown on 13 July 2017

This is a bigger update than usual, with the highlight undoubtedly being the official roll-out of the much-trailed new table and matrix visuals.

Adding row-level security to Power BI reports

Posted by Andy Brown on 08 July 2017

To prevent the wrong people seeing the wrong data in your reports, you can create row-level security (for example, so only the London regional manager can see London data). This blog explains how!

What Power BI gives you for free, and when and how to pay for extra services

Posted by Andy Brown on 08 July 2017

You can create and publish reports using Power BI Desktop and Power BI Service, both of which are free, but to share them you'll need to pay either for Power BI Pro or Power BI Premium. This blog explains when you'll need to start spending money, and what your options are.

How to share dashboards and reports in Power BI Service

Posted by Andy Brown on 04 July 2017

There are a fair few ways to let others see your masterworks: you can create an app, share a dashboard or create and share a report URL. This blog explains all of the ways that you can choose to share your Power BI reports and/or dashboards.

Creating app workspaces to share content with others in Power BI

Posted by Andy Brown on 03 July 2017

You can package reports, datasets and dashboards into app workspaces, and share these with other people in your organisation and beyond (these used to be called content packs). This blog explains how to do this, and why you'll need Power BI Pro to do so.

Creating gateways and refreshing reports in Power BI Service

Posted by Andy Brown on 03 July 2017

Naturally you want the reports that you publish to Power BI Service to be up to date, but the rules are fiendishly complex. This blog explains when and how to create the two types of gateway, and how to ensure your reports refresh.

Find the many ways to interact directly between Excel and Power BI Service

Posted by Andy Brown on 29 June 2017

You can pull Excel workbooks (or individual data ranges) into Power BI Service, or push them from Excel using a special add-in. This blog shows how to use both approaches, as well as the underwhelming Analyze in Excel feature.

Publishing reports, editing them in Power BI Service and using dashboards/tiles

Posted by Andy Brown on 29 June 2017

This blog shows how to publish reports that you've created in Power BI Desktop to Power BI Service. The blog also shows how you can create and edit reports online, how to create dashboards and add tiles, and how to get insights into your data.

Online Power BI Service training - publishing, sharing, refreshing data, etc

Posted by Andy Brown on 29 June 2017

When you've created a report in Power BI Desktop, what happens next? This comprehensive online Power BI training shows how to publish reports, edit them online, get insights into your data, link to Excel, share reports, apply security, control what happens when you refresh your reports and much more!

The most important changes included in the June 2017 Power BI Desktop update

Posted by Andy Brown on 26 June 2017

This update includes lots of nice features, such as line markers and the ability to change font typefaces, as well as many more changes!

Some ideas for how to map data in Power BI Desktop

Posted by Andy Brown on 08 June 2017

Anyone who has tried to get a meaningful non-US map out of Power BI Desktop will know that it's often not straightforward! This blog shows you how to overcome some of the issues, including geocoding data, getting latitude and longitude settings and changing cross filter settings in relationships.

A simple way to move a measure from one table to another

Posted by Andy Brown on 08 June 2017

You can't drag and drop measures between tables, but there is an easy way to move them in Power BI Desktop, as this blog shows

The most important changes made for the May 2017 Power BI Desktop update

Posted by Andy Brown on 17 May 2017

The May 2017 Power BI Update brings in a couple of nice new query transforms and some new chart features, but the big changes are still in preview mode.

A list of the updates made in the April 2017 update to Power BI Desktop

Posted by Andy Brown on 28 April 2017

This update includes some nice new features - for example, creating columns by example and changing chart axis titles. Read this blog for a full list!

The main new features in the March 2017 update of Power BI Desktop

Posted by Andy Brown on 24 March 2017

This is a small update, although the new matrix tool which is currently in preview mode will be a big change.

Combine all the files in a folder into a single table using Power Query

Posted by Andy Brown on 21 February 2017

Sure, you can use Power Query (or Get & Analyze, as it's now called) to load and transform data, but did you know you can loop over all of the files in a folder, combining their data into a single set of results? This blog explains how to do this for CSV files, and gives a lead for how to proceed with Excel ones.

Updates made in February 2017 to Power BI Desktop.

Posted by Andy Brown on 16 February 2017

A summary of the most important changes for Power BI Desktop users in the February 2017 update.