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Power BI blogs from Wise Owl (page 1 of 7)
Showing blogs 1-20 (out of 134)
Changes to Power BI in the February 2021 update
Posted by Andy Brown on 26 February 2021
After no update in January, February sees just a couple of small changes to Power BI, but there's a big logjam building up in preview.
Showing DAX Studio and Tabular Editor as external tools in Power BI
Posted by Andy Brown on 23 February 2021
Power BI automatically creates an External Tools ribbon when you install the Power BI, Tabular Editor and ALM Toolkit add-ins.
DAX.DO - a replacement for DAX Studio?
Posted by Andy Brown on 22 February 2021
The legendary Marco Russo has launched a new web-based DAX editor, but can it compete with or even replace DAX Studio?
Errors when you delete a primary key in Power BI
Posted by Andy Brown on 22 February 2021
Be careful of referencing measures in calculations when you have duplicate rows in a table! This blog explains why you might want to hang on to that unused primary key column.
How to use DAX to show for each row of a table its share of the maximum value
Posted by Andy Brown on 22 January 2021
How can you show each aggregate value in a group as a percentage of the highest aggregate value? This blog shows two ways to use DAX measures to solve this deceptively difficult problem.
Using a DAX query to show a table in Power BI
Posted by Andy Brown on 14 January 2021
Did you know that you can write an EVALUATE DAX query in software like DAX Studio and then run it from within Power BI to create a new table? You do now!
A new type of Power BI licence: Premium per user
Posted by Andy Brown on 05 January 2021
Microsoft have announced a new type of licence for Power BI called Premium Per User, which sits halfway between the current Pro and Premium licences.
What Power BI report server is, and how to create reports through it
Posted by Andy Brown on 23 December 2020
Puzzled as to why there are two near-identical versions of Power BI Desktop? Wondering if web portal is anything like Power BI report server? Confused as to what a paginated report is? This blog answers all these questions, and more!
With no big updates for December 2020, this blog looks at a preview feature
Posted by Andy Brown on 22 December 2020
There aren't any interesting or noteworthy new additions to Power BI this month, so this blog instead looks at an exciting new feature which has just appeared in preview: small multiples.
How to add cumulative totals to a visual using DAX measures in Power BI
Posted by Andy Brown on 02 December 2020
Inspired by a question from a course, in this blog Andy Brown builds up a measure to show cumulative totals for a calendar matrix, dotting his DAX i's and crossing his t's!
Playing the Harry Potter escape room game in Power BI
Posted by Andy Brown on 27 November 2020
This awesome game shows what's possible using bookmarks in Power BI (think of it as the sequel to Sam's 2019 Pin the Tail on Rudolf game).
The November 2020 update includes zoom sliders and a better apply filter button
Posted by Andy Brown on 27 November 2020
This month's update allows you to zoom in on a particular part of a chart using sliders, and also lets you save up filters to apply them all in one go.
Two easy ways to create themes in Power BI without needing to write JSON
Posted by Sam Lowrie on 30 October 2020
This blog show two ways in which you can create custom themes in Power BI without needing to learn how to write JSON: either use the built-in theme editor in Power BI, or use the theme generator from Power BI Tiips.
The Power BI app for HoloLens 2 allows you to juggle futuristic 3D reports
Posted by Andy Brown on 24 October 2020
What do you get when you combine the futuristic 3-dimensional mixed-reality environment created by the HoloLens 2 headset with Power BI reports? Read this blog to find out!
Three top YouTube channels for learning about DAX
Posted by Andy Brown on 24 October 2020
Following a question from a recent DAX course, here are 3 recommended YouTube tutorial channels to help you learn to master DAX.
Thie month's Power BI update includes a new logo, on-screen help and much more!
Posted by Andy Brown on 22 October 2020
There are a few good changes to Power BI Desktop this month, including a better icon and splash screen, on-canvas help (albeit pitched at too low a level) and the ability to let users tweak visuals you've published.
The 5 best things about working with Power Apps
Posted by Andy Brown on 26 September 2020
Power Apps is fun, as this blog tries to show. It consists of one owl's very personal take on the 5 best things about using the software.
A list of the 5 things one Wise Owl finds most annoying about Power Apps
Posted by Andy Brown on 26 September 2020
Any software has things you love, and things you ... don't love so much. This blog covers the latter set of things!
There are only two small changes in the September 2020 Power BI Desktop update
Posted by Andy Brown on 26 September 2020
You can now add total labels to a stacked or combination chart, and there are improvements to mobile layout, but in truth there's not much to get excited about for the September 2020 Power BI update.
How to save a Power Apps app to a local drive, and then open it
Posted by Andy Brown on 19 September 2020
This blog shows a simple way to export a Power Apps app without creating a solution. If you've got a fairly simple app without too many resources or data sources, it describes a much easier way to back up and restore apps than the standard export/import approach.
Hi Andy,
I'm a little confused about Power BI. Looking at your videos, it seems Power BI is a collective term for PowerPivot, Power Query, Power Map, etc.
However, googling Power BI, I see this, where the video shows a completely independent tool aimed at creating dashboards and reports, so can you please clarify what is Power BI? Thanks.
Microsoft haven't helped with their naming convention! They keep changing what Power BI refers to. Here's where we're at now ...
Power BI is a standalone desktop product, previously known as Power BI Desktop. You can use these to create reports, and publish them to the web.
PowerPivot runs within Excel, and allows you to link different data sources together to create a data model, and use this as a basis for pivot tables. PowerPivot used to be one of the Microsoft Power BI tools, but they seem to have quietly dropped this title.
So when Microsoft refer to Power BI, they now refer to creating reports in the standalone Power BI application, perhaps using Power BI Pro, and publishing these to the Internet.
Hope that's clear ... !