Wise Owl Training - Power BI blogs (page 1 of 6)

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.

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.

There are no significant changes to Power BI in the August 2020 update

Posted by Andy Brown on 22 August 2020

Notwithstanding an update blog from Microsoft, there are no interesting new Power BI Desktop features to report this month (in our humble opinon).

A correction - report tooltips can be any size in a Power BI report

Posted by Andy Brown on 08 August 2020

Sadly we do occasionally make mistakes in our training, but when this happens we always try to correct them. Here, we explain that Power BI report page tooltips can in fact be any size.

Happy 5th birthday to Power BI Desktop!

Posted by Andy Brown on 23 July 2020

Power BI Desktop went on general release on 24th July 2015. This short blog looks back nostalgically at milestones for both Power BI and Wise Owl.

Changes in the July 2020 update to Power BI Desktop

Posted by Andy Brown on 23 July 2020

This month's modest update allows you to use Excel financial functions in DAX, show a gradient legend and change your slicer header, among other minor changes.

Changes for the June 2020 update of Power BI Desktop

Posted by Andy Brown on 28 June 2020

This month's update doesn't include many changes - the biggest being probably the emergence of the hierarchical slicer from preview.

Writing an App in Power Apps

Posted by Sam Lowrie on 26 June 2020

Sam was tired of getting told off for crinkled or missing expense receipts. So he had a look at Power Apps and this is what he found…

What's new in the May 2020 Power BI update

Posted by Andy Brown on 24 May 2020

The May 2020 update is a good one! The decomposition tree is a seriously good new visual, drop shadows are a nice idea well-implemented, and there are lots of improvements to the way buttons look and work.

Our take on the April update to Power BI (announced on May 6th!)

Posted by Andy Brown on 09 May 2020

It was announced 6 days after the end of the month, but the April 2020 update to Power BI was worth waiting for - if only for the fact that you can now select visuals by clicking and dragging with the mouse. See our take on the new features in this update in the latest in our series of monthly update blogs.

Add the ComicGen custom visual to your Power BI reports to spice them up!

Posted by Andy Brown on 27 April 2020

The ComicGen custom visual allows you to show one of two characters (Dee or Dey) in a variety of poses, and with a range of emotions. Excitingly, the poses and emotions can depend on your data, making these the most human of KPIs. Find out more in this blog!

The mighty MapBox visual for Power BI

Posted by Marie Woltman on 27 April 2020

Marie Woltman is a Power BI guru whose maps we often reference on our courses. In this blog she explains why MapBox is her preferred mapping tool, and shows how to use it to create custom styles and layers.

The March 2020 update to Power BI desktop is a full one, as this blog shows!

Posted by Andy Brown on 14 March 2020

New goodies in this month's update include the roll-out (sort of) of the new ribbon, new actions for buttons, multi-column sorting and a second axis for line charts.

How to show rows with no corresponding data in a Power BI visual

Posted by Andy Brown on 12 March 2020

This modest blog explains how you can tell Power BI to show all of the members of a dimension table (even the ones which have no corresponding data).