The Algebra Teacher Powers to B.I.

In this second installment, we will start to build our app.   Now, I will not just guide you click by click of building the app, but more importantly, I will do my best to explain how all the coding and features are working in the background so you can take this knowledge to design an app specific to your needs.   Below is a list of items we will be covering: 1.        Setting colors for text, backgrounds, and images 2.        Setting up variables do to the heavy lifting for us throughout our whole process 3.        Showcase an external website https://imagecolorpicker.com/en/   that helps with color palettes that are aesthetically pleasing to your end-user 4.        Insert images, shapes, and text 5.        Insert galleries that reference our created data sources from our first video The goal of these nex...

As I write today’s blog, I am just a few hours shy of celebrating with friends and family (socially distanced of course) my son’s three-year-old birthday.   He officially turns three on Monday and I’m excited to have the day off.   Whoa!   Too much sharing information?   Well, this is my blog so I thought I would share how proud I am to be a dad.   It also reminds me of how much Jack teaches me daily.   Once I think I have him figured out he flips the script on me and amazes me with a new skill.   I never thought I would be able to play with Peppa the Pig for 2 hours straight, but alas, I experienced that this morning! More importantly, it seemed like ages ago when I was wondering if he would ever sit for more than 5 minutes with one activity.   As I am always learning from my son, I also find myself constantly having to learn the new features of Power BI with their monthly updates.   And that is what is great about Microsoft's Power BI - - i...

I started my journey of switching careers from a math educator of 16 years over to becoming a technology trainer focused on Power BI.   A few months in, I was given the opportunity to also learn how to train clients on Power Apps.   The first thing I thought was,   “What in the world is a Power App?   Is that like an app on my iPhone?”   How in the heck was I going to learn how to code and make an app?   Well, thanks to the company I work for I had so many resources to learn from and hit the ground running.   I’m a month or so into learning the basics and some more advanced functions of making a Power App.     After learning some of the basics of what a Power App can do, I immediately thought, “Gosh, I wish I knew this before now!”  This revolutionary program would solve a critical hurdle at my former school.   We had the problem of not being able to locate a student during lunch.  Wait…. that didn’t sound right! I swear...

To slice or to bookmark? Oh, the quandaries of data analysis.  Slicers are cool, but bookmarks might be better- at least in some instances.   Slicers are excellent when you want to dissect your data down to finer detail.   Are slicers complicated to use?   Not really.   Can we give our end users a more web-like feel using bookmarks?   You bet! In this demo , I am going to show you how we can create bookmarks using the selection, filter, and bookmarks pane.   We will not have a slicer visible to our end-user, but the images or buttons we use for our bookmarks will give our end-user the same desired results with a more web-like feel. The most important thing I have found when making bookmarks is to rename all of your images, visuals, and any other object you add to a report page in the selection pane.   This will help avoid confusion throughout the bookmaking process.