The Algebra Teacher Powers to B.I.

    Have you used the personalize visuals feature yet in Power BI?   If not, then you could be missing out.   The Personalize Visuals feature allows anyone you are sharing your with after published to the Power BI service to make changes to your visuals.   Have no fear though!   When they change the visuals it will not override your original report.   This feature is great if you have ever had to respond to a request from your shared users that they would like the report to be modified to their liking.   With this simple feature, the end-user can change the visualization type, change what measures or fields that are brought into the visual, and then simply make a personal bookmark after they make the changes.   Again, this will not change the initial report you published and that others have access to.   This will only make a new view of the report for the user who personalized the visual.   If you decide to use this feature...

  Power BI came out with a new preview feature in the February 2021 version of the Power BI Desktop known as small multiples.   To use this feature as of the May 2021 release, you need to turn on this feature in your preview features.   The small multiples feature allows you to take a bar/column, line, area, or combo chart visual and essentially duplicate the visuals on the page with each one being uniquely filtered down by a specific dimension.   For example, you could split a column chart that displays your sales by country into unique duplicates that report for each year.   To create the small multiples you will drag the field that you want to dissect your original visual by into the Small Multiples field in your visualization pane.   After seeing the new result, if you want to have even more control of how the visual is display check out the Small Multiple Title section and Grid Layout section in the formatting area of the visualizations pane. ...

In the Power BI Desktop, you are allowed only 1 active relationship between tables in your data model.  Many times this is all that is needed.   There are, however, scenarios where this becomes a huge reporting issue.   For example, what if you have a table of sales where one column contains the date a sale occurs and another column that records the date the money from the sale is collected.   Well, depending upon which relationship is active with your Date table in your model the sum of your sales will either be based on the sale date or the money collected date.   If you need to see both values though this is where you need to make a separate measure using the function USERELATIONSHIP paired with the function CALCULATE.   The USERELATIONSHIP function will allow you to access inactive relationships in your data model.     Another scenario, where I have seen this be an issue, is when users need to see their sales based on the city where t...

 Slicers are great in Power BI reports because they allow for the end-users to see the data filtered in any way they see fit..  What becomes a nuisance, however, is when the end-user wants to see the report page back to its unfiltered state.  For each slicer selection that becomes a click in order to reset the filter. In this video, I show how to quickly set up a bookmark page and insert a shape onto your report to activate your bookmark which will reset your filters with one single click.  There are other ways to accomplish this on the Power BI service, but if you have an inexperienced user they may not know where to go to reset the page to its default view.  With the addition of a button or shape and utilizing the bookmark, there is no way they can't figure it out now.

  Another month and another Power BI Desktop update.   What does April 2021 have in store? Keep reading.   In the April 2021 edition, there are quite a few features I want to highlight for you.   The most exciting feature in my opinion is the new custom visual dedicated to Power Automate.   With this visual, you can kick off a Power Automate with a click of a button directly from your report page.   There are a few templates already in the visual, but Microsoft plans on releasing many more shortly.   You can also create a custom flow and not start with a template.   The Small Multiples preview feature has some updates when it comes to the padding of the visual as well as the ability to access Small Multiples in the combo chart visuals.   The shapes feature has had a complete overhaul.   Instead of the standard 5 shapes that were available in the Power BI Desktop previously, with this release, there are now 21 shapes to choose...

  Organization for me is always a priority.   When things are not in the right place and I can’t find something quickly I get frustrated.   This is not only in my daily home life when trying to find a tiny car that my son remembers from 2 weeks ago and he now has to have to continue playing, but also in my Power BI report building.   When building DAX measures on a report, some users think the measure has to be on the table they are referencing.   The fact of the matter is a DAX measure can be on any table no matter the reference and it will still run properly.   Due to this, I like to put all of my measures on a dedicated table so they are easy to find for me and my end users.   This table is not a data source table, but one I create within the report itself.   You might be asking will this extra table affect the performance of my report or the data refresh.   It will not!   Let me walk you through the process of how easy it easy to...

  The IF function in DAX is a very popular logical function.  It will perform a logical check on a value expression and produce a value of True or False.  Based on the resulting True or False you can then decide what value you want to be reported.  Your value can be a hardcoded string value or some other calculation.  When you only have two outcomes to choose from the IF statement is very straightforward.  But what if you have 3 or more outcomes.  Then you will need to use more than one IF statement.  Instead of reporting a value or calculation for your first false result, you will code in another IF statement to run.  The more outcomes you need the more IF statements you will use.  This can be tiring to code and hard to read.  Here is where the SWITCH function comes into play.   The SWITCH function allows for an easier-to-read function compared to nested IF statements. The SWITCH function can always be used in place of the IF ...