It's traditional!, just like Christmas, Snow, Turkey and new Covid regulations December brings the final of the BBC's "Strictly Come Dancing"! We've been crunching the numbers again and have prepared the data on 19 Series, 265 Competitors and over 2,000 dances all analysed for your delight. So, is this season "the best ever" ?, are there more 10's and 40's than before ? Is Craig still the lowest scoring Judge ? All these questions and more are answered in this… Read More
THE BURNINGSUIT BLOG
By Alan Harman-Box
Power BI in Practice PowerQuery 29th September 2021
I have the Power(query): Functions
In the last episode of I Have the Power, we looked at calling REST APIs via Custom Columns using M's Web.Contents function. Today, we're going to look at creating Functions in Power Query. Functionalisation As a reminder, we have so far translated text by calling Google's translation API via a Custom Column. However, we might find that we have many queries in our dataset that need some kind of translation; perhaps one query that is all in one language and… Read More
By Alan Harman-Box
Power BI in Practice PowerQuery 27th September 2021I have the Power(query): using Power Query to call REST APIs
Welcome to "I Have the Power(query)" - a new intermittent series here on the Burningsuit blog, delving into some of the more advanced use cases of Power Query, the oft-overlooked and sometimes maligned ETL engine for Power BI. Today, we're looking at APIs. [latestCourse] There are a whole host of web services available that can do all sorts of things with your data; from predicting the age, gender, or nationality of someone from their name (agify.io, nationalize.io, genderize.io), to getting… Read More
By Alison Box
DAX Power BI in Practice 24th August 2021
Context Transition: Where the Row Context Becomes a Filter Context
"Nothing in life that's worth anything is easy." Barack Obama. And we could also say that nothing in DAX that's worth anything is easy! Certainly the concept of context transition is one of the more challenging concepts to get to grips with in DAX. It can't be explained in a few short paragraphs so I apologise in advance for this rather long blog but please stick with it and read on because once you understand this concept, a whole range… Read More
By Alison Box
Charticulator Power BI in Practice 16th August 2021
Charticulator In Power BI #14 – The Line Plot Segment
The Line Plot Segment. When most of us think of a chart or graph, we're usually thinking in terms of a "cartesian" chart where data is plotted on both the X and Y axis. We created cartesian charts when we used the 2D plot segment that we explored in my earlier posts; #5 and #6. However, with Charticulator, you always need to think "outside the box", to think laterally because there is another approach to plotting data and that is… Read More
By Alison Box
Charticulator Power BI in Practice 9th August 2021Charticulator In Power BI #13 – Polar Scaffolds. Pies, Peacocks & Nightingales
Polar Scaffolds. Pies, Peacocks & Nightingales. In my last post, I took you through using Horizontal and Vertical Line Scaffolds. It was there that I think we concluded we'd probably rather use sub-layouts, not Scaffolds to lay out our charts horizontally or vertically, mainly because sub-layouts give us a lot more design choices. However, there is another type of Scaffold for which hopefully you will find a plethora of uses. If you want to design circular chart types such as… Read More
By Burningsuit
Learning Training 5th August 2021
In-Room Power BI Training Is Back
After a turbulent time for us all, we can now see the light at the end of the tunnel – and can greet the return of in-room, face-to-face training. Throughout the pandemic, Burningsuit has continued training online, running over seventy online Power BI courses which have been very well received. However, as trainers, we have been looking forward to returning to training face-to-face. And so, we’re delighted to share that we are once again offering public Power BI course in… Read More
By Alison Box
Charticulator Power BI in Practice 23rd July 2021Charticulator in Power BI #12 – Horizontal Line & Vertical Line Scaffolds
Horizontal Line & Vertical Line Scaffolds Before we delve into the rather obscure world of Scaffolds, let's remind ourselves of what we know so far about how Charticulator lays out a chart. If you've read my blog post "Charticulator Explained #5" on Plot Segment Layouts you will know that there are two key drivers in the layout of the chart; fields bound to the axes and sub-layouts. So for instance, we will get different layouts if we bind the Year… Read More
By Alison Box
Charticulator Power BI in Practice 15th July 2021Charticulator in Power BI #11 – Guides, Guide Coordinators & Anchoring
Guides, Guide Coordinators & Anchoring. Have you been wondering why elements of your Charticulator chart won't stay where you put them? If the answer to this is "yes" then you need to read this post. You see, what you probably haven't understood is that for anything placed on the canvas or in the glyph pane to stop wandering around, they must be anchored to a guide. This can be one of the default guides or it can be a guide… Read More
By Alison Box
Charticulator Power BI in Practice 14th July 2021Charticulator In Power BI #10
Scales & Legends. The problem with attempting to explain how Charticulator works is that there's a frustrating "chicken and egg" scenario. To understand topic "A", you need to know about topic "B" but to understand topic "B", you need to know about topic "A". So in other words, you need to already have some knowledge of each topic before we can attempt to explain more. This is why in this post, we're going to re-visit ground some of which we've… Read More
