Power BI in Practice Blog Posts

By Stuart Box

Power BI in Practice Power BI Resources 1st February 2021

Power BI Composite models – what’s the big deal ?

In December 2020, Microsoft launched a preview feature in Power BI they called "DirectQuery for Power BI datasets and Analysis Services". Most of the Power BI community had heard of this as "composite models" and were looking forward to getting it. Marco Russo, co-author of "The Definitive Guide to DAX" called it "The holy grail of business intelligence for 20 years. The ultimate feature of semantic models." Over at Power BI tips they were equally effusive saying "Microsoft has done… Read More

By Alison Box

DAX Power BI in Practice 11th January 2021

DAX “Filter Context” Explained

Do your DAX measures return interesting values but not the numbers you want? If the answer is yes, and it happens to all of us, then the problem probably lies with the filter context in which the measures have been calculated and the fact that you haven't correctly identified them. When a DAX measure is calculated in the "Values" bucket of a Power BI visual, whether it's a column chart, pie chart, table , matrix or indeed any other visual,… Read More

By Stuart Box

DAX Power BI in Practice 21st December 2020

Join our mailing list to get “The Concise Guide to DAX” pdf

"Why does the world need another DAX book ?" was my first question to Alison when she told me she'd written guide to the DAX language in Power BI. "Well, I've written the guide that I wish had been around when I was first learning DAX, aimed at Excel users of varying levels of ability". Was her reply. "You see many Excel users would struggle to construct an "IF" formula, let alone know what VLOOKUP stands for. These are often… Read More

By Alison Box

Power BI in Practice 26th November 2020

“Strictly Come Dancing” Telling the Story Behind the Numbers with Power BI

Back in March this year, I did think I'd be relieved of my duty of updating the Strictly Come Dancing Power BI Report to reflect another series. To be quite honest, I was hoping this would be the case. I first created the Report for Series 16, updated it for Series 17 but felt that perhaps the Report had now served its time. But who would've thought that "Strictly" would survive the Pandemic! So of course, I had no option… Read More

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By Alison Box

DAX Power BI in Practice 12th November 2020
Burningsuit bottle on a beach image

How DAX Treats Nulls & Zeros

In DAX there is a special way to identify null or empty values and that's by using a value called "blank". In order to return blank values, we can use the BLANK() function e.g. 10 Percent = IF ( Winesales[CASES SOLD] > 100, Winesales[CASES SOLD] * 0.1, BLANK () ) When constructing DAX expressions using IF, if you want to return BLANK() on the "Value if false" argument, you can just close off on the bracket because BLANK() is the… Read More

By Alison Box

Power BI in Practice 26th October 2020
The Matrix

The 8th Secret of the Matrix Visual: Controlling Calculations and Labels on Subtotals

Since I wrote my blog on The 7 Secrets of the Matrix Visual in April 2019, the world has changed (in so many ways) and things have moved on with the Matrix Visual. With this in mind, I thought it was time for an update to that article. I've been wanting to do this for some time because I know from the popularity of my blog that lots of you are particularly excited by the Matrix (the visual that is,… Read More

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By Alison Box

Power BI in Practice 21st July 2020
An example of a really bad Pie Chart

7 Secrets of the Pie Chart

I suppose I shouldn't really be writing this blog because the question has to be asked, why are you using a pie chart? But if you really must, at the very least make your pie charts unambiguous and preferably, interesting. Let's not have anything anymore that looks like this:- An example of a really bad pie chart! So I'm hoping that by revealing my seven secrets below, you'll either never use a pie chart again or at least you'll produce… Read More

By Stuart Box

Power BI in Practice Power BI Premium 14th July 2020

Sentiment Analysis in Power BI, analyse text reviews and a Premium tip.

Power BI is great at analysing numeric data. Numbers like values, costs, stock holdings and averages can all be worked up into informative charts and visualisations. But what if your data isn't like that? What if your data is more textual, like product reviews, staff evaluations or survey results? How can you visualise that data with Power BI ? This post explains how you can work with that sort of data in Power BI using the AI Insights in Power… Read More

By Alison Box

Power BI in Practice 10th July 2020
7 Secrets of the Power BI Line Chart

7 Secrets of the Line Chart

The line chart is the go-to chart type to visualise data over time. Typically, this visual is used to analyse your data by year, quarter, month or by day. It should be an easy thing to do to create a line chart that plots your data in the way you want. But beware, there are secrets lurking behind the benign line chart! Here are my top seven. Attend one of our Power BI training courses #1 There Are Two Different… Read More

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