Replacing relationships with join functions in DAX - SQLBI
This article describes how to join tables in DAX when there are no relationships in the data model. The data lineage plays an essential role in this scenari
Power BI
DAX
Why you should consider Power BI Cleaner – Joyful Craftsmen
Using join functions in DAX - SQLBI
This article describes the practical uses of NATURALLEFTOUTERJOIN and NATURALINNERJOIN in DAX. These functions are not commonly used in DAX because they do
Power BI implementation planning: BI strategic planning - Power BI
This article helps you to define your business intelligence goals and priorities through strategic planning.
Conduct independent research: The working team performs research into the business context and existing BI solutions or initiatives.
To define an effective BI strategy, the working team must understand the business goals. By understanding the business goals, the working team has the right business context to describe why people use data and BI tools, and comprehension of their desired outcomes
You should identify the existing BI initiatives and solutions with respect to the business processes they support and objectives they address. These solutions help illustrate what business users do today to address their data needs, so that you can assess whether it's effective.
Taken together, research on the business context and existing BI initiatives and solutions describe the current state of BI adoption and implementation. The working team verifies this research in workshops when capturing stakeholder input.
This article uses the term workshops to describe interactive meetings with key stakeholders. The objective of the workshops is to gather input so you can accurately describe and understand the objectives and data needs.
The following diagram depicts the process to identify and inform the right key stakeholders about the BI strategy initiative.
For each functional area, identify two to three candidate key stakeholder representatives.
hen you initially request key stakeholder participation, ensure that you:
Obtain approval from their manager, as appropriate.
Explain the scope of the initiative, and its objectives, timelines, and deliverables.
Describe specifically why they've been asked to participate and what the desired outcomes are.
Outline the necessary time commitment and participation that you need from them.
Communicate clearly and concisely.
key stakeholders who have sufficient knowledge and credibility to represent their business area.
Identifying the right stakeholders is essential in order to run successful workshops and gain an accurate understanding of the business areas in scope.
Often, top-down BI initiatives limit stakeholders to executives and decision makers. While these individuals have a significant role to play (to obtain sufficient executive buy-in and strategic alignment), they aren't necessarily the right stakeholders. In this scenario, you risk defining a strategy isolated from the reality experienced by business users. This misalignment can result in strategies and solutions that don't meet the needs of day-to-day users, and consequentially they aren't used.
big
The working team investigates strategically important BI solutions to understand how the organization currently addresses business data needs. Specifically, the working team identifies who the business users are, how they use the solutions. The working team also documents key data questions or problems that these solutions address, and also potential flaws, opportunities, and inefficiencies.
The working team identifies strategically important KPIs and master data. These KPIs and master data are critical to enabling the business to achieve their business objectives.
Agree on communication values: Encourage all working team members to engage with concise, clear, and consistent communication throughout the initiative.
Business goals.
Business objectives to make progress towards their goals.
Business processes and initiatives to achieve their objectives.
Business data needs to support the processes and initiatives.
BI tools and solutions that people use to address their business data needs.
How people use the tools and solutions, and any challenges that prevent them from using the tools and solutions effectively.
To help identify priorities, the working team conducts two types of assessment: a data culture assessment and a technical assessment.
Power BI December 2023 Feature Summary
Welcome to the Power BI December 2023 update. We’ve got a lot of great features this month. Here are some key highlights:
Learn how you can skill up and get ready for the upcoming Fabric Analytics Engineer certification with the Cloud Skills Challenge.
Join us at the first annual Microsoft Fabric Community Conference (Mar 26-28 2024) 
We’ve made lots of improvement for reporting, for example there are many more options for styling your column and bar charts.
If you are a fan of our PowerPoint add-in, you’ll be happy to know we’ve made it easier to find and insert Power BI content into your PowerPoint presentations. Developers can now handle with git merge conflicts directly in the workspace.
DAX query view introduces new INFO DAX functions
DAX query view, released in public preview last month, in the December 2023 Power BI Desktop release has exciting updates including the new INFO DAX functions and improvements to the Update model CodeLens.
Semantic Link: Data validation using Great Expectations | Microsoft Fabric Blog | Microsoft Fabric
Great Expectations Open Source(GX OSS) is a popular Python library that provides a framework for describing and validating the acceptable state of data. It helps data engineers and data scientists ensure that their data meets specific quality standards before using it for analysis, machine learning, or other data-driven tasks. With the recent integration of Microsoft …
<p class="link-more"><a href="https://blog.fabric.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/semantic-link-data-validation-using-great-expectations/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> &#8220;Semantic Link: Data validation using Great Expectations&#8221;</span></a>
Semantic link is a feature in Microsoft Fabric that establishes a connection between semantic models (aka Power BI datasets) and Synapse Data Science.
Ensuring data quality in the semantic model, also known as the diamond layer
high-quality data assets in the semantic model lead to more accurate and reliable insig
the diamond layer, is crucial for organizations to make informed decisions based on accu
Fabric
Incremental refresh on Delta tables in Power BI
Partition your Delta tables to get good performance for incremental refresh in Power BI
Power QueryMicrosoft Fabric adoption roadmap: Business alignment - Power BI
Learn about the importance of business alignment with organizational goals.
With effective business alignment, the data culture and data strategy enable business users to achieve their business objectives.
strategic importance of data and analytics in achieving measurable progress toward business goals.
engaged executive sponsor who provides
Structured and consistent processes to validate, deploy, and support solutions.
regularly update existing solutions
Effective and consistent
Plan regular alignment meetings
concise communication and documentation that's formatted and well organized.
visible roadmap
iteratively define high-level desired outcomes
backlog of solutions that help you to achieve
Design, develop, test, and deploy solutions
organize short, quarterly executive feedback sessions
promptly identify any potential changes in the business strategy
Assign a responsible team: A working team reviews feedback and organizes re-alignment sessions
Create and support a feedback process
Measure the success of business alignment
you should understand that solutions and initiatives will change over time.
shared awareness
effectively balances
Productive and solution-oriented
clear and unified understanding
Implement medallion lakehouse architecture in Microsoft Fabric - Microsoft Fabric
Learn how you can implement a lakehouse in Microsoft Fabric.
What’s new: Power Apps November 2023 Feature Update
Welcome to the Power Apps monthly feature update! We will use this blog to share a summary of product, community, and learning updates from throughout the month so you can access it in one easy place. We&#8217;ve got a great set of updates across for our makers, security and monitor improvements, and updates to model driven apps for end users.
PowerApps
Anti joins and query folding in Power Query in Excel and Power BI
Make anti joins that fold in Power Query by doing left outer joins instead
Fabric Python Helper Functions
Since Fabric went GA I’ve moved the small amount of stuff that we had running in Azure Synapse into Fabric notebooks. (Sadly a large amount of our data estate is still sat on prem with SSIS&#…
Connect to Fabric Lakehouses & Warehouses from Python code
In this post, I will show you how to connect to your Microsoft Fabric Lakehouses and Warehouses from Python.
Quick Tips: Find Power BI Desktop Local Port Number with Model Explorer - BI Insight
In March 2018, I wrote a blogpost called Four Different Ways to Find Your Power BI Desktop Local Port Number. Last week, Zoe Doughlas from Microsoft left a comment reminding me of a fifth method to get the port which encouraged me to write this quick tip. Thanks to Zoe! As the name suggests, the … Continue reading Quick Tips: Find Power BI Desktop Local Port Number with Model Explorer
Read data from Delta Lake tables with the DeltaLake.Table M function | Microsoft Fabric Blog | Microsoft Fabric
We’re happy to announce a new function in Power Query’s M language for reading data from Delta Lake tables: the DeltaLake.Table function. This function is now available in Power Query in Power BI Desktop and in Dataflows Gen1 and Gen2 and replaces the need to use community-developed solutions like this one by Gerhard Brueckl. Let’s &hellip;
<p class="link-more"><a href="https://blog.fabric.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/read-data-from-delta-lake-tables-with-the-deltalake-table-m-function/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> &#8220;Read data from Delta Lake tables with the DeltaLake.Table M function&#8221;</span></a>
Create charts using Vega in Microsoft Fabric Notebook - Phil Seamark on DAX
I recently needed to generate a quick visual inside a Microsoft Fabric notebook. After a little internet searching, I found there are many good quality charting libraries in Python, however it was going to take too long to figure out how to create a very specific type of chart. This is where Vega came to … Continue reading Create charts using Vega in Microsoft Fabric Notebook
Preparing a data model for Sankey Charts in Power BI - SQLBI
This article describes how to correctly shape a data model and prepare data to use a Sankey Chart as a funnel, considering events related to a customer (con
Visualize Power BI Refresh using Semantic-link - Phil Seamark on DAX
A few blogs back I shared a technique using Power BI Profiler (or VS Code) to run and capture a trace over a refresh of a Power BI semantic model (the object formally known as a dataset). I’ve since received a lot of positive feedback from people saying how useful it was to visualize each … Continue reading Visualize Power BI Refresh using Semantic-link
Microsoft Fabric: Generating Reports with Copilot - BI Insight
In Nov 2023, Microsoft announced Microsoft Fabric’s general availability and Public Preview of Copilot in Microsoft Fabric. In a previous post, I explained what Copilot means to Power BI developers, which is valid for other Fabric developers such as data engineers and data scientists as Copilot for Fabric helps with those experiences as well. But … Continue reading Microsoft Fabric: Generating Reports with Copilot
Deep dive into DAX query view and writing DAX queries
In November 2023 release we added a new fourth view in public preview to Power BI Desktop, the DAX query view! The DAX query view gives you the ability to write, edit, and see the results of Data Analysis Expressions or DAX queries on your semantic model. Finally, you can now take advantage of the existing DAX queries syntax while working with your semantic model without leaving Power BI Desktop.
Integrate your SAP data into Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Fabric Blog | Microsoft Fabric
SAP systems hold some of the most valuable data of many enterprises, large or small. Whether it is operational data in ERP systems like SAP ECC or SAP S/4HANA, data from SAP’s data warehouse suite of products like SAP BW or SAP Datasphere, or data from SAP’s SaaS solutions – a comprehensive view on the &hellip;
<p class="link-more"><a href="https://blog.fabric.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/integrate-your-sap-data-into-microsoft-fabric/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> &#8220;Integrate your SAP data into Microsoft Fabric&#8221;</span></a>
Microsoft Fabric adoption roadmap: Change management - Power BI
Learn about effective change management for Microsoft Fabric.
Effective change management improves adoption and productivity because it:
easy to see solutions
Here are some examples of solution-level changes.
Changes in calculation logic for KPIs or measures.
Changes in how master data or hierarchies for business attributes are mapped, grouped, or described.
Changes in data freshness, detail, format, or complexity.
Controlling Direct Lake Fallback Behavior
Optimize Direct Lake fallback behavior in Power BI with XMLA. Direct Lake size limits, Tabular Editor, rowgroup
An easy way to transform/clean your data using a Notebook in Microsoft Fabric - FourMoo | Power BI | Data Analytics
This blog post shows how to transform data in a Microsoft Fabric notebook using the data wrangler with a Py spark data frame.
Semantic Link: OneLake integrated Semantic Models | Microsoft Fabric Blog | Microsoft Fabric
Semantic Link adds support for the recently released OneLake integrated semantic models! You can now directly access data using your semantic model&#8217;s name via OneLake using the read_table function and the new mode parameter set to onelake. This approach ensures that no load is placed on Analysis Services, enabling efficient data retrieval and avoids putting &hellip;
<p class="link-more"><a href="https://blog.fabric.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/semantic-link-onelake-integrated-semantic-models/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> &#8220;Semantic Link: OneLake integrated Semantic Models&#8221;</span></a>
Shape the Data, Shape the Thinking #2: Visualizing Statistical Aggregations
Summary statistics are essential, but we have to learn how to avoid major pitfalls
Data Visualization
Detecting selection in Field Parameters and Calc Groups
As a reaction to an article from SQLBI this blog post shows an alternative way of detecting selection in Field Parameters and Calc Groups
Fabric and Tabular Editor — Advancing Analytics
Did you know you can use Tabular Editor with Fabric to build advanced Power BI semantic models? Find out some of the advantages that this approach can give you.