If like your C drive was running out of space and you decided to free up some space you may have realized that Power BI desktop was using a lot of your disk space. In this short post, we will see why Power BI desktop is consuming a lot of disk space and how we can safely reduce it. Analyze disk space usage There are multiple ways to analyze the disk usage space, we can use the built-in windows tool…
In this post, I describe how to write an optimized median measure in Dax which under specific criteria can be 1,000 times faster than the built-in median function.Some time ago I was tasked to migrate a multidimensional cube to a tabular model, this cube had around 2 billion rows and I also had to create a median measure on the new tabular model. I first thought that the median would be much faster to calculate on a tabular model than on…
In this short post, I will describe how to show text results from an R script visual in Power BI. Microsoft Idea Today there is already an idea submitted to Microsoft to enable this possibility however this idea does not have a lot of votes so it is not likely to be added anytime soon so then the workaround comes to the rescue! Why do we even need to show text result from an R visual? According to the multiple…
In this post, I will describe how we can implement a paired t-test in Power BI using DAX only. What is T-Test A t-test is a type of inferential statistic that can be used to determine if the means of two groups of data are significantly different from each other. In other words, it tells us if the differences in means could have happened by chance. There are three types of t-test: An Independent Samples t-test compares the means for two groups. A Paired sample t-test compares means from…
It is possible to hide tables in Power BI by using the “Hide in report view” option, however, if a user downloads the PBIX file this is still possible to view hidden tables or to unhide tables and this is also true for the reports with a live connection to SSAS or PBI dataset. In this post, I’m going to show another way to hide tables in Power BI which prevents users or anyone to view the hidden tables. Hide…
In this post, I will describe what is the Pearson correlation coefficient and how to implement it in Power BI using DAX. What is Correlation Coefficient The correlation coefficient is a statistical measure of the relationship between two variables; the values range between -1 and 1. A correlation of -1 shows a perfect negative correlation, a correlation of 1 shows a perfect positive correlation. A correlation of 0.0 shows no linear relationship between the movement of the two variables. How to interpret…
In this post, I will describe what Skewness and Kurtosis are, where to use them and how to write their formula in DAX. What is Skewness Skewness is a measure of symmetry, or more precisely, the lack of symmetry. A distribution, or data set, is symmetric if it looks the same to the left and right of the centre point. For a unimodal (one mode only) distribution, negative skew commonly indicates that the tail is on the left side of the distribution, and positive skew…
I previously wrote a post on how to dynamically partitioning tables in SSAS tabular using SQL, but in this short post, I will focus on the performance side of partitioning. What is Partition Partitions split a table into logical partition objects. Each partition contains a portion of the data, partitions can be processed in parallel independent of other partitions or excluded from processing operations if they don’t need to be refreshed. Why partitioning improves the refresh performance The main reason…
Since 2016 there’s a built-in feature in Power BI that allows us to automatically find clusters within our data.This is a great feature, however, its main drawback is that whenever we add new data into Power BI the clusters need to be manually recalculated for the new data. In this post, I will show how we can implement clustering in Power BI using R and automatically recalculate the clusters whenever we hit the refresh button. What is Clustering Clustering is the…
In this post, I share how to perform a bootstrap analysis with Power BI and briefly introduce what is bootstrapping and when to use it.
In this short post, I show how we can integrate a data dictionary using DMV queries within an SSAS tabular model and why we should do so. Why should we have a Data Dictionary within our model? The more complex a model becomes the more documentation we need to have about it. The more measures and complex formulas we have in a model the more calls/questions we have from end-users and thus the less time we can spend on getting…
In Power BI Desktop with Query Editor we can perform advanced custom transformation using Python or R script.
In this short post, I show how we can pass parameters to python script.
As of now, in the Power BI Line and Clustered Column chart, we cannot Combine Clustered Columns with Clustered Lines or Markers.
In Power BI the markers all line up over the middle of the cluster instead of overlaying every single column.
So in this short post I share how to create such a visual using R.
A/B testing, or split testing, is a digital marketing technique that involves comparing two versions of a web page or application to see which performs better.
In this post, I am going to share a step by step guide to implement AB Testing with Power BI.
By now there’s plenty of good tutorials that explain how to create your own visualisations in Power BI by using R or Python like the Microsft one here.However, I haven’t seen any articles on how to create dynamic visuals by using Python (or R).So in this post, I’m going to show a very simple and fast way to create your power bi visuals by using python. (Same can be done using R) Goals of this Post Create visuals by using…
Now it’s been a year since the game-changer new calculation groups feature has been released and I just thought that I still haven’t written a post on it. Goals of this Post Use Calculation Groups Use Tabular Editor Advanced Scripting Speed up SSAS/PowerBI model development Create reusbale script Setting up the Environment Power BI: Download here. Tabular Editor: Download here. SQL Server 2019 and later Analysis Services or Azure Analysis Services. At the time of writing this post, Calculation Group…
I first thought that the recent calculation group feature wasn’t working in a matrix when selecting more than one calculation item from a slicer, until, I realised that all I had to do to fix it was to simply disable the “column subtotals” option. To be honest I find the error message shown by PBI misleading. So if you encounter the error”Time Calculation Requires selection of exactly one calculation item” here is what you have to do to fix it:…
In this post, using Power BI I’ll try to uncover some useful insights and demonstrate that using the appropriate visuals help to analyse data more efficiently.
I’ve previously written an article on how to dynamically convert and change the currency of a measure using a slicer.Now let’s see how we can use dynamic format strings for currency conversion in PowerBi with DAX. Model Prerequisite Add the FormatString column into your currency dimension You can download the file with the sample format string from here.Make sure to use a Unicode type column to store the different format strings otherwise the collation of your DB might not support…
A common scenario in multinational companies is having to integrate different currency rates across transactional data.
So here is how we can convert and display data in different currencies in Power BI in a few simple steps.
In this short post we will see how can step by step create an interactive R custom visual in Power BI Prerequisites Install node.js: Download and Install the latest version of node.js from the node.js website Install R : Download and install the latest version of R from here.Once R is installed I also recommend you to install R Studio the integrated development environment for R. Enable R scripting in Power BI: In Power BI desktop, go to File >…
Treatas is a powerful DAX function that applies the result of a table expression as filters to columns from an unrelated table. In other words, treatas applies the filter context of a specific table to another unrelated table (no relationship in the model). Book to Bill ratio A book-to-bill ratio is the ratio of orders received vs orders shipped and billed for a specific period, a month in our case. The book-to-bill ratio reveals how quickly a business fulfils the demand for…
In Power BI the slicers allow us to filter and view only the information that we want but we can also in Power BI Exclude data based on Slicer selection. In this short post, I will show how we can reverse the behaviour of a slicer “excluding” the selected values instead of “filtering” the selected values. What is a Power BI Slicer? In Power BI a Slicer is a canvas visual that allows us user to filter and view only…
Since the latest Power BI release (June 2019) we are now able to filter a slicer based on a measure!And I think we’ve all been waiting for this feature for quite a while. One of the top reason we needed this feature was to have the ability to sync slicers. (Well this was already achievable with the bidirectionnel filter which is a really bad practice…) So as we can see on the example below the customer Alma has bought only…
In this post, I illustrate how to implement Deviation From Average in Power BI and why we should use it. Margin is a key metric to assess high-level performance of a company. But sometimes we want to measure and compare specific shop or department or employee performance with the entire company overall performance and this where deviation from average metric comes to help. The requirement are as follows: Company overall margin over time (which is just the margin average) Employee…
Let’s assume a scenario where we have 50 time intelligent measures and 5 dimension Dates (order, invoice, ship, due, calendar…). If we want the 50 measure to interact with the 5 dimensions we would need to create 250 measures which might rapidly overwhelm the users as they must sift though so many measures. This script below allows you to drag any dates with the YTD margin measure and the measure will dynamically apply the calculation accordingly and thus keeps our…
Unlike Qlikview, the chart titles in PowerBI can only be static. as you can only pass a static text in the title parameter. However, there’s a way around it! The workaround I found is pretty simple you just need to fake a title by creating a measure which contains your title expression and drop this measure into a Card visual . Then by applying the same transparency and colours of your chart you just need to turn off the chart…