Tag Archive: Power BI

  • Power BI: Grouping & Binning using Data Groups

    In this blog, we explore Power BI’s Data Groups feature, enhancing data visualization and interaction for report users. Data Groups in Power BI: Power BI’s Data Groups efficiently organizes data. Compared to lengthier alternatives like grouping in Power Query or DAX Calculated Columns. Binning Data for Visualization: Let’s discuss data binning for clearer visuals. Binning categorizes data into bands or ranges. For instance in…

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  • Automate Power BI single table refresh using Azure Synapse Analytics and Power BI APIs

    In a blog I posted back in June 2022, I explained how you could trigger a Power BI dataset refresh via Azure Synapse Analytics. https://www.purplefrogsystems.com/2022/06/how-to-trigger-a-power-bi-dataset-refresh-via-azure-synapse-analytics-in-3-simple-steps/ However, what if you just wanted to refresh a select number of tables or objects rather than a full dataset? This might be the case if you are performing intraday loads in your ETL. There…

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  • Power BI – Recalculate / Refresh a Calculation Group

    In Power BI, when working with calculation groups, they will often need to be recalculated when certain changes are made. You will end up with this error message if you use a calculation group that’s been changed in your Power Bi Report: The query referenced Calculation Group Table ‘Calculation Group’ which does not hold any data because it needs to be recalculated or refreshed.   Thankfully, the solution to this error is quite simple…

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  • What is Microsoft Fabric? (Power BI + Synapse + DW + DataLake + ML)

    What Is Microsoft Fabric

    At today’s Build conference, Microsoft announced Fabric. What is this? In simple terms, think of taking Synapse Analytics, Data Warehousing, Data Lakes, Data Factory, Spark Notebooks and Machine Learning, and bring them all together into Power BI. This is underpinned by Microsoft OneLake, a high performance scalable data lake storage layer, supporting all of the above. OneLake is, as the name implies, one data lake that can be used across…

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  • Previous Row Value DAX

    In this quick blog post I’m going to show you how to use a hidden DAX function to get a previous row value with just a few lines of code. It’s that hidden that intellisense doesn’t even recognise it! I’ll use an example of some fictional race results from some well-known cartoon characters! Lets assume that in this scenario we wanted to analyse the time difference between 1st and 2nd place, 2nd and 3rd place etc in the race scenario…

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  • Upload Power BI Reports using PowerShell

    In this blog post, I will be sharing a PowerShell script that allows multiple Power BI reports to be uploaded at once. In a previous blogpost, I shared a PowerShell script that allowed users to downloaded multiple Power BI reports. Combined you could move several reports from one workspace to another in a few seconds. The script is downloadable at the bottom of the page as a txt file. To use the script there are three steps to take. The first…

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  • How to Trigger a Power BI Dataset Refresh via Azure Synapse Analytics in 3 Simple Steps.

    In this blog post we’ll explore how to trigger a Power BI Dataset via Azure Synapse Analytics in 3 simple steps: Step 1: Create a new security group called “AzureSynapsePowerBIIntegration” in your Azure Active Directory. Next add the name of your Azure Synapse Workspace as a member of your new security group. This will be your service principal. Step 2: Login to powerbi.com and in the top right hand corner locate “Settings” and…

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  • Download Power BI Reports using PowerShell

    In this blog post I will be sharing a PowerShell script that allows multiple Power BI reports to be downloaded at once. In the Power BI service, there is no way of downloading multiple Power BI reports at once. Therefore, users must download files one by one which is slow, time consuming and inefficient. Thankfully, there are ways around this, one of which is using PowerShell. The script is downloadable at the bottom of the page as a txt file.…

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  • Combining Queries from Multiple Sources in Power BI using Merge and Append

    It is always good practice to do as much data preparation as close to the sources as you can before importing or connecting them to your Power BI reports, but what if there are circumstances where this isn’t possible? I had an issue recently where a third-party application had been updated and both the new and legacy versions were being used side-by-side. Logging data from both versions was being written to two separate Azure SQL databases.…

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  • How to create a toggle button in Power BI

    In this blog post I will be showing you how to use a toggle button in Power BI. A toggle button in Power BI allows users to quickly switch between two options. Our first step is to create a toggle button as Power BI doesn’t have one by default. You can import one but by creating it yourself, it gives you more control. Our toggle button is created by having two images of identical size over the top of each other and using bookmarks to flip…

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