There are some cases that we want to add a leading zero to a digit, such as showing 01 instead of 1, 02 instead of 2 and so on. We have two options to do this in Power BI, doing it in Power Query or doing it with DAX.
Adding a Leading Zero in Power Query
The first method is doing it in Power Query using the Text.PadStart() function.
Here is how the syntax of the function:
Text.PadStart(text as nullable text, count as number, optional character as nullable text)
And here is how the function works:
Text.PadStart(input string, the length of the string, an optional character to be added to the beginning of the string util we reach to the string length)
For example, Text.PadStart("12345", 10 , "a") returns aaaaa12345 and Text.PadStart("1", 2 , "0") returns 01.
Let’s create a list of integer values between 1 to 20 with the following expression:
{1..20}
Creating a List of Integer Values Between 1 to 20 In Power Query
Now we convert the list to a table by clicking the To Table button from the Transform tab:
Converting a List to a Table in Power Query
Now we add a new column by clicking the Custom Column from the Add Column tab from the ribbon bar:
Adding a New Custom Column to a Table in Power Query
Now we use the following expression in the Custom Column window to pad the numbers with a leading zero:
In 2020, the world celebrated the new year with many uncertainties. Well, life is full of uncertainties, but, this one was very different. The world was facing a new pandemic that never experienced before. The first COVID19 case in New Zealand was confirmed in February 2020. In March 2020 the entire country went to lockdown for the first time. The world was experiencing a massive threat changing everyone’s lives. I was no different. Every day was starting with bad news. A relative passed away; a friend got the virus; the customers put the projects on hold etc. Nothing was looking normal anymore. You can’t even go to get a proper haircut, because everyone is in lockdown. This is me trying to smile after getting a homemade haircut. I bet many of you have done the same thing.
Soheil’s Homemade Haircut
One day, I checked my email and saw a message from Packt Publishing. They wanted to see if I am interested in writing a book about Power BI. That was a piece of good news after a long time. I always wanted to write a book about Power BI. Indeed, I attempted for the first time in 2016, but I couldn’t manage to get my ducks in a row to grasp the publishers’ attention.
I was not unfamiliar with writing books; indeed, I wrote my first book back in 2006 about Multimedia Applications in Persian. One of my passions in life is listening to music. And CDs were the most accessible music source with high-quality sound. I recall I saved money for some months, and I bought a Discman to listen to the music on the go. But CDs are rather bulky, and you could not have many of them in your pocket. So the next project was to save even more money to buy an MP3 player. But, converting Audio CDs to MP3 without compromising a lot on the sound quality was a real challenge for many people. And, that was my motive to write my first book in Persian to share my little knowledge with everyone.
Microsoft newly announced a piece of very exciting news that Azure Purview now supports Power BI. This is massive news from a data governance point of view. Azure Purview is the next generation of Azure Data Catalog with more metadata discovery power and the ability to use sensitivity labels. After reading the news, I immediately decided to set up my test environment and give it a go. I followed the steps mentioned in this article on the Microsoft documentation website but I faced some difficulties to get it to work. And here we are, another blog post to help you to set up the Azure Purview for Power BI.
Note: In this blog post I am not intending to explain what Azure Purview is. You can find heaps of useful information here.
Creating an Azure Purview Resource
We first need to have an Azure subscription, if you don’t have, don’t worry, you can start your Azure free trial subscription here. The following steps explain how to set up Azure Purview for Power BI:Login to the Azure Portal
Click Create a resource button
Creating Azure Purview resource in Azure Portal
2. Type in Purview in the search box
3. Click Azure Purview
Searching for Purview resource in Azure Portal
4. Click the Create button
5. Select your Subscription
6. Select a Resource group or Create new if you don’t have any
7. Type in a name in the Purview account name text box
8. Select the Location
9. Click Review + Create (if you require to do more configurations click Next:Configuration > button)
Creating Azure Purview Account
At this point, Azure validates the configurations and requirements. You may get an error message like below:
I wrote some other posts on this topic in the past, you can find them here and here. In the first post I explain how to create “Time” dimension with time bands at minutes granularity. Then one of my customers required the “Time” dimension at seconds granularity which encouraged me to write the second blogpost. In the second blogpost though I didn’t do time bands, so here I am, writing the third post which is a variation of the second post supporting time bands of 5 min, 15 min, 30 min, 45 min and 60 min while the grain of the “Time” dimension is down to second. in this quick post I jump directly to the point and show you how to generate the “Time” dimension in three different ways, using T-SQL in SQL Server, using Power Query (M) and DAX. Here it is then:
Time Dimension at Second Grain with Power Query (M) Supporting Time Bands:
Copy/paste the code below in Query Editor’s Advanced Editor to generate Time dimension in Power Query:
let
Source = Table.FromList({1..86400}, Splitter.SplitByNothing()),
#"Renamed Columns" = Table.RenameColumns(Source,{{"Column1", "ID"}}),
#"Time Column Added" = Table.AddColumn(#"Renamed Columns", "Time", each Time.From(#datetime(1970,1,1,0,0,0) + #duration(0,0,0,[ID])), Time.Type),
#"Hour Added" = Table.AddColumn(#"Time Column Added", "Hour", each Time.Hour([Time]), Int64.Type),
#"Minute Added" = Table.AddColumn(#"Hour Added", "Minute", each Time.Minute([Time]), Int64.Type),
#"5 Min Band Added" = Table.AddColumn(#"Minute Added", "5 Min Band", each Time.From(#datetime(1970,1,1,Time.Hour([Time]),0,0) + #duration(0, 0, (Number.RoundDown(Time.Minute([Time])/5) * 5) + 5, 0)), Time.Type),
#"15 Min Band Added" = Table.AddColumn(#"5 Min Band Added", "15 Min Band", each Time.From(#datetime(1970,1,1,Time.Hour([Time]),0,0) + #duration(0, 0, (Number.RoundDown(Time.Minute([Time])/15) * 15) + 15, 0)), Time.Type),
#"30 Min Band Added" = Table.AddColumn(#"15 Min Band Added", "30 Min Band", each Time.From(#datetime(1970,1,1,Time.Hour([Time]),0,0) + #duration(0, 0, (Number.RoundDown(Time.Minute([Time])/30) * 30) + 30, 0)), Time.Type),
#"45 Min Band Added" = Table.AddColumn(#"30 Min Band Added", "45 Min Band", each Time.From(#datetime(1970,1,1,Time.Hour([Time]),0,0) + #duration(0, 0, (Number.RoundDown(Time.Minute([Time])/45) * 45) + 45, 0)), Time.Type),
#"60 Min Band Added" = Table.AddColumn(#"45 Min Band Added", "60 Min Band", each Time.From(#datetime(1970,1,1,Time.Hour([Time]),0,0) + #duration(0, 0, (Number.RoundDown(Time.Minute([Time])/60) * 60) + 60, 0)), Time.Type),
#"Removed Other Columns" = Table.SelectColumns(#"60 Min Band Added",{"Time", "Hour", "Minute", "5 Min Band", "15 Min Band", "30 Min Band", "45 Min Band", "60 Min Band"})
in
#"Removed Other Columns"
