Category: Power BI Desktop

Business Intelligence - BI, Copilot, Microsoft Fabric, Power BI, Power BI Desktop, Power BI Service

Microsoft Fabric: Use Copilot to Generate Data Model Synonyms

Microsoft Fabric: Use Copilot to Generate Data Model Synonyms

One of my older posts explains how to enable Copilot on Fabric and how to use Copilot to generate Power BI reports. In this post, I aim to explain yet another use case for Copilot that can help us to make a better and more useful semantic model in Power BI using synonyms. In an old post published in May 2016, I explained how to use Power BI synonyms to take our Power BI Q&A experience to another level. In that post, I explained how we could use synonyms to translate data model objects in different languages so the end-user could ask questions in their native language and get the results in Power BI. That was such a cool use case for synonyms, I suppose, wasn’t it? Fast track to December 2023, I believe the Q&A is still one of the coolest Power BI features that stands out when demoing the solutions to the customers; therefore, it makes absolute sense to use synonyms to improve the Q&A‘s efficiency and accuracy. This blog post explores the possibility of using Copilot to define synonyms in Power BI Desktop.

Prerequisites

As explained here, we first need to enable Copilot on Fabric Service. Please note that the technique explained in this post requires either Power BI Premium Capacity or at least F64 Fabric capacity and won’t work on PPU, Embedded capacities, Fabric capacities smaller than F64 or Fabric Trial (FT) capacities.

We also need to have the latest version of Power BI Desktop installed on our machine. With that, let’s begin.

Using Power BI Copilot to generate synonyms

While defining synonyms for the semantic model objects significantly helps with the Q&A experience, it is still a cumbersome process if done manually. So, if we meet the prerequisites, we can summon Copilot to the rescue. Follow these steps after opening a Power BI file in Power BI Desktop:

  1. Ensure you’re signed into Fabric service with your account
  2. Click the Insert tab
  3. Select the Q&A visual
  4. On the Q&A visual, click the Q&A Setup button shown with a gear icon
  5. On the Q&A Setup window, you must see a message offering to “Improve Q&A with synonyms from Copilot” on top of the window; click the Add synonyms button

The following image shows the preceding steps:

Improve Q&A with synonyms from Power BI Copilot in Microsoft Fabric
Improve Q&A with synonyms from Copilot
Continue reading “Microsoft Fabric: Use Copilot to Generate Data Model Synonyms” →
Power BI, Power BI Desktop

Quick Tips: Find Power BI Desktop Local Port Number with Model Explorer

Quick Tips: Find Power BI Desktop Local Port Number with Model Explorer

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 blog was about finding Power BI Desktop’s local port number. If you do not have any clue what I mean by local port number, I strongly suggest reading that blog.

This blog focuses on yet another method that wasn’t available back then. Indeed, it is a new feature added to the October 2023 release of Power BI Desktop. This is a Quick Tip so let’s jump straight to the topic and learn how we find the port number (and more) in Power BI Desktop (Oct 2023 and later releases).

Prerequisites

As mentioned, this new feature was added to Power BI Desktop’s October 2023; therefore, we must install that release on our local machine. Indeed, the October 2023 release was packed with many other features, including the Model Explorer (the topic of this blog) and the ability to define calculation groups directly in Power BI Desktop. Many of these features are still in preview; hence, they require enabling.

The following few steps explain how to enable Preview Features in Power BI Desktop:

  1. Open Power BI Desktop and click Settings (the gear icon) from the right pane
  2. On the Options page, from the GLOBAL section, click the Preview features tab
  3. Enable the desired features; for this blog, we need the Model explorer and Calculation group authoring
  4. Click OK

The following image shows the above steps:

Enabling Preview Features in Power BI Desktop
Enabling Preview Features in Power BI Desktop

Depending on the selected features, you may need to restart your Power BI Desktop to allow them to enable.

Looking at the above image, some of you may ask “Soheil, are you using an older version of Power BI Desktop?” and I am glad you asked. The answer as always is “It depends”. And, this time it depends on the timing of writing this blog which is early December 2023, and the fact that Power BI Desktop November 2023 was released a couple of weeks ago, therefore, Power BI Desktop October 2023 is kind of OLD! And, YES! I installed Power BI Desktop Nov 2023 for the sake of writing this blogpost.

Continue reading “Quick Tips: Find Power BI Desktop Local Port Number with Model Explorer” →
Azure SQL Database, Data Visualisation, Dataflows, Fabric Administrator, Lakehouse, Microsoft Fabric, Notebook, OneLake, Power BI, Power BI Desktop, Power BI Embedded Capacity, Power BI Premium Capacity, Power BI Service, Power Query, Self-Service BI, Synapse Data Engineering, Synapse Data Science, Synapse Data Warehouse

Unveiling Microsoft Fabric’s Impact on Power BI Developers and Analysts

Unveiling Microsoft Fabric’s Impact on Power BI Developers and Analysts

Microsoft Fabric is a new platform designed to bring together the data and analytics features of Microsoft products like Power BI and Azure Synapse Analytics into a single SaaS product. Its goal is to provide a smooth and consistent experience for both data professionals and business users, covering everything from data entry to gaining insights. A new data platform comes with new keywords and terminologies, so to get more familiar with some new terms in Microsoft Fabric, check out this blog post.

As mentioned in one of my previous posts, Microsoft Fabric is built upon the Power BI platform; therefore we expect it to provide ease of use, strong collaboration, and wide integration capabilities. While Microsoft Fabric is getting more attention in the market, so we see more and more organisations investigating the possibilities of migrating their existing data platforms to Microsoft Fabric. But what does it mean for seasoned Power BI developers? What about Power BI professional users such as data analysts and business analysts? In this post, I endeavor to answer those questions.

I have been blogging predominantly around Microsoft Data Platforms and especially Power BI since 2013. But I have never written about the history of Power BI. I believe it makes sense to touch upon the history of Power BI to better understand the size of its user base and how introducing a new data platform that includes Power BI can affect them. A quick search on the internet provides some interesting facts about it. So let’s take a moment and talk about it.

The history of Power BI

Power BI started as a top-secret project at Microsoft in 2006 by Thierry D’Hers and Amir Netz. They wanted to make a better way to analyse data using Microsoft Excel. They called their project “Gemini” at first.

In 2009, they released PowerPivot, a free extension for Excel that supports in-memory data processing. This made it faster and easier to do calculations and create reports. PowerPivot got quickly popular among Excel users, but it had some limitations. For example, it was hard to share large Excel files with others, and it was not possible to update the data automatically.

In 2015, Microsoft combined PowerPivot with another extension called Power Query, which lets users get data from different sources and clean it up. They also added a cloud service that lets users publish and share their reports online. They called this new product Power BI, which stands for Power Business Intelligence.

In the past few years, Power BI grasped a lot of attention in the market and improved a lot to cover more use cases and business requirements from data transformation, data modelling, and data visualisation to combining all these goods with the power of AI and ML to provide predictive and prescriptive analysis.

Who are Power BI Users?

Since its birth, Power BI has become one of the most popular and powerful data analysis and data visualisation tools in the world used by a wide variety of users. In the past few years, Power BI generated many new roles in the job market, such as Power BI developer, Power BI consultant, Power BI administrator, Power BI report writer, and whatnot, as well as helping many others by making their lives easier, such as data analysts and business analysts. With Power BI, the data analysts could efficiently analyse the data and make recommendations based on their findings. Business analysts could use Power BI to focus on more practical changes resulting from their analysis of the data and show their findings to the business much quicker than before. As a result, millions of users interact with Power BI on a daily basis in many ways. So, introducing a new data platform that sort of “Swallows Power BI” may sound daunting to those whose daily job relates to content creation, maintenance, or administrating Power BI environments. For many, the fear is real. But shall the developers and analysts be afraid of Microsoft Fabric? The short answer is “Absolutely not!”. Does it change the way we used to work with Power BI? Well, it depends.

To answer these questions, we first need to know who are Power BI users and how they interact with it.

Continue reading “Unveiling Microsoft Fabric’s Impact on Power BI Developers and Analysts” →
Azure DevOps, Data Visualisation, DAX, Microsoft Fabric, Power BI, Power BI Desktop, Power BI Embedded Capacity, Power BI Premium Capacity, Power BI Service, Self-Service BI, Source Control

Integrating Power BI with Azure DevOps (Git), part 2: Local Machine Integration

Integrating Power BI with Azure DevOps (Git), part 2: Local Machine Integration

This is the second part of the series of blog posts showing how to integrate Power BI with Azure DevOps, a cloud platform for software development. The previous post gave a brief history of source control systems, which help developers manage code changes. It also explained what Git is, a fast and flexible distributed source control system, and why it is useful. It introduced the initial configurations required in Azure DevOps and explained how to integrate Power BI (Fabric) Service with Azure DevOps.

This blog post explains how to synchronise an Azure DevOps repository with your local machine to integrate your Power BI Projects with Azure DevOps. Before we start, we need to know what a Power BI Project is and how we can create it.

What is Power BI Project (Developer Mode)

Power BI Project (*.PBIP) is a new file format for Power BI Desktop that was announced in May 2023 and made available for public preview in June 2023. It allows us to save our work as a project, which consists of a folder structure containing individual text files that define the report and dataset artefacts. This enables us to use source control systems, such as Git, to track changes, compare revisions, resolve conflicts, and review changes. It also enables us to use text editors, such as Visual Studio Code, to edit the artefact definitions more productively and programmatically. Additionally, it supports CI/CD (continuous integration and continuous delivery), where we submit changes to a series of quality gates before applying them to the production system.

PBIP files differ from the regular Power BI Desktop files (PBIX), which store the report and dataset artefacts as a single binary file. This made integrating with source control systems, text editors, and CI/CD systems difficult. PBIP aims to overcome these limitations and provide a more developer-friendly experience for Power BI Desktop users.

Since this feature is still in public preview when writing this blog post, we have to enable it from the Power BI Desktop Options and Settings.

Enable Power BI Project (Developer Mode) (Currently in Preview)

As mentioned, we first need to enable the Power BI Project (Developer Mode) feature, introduced for public preview in the June 2023 release of Power BI Desktop. Power BI Project files allow us to save our Power BI files as *.PBIP files deconstruct the legacy Power BI report files (*.PBIX) into well-organised folders and files.
With this feature, we can:

  • Edit individual components of our Power BI file, such as data sources, queries, data model, visuals, etc.
  • Use any text editor or IDE to edit our Power BI file
  • Compare and merge changes
  • Collaborate with other developers on the same Power BI file

To enable Power BI Project (Developer Mode), follow these steps in Power BI Desktop:

Continue reading “Integrating Power BI with Azure DevOps (Git), part 2: Local Machine Integration” →