Category: Power BI Service

Business Intelligence - BI, Data Visualisation, Power BI, Power BI Desktop, Power BI Service, Self-Service BI

Highlighting Below Avg Sales per Hierarchy Level with SWITCH() and ISINSCOPE() DAX Functions in Power BI

Highlighting Below Avg Sales per Hierarchy Level with SWITCH() and ISINSCOPE() DAX Functions in Power BI

I was working on a project a wee bit ago that the customer had conditional formatting requirement on a Column Chart.
They wanted to format the columns in the chart conditionally based on the average value based on the level of hierarchy you are at.
Here is the scenario, I have a Calendar hierarchy as below:

  • Calendar Hierarchy:
    • Year
    • Semester
    • Quarter
    • Month
    • Day

I use “Adventure Works DW2017, Internet Sales” Excel as my source in Power BI Desktop. If I want to visualise “Total Sales” over the above “Calendar Hierarchy” I get something like this:

Line Chart in Power BI, Total Sales by Year

Now I activate “Average Line” from “Analytics” tab of the Line chart.

Adding Average Line to Line Chart in Power BI

When I drill down in the line chart the Average line shows the average of that particular hierarchy level that I am in. This is quite cool that I get the average base on the level that I’m in code free.

Power BI, Drilling Donw in Line Chart

Easy, right?

Now, the requirement is to show the above behaviour in a “Column Chart” (yes! visualising time series with column chart, that’s what the customer wants) and highlight the columns with values below average amount in Orange and leave the rest in default theme colour.

So, I need to create Measures to conditionally format the column chart. I also need to add a bit of intelligent in the measures to:

  • Detect which hierarchy level I am in
  • Calculate the average of sales for that particular hierarchy level
  • Change the colour of the columns that are below the average amount

Let’s get it done!

Detecting Hierarchy Level with ISINSCOPE() DAX Function

Microsoft introduced ISINSCOPE() DAX function in the November 2018 release of Power BI Desktop. Soon after the announcement “Kasper de Jonge” wrote a concise blogpost about it.

So I try to keep it as simple as possible. Here is how is works, the ISINSCOPE() function returns “True” when a specified column is in a level of a hierarchy. As stated earlier, we have a “Calendar Hierarchy” including the following 5 levels:

  • Year
  • Semester
  • Quarter
  • Month
  • Day

So, to determine if we are in each of the above hierarchy levels we just need to create DAX measures like below:

ISINSCOPE Year		=	ISINSCOPE('Date'[Year])
ISINSCOPE Semester	=	ISINSCOPE('Date'[Semester])
ISINSCOPE Quarter	=	ISINSCOPE('Date'[Quarter])
ISINSCOPE Month		=	ISINSCOPE('Date'[Month])
ISINSCOPE Day		=	ISINSCOPE('Date'[Day])

Now let’s do an easy experiment.

  • Put a Matrix on the canvas
  • Put the “Calendar Hierarchy” to “Rows”
  • Put the above measures in “Values”
Detecting Year, Semester, Quarter, Month and Day hierarchy levels with ISINSCOPE in Power BI Desktop

As you see the “ISINSCOPE Year” shows “True” for the “Year” level. Let’s expand to the to the next level and see how the other measures work:

Continue reading “Highlighting Below Avg Sales per Hierarchy Level with SWITCH() and ISINSCOPE() DAX Functions in Power BI” →
Power BI, Power BI Desktop, Power BI Service, Quick Tips, Self-Service BI

Quick Tips: Line Chart and Area Chart Conditional Formatting in Power BI

Line Chart and Area Chart Conditional Formatting in Power BI

In this post I show you a very quick trick to format Line Chart and Area Chart conditionally in Power BI. As this is a “Quick Tip” I’m going to keep this post really short.

One of my customers asked me to show time series in line charts and area charts. But she want’s it to be conditionally formatted based on the average value over time. Let’s keep it simple, she wants to show “Sales by Year Month” in line chart, but, highlight the data points that are below “Average Sales per Year Month”. As you may know, we currently do not have the luxury of formatting line charts and area charts. But wait, this post is all about that. Let’s dig into it.

From the above scenario, you perhaps already guessed that we need to create a measure which defines the colour based on “Average Sales per Year Month” to be able to format the chart conditionally. If any data point is below the “Average Sales per Year Month” then we highlight it in Orange, if it is above the “Average Sales per Year Month” then we stick to the default colour.

Let’s do it.

Continue reading “Quick Tips: Line Chart and Area Chart Conditional Formatting in Power BI” →
Business Intelligence - BI, Datazen, Mobile BI, Power BI, Power BI Desktop, Power BI Desktop RS, Power BI Embedded Capacity, Power BI Paginated, Power BI Premium Capacity, Power BI Service, Self-Service BI

Power BI Ecosystem Report Authoring Tools Demystified

Power BI Reporting Tools Confusion

There are a lot of discussions these days around Power BI tools to create reports and for sure many of you may have already downloaded and worked with some of them if not all of them. You may already think that some of the tools’ names are confusingly similar. I recently had an interesting conversation with a fellow who has a lot of SSRS report writing background. I was talking about Paginated reports and said, I downloaded the latest version of Power BI Report Builder… that he immediately said, wait for a second…

  • John: Power BI Report Builder? Oh I see, that’s the one that you can create paginated reports with then you can deploy those reports into an SSRS instance.
  • me: NOPE! That’s not the case I’m afraid.
  • John: Oh I know, I meant Power BI Report Server, you can deploy the reports to an instance of Power BI Report Server. I knew it!
  • me: NO! That’s not what I’m talking about…
  • John: What the…?

I bet some of you had a similar conversation with a friend or a customer. OK, in this post I explain a little bit about report authoring tools available to you and your organisation to get the most out of your Power BI ecosystem.

Here is a list of all reporting tools currently available to you:

  • Power BI Service: It is a SaaS (Software as a Service) offering from Microsoft in the cloud. The users in an organisation, based on their access rights, may be able to create and publish data, reports, dashboards in Power BI Service. The users can also schedule data refreshes on the published data as well as securely sharing and distributing the contents. While creating or editing reports is possible in Power BI Service, it is strongly recommended to avoid this method for several reasons. The most obvious one is that the changes you make in a report may be soon get overwritten by someone else that republishes the same report from Power BI Desktop. Check this blog post from SQLChick to see why you should avoid creating or editing reports directly from Power BI Service. The reports are downloadable in PBIX format. Use Power BI Service here.
  • Power BI Desktop: It is a desktop report authoring tool that can be used to connect to, or loading data from, varies types of data sources, preparing, transforming and cleansing that data and at last visualising the data. Power BI Desktop is the predominant report authoring tool with a lot more functionalities and flexibility than Power BI Service. For instance, setting up Role Level Security (RLS) is NOT available in Power BI Service. The format of the report file is PBIX. Download Power BI Desktop from here.
  • Power BI Report Builder (Paginated): Paginated reports aka “pixel perfect reports”, as the name resembles, are formatted in a way to fit perfectly on a page. That report page might later be printed. You have exact control over the page formatting to display your data in tables or charts. The reports are not as interactive as Power BI Desktop reports are. Paginated reports are based on RDL technology which is standard report format in SQL Server Reporting Services. The tool for developing paginated report in Power BI ecosystem is Power BI Report Builder. The reports file type is RDL. You can currently publish Paginated reports only to a Workspace that is backed with a premium capacity. Download Power BI Report Builder from here.
Continue reading “Power BI Ecosystem Report Authoring Tools Demystified” →
Azure, Azure Analysis Services, BISM Tabular, Business Intelligence - BI, DAX, Power BI, Power BI Desktop, Power BI Service, Quick Tips, Self-Service BI, SQL Server, SQL Server Analysis Services - SSAS, SQL Server Management Studio - SSMS

Quick Tips: Export Power BI Desktop and Power BI Service Model Data In One-Shot with DAX Studio

Exporting Model Data to CSV or SQL Server in One Shot

Update 2021 March:

You can now export the data direct from Power BI Desktop using my tool, Power BI Exporter. Read more here.

In some of my old posts, which are the most popular ones, I explained how to Export data Power BI Desktop or Power BI Service data to different destinations like CSV, Excel and SQL Server. In this quick tip I explain a very easy way to export the model data as a whole to either CSV or SQL Server with DAX Studio.

Daniil from XXL BI well explained this method, but I’d rather quickly explain how it works and add some more information.

After release 2.8 of DAX Studio, you can now quickly export the whole model to CSV and SQL Server in one shot.

Enabling Export All Data in DAX Studio

  • Open DAX Studio
  • Click “File”
  • Click “Options”
  • Click “Advanced”
  • Tick “Show Export All Data button”
DAX Studio Export Power BI Model Data Settings

Export Power BI Model Data to CSV

DAX Studio Export Power BI Model Data to CSV
Continue reading “Quick Tips: Export Power BI Desktop and Power BI Service Model Data In One-Shot with DAX Studio” →