Tag: DAX

Data Visualisation, DAX, Power BI, Power BI Desktop, Power BI Service

Thin Reports, Report Level Measures vs Data Model Measures

Thin Reports, Report Level Measures vs Data Model Measures

The previous post explained what Thin reports are, why we should care and how we can create them. This post focuses on a more specific topic, Report Level Measures. We discuss what report-level measures are, when and why we need them and how we create them.

If you are not sure what Thin Report means, I suggest you check out my previous blog post before reading this one.

What are report level measures?

Report level measures are the measures created by the report writers within a Thin Report. Hence, the report level measures are available within the hosting Thin Report only. In other words, the report level measures are locally available within the containing report only. These measures are not written back to the underlying dataset, hence not available to any other reports.

In contrast, the data model measures, are the measures created by data modellers and appear on the dataset level and are independent from the reports.

Why and when do we need report level measures?

It is a common situation in real-world scenarios when the business requires a report urgently, but the nuts and bolts of the report are not being created on the underlying dataset yet. For instance, the business requires to present a report to the board showing year-to-date sales analysis but the year-to-date sales measure hasn’t been created in the dataset yet. The business analyst approaches the Power BI developers to add the measure, but they are under the pump to deliver some other functionalities which adding a new measure is not even in their project delivery plan. It is perhaps too late if we wait for the developers to plan for creating the required measure, go through the release process, and make it available for us in the dataset. Here is when the report level measures come to the rescue. We can simply create the missing measure in the Thin Report itself, where we can later share it with the developers to implement it as a dataset measure.

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Data Visualisation, Dataflows, DAX, Power BI, Power BI Desktop, Power BI Embedded Capacity, Power BI Governance, Power BI Paginated, Power BI Premium Capacity, Power BI Service, Power Query, Self-Service BI

Power BI 101, What Should I Learn?

This is the second part of my new series of Power BI posts named Power BI 101. In the previous post, I briefly discussed what Power BI is. In this post, I look into one of the most confusing parts for those who want to start learning Power BI. Many people jump straight online and look for Power BI training courses which there are plenty out there. But which one is the right training course for you? Let’s find out.

What do you want to gain from learning Power BI?

Regardless of attending paid training courses or being a self-learner, the above question is one of the most important questions you might ask yourself before going to the next steps. The answer to this question dictates the sort of training you must look for. Your answer to the preceding question can be one or none of the following:

  • I am a graduate/student looking at the job market
  • I am a business analyst and I want to know how Power BI can help you with my daily job
  • I am a database developer and I want to learn more about business intelligence and data and analytics space
  • I am a non-Microsoft Business Intelligence developer and I want to start learning more about Microsoft offerings
  • I am a system admin and I have to manage our Power BI tenant
  • I am a data scientist and I want to know how I can use Power BI
  • I am just ciourious to see what Power BI can do for me

As mentioned, your answer might not be any of the above, but, thinking about your reason(s) for learning Power BI can help you to find the best way to learn and use Power BI more efficiently. You can spend time and money taking some online courses and get even more confused. You don’t want that do you?

So, whatever reason(s) you have in mind to learn Power BI, most probably you fall into one of the following user categories:

Think about your goal(s) and what you want to achieve by learning Power BI then try to identify your user category. For instance, if you are a student thinking of joining an IT company as a data and analytics developer, then your user category is most probably a Power BI Developer or a Contributor.

To help you find out your user category let’s see what the above user categories mean.

Power BI Developers

The Power BI Developers are the beating hearts of any Power BI development project. Regardless of the project you will be involved with, you definitely require to have a certain level of knowledge of the following:

  • Data preparation/ETL processes
  • Data warehousing
  • Data modelling/Star schema
  • Data visualisation

To be a successful Power BI developer you must learn the following languages in Power BI:

  • Power Query
  • DAX

Depending on the types of projects you will be involved in, you may require to learn the following languages as well:

  • Microsoft Visual Basic (for Paginated Reports)
  • Python
  • R
  • T-SQL
  • PL/SQL

As a Power BI developer, you will write a lot of Power Query and DAX expressions. Most probably you require to learn T-SQL as well. The following resources can be pretty helpful:

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Business Intelligence - BI, Power BI, Power BI Desktop, Power BI Embedded Capacity, Power BI Premium Capacity, Power BI Service, Self-Service BI

Power BI 101, What is Power BI

Many people talk about Power BI, its benefits and common challenges, and many more want to learn Power BI, which is excellent indeed. But there are many misconceptions and misunderstandings amongst the people who think they know Power BI. In my opinion, it is a significant risk in using tools without knowing them, and using the technology is no different. The situation is even worse when people who must know the technology well don’t know it, but they think they do. These people are potential risks to the businesses that want to adopt Power BI as their primary analytical solution across the organisation. As a part of my day-to-day job, I communicate with many people interacting with Power BI. Amongst many knowledgeable users are some of those who confuse things pretty frequently, which indicates a lack of understanding of the basic concepts.
So I decided to write a series of Power BI 101 to explain the basics of the technology that we all love in simple language. Regardless of your usage of Power BI, I endeavour to help you know what to expect from Power BI. This is the first part of this series.

What is Power BI?

I do not frequently get the “What is Power BI” question from my customers, my website’s comments, or my students within the training courses. It is indeed a question that I often ask people. I usually ask the question to indicate people’s level of understanding on different occasions, such as when a friend wants to know more about Power BI, or in a job interview from a candidate who applied for a Power BI related role, or my students attending a training course. Depending on the context that I ask the question, the responses are often pretty different.

It is the general rule of thumb to know what a “thing” is before using it. The “What is X?” (and X is the name of a “thing”) is a broad question, so the answer is also broad. Therefore we usually need more digging to get a better understanding of the “thing”. 

In our case, the “thing” is Power BI, so the question is “What is Power BI?”. And the answer is:

“Power BI is the Business Analytics platform part of a larger SaaS platform called Power Platform offering from Microsoft.”

Now, let’s dig a bit more with two more questions:

  • What is a Data Platform?
  • What is Saas?

Let’s quickly answer those questions.

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Azure Analysis Services, DAX, Power BI, Power BI Desktop, Power BI Desktop RS, Power Query, Quick Tips

Quick Tips: Adding Leading Zero to Integer Values (Padding) with DAX and Power Query

Quick Tips: Adding Leading Zero to Integer Values (Padding) with DAX and Power Query

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
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
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 Column to a Table in Power Query
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:

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