Year: 2021

  • A better way to Mobile

    A better way to Mobile

    Where does the Power BI Mobile app fit within your report building plan? This topic is widely un-discussed within the Power BI community. Many blogs and tutorials focus mainly on developing Power BI reports for a desktop screen.  More specifically, a report design that fits a wide screen monitor. However, building reports for the mobile app require additional considerations.

    The Current State of Mobile

    First before we get to the recommendations for mobile reporting developments, let us discuss the current status of building a mobile report. To create a mobile centric view Power BI desktop follow these steps:

    1. Click on the View ribbon
    2. Click on the button labeled Mobile layout
    Click on the Mobile Layout

    Portrait Mode Only

    This takes you to a new screen where the mobile device is positioned in portrait mode.  At the time of writing this article there are no options to build a mobile view in landscape. If you desire to have a mobile report that can be viewed in landscape mode you actually have to create a normal report view but with a narrower screen.

    View of building reports in the mobile view.

    Simplified Build Experience

    The report canvas is greatly simplified. Meaning you don’t get all the advanced features of a normal report page. Stacking visuals on top of each other is not an option. Changing the color of the background is not an option on this screen. Instead, to change the mobile page background color you have to leave the mobile view.  Return to desktop mode change the color and then return to the mobile view.

    An Alternative Approach

    Due to the limitations mentioned above. We propose that you build a report page with custom dimensions.  From my experimentation a width of a page from 600 to 800 pixels meets my needs. The page length can be as long as you need it so that all the required visuals can fit on the page. Previously pages have grown to 1000 to 2000 pixels in length. 

    How to customize the page size?

    Follow these instructions to change the page size

    1. Click somewhere on the Report page to deselect any visuals
    2. Open up the Visualizations Pane
    3. Click on the Format button; the one that looks like a paint roller
    4. Open the section named Page Size
    5. Change the drop down menu for Type to be Custom
    6. Type in a new Width and Height for the page

    Change View of Report for scrolling

    By making the page narrower but longer, the default view of the report will cause UX challenges. To fix this the report is will need to render as a scrollable object. To do this we adjust the view settings of the page

    1. Click on the View ribbon
    2. Click on the button named Page View
    3. A drop down menu will appear
    4. From this dropdown menu Click on the option named Fit to width
    Fit Page to Width

    Other UI / UX Considerations

    As a report designer it is important to consider the UI for report consumers. In most reports I design everything that the user can see fits on a single page.  Scrolling on a page is not a major issue.  As we introduce scrolling on mobile we run into issues with some visuals. 

    Table Visuals Cause Issues

    Take for example a table visual.  This visual it’s self has scrolling built in. Thus, if you are scrolling a page on mobile when you touch inside the table and swipe up the mobile experience swipes the table visual.  This UX can lead users to get suck inside a table when attempting to scroll the page.

    Table Scrolling Solution

    A solution to address users getting stuck inside a table is to provide a pixel boarder. The boarder can be either dual boarders on the left and right or just one boarder on the left or right. Inside this boarder do not place any visuals that would require scrolling, such as a table.

    Adding a Scrim for added Clarity

    In addition to just retaining a pixel gap on the sides I recommend also adding some color to the background. The concept of the color either in blocks or via a gradient color. See the following sample scrim for reference.

    Mobile Scrim Product

    If you like the content from PowerBI.Tips please follow us on all the social outlets. Stay up to date on all the latest features and free tutorials.  Subscribe to our YouTube Channel.  Or follow us on the social channels, Twitter and LinkedIn where we will post all the announcements for new tutorials and content.

    Introducing our PowerBI.tips SWAG store. Check out all the fun PowerBI.tips clothing and products:

    Check out the new Merch!

    Hasta La Vista Data
    Go Ahead Make My Data
    PBIX Hat


  • Three New Time-Saving Scripts for Tabular Editor

    Three New Time-Saving Scripts for Tabular Editor

    Howdy folks!

    I just published three new scripts for Tabular Editor to the PowerBI.tips “TabularEditor-Scripts” repository on GitHub yesterday. So, I wanted to take a moment to explain what they do, and why you should have them in your Tabular Editor Scripts arsenal.

    1. Replace String Across All Power Queries
      • Replaces a string in Power Query on all partitions in the model
      • Useful for automating updates to connection strings, filter conditions, etc.
    2. Replace Dataset Source Dataflow IDs
      • Replaces the source DataflowID & WorkspaceID on all Power Query partitions in the model
      • Similar to the previous script, this one is specialized for automatically replacing old DataflowID and WorkspaceID references in Power Query with new ones. Helpful in situations where you need to re-deploy an existing Dataflow and Dataset to a new workspace, and then re-link the new Dataset to the new Dataflow
    3. Exclude Selected Tables From Model Refresh
      • Excludes the selected tables from model refresh
      • Useful for quickly excluding specific tables from the model refresh, which you may need to do for any number of reasons, including troubleshooting, performance, etc.

    This repo has lots of other useful Tabular Editor Scripts, and we add more every day, so check it out! Also, if you have some handy scripts of your own, you can Fork the repo and submit a Pull Request. Then, we will add your scripts to the collection.

    Happy scripting, everyone!

    James

    If you like the content from PowerBI.Tips, please follow us on all the social outlets. Stay up to date on all the latest features and free tutorials.  Subscribe to our YouTube Channel.  Or follow us on the social channels, Twitter and LinkedIn, where we post all the announcements for new tutorials and content.

    Introducing our PowerBI.tips SWAG store! Check out all the fun PowerBI.tips clothing and products:

    Hasta La Vista Data
    Go Ahead Make My Data
    PBIX Hat



  • Copy Power BI Desktop Server:Port Connection String to Clipboard

    Copy Power BI Desktop Server:Port Connection String to Clipboard

    Howdy, folks!

    A few months ago, I was writing and running various PowerShell scripts to manipulate the connected data models in my Power BI Desktop files. During model development, I was constantly having to open DAX Studio to copy the Server:Port connection string, and thinking, “there’s got to be a faster way to do this.”

    So, I developed and released a simple External Tool for Power BI Desktop, which copies the Server:Port connection string for the currently-connected data model directly to the clipboard.

    I’m a strong believer in modular design, so when I build something, I try to make it do one thing, and do it well. I believe this External Tool for Power BI Desktop is a great example of that philosophy in action.

    This external tool is now in the Business Ops tool from PowerBI.tips.

    Enjoy!

    James

    If you like the content from PowerBI.Tips please follow us on all the social outlets. Stay up to date on all the latest features and free tutorials.  Subscribe to our YouTube Channel.  Or follow us on the social channels, Twitter and LinkedIn where we will post all the announcements for new tutorials and content.

    Introducing our PowerBI.tips SWAG store. Check out all the fun PowerBI.tips clothing and products:

    Check out the new Merch!

    Hasta La Vista Data
    Go Ahead Make My Data
    PBIX Hat


  • Power BI Bookmarks Tips, Tricks, and Best Practices

    Power BI Bookmarks Tips, Tricks, and Best Practices

    This article describes Power BI Bookmarks tips, tricks, and best practices. Bookmarks are a powerful feature that can greatly improve the reader’s experience. However, there are several settings you should be aware of. Used incorrectly, they can become hard to maintain and often not display the intended functionality.

    Power BI Bookmarks

    This article will assume some basic knowledge on how to record or apply bookmarks. Please see this. If you are new to Bookmarks, you may want to watch this helpful video by Adam Saxton from Guy In A Cube.

    It will run through an example of using a switch visuals bookmark group. If you have not seen this before, I suggest you watch this video, also by Guy In A Cube.

    You should be familiar with:

    The rest of the article will focus on some tricks and tips using bookmarks, while walking through an example of a visual switch between a map and a graph.

    Tips Covered


    Change Power BI Bookmark Settings

    You should always update the bookmark settings when creating them. This should always be as specific as possible to the action they are trying to achieve.

    Here is a quick breakdown of the settings:

    Data: This captures items including filters and sort order. It does not capture if the item is visible or not.

    Display: This captures whether an item is visible or not, without modifying filters or sort order.

    Current Page: This will switch to the current page view if you apply the bookmark from a different page. If unselected, it will still apply the bookmark, but it will stay on the page you apply it from.

    All Visuals: If this option is selected, it captures every setting on the page. This can include items in the filter pane, or even if the filter pane is open. I would recommend to never use this setting.

    Selected Visuals: Selected visuals still only apply bookmarks to the visuals you had selected when you record the bookmark. You can select items by holding control and clicking on them in the selection pane.

    In general, I try not to use both Data and Display together, as most cases bookmarks are just changing one of these fields. Previously, it was required to use bookmarks to navigate pages. However, this is no longer needed after new functionality allows this to be done with buttons directly. Therefore, I rarely use this feature.

    One of the best Power BI Bookmarks tips – use selected visuals only. Recording bookmarks on all visuals often has unintended consequences and can be difficult to manage. Rarely is this needed and can become very hard when adding more visuals to the page.


    Rename Your Visuals

    The first tip is to rename your visuals. Each visual is given a name, which can be viewed in the Selection Pane. By default, the name is usually the type of visual it is. This means if you have several slicers on a page, you might get a list of several visuals with the same name. While this is not an end user feature, it can make it difficult to identify the correct visual when developing.

    We recommend renaming each visual when you add it. First, open the selection pane. Next, double click on the visual you have just added in the selection pane. Rename the visual to something that calls out what it is. Our recommended naming strategy is the following.

    Visual - Description
    The selection pane
    Example of renamed visuals in a selection pane

    Pro Tip: When a page contains multiple bookmarks it’s difficult to know what Bookmark touches which Visuals or Groups. Thus, when you are planning multiple bookmarks on a single page add an ID at the end of the Visual or Group. This will correspond to a number listed at the end of the Bookmark.


    Record Power BI Bookmarks on Groups

    Using groups has huge benefits for Power BI bookmarks. If you record bookmarks on groups instead of individual visuals. Now, any edits made on the content of the groups will flow through, without the need to re-record bookmarks.

    For example, let’s say I want a bookmark that switches a visual from a table to a map.

    First, I’m going to make the groups. Open the selection pane. Whilst holding control, click on each visual that should be in the group. Right-Click on one of the selected visuals, then click the list option named Group then in the sub menu Group. You should also rename the group, so you know what it contains.

    Visual image showing how to group visuals, as described in the text above.

    Note that to set up a group, you need at least two visuals. In my example, I have a graph visual and a title. If you have just one, you can still set up a group. Simply add a blank text box or shape and group it with your visual. You can then delete the blank text box or shape and the group will persist.

    HINT: Elements can be difficult to move or select after grouping. If you want to modify a visual, use the selection pane to select it easily. If you want to move it, click and drag the ellipsis to move it.


    Add Placeholder Groups to Easily add More Visuals

    Next, I will set up the remaining groups. Aside from the map group, I’m also going to add some placeholder groups. To do this, I will add a blank visual and a blank text box.

    Power BI Bookmark tips: Grouping visuals

    Next, I’m going to select the new group. Then I’m going to copy and paste using Control-C and Control-V to create three placeholders.

    Now that all the groups are set up, it is time to record the bookmarks! For each group follow these steps:

    1. Using control, select all visual groups including the placeholders.
    2. Using the eye, hide all visual groups except the Map – Visual Switch.
    3. Rename the bookmark in the bookmark pane by double clicking it.
    4. Click the ellipsis to open the bookmark settings.
    5. Deselect Data and Current Page. Change to Selected Visuals. The settings should look like the picture above.
    Power BI Bookmark tips: Adding the bookmark and changing the settings

    Rename and Group Bookmarks

    Two more Power BI Bookmarks Tips are to rename the bookmarks and to group them. In addition to renaming your visuals when adding them, you should also rename your bookmarks. For the bookmarks themselves, I do action name – function.
    Secondly, you should group similar bookmarks together. For example, the bookmarks in the visual switch should be put in the same group. This group can also be renamed. I often like to include the page name in the group and then its function.

    Image showing renamed Power BI bookmarks. The names read Sales Overview - Preset filter selections, Product - Visual Switch, Show Graph - Visual Switch, Show Map - Visual Switch
    Example of Power BI bookmark groups and names

    Pro Tip: You will want to provide a connection between the bookmarks and the visual elements on the page. By adding an ID at the end of the Visual or Group and the Bookmark you can create a traceable link. This is especially important when you have multiple repot developers working on the same report. Adding an ID signals to the next report developer that these bookmarks are influencing the associated items on the Selection pane.


    Layers

    For this section, you should be familiar with the selection pane. Remember that objects at the top of the selection pane are in front of those below it.

    Now that we have our groups, it makes it simpler to have buttons. In my example, I will create a button that says Graph, plus a button that says Map. If we are switching visuals, it is useful to have highlighted what visual is presented. I will highlight with a blue background and bold text.

    One way of doing this, is to layer text boxes behind the buttons. First, create the buttons at the that will contain the bookmark action. This button will be see-through and slightly larger than the text boxes.

    Next, create the middle text boxes that formatted for the selected button name.

    Finally, create the back text boxes that are formatted for the unselected button name.

    Visual description of the layer order described above
    Example of the button elements

    Keep it Tidy

    Once we have repeated for all buttons, we can tidy it up. First, place all button elements in the same position on the page. You can do this easily using the align function.

    Then, place the middle text box inside the group it relates to. This means when the bookmark is applied, the selected format will be visible for the correct visual. The trick is that we will layer the elements, so this text box will appear in front of the unselected text box. The buttons will always be on top, so the functionality will always remain the same.

    Group the front buttons together, and make sure they are in front of the text boxes. These control the functionality of the Power BI Bookmarks.

    Group the back text boxes together, and make sure they are at the back.

    Example of Power BI Bookmark groups

    The layer sets:
    Visual Switch Buttons
    : These are the buttons that apply the bookmarks. This is the top layer and always visible. This contains the Front Buttons.

    Visual Switch Groups: This is the groups we set up earlier. This contains the text box that shows the highlighted button name. As the text boxes are part of the groups, only the selected one is visible. The is the middle layer. This contains the middle text boxes.

    Button Text Boxes: This contains the text boxes that go at the back and show the unselected value. This contains the Back Text Boxes.


    Final Words

    Out of all the Power BI Bookmarks tips, the one I would stress the most is: use the selected visuals setting. It will make your reports much easier to maintain!

    If you are not convinced to use bookmark groups, it was recently announced at MBAS 2021 some extra functionality. This will allow users to apply whole bookmark groups to a page, automatically adding buttons when you add extra bookmarks.

    I also described a similar tip using buttons almost two years ago. This uses slightly more advanced technique, and some functionality was not out then that is now. However, it is still valid and a viable option.

    If you like the content from PowerBI.Tips please follow us on all the social outlets. Stay up to date on all the latest features and free tutorials.  Subscribe to our YouTube Channel.  Or follow us on the social channels, Twitter and LinkedIn where we will post all the announcements for new tutorials and content.

    Introducing our PowerBI.tips SWAG store. Check out all the fun PowerBI.tips clothing and products:

    Check out the new Merch!

    Hasta La Vista Data
    Go Ahead Make My Data
    PBIX Hat


  • Standardizing KPI’s around a Business Intelligence Team

    Standardizing KPI’s around a Business Intelligence Team

    This article follows from Episode 5 of the new Explicit Measures Podcast, a whole new way to talk about Power BI. If this article strikes you as relevant, subscribe to the podcast on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen. You can also watch live at 7:30am CST every Tuesday and Thursday morning on YouTube.

    On the latest Explicit Measures Podcast (Episode 5), the team dived into what should a BI Team focus on for their own KPI’s. One theme was consistent across each host however: Any KPI for a BI Team starts with the question: how do you evaluate and define success? This idea of success and the value for a Power BI pro can fall into many different opinions, depending on the size, team, and current culture at an organization. We wanted to share an initial template of KPI’s that any BI Team or Pro should start using and integrating in their own workflow.

    Evaluating Success for Power BI

    How can you properly gauge whether reports and data is satisfying the role in a company? At least from the opinion of the Explicit Measures Podcast, the basis starts with the ability to provide value, trust, and insights to an organization through their data. Starting with this as the end-goal, a BI Team can and must strategize on translating success into measurable targets. Let’s break this out into three distinct elements of success, with examples of KPIs for a BI Team.

    Elements of Success

    Adoption

    Adoption has become a buzz word in our industry over the past few years, and with good reason. One could make the argument that the ability to drive adoption should take higher precedent than some of the reports themselves. For reference, we are defining adoption as the maturity, growth, and reliance an organization has on their data via Power BI.

    Value / Time

    While most BI professionals do not directly create revenue, there is no question that there is a cost. With an ever increasing workload and requests for our time, the ability to validate and choose to work on impactful and value-added reports is essential. If a pro is working on one report, there are five others that are being ignored. Further, are the reports that are being developed and deployed providing the expected insights and information to an organization?

    Data Quality

    Anyone who has worked in Business Intelligence can tell you – once teams lose trust in the data, it is an awfully long and difficult road to gain it back. If users cannot trust the data in Power BI reports, that both reverts adoption and users will find other means to get their data. BI teams must be able to monitor how up-to-date published reports are, and ensure that the content that is available is current and accurate.

    Examples of Success KPI’s

    The following are examples of what a Power BI team or Pro can use to evaluate their own success based the pillars of Adoption, Value, and Quality. This is by no means an exhaustive list – this is an amazing community that consistently contributes new and innovate ideas – however there is no current standard for a BI Team success KPIs.

    An Example BI Team Scorecard using the new Goals in Power BI

    Adoption – KPI’s

    Rolling 14 Days / 30 Days Report Views

    Just with a basic department metric, simply looking at the aggregate does not create a KPI. While Report Views are important, giving context to the current performance transforms how you view this. This KPI not only shows you your top reports on a 2 week and month period, but also compare with the previous 14 / 30 day period.

    Viewing Report Usage on a 30 Day Rolling Basis

    Active Users (Weekly, Monthly)

    The relationship between the number of Report Views and Users may not be as straightforward as you think. Keeping watch of engaged consumers should occur on a weekly and monthly timeframe. For this, you can simply use a filter on a minimum of X reports viewed per week or month. Depending on your data, you can gauge the current state.

    User Distribution by Report

    Do not be fooled by high usage numbers in your reports alone! By this, make sure you can identify power users who are hoarding the majority of views for a given report. For example, a great technique to understand this is using the Pareto Principle, or the 80/20 rule in your report views. For example, for your top report, try to track the 20% users, and how much of total views they make up for an entire user base.

    SAT Scores, Feedback

    The majority of the KPIs in this article focus on quantitative metrics. However, there should attention to create subjective feedback in Power BI. For example, creating a Power BI Feedback Survey can create high value. In regard to when to send out a Survey, the following scenarios are suggested:

    • 45 Days after New Reports Launched (per-Report Feedback)
    • Quarterly Feedback Surveys (Overall experience using Power BI)

    Collecting this data via Power Automate and integrating into Power BI becomes a powerful tool.

    Using Customer Voice to Send out Report Feedback Surveys using Variables for Report Name

    Value / Time – KPI’s

    New Reports Launched

    Like Supply Chain Management, ensure you can track newly published reports. Bear in mind, this is not a growth target. There should be some range depending on the size of the BI Team that should aimed for. For example, a consistent small number may show a backlog. However, to high of a number may be saturating the overall experience for users.

    New Report Usage

    In parallel with tracking newly published reports, keep an eye on the immediate interest from consumers for these new reports. Like with the New Reports Launched KPI, depending on your team and size, decide on a sweet spot regarding range of views you expect. Likewise, have a filter on this based on the date the report was launched, looking at 30 to 45 days forward. The only usage metrics that should be included are ones based on the date the report was published.

    Report Lifespan

    This is a favorite. Too many times has a BI Author worked on what was deemed an urgent report, imperative to the business. These types of projects involve stress, pressure, and most importantly time taken to get right. Despite this, some of these reports seem to lose their luster once completed, not to be heard from again.

    In short, the ability to understand the durability and longevity of reports is essential. This can be taken both from viewing at an individual report level or an aggregate of newly launched reports. Are the reports being built showing value to consumers, not just once, but giving them a reason to return to the report on a consistent basis?

    Data Quality – KPI’s

    Report Refresh Rate

    An obvious choice when referring to Data Quality, if your reports are consistently failing that causes multiple problems. For one, consumers are not receiving the most current data. Secondly, this should trigger within the BI Team an alert that a data model may need to be reviewed for best practice standards.

    What is the target rate? While there is no current industry standard, targeting anything near the 95% rate should not be over achievable.

    An Example of Report Refresh KPIs

    Days Since Report Views

    From a bird’s eye view of all the reports in an organization, flagging unused report becomes an actionable KPI. In addition, mapping this to also track duration on a per-user basis provides a wholistic scorecard to future decisions. Firstly, Reports with consistent low Days Since Views should be treated with extra care if any updates are needed. On the other hand, Reports that have not been viewed in over 2 weeks may indicate loss of interest. Depending on the report, a BI Team can decide either to re-promote a report or assess if a report is not providing the value it should.

    From the User perspective, tracking Days Since Views by User can provide value in multiple ways. For instance, Users who are “top customers” (i.e. those who overall and per-report have low Days Since Views) tell Authors who to reach out to or who knows what can enhance reports in the future. By contrast, Users with high Days Since Views provide the ability for push-back for requests for new builds. For example, any colleague that may be requesting the most report builds but do not return to their reports give support to Project Managers that this may not be worth the value.

    Flagging a Report with 40 Days since being viewed by User

    Reports Retired

    As we discussed monitoring how many Reports have been launched, what about Reports on their way out? That is to say, how many reports have been removed from the service and from the “public” view. The importance of keeping track of this KPI is all about quality for the consumer experience.

    Ensuring that any data published for an organization is current, has a clear objective, and provides clarity is paramount. Above all, this grows the trust and reliance on using Power BI for users. From a discovery standpoint, there is no confusion on reliable data.

    Taking the previous KPI (Days Since Views) into account, a BI Team can create a view to monitor “at-risk” reports. For example, any Report with over 45 Days Since Views should be strongly considered to be retired. Any report that meets the threshold should alert users on a pending retirement date. If there are no objections, then these reports should be moved to an Archived workspace.

    Getting the Data from Power BI

    This may be obvious, but a prerequisite of creating and using KPI’s is having the data. So where is this data coming from? If you are a Power BI Administrator in your tenant, you can import the data via PowerShell. Install the Power BI Module in PowerShell using the following command:

    Install-Module -Name MicrosoftPowerBIMgmt

    Once you installed the cmdlet, you can use the following script to pull in usage day (by day) into a specified folder on your PC.

    Login-PowerBI
    ## $a is the starting Day. Start with the you want it run and subtract 1
    $a = 17
    Do {
        "Starting Run $a"
        $a
        $a++
        $ab = "{0:00}" -f $a
        "Running Day $a"
        $daytype = "$ab"
        ## Update monthly the 05 for start date for the current month
        $startdate = '2021-05-' + $daytype + 'T00:00:00'
        ## Update monthly the 05 for end date for the current month
        $enddate = '2021-05-' + $daytype + 'T23:59:59'
        $activities = Get-PowerBIActivityEvent -StartDateTime $startdate -EndDateTime $enddate | ConvertFrom-Json
        ## Update the 05 with the current month
        $FileName = '2021' + '05' + $daytype + 'Export.csv'
        ## Add where you want the files to go
        $FolderLocation = 'C:\Users\PBIActivity\'
        $FullPath = Join-Path $FolderLocation $FileName
        $activities | Export-Csv -Path $FullPath -NoTypeInformation
        ## Change the number for what day of the month you want it to run until
    } Until ($a -gt 19)

    The script above collects activity data from your tenant and creates a CSV file per day. Note that this can only go back 30 days – make sure you run this on a weekly basis and change the variables. To learn more about what else you can do with the PowerShell cmdlets for Power BI, read the announcement from the Power Blog here.

    To collect refresh statistics, Marc Lelijveld (Data-Marc) has a great tutorial here.

    Conclusion

    The KPIs outlined should serve as a starting point to monitor performance. Power BI Pros without insight into their own performance are stunting their own growth. Not only are metrics for Pros essential for an organization, but it alters the way new reports are built in the future.

    Like the content here? Then you will love the Explicit Measures Podcast!  Subscribe to the Podcast on Spotify, Apple or multiple platforms on Anchor. Want to join us live? We stream every episode on YouTube Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7:30 am CST. You can also subscribe to new events on the PowerBI.tips LinkedIn Page

    If you like the content from PowerBI.Tips please follow us on all the social outlets. Stay up to date on all the latest features and free tutorials.  Subscribe to our YouTube Channel.  Or follow us on the social channels, Twitter and LinkedIn where we will post all the announcements for new tutorials and content.

    Introducing our PowerBI.tips SWAG store. Check out all the fun PowerBI.tips clothing and products:

    Check out the new Merch!

    Hasta La Vista Data
    Go Ahead Make My Data
    PBIX Hat


  • How to Represent Your Power BI Skills

    How to Represent Your Power BI Skills

    This is part 3 of 3 in a series designed to help Power BI users and enthusiasts. The first post focuses on identifying the dizzying array of skills that make up the Power BI ecosystem. It was created to help you take a personal inventory and assess your current skills. The Second post focuses on providing ideas for building learning plans and putting that base assessment to use. Finally, we come to this post where I’m going to focus on some key areas for how you represent your skills when the time comes. This post is for job seekers, for career movers and anyone else that finds themselves in a position where you need to represent your Power BI skills effectively.

    Be Distinctive

    All of us are unique. You have so many different qualities and passions, and your experiential knowledge is one of a kind. The many years it’s taken you to get to this point, the schooling, the challenges you’ve had to overcome, the boss that made your life miserable, the aha moments, and big successes are all part of who you are. There is SO much there…and you have a piece of paper, and possibly 30 to 60 minutes to convey that in an interview. How do you do that?

    The simple answer is, you don’t. You do all that before the interview. You take those experiences. Take those challenges you’ve overcome. You embrace getting outside your comfort zone. You assess your skills, you set a plan of action, and you grow. It is through that commitment to action that you will grow in an area you are passionate about or hold interest in. The old adage, show me who you are by your actions is what sets you apart and will increase your chances of landing your next big job. If you are different, be different first.

    Learning and growing will show well by themselves based on the answers you give. However, you can easily take this to the next level by showing what you’ve done. Build some reports and share the public links in your resume, start a git repository and store your stuff there. You can also add links to Community activities or blogs. As someone who hires people, I know this is the first thing I look for. This gives you an advantage because you show who you are before we even talk.

    You are One in a Sea of Resumes

    Regardless of the position being looked for, the reality is that you are a single candidate in a sea of resumes. I’m not a recruiter or human resources people finder. I’m don’t know all the different techniques you can use to make sure your resume pops up on someone’s screen. Here is what I can tell you based on experience looking at hundreds of resumes over the years. Firstly, there are certainly key words related to tech skills that I look for in order to find candidates. This should make sense. If I need a Power BI developer, I’ll be looking for Power BI in your resume. However, that just gets me to your resume, it doesn’t sell me.

    Is your resume going to stand out? Not in a bizarre way, but have you really thought about how to convey your skills without writing 6 pages? Here are my top recommendations for increasing your chances of going from resume to interview.

    Top Recommendations

    1. Stack rank your skills. It should be abundantly clear somewhere what you are the best at and what you only have limited exposure too.
    2. Don’t put every single program, operating system and application you have ever opened on your resume.
    3. Condense your experience down to the most concise wording. You are putting your experience down to convey your knowledge not describe all your job functions in detail.
    4. Have you blogged? Do you have a community user account where you are actively helping people? Are there any published reports of yours to look at? Do you have anything to show that you are different?
    5. Do you have an ending that outlines what you are currently learning?

    It requires effort to be distinctive. Adopt a learning mentality and let that shine and set you apart in your resume.

    One of the best resumes I’ve seen had a link to encourage me to look at a Power BI report. The candidate built this to represent their skills. It was the longest I’ve ever spent looking at a resume. It showed the candidates skills, technique and understanding of how to put together a well polished report. They followed that resume with a solid interview where the technical skills in the resume aligned with the conversation. Instant hire!

    Do Not Embellish!

    A counter point has to be made right after pushing you to think about how to set yourself apart. I am not suggesting you embellish. One of the absolute worst things you can do is mis-represent yourself on your resume. Land an interview, and then display that you actually don’t have any of the experience that you said you had. Writing it down doesn’t make it reality. I love rating scales, its one way you can easily articulate your technical skills on a resume.

    A business will have different needs, and it isn’t everything. For instance, you might know nothing about Power Query because you work in enterprise areas for data movement and shaping. However, you do have a ton of Modeling/DAX. That could be a perfect fit for an enterprise or more technical role. The converse is that a business unit may only need simple Modeling/DAX because all their issues revolve around connecting to, cleaning, and shaping data in Power BI. Those are two completely different skill paths.

    Why Not Embellish a Little?

    One of the challenges we’ve identified already is trying to convey who you are in a short amount of time. If there are huge differences between the way your resume conveys your technical skills and the way you can represent them in conversation you just took Trust off the table. And that will likely kill your chances of getting hired. All that work to get this far will get instantly flushed.

    Another reason is that you may not know about all the other areas of need a company has. Just because you may not be a good fit for this role, the hiring person may pass your resume around to other parts of the organization. You may have the skillset that a colleague of theirs is looking for.

    Understand the skills the position needs

    Was the job description specific? Did it give you an idea of what skills were needed? Could you figure out whether the job was going to be business facing or more of a development role? If you said no to any of these questions, be sure you bring that up right away in the interview. Clarity around the type of position is really important to understand where the focus of questions should fall.

    Pay attention to the details in the job description and focus on the areas where an organization is placing emphasis. If you don’t have skills in Power Query and the job description stresses that as a main area of expertise, you might want to pass on applying. This goes back to not embellishing. Just because you have focused a lot of your time in Power BI doesn’t mean that you would be able to perform all areas as an expert. The level of job, the requirements they are asking for and the years of experience are good indicators of whether or not it is the “right” Power BI job for you.

    Be Honest

    This is without a doubt the number one make or break thing for you in an interview. Just like embellishing, this will instantly kill your chances of getting a job if you aren’t honest. What do I mean by this? Here is an example that you might not think would qualify, but it does.

                    Question: We’re in need of someone with really good Power Query skills. Are you familiar with Power Query and have you processed data through it on a regular basis?

                    Answer: Yes, I know Power Query very well.

                    Follow up: Great! How can I transform the data type of a column?

                    Answer: Well, actually… I’ve read about Power Query but I do all my transforms in SQL…

    At this point its likely you just flipped the switch. An interview is so much more than just the technical things you know. The interviewer has a limited amount of time to get to know you, and even in a technical interview they are looking for all the key things that they would want to see in a team member. Examples like this erode, or destroy, the trust/honesty element. Right or wrong, an interviewer will take this information and apply it to other scenarios.

    What answers like this represent is there won’t be an open dialogue, and a manager could have a new resource committing that they know everything. This would likely lead to over committing or missing deadlines. Either one is a recipe for conflict and a bad relationship. Be honest when you represent your Power BI skills.

    Be Inquisitive

    There is nothing better than having a dialogue with individuals around topics. As mentioned above, hiring managers are looking for a lot more than just what you can recite. Are you asking clarifying questions? Do you follow up with a question of your own, or talk through your thought process? Did you come prepared with questions on the company? Did you inquire about the team, and the direction that the company is headed. What is the work style, do they work under heavy process and procedure or is it the wild west. What does a day in the life of this job look like for you? All the questions you bring to an interview, show the interviewer that you have a vested interest in the company and the team you would be working on.

    Be Yourself

    The resume opens the door. The interview is the initial meet and greet, and any follow up meetings would be closing the deal. You wouldn’t have the interview if you didn’t appear to have the skills that a company needs. For all intents and purposes you should feel pretty comfortable, provided you have the skills you represented in your resume.

    Bring your personality to the interview, engage as much as you can with the interviewer to let them see the side of you that you would show at work. This is important for a couple reasons. First, you want to show the interviewer a glimpse of the type of person you are. Without that, it can be hard to gauge whether or not you would fit with the team or wouldn’t. The other thing to keep in mind here is that you are interviewing the company, just as much as they are interviewing you! Show a bit of yourself in the interview to make sure that the company is one that you would want to join and you think you could be successful in.

    Extend Thanks, Request feedback

    Wherever possible, follow up with the recruiter or interviewer to extend thanks for their time. Hopefully it was an enjoyable experience for all involved regardless of whether or not it worked out. Extending thanks to people for engaging with you should have gone both ways, but you’ll never lose when extending a bit of closing goodwill. Wherever or whenever possible, if you don’t get the job, request feedback. Knowing the reasons is invaluable to you in your next interview or the job you apply for.

    Do you lack certain skills, did you convey something that you didn’t mean to convey, was there a candidate stronger in a particular area. There is a huge disparity sometimes between how someone reads us vs. what we are trying to show. Getting this type of feedback is constructive because it leads to introspection and tweaking how you present yourself or a skill area you need for that particular job role. Other times, there could be no skill difference but a different candidate presented themselves in such a way to make the interviewer feel it was a better team fit.

    Representing your Power BI Skills

    There are so many roles and jobs that you can apply for now. There are also one’s you can focus on for future goals after you learn more skills, and build more experience. While I can’t make any guarantees, I can say that these tips and recommendations come from interviewing many Power BI candidates. These steps outlined above are key areas that will make your job hunting, your interviews, and your future interactions with your next career move a more positive one.

    This wraps up the 3 part series that I wanted to complete to bring my insights and experience to all of you. This last post was the first one I wanted to write, but I couldn’t bring this forward without the first two. If you missed those, be sure to go check them out (Skills, Learning). This is the last stop, understanding your skills and adopting a learning mindset should be your first focus. Those set the stage for being successful personally, in an interview, or anywhere your career may take you.

    If you like the content from PowerBI.Tips, please follow us on all the social outlets to stay up to date on all the latest features and free tutorials.  Subscribe to our YouTube Channel, and follow us on Twitter where we will post all the announcements for new tutorials and content. Alternatively, you can catch us on LinkedIn (Seth) LinkedIn (Mike) where we will post all the announcements for new tutorials and content.

    As always, you’ll find the coolest PowerBI.tips SWAG in our store. Check out all the fun PowerBI.tips clothing and products:
    Store Merchandise

  • Introducing the Explicit Measures Podcast

    Introducing the Explicit Measures Podcast

    Welcome to a new podcast from PowerBI.tips, Explicit Measures. We aim to discuss relevant topics and thoughts around Power BI. Join us Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7:30 am CST (-6 UTC) on our YouTube Channel and subscribe on Spotify Podcasts.

    Answering the Why

    For most of you who casually visit or frequently visit PowerBI.tips, we deal with many tools, features, languages, and situations in modeling, visualizing, and distributing our data and reports. We are the Power BI Power Users, capable and responsible for building complex solutions. We have to be continually acquiring new skills, and improving on our processes & standards.

    Additionally there are so many resources available out in the Power BI Community. So many amazing champions and industry leaders who share their knowledge and expertise on how to build faster, better, and more reliable reports. As a developer we increasingly tasked with, How to audit your data? or how to create complex calculations? We learn best practices and better workflows to implement in our daily tasks.

    One aspect of what we do that is not easily discovered in the community, the why of what we do. The why of building reports is universal across all Power BI Pros. As professional BI developers we know the how. If we don’t know the how, we learn the how. This begs the question about the why? Why this particular feature, tool, or product integrate with my organization or my team? Why would my users need this? What does this mean for me?

    The why is the question around every BI pro’s water cooler. You may ask this yourself. Possibly sitting at your desk after a meeting, or as you engage with the Power BI community, or User Group. No matter how you get to it, we all face common questions. Eventually all of us will need to ask these types of questions.

    Today this is why I am excited to introduce the new Explicit Measures Podcast, available every Tuesday and Thursday live at 7:30am CST.

    The Background of the Podcast

    Being a Power BI Author

    I have been part of the Power BI World since it was “Power BI Designer”. As soon as I was able to download the first application version of Power BI Designer, I was hooked. I felt it was intuitive, complex enough, and just worked. At the time, our organization was vetting new BI platforms. I strongly made the push that we adopt this new tool.

    I decided to put all my eggs in the Power BI basket. Believing this tool could easily be widely adopted as it’s part of Office 365, everyone has Office 365. The barrier to entry was low, and we already have strong community. A community of Excel gurus, Power Query and Power Pivot experts.

    Over the coming months, we moved Excel files to Power BI, and eventually became a Power BI shop. I soaked up any and all information and resources on how to create DAX measures. Learning what the heck Filter and Row context where. Then figuring out how to create my own function in Power Query. This process was love at first sight. It felt that I was bringing advanced data solutions to my users. I was able to create models and create relationships that otherwise would not have been able to exist. Created tables that finally bridged so many gaps in the data.

    I would jump in my chair when a new Desktop version was released. Any new feature that caught my eye would immediately be something I wanted to integrate into my reports. Drill Through (I think at the first Data Summit before being MBAS?) feature was a game-changer to me.

    The problem was what I thought was a game changer, which they are. This same excitement did not translate among colleagues who did not focus on data or felt overwhelmed by data. Many of our old Reports were built in SSRS, and users liked them for what they provided.

    Excitement vs. Expectations

    Drill through, interactive visuals, and other complex features that were in these Power BI reports became overwhelming to users. Not only that, but any data analyst was also now working in Power BI. They were building their own reports, with their own filters, and their own business logic.

    What arose from these implications was the matter of users losing trust in the reports. They lost trust in the data they needed to rely on. A department with one report would complain about a certain KPI being too low, while the defending department claimed their report was provided a more adequate number. Users did not know what reports to use, much less how to use drill through. They wanted what would provide them the value they needed.

    This brought me to an epiphany of sorts, or multiple over numerous situations. Not only about the importance of governance and adoption in Power BI, but at the end of the day, why do we do what we do? Why are we in this space, and what are we ultimately judged and measured on showing success and real impact at where we work?

    Focusing on the Why

    This brings us back to the Power BI Water Cooler. How many of us have delt with these sort of situations, problems, and trying to find a solution? I would put good money on the majority of us who have been working with Power BI for a while have gone through this type of arc.

    In conversations with other User Group Leaders, the community, and other Microsoft MVPs. I have learned time and time again this is not a siloed story. What can really separate a Power BI Tech vs. a Power BI Pro is the ability to think of alternative solutions. What is the ultimate impact of any feature, product, or visual on the most important audience, the consumer.

    We must think this way. We must be able to process all of the new capabilities that come out at rapid speed. Then understand who our consumers are. Finally, understand of not just Power BI but the data, and where can we further drive more and more trust into the data.

    Being Explicitly Measured

    I want all of you whom this article may hit close to home to join us in this ever-going discussion. Having the pleasure of knowing Mike and Seth of this site has shown this need is so prevalent. We want to bring to the surface these questions, topics, and discussions. There is more than one way to define a measure, but the importance is that you start with some definition.

    That is truly where the name of the podcast, Explicit Measures, comes from. Being able to start with a use case (take the technical situation of defining a measure), understand what is available to you (the functions), and what is best to apply (FILTER inside a CALCULATE, ALL or ALLSELECTED?).

    The Explicit Measure Podcast is meant to be first entertaining for users. We all need an outlet for some of the frustrations we feel by end users, and being with fellow users who understand the pain helps the feeling you are not alone!

    The heart is in the ability for us to debate, argue, and most of all inspire. Find solutions, figure out what impacts us and where can we go from here.

    Join us every Tuesday and Thursday at 7:30 am CST live, or follow along on the playlist on YouTube or subscribe on Spotify. You can also subscribe to new events on the PowerBI.tips LinkedIn Page

    If you like the content from PowerBI.Tips please follow us on all the social outlets. Stay up to date on all the latest features and free tutorials.  Subscribe to our YouTube Channel.  Or follow us on the social channels, Twitter and LinkedIn where we will post all the announcements for new tutorials and content.

    Introducing our PowerBI.tips SWAG store. Check out all the fun PowerBI.tips clothing and products:

    Check out the new Merch!

    Hasta La Vista Data
    Go Ahead Make My Data
    PBIX Hat


  • How to Build Your Power BI Skills

    How to Build Your Power BI Skills

    One of the biggest improvements you can make to your life and career is embracing a learning mentality. If you are here, I assume one of your interest areas is Power BI. This post is the 2nd in the series to help individuals identify where your current skill strengths are, and where you have room for improvement. (The first post introduces the Power BI Skills Matrix and is designed to assess your current state.) After reading that you can dial in on your strengths and weaknesses and your now ready to start creating learning plans to build your Power BI Skills.

    Therefor this post is a series of steps that I have used, still use, and remind myself to use, to stay on track. This isn’t a training manual. It is a compilation of ideas that you can use to formulate a plan of action and stick to it. I’ve carved this into four sections for easier digestion. First, some tips for any level. Second thru Fourth focus on different levels. Beginner, intermediate, and expert.

    For Everyone

    Pick a Time and Schedule It

    The struggle to do this is real! In order to remain consistent, we have to be diligent in carving out time for ourselves to learn new things. Figure out how much time you want to devote to learning and schedule it. Literally, put it on a calendar and make it part of your routine. Not doing this results in large gaps in learning. Losing traction on the things you did learn. Or even worse, regressing instead of progressing.

    Pause – seriously. Take a minute, figure out if its 1 hour or 24 and carve out the time in your schedule. Open your device/notebook/calendar and write it down.

    Don’t Just Read it, Do it

    This relates to almost everything in life. When you actually do something, you understand it infinitely better than just reading about it. I like to separate out my learning time in two ways. The first, starts with reading about concepts or ideas that I can jot down and reference when practicing it later. Visualization is a good example of this. Reading books, blogs, etc can uncover a ton of different methods, theories and approaches to building great visualizations. This requires time to digest these conceptual aspects before taking a direction. Only after we process it, can we start testing something out or re-enforcing our learnings by doing.

    However, the second way is much more applicable to almost all of Power BI, and that is learning while doing.

    • Connecting to Different Data Sources
    • Cleaning & Shaping Data
    • Modeling
    • DAX
    • Visualization & Properties

    All these are best served by getting dirty right away. Have the Power BI Desktop open all the time when you are working on new concepts and learning new skills. Power BI makes this quick discovery so much easier now! You can immediately access and load a sample data set right out of the Power BI Desktop. Click Try a sample dataset

    Select Load sample data

    Load Sample Data

    Choose financials and Click Load

    Don’t just read tutorials, walk through them with the author. Don’t just find books that talk at you. Find those that invite you to follow along, or test out what you are being taught. Always, Always DO IT!

    Share It

    One of the most rewarding aspects of learning new things is sharing those new learned things with other people. Not everyone wants to devote all their time to speaking, blogging, making videos and interacting with the community at large. However, sharing what you’ve gone out of your way to learn with other people is very rewarding. Whether it is on the job or in community forums once in awhile. Not only that, sharing helps others out in ways you will never even know. Sharing what you’ve learned and experienced is the ultimate pay-off for continued learning. Investing the time to learn, then sharing that with others, makes all the struggles worth it!

    Beginners

    Have FUN! Embrace the Experience

    There is a lot to learn, but don’t start the journey of building Power Bi skills thinking you should know everything. Just like you, we all started at the beginning at one point in time. The great thing about you starting now is that there are more people that can teach you things! One of the best ways you can start the journey is by joining the Community. Hop on over to community.powerbi.com and create an account. The forums and linked content in that single space alone will set you up for success.

    I would also highly recommend joining a local User Group. Interacting with other Power BI users that are local to you is a great way to network. Joining the community and starting a Power BI User Group were the two single things I did that had a huge impact on my professional life and career. These communities get you engaged with others like you and open many doors.

    Start with the Basics

    Download Power BI Desktop and open it. Keep it open as you look for new things to learn. Within the tool is a link to guided learning. Click Help and you will see easy links to a multitude of MSFT created material.

    Combine these quick links with the sample datasets we outlined above. You can see it is extremely easy to get started. Now you can test out the things you learn without the need to have your own dataset curated.

    Find Your Learning Style

    One of the best things you can do is figure out what methods of learning work best for you. Is it video? Presentation style or tutorial. Do you love books and will never give up the feeling of paper? Or do you need your tidbits in smaller chunks like posts, blogs or community posts? Try them all out! Once you sort that out, then dive into those sources for information. I could link to many of my favorites, but I don’t want to find your favorites for you. I want you to find them on your own. The only blog I will mention is the Power BI Blog from MSFT. This is where you will find all the latest news, and is the first thing you should subscribe to.

    Use the Skills Matrix to build a plan of action

    Take some time to figure out what learning path you want to head down first with the Skills Matrix. What is the most relevant skillset for your job, or the job you want? What have you struggled the most with? Do you want to know a little about everything, or do you want to focus on one area before others? Most of these questions can only be answered by you. Hopefully the Skills Matrix will help you figure out those paths. You might also find some helpful pointers in this Post by Steve Campbell. He outlines some different roles in a data solution.

    What I cannot stress enough though is this. Understanding the fundamentals in Power Query, Modeling and DAX should be your first goal! It is important to get familiar with those areas before you start diving deep into anything else. Once you understand the basics of those areas. Dive into visuals and the properties and methods used to create good looking reports. There are so many great features that you can use to produce the best end user experiences.

    Find Content Creators you like and Follow them

    Why? Because this is one of the easiest ways to stay up to date on new things. It also serves as a reminder to keep on your learning path. Doing things alone all the time can get boring. You are also more apt to lose focus on your learning goals. Finding someone or some platform that you enjoy will be a subtle reminder to keep it up! Its also really easy to take a break and check your latest YouTube notification or twitter/Instagram feed. People are always posting relevant things you can check out.

    Intermediate

    Refine Your Skills

    Now that you’ve had some time to build your Power BI skills, you likely have an area where you spend more time than others. DAX is likely front and center in your universe, and if its not, put it there. Without a good understanding of DAX. How it filters and shapes data, you will always be battling presenting the right data.

    This is the point where the learning cycles get a bit more involved. You’ll be diving deeper into your interest areas or the areas you have to solve problems for all the time. If you clean and shape your data in Power BI. Maybe diving deeper into M and using the advanced query editor is more valuable. In either case, make sure you spend time refining your craft. Spend time to learn the languages above and beyond what you use daily. Also start to learn the tools that will help you troubleshoot and figure out performance issues in these areas.

    Understand the underlying technologies

    Power BI is the culmination of technologies that MSFT has had for many years. You may have some idea of this already. There has been a ton of work done to make sure Power BI has the full enterprise features from its originating products. Therefor, knowing how all these technologies work together is important. Especially something like Analysis Services. Understanding these concepts and tools is key to understanding how to work and interact with them. What does O365 have to do with Power BI? What is Azure AD? Where do I purchase licenses depending on the business needs? Why are there all these External Tools and how do I use them? All these are questions you should have an idea of how to answer.

    Expand outside your comfort zone

    By this time, you have an area of comfort. It might be visualization, it might be administration, or could be DAX. Push yourself to get into the things that don’t come easy to you. We all fight with the “fear of failure”, and learning new things falls squarely into that “fight or flight” response. Push past that and be sure to take little bites of those challenging areas. The more you embrace, rather than avoid, those challenging areas the better off you’ll be.

    Expert

    Stay Current

    You already know building your Power BI skills is important. However, as you become more and more familiar with all the tools, languages and infrastructure its easy to become relaxed. Conversely, you may be getting overwhelmed with work and outside pressures. In some spaces taking a break might not be a big deal as releases are months if not quarters apart. However, Power BI continues to barrel ahead with change after change every month. It is important to stay plugged in to the community, events, blogs and the latest news that impacts your learning world. There is no end to refining and adjusting solutions and implementations of Power BI within organizations. Here is your reminder (and mine) that its crucial to stick with your learning schedule and stay engaged rather than just reading headlines.

    Find Outlets to Share

    If you are an expert in your field you are likely providing major value to one or many businesses with your expertise. As I mentioned above, one of the most rewarding aspects of accumulating knowledge and experience is being able to share that with others.

    Some easy paths to engagement would be answering questions on the Power BI Community, or other online forums. Start a User Group and/or engage with your local group more. Try to blog a bit. Just because someone wrote about a topic somewhere in the world, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t write yours. Alternatively, try to hone your skills to the max by biting the bullet and creating a presentation. I guarantee, nothing will lock in your learnings more than having to teach someone else how to do it. This is where your local User Group is important! It’s typically a smaller venue that can be used to hone your speaking skills. Get past your negative inner voice, just get something started and find out what path you like the best.

    Go Deep or Widen your focus

    There will always be something to learn, but you will certainly start to see things in a different way. One of the hardest decisions can be to choose to go really deep on a specific area, or focus your attention on the ecosystem as a whole. The driving forces here may be a career path change, or a future goal you wanted to achieve. In either case, the same principles you used to get you here will take you to the next level, keep it up!

    Start Building Your Power BI Skills

    Wherever you stand in the spectrum of the skills matrix, you will always have something to learn. Carve out the time, figure out a game plan, and execute on it. Building your Power BI skills and embracing a learning mentality will not only help you find a great job, but it will help you grow in your current one and expand into others that you only dream of right now.

    The absolute best thing about owning your own learning path is that you take that knowledge with you wherever you go. Self learning provides you with a deeper understanding of how to solve problems regardless of datasets. This pulls you out of the “I only know what I did at school or in my job” mentality and gives you ownership of those learnings. It allows you to explain them, and talk about broader solutions. This alone will set you apart from a large swath of individuals that don’t have, or embrace, a learning mentality.

    It is my sincerest hope that each of you reading this embrace a learning mentality and make it a part of your life.

    If you like the content from PowerBI.Tips, please follow us on all the social outlets to stay up to date on all the latest features and free tutorials.  Subscribe to our YouTube Channel, and follow us on Twitter where we will post all the announcements for new tutorials and content. Alternatively, you can catch us on LinkedIn (Seth) LinkedIn (Mike) where we will post all the announcements for new tutorials and content.

    As always, you’ll find the coolest PowerBI.tips SWAG in our store. Check out all the fun PowerBI.tips clothing and products:
    Store Merchandise

  • Using Power Apps, Power BI and Power Automate Together

    Using Power Apps, Power BI and Power Automate Together

    Using Power Apps Power BI and Power Automate together can unleash huge benefits and enhance your solutions. Creating an end-user-centric dashboard and power app creates a simplified user experience. We will understand who will be visiting the reporting solution, the value they will receive from it, and take action through the actions below.  

    Use Cases for Power Apps, Power BI and Power Automate Integration

    There are countless opportunities to unify these tools and use them together. Here are a few common use cases that can have huge benefits.

    Editing source data directly

    One of the biggest advantages of using Power apps, Power BI and Power Automate together is the ability write back data to the source system.  Power BI is natively a read-only tool, allowing users to see their data. Power Apps and Power Automate provide a great way to be able to modify this data directly. A good example is sales staff looking at forecasts. They may want to make some small adjustments. For example, they know a customer has gone out of business. With the embedded solutions, they can update and write back to the source system from within the Power BI Report. 

    Adding additional information

    Like editing the data directly, the solutions also allow for additional data to be stored. This may include adding comments to another database. A solution like this would let others see the comments when they view the reports. Or we could send an email regarding some information you have filtered in the reports. 

    Take Action on data

    As well as adding and storing information, several actions can be taken through Power apps, Power BI and Power Automate integration. Maybe in a sales dashboard, we want to alert someone about a trend. Alternatively, we could kick off a campaign by reacting to information in a marketing dashboard. There are huge amounts of actions that can be taken in Power Automate. Power Apps provides a great shell to control and kick off these actions. You can even call Power Automate to keep track of Power Query errors. 

    Power Platform architecture

    See our Power BI data elsewhere

    It is not limited to just surfacing Power Apps in the Power BI report. We can also view our Power BI data in our Power Apps. Thus, allowing business users to access the information when using the apps. There is also the possibility to set off Power Automate actions based on data-driven alerts. 


    Create a Unified Power Apps, Power BI Experience 

    Power BI, Power App embedded one report
    An example of a Power App embedded in a Power BI Report

    Here is a quick tip before you start to plan how to build your Power Apps, Power BI and Power Automate integration. Write down two things and keep this at the center of every action taken.  

    1. Understand who your audience is by writing down the end-user. Write organizational titles and personalities (technical ability). Writing these down and seeing these as a reminder throughout the build will help guide visuals, verbiage, and process flow.
        
    2. Now that we understand the audience, write down the goal of surfacing the data and how it affects the audience.  

    Suppose the tool doesn’t have a defined audience and purpose. It’s like having a destination but no map, a vehicle, and an idea but no vision to truly connect the dots. Ensure that these are clearly stated, placed somewhere visible even on the Power App or within the dashboard while testing to keep these critical pieces of information at the forefront while combining the end-user experience from two separate tools to one unified solution.  

    Interact with your data in real-time 

    The questions above drive cohesiveness and solution unification, but how are we informing the audience, and for what purpose? The purpose of integrating a Power Apps, Power BI report is to enable real-time Action. In fact, it’s at the most critical point while the consumer is digesting the information.  

    Build a power app to drive input through Power BI’s self-service capabilities. Power BI users visit reports to visualize meaningful data, discover trends, and ultimately make decisions. Allow Power Apps to complement the users by enabling the end-user to take Action while the end-user has data in front of them. Combing Power BI, Power Apps and Power Automate reduces context switching. It provides a simple way for the end-user to make meaningful areas of interest actionable. Keep these tools as close as you can to maximize decision-making capabilities and employee productivity.  

    Gain Feedback

    Build a power app to drive actionable outcomes through process automation. Viewing insights is essential. However, taking Action on these insights is equally as important. Embedding a Power App on the form and surfacing the data through Power Apps will bring that information to the end-user in a way that Power BI can’t, providing data modifying capabilities. Whether it’s one column or a large number of columns be edited, Power Apps can filter based on what you have selected. It brings in the form so that it only pulls in the relevant information. Keep this in mind while Sales team members are looking at their forecast and are 5 minutes before their weekly quota call and making some changes. They modify their data to see it very easy to use and don’t require them to context switch, losing their train of thought.  


    Learn How

    Watch the video below to learn how to use Power Apps, Power BI and Power Automate together!

    This was originally recorded from the Milwaukee Brew City Power Platform User Group on August 24th, 2020.

    If you like the content from PowerBI.Tips please follow us on all the social outlets. Stay up to date on all the latest features and free tutorials.  Subscribe to our YouTube Channel.  Or follow us on the social channels, Twitter and LinkedIn where we will post all the announcements for new tutorials and content.

    Introducing our PowerBI.tips SWAG store. Check out all the fun PowerBI.tips clothing and products:

    Check out the new Merch!

    Hasta La Vista Data
    Go Ahead Make My Data
    PBIX Hat


  • The Dice Game

    The Dice Game

    Well, it’s Friday, time to take a little break and play the Dice Game! The Power BI community is creative and is always developing amazing ideas. This is another incredible example that you can play right in Power BI! The brain child of this game is Kerry Kolosko, an Analyst out of of Australia.

    Play the game

    Below is a sample of the game. Again, fully built in PowerBI. Check out give it a good old roll of the dice!

    The Magic in the Game

    There are animations moving elements all on the report canvas. Rounded buttons to click on. All sorts of neat visual elements. These creative elements are capable via a custom visual, HTML Content. The HTML Content visual is maintained by Daniel Patrick-Marsh.

    Daniel’s work on custom visual development is top notch. So if you are super impressed with this report go download this visual from App Source.

    DOWNLOAD HTML Content Visual

    Download the Game

    For those of us who are really curious and want to see all the code. Download the full Dice Game found here.

    DOWNLOAD the Dice Game

    Please Follow

    If you like the content from PowerBI.Tips please follow us on all the social outlets. Stay up to date on all the latest features and free tutorials.  Subscribe to our YouTube Channel.  Or follow us on the social channels, Twitter and LinkedIn where we will post all the announcements for new tutorials and content.

    Introducing our PowerBI.tips SWAG store. Check out all the fun PowerBI.tips clothing and products:

    Check out the new Merch!

    Hasta La Vista Data
    Go Ahead Make My Data
    PBIX Hat