Dissecting Other Reports – Ep. 210

It’s one thing to build a report from scratch. It’s a completely different skill to open a report you didn’t build and quickly answer: “what is driving this experience?”

In Ep. 210, the team walks through how they dissect other people’s reports in Power BI Desktop—starting with the panes that reveal hidden complexity (selection, bookmarks, and filters), then working outward into formatting choices, navigation patterns, and the assumptions the report is making about the user.

News & Announcements

• How To Dissect Someone Else’s Power BI Report - Learn How It Works! — A quick walkthrough of the same report-teardown approach: open the file, identify how navigation is built, and trace why visuals behave the way they do.

• Friends of PowerBI.tips: Argus PBI — Monitoring for Power BI tenants (refresh health, activity signals, and governance visibility) so you can catch problems early and reduce “mystery failures.”

• Subscribe: The Explicit Measures Podcast — The main subscription page for the show, with links to recent episodes and platforms.

• Explicit Measures Podcast (show page) — A central hub for the series and episode archive if you’re sharing it internally or catching up.

Main Discussion

The group’s core point is that a report review is a process, not a vibe. Before you touch visuals, you need a reliable way to surface the mechanics: what objects exist on the page, how they’re being shown/hidden, what filters are being applied, and what interactions are driving the user experience.

Takeaways to apply right away:

• Open Selection, Bookmarks, and Filters first—these panes usually expose the real logic behind a “simple-looking” report.
• Click through items in the Selection pane to understand layering, hidden shapes/buttons, and which objects are actually clickable.
• Inspect visual-level and page-level filters early; invisible filters are one of the fastest ways to misinterpret results during a review.
• If the report uses lots of bookmarks, demand good naming (and foldering) or you’ll spend hours reverse-engineering what each one does.
• Review formatting defaults vs. intentional choices (themes, colors, typography) so you can improve consistency without breaking the brand or meaning.
• Decide if you’re doing refactor vs. rebuild: if navigation is a spaghetti bowl of bookmarks and unnamed objects, rebuilding can be the safer, faster path.
• Add documentation somewhere (even a hidden “About / Definitions” page): the next maintainer needs context on metrics, intended flows, and why design choices were made.

Looking Forward

If you build with the next maintainer in mind—clear naming, intentional navigation, and fewer hidden surprises—your reports will survive handoffs without becoming a rewrite project.



Episode Transcript

0:31 good morning everyone welcome back to the explicit measures podcast with Tommy Seth and Michael as you can see for the first time in many many weeks we are wearing something different different because we didn’t record a ton of episodes all the same time you seen what do you say I don’t know what you’re talking about I don’t know what you’re talking about I don’t know what you’re talking about but it is a happy Tuesday gentlemen happy happy Tuesday live and in color welcome to snow and cold wintery oh man in Wisconsin

1:01 wintery oh man in Wisconsin did you guys did you guys get snow I got some snow at my house it didn’t stick but I was like what the heck is this all about this is not fun indeed saw the snow yesterday what a quite a disappointment we’re probably gonna get it we literally like the week we started not recording we had barbecued the next day flurry snow oh boy yeah everyone’s been traveling in Wisconsin or the Midwest never been zooming around so we had a couple people traveling Seth you were

1:33 couple people traveling Seth you were traveling out to the Microsoft MVP Summit I I did got to experience the wonderful same weather of Washington 50 and drizzly there we go and just no snow it’s been yeah got to spend fantastic time at the MVP Summit it was great great seeing all the folks again obviously this was the first in in person they did a hybrid this year this year saw a lot of the other MVPs and and got to interact a lot and got to see my brother who lives out there and works for Microsoft so yeah it was a great

2:03 for Microsoft so yeah it was a great week week excellent and I I watched virtually and caught a lot of the sessions that they do they do a lot of Pro program management interactions with the MVPs we get to go meet the PMs and hang out with them and talk to the PMS around just furious things are building stuff that’s happening so we that’s super fun there’s super enjoy that I really missed not being able to go it was I was incredibly disappointed I already had a trip planned and I was unable to make it to the MVP Summit this year so I was super super disappointed it came

2:34 super super disappointed it came planned a little bit late this year it was usually they give you like you was usually they give you like like a November December time frame know like a November December time frame and say hey this is when it’s roughly going to be It’s usually the last week of March so I reserved the last week of March then they delayed it and then it was booked on top of my other trip so maybe next year but definitely caught up on all the sessions online did you travel anywhere last week no I I worked I had to work so it was working hard no traveling yet actually no that’s that’s a lie actually I did work but

3:04 that’s a lie actually I did work but I had to go to I visited my sister we did a road trip nine hour road trip to Alabama oh there you go yeah yes it’s a nice drive straight South straight South that’s almost to the Gulf no so she’s in Huntsville she’s she’s like an hour and a half South I love Huntsville Huntsville is a cool little town I will tell you that well it is is that where they shoot off a lot around here a couple times yes yes so that is that’s my my brother-in-law is a civilian in the Army Logistics oh wow the fun part of Alabama is you can walk

3:35 the fun part of Alabama is you can walk up to anyone go roll Tide and they’ll say it right back did not know this yes no just go up to anyone from Alabama just go well make sure they’re not from they’re Auburn but you just go roll Tide and they’ll look at you go die and they’ll keep walking your cap so that’s amazing with that I was like tipping cows a couple things came out this week around the Microsoft blog so one of the items that came out recently was create a power bi report inside a Jupiter

4:06 a power bi report inside a Jupiter notebook notebook quite interesting this is a neat little feature that was recently released by the Microsoft product team initial reaction any any thoughts on this one I I think this is an interesting feature I’ll need to play with it a bit more I haven’t had a whole bunch of time to like really get into making a Jupiter notebook Spin and build things here but any initial thoughts I think I think the same is yours it’ll be interesting like I I’m gonna I’m gonna be looking for ease of use yes because obvious like I’m a big

4:38 because obvious like I’m a big databricks guy right and they’ve updated their reporting in visual system layer and it’s very it’s it’s very nice the great great upgrades that they made but it’s very integrated right it’s very easy to just instantly go from an output into a visual yes and I’ll be I’ll be interested in like how quickly I can do that with this plugin in in the independent Jupiter notebook it feels like I think I’m gonna ton of talk tactical about it it’s it feels like what they’re doing is you’re allowed to engineer data inside the notebook and in notebooks you have these things called

5:08 notebooks you have these things called cells so a cell basically does some work on the information of the data the output of that cell could be a data frame so in the memory would reside a data frame or basically a table a data scientists call it a data frame but it’s like a table then it sounds like what you’re doing is you’re able to then inject okay take this table and shove it into a powerpay report and the Power report automatically creates itself based on some columns and data types it’s interesting because it’s doing a lot of automatic things it’s taking a data frame it’s detecting data types of

5:39 frame it’s detecting data types of columns it’s Auto building visuals for you and visualizing on a page here’s a bunch of bar charts or categorical things that are showing you information about your data which seems interesting but again I’m also to the point like in the databricks world you do visualization there it’s like you build one visual it’s like a single visual that you build in how power bi is implementing it it’s more like a little mini data model like they’re injecting the data directly into a an iframe that is a powerba report and

6:10 a an iframe that is a powerba report and then you can then change the visuals and make multiples and I I could see that being valuable maybe for some test scenarios but I’m still a little bit at a Miss as like where’s the real value of this one oh yeah my gold nugget is I’ve been spending way too much time in Powershell and Powershell yes jeez man like go hardcore I guess no so I actually I I did a post on LinkedIn and I just said the wins in terms of man there’s a lot

6:42 the wins in terms of man there’s a lot of things with python and power bi obviously the visual integration people are talking more and more about python in general yes one of the fastest growing languages and I saw this I was like okay like okay I like in terms of what I want to learn I was like I think power bi developers are do they need to know Python and they got a lot of reactions and Mr Greg brachiosaur who want to make sure that we’re live so we’re live right now he we had this a bit of a dialogue going back but I think for me this is like okay there’s

7:14 I think for me this is like okay there’s two there’s too many reasons for me not to Learn Python at least on a basic level yes and it does I don’t think it’s a requirement but it just makes more and more sense sorry you started by saying Powershell and now we’re talking about python well I’m saying I’ve been spending too much time learning a Powershell and other languages now you’re trying so now you’re saying like there’s a lot of other languages there’s a lot of other languages yeah and I I to me it’s like okay I need to invest time if I want to learn a language or become an an expert in language makes more

7:45 an an expert in language makes more sense to do python I I still think I will 100 rely on SQL runs the world like you cannot fight with me all day long I still think sequel runs the data World 100 however I’m finding very to your point Tommy I’m finding what these new these notebook things and you I’m a big databricks user so I love using databricks and and that that design experience is very python based and so I see that creeping in more and more and I’m also seeing this whole spark ecosystem becoming increasingly

8:16 ecosystem becoming increasingly important in the data space in general so I think that the trend here is Learn Python be really good at SQL and mix the two together because that’s going to be really that’s going to be your data engineering languages that’s what you’re going to data engineer with I think that’s coming coming from my background just hardcore SQL I couldn’t agree with you more like but at the same time like I’m just the python I’m Gonna Learn hopefully just dovetails into when we

8:46 just dovetails into when we get the the prompts or The Help The Help oh yeah the vs code co-pilot like all the pilot that’s what it is all the extensions that work really well with vs code are python based usually yeah one of the more popular languages so and and I know it’s it’s really prevalent in the the teaching Cycles right of python and data engineering and this is where we’ve we’ve done multiple podcasts of like what is a bi person and the dev bi

9:17 what is a bi person and the dev bi developer right and and I think we we speak in the Enterprise space right so when you’re working with big companies or big data sets and ultimately like this is where data is going to go pretty quickly as long as organizations want to plug into cloud services because you wouldn’t normally just do this with your own Hardware but the volumes of data right so you’re gonna be playing in arenas and with these tools and python is one of those that that is a great and widely popular language that that helps you do that ETL and it fits it

9:48 helps you do that ETL and it fits it fits these Frameworks really really well as well but at the same time every like I haven’t run into I think

9:56 every like I haven’t run into I think regardless of which company that hasn’t invested in an insane amount of time to get SQL to work in these environments because it is it’s been the prevalent data language for forever in a day right and I think by Nature it is going to be something that like any developer of reports at any level would be your first first step before jumping into python because I think you’re going to use SQL in whether that’s like a business unit moving into working with databases Etc

10:26 moving into working with databases Etc like the vast majority of companies out there have SQL have a MySQL have you there have SQL have a MySQL have the that that interaction know the that that interaction interface interface so you guys also remember talking about code based things that make it easier for you to write python Tommy you should check it out put in the chat window as well Microsoft released I guess this would be the data Wrangler introducing data Wrangler so the data Wrangler releases as March 16th is amazing it’s super cool and it does a lot of that it you it builds it basically is like it

10:56 you it builds it basically is like it almost feels to me a little bit like power query on top of python I was like oh this makes so much sense to me like Oh I wanna I wanna group these columns and summarize something great or I want to like this is what I wanted like I don’t want to write code I want to just have a UI that does like 90 of the data manage relations write me code behind the scenes and then allow me to tweak the code later on so oh I see it just made a function here it defined a function I don’t think I need that I’m just going to delete that part around it and just keep the the individual data

11:26 and just keep the the individual data frame portions or whatever that thing is like you I really like it so I thought that’s that’s going to be a really cool tool that’s actually you can get that for visual studio code today yeah I’m really like this so I think that’s going to be a new a really good thing to learn moving forward forward it’s also nice to see that they’re playing in the open open Source area open source area yeah agreed yeah there’s a lot more community-based projects like if you find if there’s a problem or is there something that the tool doesn’t do go ahead it’s on it’s on

11:57 tool doesn’t do go ahead it’s on it’s on GitHub like go add your little thing and then Microsoft can review it and add I’ve done a couple additions to or modifies to the Microsoft docs I saw something was wrong or like how I understood themes or whatever I added a little blurb and said here’s a way here’s an easier way of explaining this based on how I understand it and they’ve actually taken some of our changes and allow you to edit some of their docs so I think this is really good for Microsoft to continue to push towards that open source Community piece I think people will be more apt to use it because it’s a bit more free and open source source well and I I think you’re you’re opening

12:27 well and I I think you’re you’re opening the audience too right like that’s true if you if you continue to talk to students right Microsoft has always not been the prevalent tool set that kids are learning the university yeah right University students that this it Elite like Jupiter notebooks are are a thing for sure right especially in school yeah plug-in like this that or a library that package allows you to incorporate that as a visualization maybe that’s another play into this and there’s no excuse to not easily

12:58 this and there’s no excuse to not easily understand or the basics of there with all the tooling out there like copilot labs and vs code chat GPT basically defaults to python if you don’t specify a language so it’s to me there’s there’s no barrier to entry here where it’s like okay what book do I read yeah you can read a few books but man this is I feel like the easiest language to start learning I would agree and there’s and there’s part of learning a language is having lots of examples and lots of documentation out there and there’s

13:29 documentation out there and there’s nothing more has even higher amounts of documentation than python yeah like there’s just you can literally Google it and it’s just a million things that show up so that again it makes it also very easy there and again chat EPT hey chat TPT write me a function that loads this and does this with with in Python boom it’s like it’s pretty on point it’s so good anyways so good so good it’s so good guys any other major topics or announcements that you guys wanted to touch on before we get going oh I guess we would be remiss if we talk

14:00 oh I guess we would be remiss if we talk about Dynamic string formats in measures have you play with this one at all there’s a Blog article around from Zoe talking about using Dynamic string Dynamic formatting strings for measures I it’s a it’s a preview feature right now I believe so you have to go turn it on inside desktop this one is pretty interesting but it’s what they’re doing with this and I I really like this idea well it’s another solution

14:30 well it’s another solution alternative to calculation groups yes yes correctly yeah because and again since you can’t really build calculation groups in desktop this is okay this is a good alternative to like not being able to do this that’s the only alternative it’s like the only Electric but I do I so I really like this one again it’s gonna get I I feel like this is gonna then trigger a flurry of SQL bi articles that will be like hey here’s how to do this efficiently and effectively and I’ll be lost and and over my head again but this is

15:00 over my head again but this is another feature that I think came out this came out in the middle of April but we were I think recording videos at the time wait wait missed this one we’re talking about it for like currency format strings that’s interesting yeah Seth just learned about this feature right now I did I’ve been a little busy and you could you can do like I think you can do like switch statements on stuff and you can do like so it’s gonna it’s gonna let you be like a lot more Dynamic and what the string format

15:30 more Dynamic and what the string format is and so it’s a it sounds it’s a measure that is defining what is in the format right portion of that column or string so you could you could change from currency you could have different types of currencies you could even change like commas and you could change it between like commas and decimals Midstream inside of formula because you can detect if it’s which currency it is and then say Oh it’s it’s UK so therefore it’s switching the commas and decimals which I don’t know why you do that it just seems so weird to me but anyways

16:00 but anyways another another neat feature that’s out there be curious if anyone I’m sure Greg baldini has spent tons of time figuring out how to make this optimized and simple he’s already have to dig into this one optimization technique so yeah oh that’s right well when we move on please enlighten Us in the chat there we go so on to our actual topic of the day 16 minutes in here so let’s get into our our main topic today today we’re dissecting a video that came from Enterprise DNA I forgot the gentleman’s name who was

16:30 I forgot the gentleman’s name who was doing the video Sam was doing it so Sam was going through a video on how to how to interpret or digest or dissect someone else’s report and I thought I gave a really a couple good really key points in this video so I’ll put the video here in the chat window so that way you can watch this on your own at your own leisure leisure so here is the video which is actually probably not the best idea because we

17:00 hey you’re walking watching a podcast here’s another video you can go watch yeah oh yeah I trust her we trust our audience we trust her yeah you’ll come back you’ll come back so here’s the video from Sam it’s in the chat window and it basically goes through what I would call infographic level reports or reports that are based more like an app there there’s a lot more to these reports and he basically dissects them and says here are some techniques that I use when someone gives me these reports or or how

17:30 someone gives me these reports or or how do you learn better techniques in report building and to some degree I really agreed with a lot of his comments around you study other people’s designs and trying to understand what they built and I I resonated this with with this a lot when I was talking with Seth we had Miguel Meyer Miguel Myers at our user group in Milwaukee and he was doing things we’d never seen before and we were like floored like how are you getting rounded bars on a bar chart what what do you what Voodoo are you doing here and how are you getting this gradient thing to show up and what do

18:00 gradient thing to show up and what do you do he was doing things that we didn’t even know was possible and we were like were like just on the floor like drooling over whatever this stuff was so so we were like grilling him like how did you do this can you share the files can you show me what’s here what is this build that is how do you how do you make these things and so this is like one of these scenarios where you’re getting access to these really highly stylized highly visualized reports and trying to digest them so let’s I’ll pause right there initial

18:31 let’s I’ll pause right there initial thoughts thoughts on the video or initial thoughts on this topic topic yeah I think you teed it up pretty well the only thing I would add is he he sees all these because they run a contest right so that’s true they do the same theming there’s multiple different visualization groups out there that run RBI contests right so these are like the creme de La Creme of your of your reports that you would typically probably build for an executive or for for something that’s going to go out to the entire company

19:02 going to go out to the entire company where where you’re spending a lot of time but the the good part about that is for him it offers him an Avenue of seeing a lot of complex implementations where it bookmarks like how do you how do you page between different pages all the hidden tabs what are all of the things in the realm of power bi in terms of features that we can Implement that aren’t readily readably readily

19:34 readily readably readily understandable and you have to dig into them and what I liked about it from the high level is I a lot of this I just take for granted you you work with the tool a lot and you’re like okay well I’ll jump on this page and I do these things so he breaks it out really well for well for I think users who aren’t familiar

19:51 I think users who aren’t familiar with how complex things can get and and gives a good path into helping understand how to like just you’re dropped into a report page and you you see all these highlights and buttons and interactions and overlaid things and how do you start to digest what’s all going on and I think it’s very valuable in outlining that from a an experience level to people who may not be familiar

20:21 level to people who may not be familiar and the Enterprise DNA team actually has a nice a nice latest power bi showcases Tommy there’s also a showcase that you have that you’ve looked at before I keep forgetting the name of it I must have I must have bookmarked it wow there’s isn’t there another oh Novi Pro I think it’s another one I think yeah I sent that before yeah so Novi there’s another one called Novi Pro Enterprise DNA has like a gallery basically here’s a bunch of reports people have made and you can see what they’ve built and then look at you

20:51 and then look at use their live demo and or dissect know use their live demo and or dissect their reports a bit to see oh how did they build these things how can you actually get your hands on understanding these techniques that people are using inside reports oh there’s links in the yeah me like I love the video by Sam I was going through that and thinking okay what are the use cases where I would want to do this either from if I was a consultant internally or just I’m on my own and I think depending on the situation you’re going to be approaching it

21:22 you’re going to be approaching it differently in terms of what you’re trying to get out of it there’s obviously if you’re migrating that report to your team or migrating the data or in the sense of like what you’re trying to measure I I had a situation where there’s this template that came from us like you buy the service it comes with a template and if anything ever looked like an application it was this report and you break down like oh the background’s actually an image I thought those were all objects and you’re trying to break down what are they trying to do here and what are they measuring

21:52 what are they measuring that that’s a completely different method I think methodology in terms of what you’re trying to get out of it compared to trying to learn a new technique technique and I think for me those are the two separations I think that’s either trying to learn a best practice or a new technique there’s approaches and what you’re a method of what you how you approach that report compared to migrating a report to your team because you may not want to keep all the features in that in the bookmarks in the selections so if I feel like there’s there’s

22:23 so if I feel like there’s there’s different so I feel like when we talk about reporting there’s like I think three kinds of reporting that I think about right there’s there’s like the analyst level reporting which would be less pretty more visuals on a page and I’m and it’s more of a self-discovery here’s a bunch of information in a data model go find some info go find some insights on top of that data that’s an analyst level report it’s overwhelming to give that around to other people I think another reporting type is like enter like a C Level or or management level

22:53 like a C Level or or management level reporting talking more about kpis things that matter action based decision making right when I look at this report I need to go do something I need to go talk to my sales team I need to there’s there’s action based reporting though and so I’m I’m trying to craft there are a handful of questions I’m trying to answer and I’m trying to have you walk away from the report and do something and I think the the third type is like this infographic level right again it’s a bit more self-discovery very much more

23:23 a bit more self-discovery very much more on the visual emphasis right looking really I see a lot of the when you look at infographic level reporting it feels to me there’s a lot more images there’s a lot of like colors the background is is stylized there’s potentially a lot less visuals on the page I’m telling more of that story of what I’m trying to guide you along for some information so I think I think those are the three types that I see and again the things that Sam decompressed here here if I’m trying to learn new techniques I’m probably trying to learn techniques

23:53 I’m probably trying to learn techniques from those highly stylized reports because they’re the ones really pushing the edge of like what you can develop and then it’s then it becomes a problem love love how do I pick the right feature set from that very highly like I could build that in my local reports or my my analyst reports but is it worth the time it’s not a copy paste it’s not a copy you can’t copy paste it like these are things you just can’t straight up built like it takes some time and thought and so Sam also

24:23 some time and thought and so Sam also mentions the note here that I resonate with he goes you’re making your report feel more like a data application and I’d agree with that we’ve talked about this a lot on the podcast like we’re building data apps this is an application of a lot of things you can look around data yeah I I’m a little leery with like jumping on board with the infographic because to me there there’s a story involved in that right like you’re leading people into like so like highly stylized is where I end with like the the stuff in

24:57 because it’s it’s not everything that we’re doing a lot of the times in companies and Reporting is not infographic you’re not you’re not just you’re not creating the story in the report leading somebody to a conclusion what you’re doing is you’re creating a really rich stylized like application that like they just don’t they don’t understand that there’s 20 pages in here right it’s just that it looks like this really unique single page experience where they get to click on this button and see a filter of all these visualizations change but they

25:28 these visualizations change but they don’t realize that it’s a mix of bookmarks or different pages or Etc and that’s where I think the the levels of detail in here are are how he goes about it right so like I guess my question to you guys is do you do you approach the understanding of what’s happening on these pages in the same way right so his method that he goes through in the video is he first looks at all the hidden Tabs are all the tabs in the report then he opens up bookmarks then

26:00 report then he opens up bookmarks then he opens up selections do you guys follow that same like precedence when you’re trying to understand like hey I’m landed on a new report page I’m seeing as I scroll my cursor all over that canvas a whole bunch of things pop up or do you have a different method so I’ll usually start with probably what seems to be the more the most popular or like the landing page the summary the summary page and I’ll do a simple control a just to see how many objects

26:30 control a just to see how many objects are there because that’s a good one yeah and you go what in the world I’ve seen things where they’ve used a table but they’ve minimized it so much only just for like to make it a line and it was pretty neat to do but you never think of that that but I I usually start with the high level page and I’ll try to click around myself before looking at the bookmarks just to see what’s intuitive like and what are the options and then I will go to the selections then I would go to like the bookmarks but I’ll try to see basically all the objects and what’s the

27:01 basically all the objects and what’s the layering layering so I I think in my technique when I’m looking at reports most of what I I can look at many reports on RBI and know how they’re built without without even like touching like I can just watch people click on things and see oh yeah I know how I can I can mentally model out what they’re doing yeah so usually when I’m finding reports if I’m going deeper on them I’m typically trying to figure out there is a there’s a technique they used there’s something that was changing or dynamically like animating or something

27:33 dynamically like animating or something so the one report I’m thinking of Armin van understood or something like that Armin over and I’m not sure over in the Europe area somewhere had made a report one time where you clicked on something and this this like map would like zoom into focus in the background and I was like how the heck did he do that so usually what I’m looking for is like stuff that I don’t know how to do so it’s I’m not necessarily doing a full assessment of the entire report I’m usually looking at very key design elements that I didn’t

28:04 very key design elements that I didn’t understand how it was created like okay that I can learn from that piece there I’ll go to learn it up but I think that also comes from like doing this for nine years right we’ve spent so much time visually building things like we don’t have to go through and dissect tables or buttons or like most of that stuff we can understand and just dismiss yeah oh good well to follow up right like obviously your experience is not like the vast majority of I would agree users so users so do you in in his approach in teaching

28:35 do you in in his approach in teaching people how to understand what’s on a page do you agree with that approach or do you do different things when you’re talking to people you’re training training so I would start with so to Tommy’s point I do a similar thing to his control a so one of the first things I’d like to look at is what stuff is on the page I find it’s very efficient to go right into the selection pane open that up immediately and figure out what’s there now I’ve also noticed two things when I look at very highly stylized reports if the person’s organized when building highly stylized report you’ll typically

29:06 highly stylized report you’ll typically find that there are folders there and that’s how I build if I’m building things I have like a section called the header and there’s all the objects at the top of the page and then I have like the body here’s things on the main part of the page and maybe I’ll have a couple other things like buttons or navigation and I’ll folderize those different objects into different categories inside the the selection pane so to me it helps me make things easier to build stuff initially but it also makes it easier for someone else to look at my report and see what’s being built in there so I will go to the selection Pane and I’ll look there to

29:36 selection Pane and I’ll look there to see what’s going on and then from there if I need to select stuff on the report page I will just click through the items in the

29:43 just click through the items in the selection pane because then I can see exactly what item is that and where it is after that I definitely agree with Sam on the The Next Step which is once you select an item you immediately open up the filter pane or or the properties Pane and then you look at all the properties of it okay here’s what they turned on or here’s what they turned off and and that’s where I’ll go next primarily is to figure that part out yeah I agree with most of that the the only my default though is always right right into view open up bookmarks open

30:14 right into view open up bookmarks open up selections right because that that way that tells me a lot about what I’m gonna find on the canvas or in the report report that I’m that I’m looking at control a is a good one Tommy I would typically just like move things around or like Mike was saying click through the selections and I think you nailed the the one point mic that I would make is and we did a whole episode on like how do you organize bookmarks yeah or your visuals on a page Etc it properly named entities

30:48 it properly named entities huge difference is absolutely like if you didn’t do if somebody built a complex report and didn’t do that I would rather start over yep just give me the model button one building button yeah correct rebuild it because it is not worth trying to understand like all the bookmarks what they’re trying to do yes right like and it is it is you will put a smile on somebody’s face if you properly like organized and named your things in a power bi report but it is

31:19 things in a power bi report but it is Paramount to do that when you’re going to build something that has a lot of navigation that has a lot of like the app features that you’re naming them correctly like tab upper right button or like whatever the action in thing is going to do so it’s easy for people to come in and understand and you’re remember like you’re building for somebody else so this is like I’m somebody else and I’m coming in and looking at the report oh my gosh like this is a dumpster fire just throw it

31:50 this is a dumpster fire just throw it away versus I can I can open up these panes I can understand what’s going on and actually modify or improve upon something if I need to so here here’s a a a follow-up to the question you asked Seth how much are you focusing on the story of a page or the report itself in terms of the measurements they’re using compared to are you focusing more on the style in the application I I think that’s one of the biggest gaps

32:21 I I think that’s one of the biggest gaps that we have I don’t think you have that context typically unless unless you’re building that as part of the solutions and documenting that somewhere because I’m not aware of nor have we really talked about like adding in another page that that walks through the questions and answers right of of a particular report like what is the design of this page Why did I build it the way I did and I think that’s what your question alludes to me which my automatic response is like wow we don’t we

32:51 we we don’t we don’t have that in the report typically yeah but I would say one can argue if you have a main kpi or metric on the report there should be some Association next to it to go that’s a lot of assuming man I know I know what they say about yes it’s very easy to see like okay summary page or a tab indicates what what we’re talking about and I think in his representation okay well like we’re looking at covid statistics it’s like okay I’m pretty sure I understand like the story in here and there was a lot of like in context

33:21 and there was a lot of like in context things but a lot of reporting is not that easy right and I don’t think a lot of the context is in there for a a new report user to just innately understand like hear the things and why we built them the way we did that would help a new user like completely understand like this the context and story behind it to like enhance it again yeah and maybe that’s like where do you think that belongs though right because we’re talking about people who are just going to pop open and report and and like are

33:53 to pop open and report and and like are we assuming that there’s documentation somewhere else or should that belong in the report itself I think it’s the the intent of getting into it if I’m migrating or transforming that report maybe just doing a redo I want to understand okay why do they put that measurement there where is it coming from then go through the objects like wow they used engaged and a hidden table okay to do what and but if I’m trying to add things to my tool belt I’m not as concerned about the story I’m not concerned about the

34:23 the story I’m not concerned about the numbers it’s like so but I think it goes to that intent where most of the time if I were to pull this coveted report if I were to pull a report on WOW I’m gonna really focus on the techniques they use like I think wow but for people who don’t know wow I’m gonna really focus more than anything especially with workout Wednesday submissions on The Styling and going how can I add that to my own tool belt what visual are they using or what hidden objects but if I’m doing it

34:54 what hidden objects but if I’m doing it from a work point of view from from a client I’m probably going into that going okay trying to dissect the measurements they’re using why they use it that way and then break it out and so so it is one I just want to make this one point like when you’re talking about migration migration as Tommy I’ve spent a lot of time over the last several years in migrating especially when you migrate from other platforms into new reporting tools where context matters understand

35:26 tools where context matters understand like like this is why your point is throwing me for a loop because if I were if I were to like say now I’d be like wow maybe we should add this in the report because it is understanding why like the key themes or things that were built and why they’re in there will help you understand whether or not you need to keep them in the new version yes right because what innately happens a lot is you’re you as a report author have a different view about the data

35:56 have a different view about the data sets what’s important the context by which the current customers want to engage with it whether that’s internal or external you you rebuild this report and it’s missing something and you didn’t realize that your top five customers specifically requested that report or the top five users right yes and you just left it out because you didn’t think it was valuable that’s the stuff that bites you big time in migrations and that’s why I’m like rethink I’m sitting here going hmm hmm do we add another hidden page in here

36:27 do we add another hidden page in here where I’m like just summary like here’s the key things you need to you really need to be sure of why I why things were built in the way they were so that in the future if you’re going to expound upon it like the intent of these Pages was this and because that value I agree with that that’s huge but like how often are you migrating or I don’t know oh you’re migrating enhancing doing different things I’m I’m just so exciting so I’m not articulating well I I’ve done well no no I think I agree with you sat there on that point and

36:57 with you sat there on that point and I’ll say I’ve done a couple major migrations and I’ve seen a lot more customers now move away from click or click view or whatever that is Click into Power bi and so this is a common challenge I feel like I’m identifying is that exact thing right people have requested these large tables of data and these other reporting tools that they’re migrating from have been traditionally thought of as a data dumping tool right hey give me these views together make these tables maybe there’s a visual tool on there but really it’s about these other visualizations tool are

37:27 these other visualizations tool are really addressing the need of access to data with filters on top of it right so it’s more of an access to data versus an insights on data and I think when we look at like the visual side of power bi we’re talking more about insights on data and so I think to your point Seth it’s really good if you’re especially if you’re doing a migration from another platform or if you’re killing off an old report and making a new report there are some things that are there are some very political things that go along with that the the audience may have changed the new leadership on that report or who’s using that report might be different now so there’s a whole like the questions

37:59 so there’s a whole like the questions that that old report was answering are probably not the same questions we need to answer now and this is the thing with bi which I think we’re in a really good place right now is companies are trying are continually adapting as you learn about your data the questions you’re asking are continually evolving and this is why we are in a great space because there’s always more work to be done because the questions are changing all the time we’re going from this is you the time we’re going from this is yesterday I used to know and you know yesterday I used to know and you used to know about sales well something

38:30 used to know about sales well something happened and now we need to have all these new questions about something else that’s of of interest to us so we’re always in a place where we’re constantly the moving the end goal of a target for a report is ever changing that final go post keeps getting picked up and moved somewhere else all the time that I’m sure you guys have stores as well but this is actually that leads into a great situation I literally just had where this was a page that had 100 objects on it it was absolutely insane and the problem was it didn’t measure the

39:01 problem was it didn’t measure the bookmarks his performance analyze but the problem was it wasn’t measuring anything the the client didn’t like it it came as a template and but all the measurements were just volumes and it was like didn’t tell you anything they wanted to transform and modify yes I actually had a conversation I built something basic or what I would consider basic and I was actually telling my wife I was like I can’t compete with that dude are they expecting that style with the new measure like what we’re developing and she had like in a

39:31 we’re developing and she had like in a sense calm me down so just simplify and if they don’t like it you can try because so that’s style yes only leads

39:37 because so that’s style yes only leads to what they built like yeah modificating yes there’s no modificating modification modification modifying what the design was was what you need to do yes and I think that’s that’s a misnomer for a lot of people I think we I think I think start if I had to give words of wisdom to nude report developers it’s start with this simplest most basic report you can begin with just put a couple visuals no stylizing just get some stuff on the page and get people to react to it because I think

40:07 because I think we’re taking a very large mental shift from where we have been which has been Excel qlik sense or click view or whatever that is and you you’re building tables of data and I’m just trying to dump stuff out I was in business objects for a number of years that’s what we did we just made tables exported them and then did all our own analysis yeah working Services SSRS same thing yeah same thing so like now we have this new world of like okay now we’re saying okay we’re going to give you a tool that’s going to let you keep the data in the tool and do more analytical things on there so you can actually impactfully draw out insightful information and

40:38 draw out insightful information and that’s harder to do and that’s more of a studied technique over time so I’m actually looking at I’m doing a project right now where I’m I’m pairing much closer the paginated report to a power bi report so Pat there’s a couple features in paginy reports that I really like right now you can build a table of data in a paginate report and it Pages through the information so the report does it renders a little bit slower but it does have the ability of being able to page through the information and you get almost unlimited

41:10 information and you get almost unlimited downloads of unlimited size download as a CSV so when people are asking me hey I want to download this data great we’re going to give you a overview page and then we’ll we’ll dive you into the report and provide to you the tables of data that you need as a paginate report and then you can export it as Excel PowerPoint whatever the other things are and it gets a bit more of a Pixel Perfect and or larger amount of data extraction so so to go back to Sam’s article here I want to circle back on a couple more points here I think that we’re relevant here

41:41 relevant here he mentioned clicking through the bookmarks I thought that was a very good insight and I thought that’s a very this is going to come out wrong I think that was a very beginner way of looking at how bookmarks interact with the report so that that is like if you don’t have access to the pbix file and understand what’s inside those bookmarks bookmarks have always been a very big black hole in any report you don’t know what they are you don’t know what they clicked connect to you don’t know what they’re doing there’s there’s almost no

42:11 they’re doing there’s there’s almost no way for you to understand what the bookmark is actually touching inside the report report however if you want to go to the pro mode and this is like the next level up of bookmarking you take your file your PBX file and you use PBA tools to extract extract the the report and when you do that you can see everything in the bookmarks you can see what they’re touching what selection of data they’re using you can see if the if it’s turned off on data or turned on on data you can see every state of what is

42:42 data you can see every state of what is happening inside that bookmark now I wish Microsoft would do a better job of exposing to us what is in the bookmark like what what like when you click one is it snapping shots of data or visuals is it hiding or showing or what’s going on inside the context that bookmark and they just don’t do a good job in desktop showing you what the bookmark does other than you physically have to click it yeah you basically might just do the extremes of my kid playing t-ball a major league yeah we went from t-ball to

43:12 major league yeah we went from t-ball to Major League in one yeah exactly because it I will say it is much harder to get to that level but once you understand how to do it again it’s not super complicated but once you get it set up I think you get a very very deep level of like understanding what’s what’s occurring inside the bookmarks yeah I occurring inside the bookmarks yeah just seeing the Haydn show right of mean just seeing the Haydn show right of all the objects and how that tran how that differs as you’re clicking through is is

43:44 mind-boggling once you if you’ve never used them before right like it opens up this whole new Arena of I think taking a a basic report author and helping them understand why we talk about building applications Within power bi because you can extend the tool and these features in such a way that you get this experience and you can create these experiences that from an end user perspective look just like a page which is trips people up

44:14 page which is trips people up because even even UI ux folks or product folks where they’re like okay you guys we’ve been able to do this stuff and like now I want this and they present something and you just go what no like there is no way like I can’t do that like you need a custom Apple you need a custom web page to be able to like run yeah especially as reports get more complex and I don’t want to say that we’re complicated as this complex when the ones from the covid or the storytelling or even the workout Wednesdays I think the difference we

44:45 Wednesdays I think the difference we have to remember too is those are more storytelling there’s a beginning middle end most of the reports that we’re building are not going to be a subset of basis of time like that’s going to be submitted for the New York Times in an article for one article we’re building things that require flexibility Mike to your original point the questions are always evolving and most of these bookmarks and objects are built for a point in time for a measurement in time time and that’s not really where we lean I

45:15 and that’s not really where we lean I generally don’t go through every book Market especially dissecting you I’ll go through the ones that interest me or or spark the interest because there’s not enough time to go through each item each item and I always go through my the mind frame or the the the mindset of rather than on all every single technique that they’re using what are ones that would be make sense from a story framing not necessarily storytelling so another random question around this one so I’m going to transition here just slightly on topic wise

45:46 slightly on topic wise there is a preview feature out now for the on visual editing oh don’t get me angry oh man oh no okay so we’re talking about we’re talking about dissecting things on a report right so we’re talking about getting into revisions there’s two main points here and I hope all of the one of Microsoft employees that are listening to the podcast I hope you’re listening to this part so I’ll snip at this one and send it to you because this is a pain point for me right now if you if you highlight a visual and click on it it is almost unusable

46:16 unusable to be able to switch data fields on an existing visual like the complication that it requires to get between I I like having the data field window open because I can see all the tables in the field the measures and to get those visual items over like I’m not I haven’t figured out my new workflow for the new on visual editing but in addition to this if you turn on filters data format bookmark selection all the performance analyzers things like all the things right turn them all on every single one of those are icons on the far right hand side of the page you

46:47 the far right hand side of the page you can right click and you can’t open multiples of them yes you can how do you right click on one of the on one of the icons why but this is my why why do I have to right click this is ridiculous like I should be able to control click I should be able to just select click like oh it’s a right click open not intuitive at all no and oh yeah so I was about I was about to go off on this too right so it’s horrible

47:17 off on this too right so it’s horrible experience where where in order to understand all these interactions on a page what was the first thing I said like is like almost a year right so it’s it’s the existing experience where you have books marks and selections and those things are right next to each other yeah where you’re clicking on them and yes anyone’s on the page and I I was in the same boat I didn’t know this was the right I was like I’m only getting bookmarks or selection but there’s a horrible on those icons that you can open in a new pane to get the experience

47:49 open in a new pane to get the experience but it doesn’t save it if you go to a new page it’s it’s the most frustrating it’s very weird yeah and according to if we’re developers we do need these windows it’s not just PowerPoint where I just need a single pane yeah we’re at all don’t say that swear word if if you were gonna if you were gonna invest don’t say that in in a new experience like maybe give us the ability to take out that pain pop them out let me let me pop it out yeah yeah yeah 100 that’s the great but yeah it

48:19 yeah 100 that’s the great but yeah it would have made it much more challenging had Tommy not been here because right click wow yeah it’s a strong but again this is my this is my gripe with this new thing any type of this on visual editing everything they have added has in my opinion has just added more clicks to everything and in my opinion it makes it much more complicated so I get what they’re trying to do they’re trying to minimize the right hand side of the screen right you right hand side of the screen right everything you need to do is on the know everything you need to do is on the visual so click the visual and

48:49 visual so click the visual and double click into it change the names of stuff change the titles add things you want but on the other hand it just convolutes and so now I’m jumping between the visual and then all the things that I used to be using on the right hand side and so now I’m constantly scanning between the visual and the side and the visual back and forth of the time the meant the processing unit it’s not just because it’s new because to your exact point we need to look at what formatting they’re doing for what data they’re doing and then see understand understand what’s associated with that and yes we’re going

49:20 associated with that and yes we’re going back and forth and you’re losing that context context it’s frustrating and I’ll say the other thing I really dislike here is when you click on the visual you can see the data on the visual there’s no like you have to click a visual and then you

49:33 you have to click a visual and then you have to click the other button to show you which columns were added to that Visual and again yeah and then I I find myself fumbling over context where to click how to change the like changing visuals now are much harder yeah it’s not as easy as it used to be so I I really just list dislike this new experience I’m they’re probably going to get it better they’re going to refine it make it easier to use but if you click on a visual it should immediately open up open up the build of visual options it should just be open because I want to see what columns are being used from where from

50:04 columns are being used from where from what table from what tables it’s just not not intuitive we should use sorry for devolving or one of those things to see how many more clicks and measure that I might do an RBI oh I’m 100 like yes things are used to be able to do in one or two clicks are now like three or four or five clicks now it is increasingly clicked increased the clicking amount just more user like how much how that is more more accessibility options I don’t know yeah

50:34 accessibility options I don’t know yeah screen readers must hate this thing I so I I know I know balance is is everything right and Rafael even says like hey with smaller monitors like it make like to be able to collapse things make sense but the more hidden you make these features or like even options the more difficult it becomes for beginners to understand that those features are there I totally agree like if you were gonna like in my mind unless there’s gonna be so many viewable things that you’d have

51:06 so many viewable things that you’d have to create a new icon for everyone but they’re already creating icons because if you click on all the options in view they show up as icons on the right then just give me the icons like then I know that they’re in the same order every time as opposed to me depending on which one I enable is going to be in a different order every time so now I have a different user experience every time I’m trying to open or close something or now that I know right click and expand into a pane the the different things it’s just pivot tables don’t even work that way yeah no agreed so where where I would maybe take this

51:37 so where where I would maybe take this last part of the conversation here too is I think everything we’ve been talking about has really been focusing on like those highly stylized those very visually appealing reports and I want to just encourage people I would say from it from a learning standpoint go out into the community go find reports that you find are interesting go find reports that are doing things you don’t know how to do and learn how they’re building those reports download them tear them apart I reports download them tear them apart there’s a lot of stuff on the mean there’s a lot of stuff on the community there’s a lot of stuff on GitHub GitHub that’s what those are meant to be doing doing they’re there learn from them and so I

52:08 they’re there learn from them and so I think the techniques that Sam provides in his video are very solid right you in his video are very solid right look at all the bookmarks find all know look at all the bookmarks find all the elements on the page start scanning through those items and I would also agree with with Sam as well in these more highly stylized reports you’re less worried about the data modeling and you’re more worried about what the visual interactions are doing and and producing that data application like thing what I would say is I would caution new users is don’t feel like every report you build has to be this way I would say this is a rare case

52:39 this is a rare case this is this is a rare situation where you spend so much time if you look at these reports there’s there’s 10 30 hundreds of hours spent developing and building and they’re creating custom backgrounds and custom Styles and all the visuals are being stylized to have black backgrounds and white text there’s a lot of work that goes into making sure every single one of those properties are stylized the right way and I’ve seen a couple people do I don’t know if you’ve seen the speeded up videos of someone does a build of a

53:11 videos of someone does a build of a report and they start with the like here’s the Here’s the final solution and then they go from the very beginning and they just record them building the report which I find actually fairly fascinating doing a speed build on a report and just watching what they do and what they click on but if you watch that take note Microsoft look how much time they’re spending going back and forth and adjusting properties and in the plane and up and down the pain and so many changes and properties all the way through and that’s probably they’re recording these videos after they’ve already built a report that looks good so this is like their second pass on it

53:42 so this is like their second pass on it and there’s still a ton of clicks yeah so they already know what they’re clicking on so to me in general there’s just not an easy way there’s not a really good layer of how do I get good looking reports out of the box and so with that I’ll just put a little ad pitch in here as well if you haven’t experienced it or haven’t thought through it layouts are a really good solution for this so we we like three years ago I think I think it’s three years ago now Power bi tips started producing layouts for this exact reason here’s a stylized Report with no data

54:12 here’s a stylized Report with no data other than that maybe it’s even been four or four years it’s been a while we’ve been doing the podcast for two years but Seth and I have been beating this idea for quite a long time here here’s a layout so I’ll put the link in here and as well so if you want to go look at what those are it’s the ideas here’s a stylized Report with no data and and that is the the idea of this is to help you get past that over that hurdle hurdle of just beginning to build that report report build templates do some exploration on things so those are those are reports or things that are out there

54:42 reports or things that are out there that you can go use today start right away and it gives you like initially a starting point for things that have already been pre-stylized for you and so I think this is what we need more of I think we need more of this ability to be able to build stylized reports quicker and and be able to help you build like like there’s a handful of really good designers let them design the designs yeah let us show up and just drop data into it at the very minimum though I would I would argue that every every

55:13 would I would argue that every every single one of us if you’re serious about it saying that you’re a power bi report author you should have one of these type of pages you should build a complex report page that incorporates some of the page navigation drill through like pick some of the learnings that you’re seeing in in this example of Enterprise DNA and how to how to dissect what a page is going on and understand like all of these elements contribute to these really unique experiences and you

55:43 really unique experiences and you investing the time in having an example of your work not only gives you experience not only gives you the understanding of like hey some of these tools out here like the theme generator or what Mike’s talking about in shortcuts of like we’ve created these templates that you can uniquely use like the time Savings in there but also also this is like this is something you can have for your CV your resume like this speaks more than you saying like building a full paragraph of all of your experience about power bi visualization

56:14 experience about power bi visualization show people yep right there and and the reason I’m saying that is the vast majority of report authors don’t know about these features in depth that they’ve created a page like this so it’s it’s well worth your time to engage in these features and build those interactions and try to build a page that fits some theme like pick a picture it doesn’t have to be like as amazing as all these folks who spend many many years in UI ux design and that like

56:47 many years in UI ux design and that like predominantly they’re bringing a lot of visualization expertise into these contests and even in the Enterprise DNA it’s like oh this group of people over here submitted this one and this group over here because they come from different backgrounds data visualization you don’t have to be an expert at all of them but if the feature is there right and how how to build it and you’ve done it before then that helps you in in articulating hey boss that’s that’s great that you want that but that that that’s going to take me 60 hours to

57:18 that’s going to take me 60 hours to build right and and and 40 of that is just the visualization part of that like if we want to make that investment that’s fantastic but you building that into your repertoire is always always a a valuable thing and just be ready to do it yeah just be ready to speak to it so whatever you did be able to break it down don’t copy paste someone else without knowing what exactly that though right like going out here and taking somebody’s template and like copying pasting that into a page I don’t like that’s not what I’m suggesting what I’m suggesting is you take videos like this

57:48 suggesting is you take videos like this you understand the bookmarks you understand the selections and you build your own version of something because you’ll you’ll see the the time it takes right and the pain of of how long creating something that beautiful is and why you don’t see a ton of that everywhere for every report right there’s a reason for that it takes a lot of time to do it awesome with that you’ve burned out a pretty good hour with us we’ve talked a ton around how to dissect a report what kind

58:19 around how to dissect a report what kind around how to dissect a report what report should be built like this or of report should be built like this or not but like this we’ve talked about this I think a lot on the podcast so I hope you added some value to your day if you like what we’re talking about if you like what you’re seeing here we’d highly recommend you just share this with somebody else let someone else know either share it on social media or share it through someone at work if you’re talking with them hey this podcast is interesting I’m learning from it we really appreciate your your the ability for you to to push out and then share this across the community we’re just really excited about all the cool things that are happening and that are

58:50 things that are happening and that are that are built with power bi we live and breathe data as you saw the shirt earlier we we literally do eat sleep power bi repeat that’s what we do so with that Tommy where else can you find the podcast you can find the podcast anywhere they’re available Apple Spotify YouTube Google podcast if you’re listening make sure to subscribe leave a rating it helps us a ton on Apple and Spotify if you want to join the conversation live you can do so on all power bi tips social media platforms at Power bi tips join us at 7 30 a. m

59:21 Power bi tips join us at 7 30 a. m Central Tuesdays and Thursdays awesome thank you all very much I appreciate your time and we’ll catch you next time

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