Exam Ref PL-300 Microsoft Power BI Data Analyst

Daniil Maslyuk

Exam Ref PL-300 Microsoft Power BI Data Analyst

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—DANIIL MASLYUK

Contents at a glance

Introduction

CHAPTER 1 Prepare the data

CHAPTER 2 Model the data

CHAPTER 3 Visualize and analyze the data

CHAPTER 4 Deploy and maintain assets

Index

Contents

Introduction

Organization of this book

Preparing for the exam

Microsoft certifications

Quick access to online references

Errata, updates, & book support

Stay in touch

Chapter 1 Prepare the data

Skill 1.1: Get data from different data sources

Identify and connect to a data source

Change data source settings

Select a shared dataset or create a local dataset

Select a storage mode

Use Microsoft Dataverse

Change the value in a parameter

Connect to a dataflow

Skill 1.2: Clean, transform, and load the data

Profile the data

Resolve inconsistencies, unexpected or null values, and data quality issues

Identify and create appropriate keys for joins

Evaluate and transform column data types

Shape and transform tables

Combine queries

Apply user-friendly naming conventions to columns and queries

Configure data loading

Resolve data import errors

Chapter summary

Thought experiment

Thought experiment answers

Chapter 2 Model the data

Skill 2.1: Design a data model

Define the tables and design a data model that uses a star schema

Configure table and column properties

Design and implement role-playing dimensions

Define a relationship’s cardinality and cross-filter direction

Create a common date table

Skill 2.2: Develop a data model

Create calculated tables

Create hierarchies

Create calculated columns

Implement row-level security roles

Use the Q&A feature

Skill 2.3: Create model calculations by using DAX

Create basic measures by using DAX

Use CALCULATE to manipulate filters

Implement Time Intelligence using DAX

Replace implicit measures with explicit measures

Use basic statistical functions

Create semi-additive measures

Use quick measures

Skill 2.4: Optimize model performance

Remove unnecessary rows and columns

Identify poorly performing measures, relationships, and visuals

Reduce cardinality levels to improve performance

Chapter summary

Thought experiment

Thought experiment answers

Chapter 3 Visualize and analyze the data

Skill 3.1: Create reports

Add visualization items to reports

Choose an appropriate visualization type

Format and configure visualizations

Use a custom visual

Apply and customize a theme

Configure conditional formatting

Apply slicing and filtering

Configure the report page

Use the Analyze in Excel feature

Choose when to use a paginated report

Skill 3.2: Create dashboards

Manage tiles on a dashboard

Configure mobile view

Use the Q&A feature

Add a Quick Insights result to a dashboard

Add a dashboard theme

Pin a live report page to a dashboard

Skill 3.3: Enhance reports for usability and storytelling

Configure bookmarks

Create custom tooltips

Edit and configure interactions between visuals

Configure navigation for a report

Apply sorting

Configure sync slicers

Group and layer visuals by using the Selection pane

Drill down into data using interactive visuals

Export report data

Design reports for mobile devices

Skill 3.4: Identify patterns and trends

Use the Analyze feature in Power BI

Identify outliers

Choose between continuous and categorical axes

Use groupings, binnings, and clustering

Use AI visuals

Use the Forecast feature

Create reference lines by using the Analytics pane

Chapter summary

Thought experiment

Thought experiment answers

Chapter 4 Deploy and maintain assets

Skill 4.1: Manage files and datasets

Identify when a gateway is required

Configure a dataset scheduled refresh

Configure row-level security group membership

Provide access to datasets

Manage global options for files

Skill 4.2: Manage workspaces

Create and configure a workspace

Assign workspace roles

Configure and update a workspace app

Publish, import, or update assets in a workspace

Apply sensitivity labels to workspace content

Configure subscriptions and data alerts

Promote or certify Power BI content

Chapter summary

Thought experiment

Thought experiment answers

Index

Introduction

Exam PL-300 focuses on using Microsoft Power BI for data analysis. About one-fourth of the exam covers data preparation, which includes getting data from different data sources, as well as cleaning, transforming, and loading the data. Approximately one-third of the questions are related to data modeling: designing, developing, and optimizing a data model. Another one-third of the book covers the skills necessary to visualize and analyze data, such as creating reports and dashboards, as well as performing advanced analysis. The remainder of the book discusses how to manage datasets and workspaces in the Power BI service.

This exam is intended for data analysts, business intelligence professionals, and report creators who are seeking to validate their skills and knowledge in analyzing data with Power BI. Candidates should be familiar with how to get, model, and visualize data in Power BI Desktop, as well as share reports with other people.

This book covers every major topic area found on the exam, but it does not cover every exam question. Only the Microsoft exam team has access to the exam questions, and Microsoft regularly adds new questions to the exam, making it impossible to cover specific questions. You should consider this book a supplement to your relevant real-world experience and other study materials. If you encounter a topic in this book that you do not feel completely comfortable with, use the “Need more review?” links you'll find in the text to find more information and take the time to research and study the topic. Great information is available on https://docs.microsoft.com

Organization of this book

This book is organized by the “Skills measured” list published for the exam. The “Skills measured” list is available for each exam on the Microsoft Learn website: http://microsoft.com learn. Each chapter in this book corresponds to a major topic area in the list, and the technical tasks in each topic area determine a chapter’s organization. If an exam covers six major topic areas, for example, the book will contain six chapters.

Preparing for the exam

Microsoft certification exams are a great way to build your résumé and let the world know about your level of expertise. Certification exams validate your on-the-job experience and product knowledge. Although there is no substitute for on-the-job experience, preparation through study and hands-on practice can help you prepare for the exam. This book is not designed to teach you new skills.

We recommend that you augment your exam preparation plan by using a combination of available study materials and courses. For example, you might use the Exam Ref and another study guide for your ”at home” preparation and take a Microsoft Official Curriculum course for the classroom experience. Choose the combination that you think works best for you. Learn more about available classroom training and find free online courses and live events at http://microsoft.com/learn. Microsoft Official Practice Tests are available for many exams at http://aka.ms/practicetests.

Note that this Exam Ref is based on publicly available information about the exam and the author’s experience. To safeguard the integrity of the exam, authors do not have access to the live exam.

Microsoft certifications

Microsoft certifications distinguish you by proving your command of a broad set of skills and experience with current Microsoft products and technologies. The exams and corresponding certifications are developed to validate your mastery of critical competencies as you design and develop, or implement and support, solutions with Microsoft products and technologies both on-premises and in the cloud. Certification brings a variety of benefits to the individual and to employers and organizations.

More Info All Microsoft Certifications

For information about Microsoft certifications, including a full list of available certifications, go to http://www.microsoft.com/learn.

Check back often to see what is new!

Quick access to online references

Throughout this book are addresses to webpages that the author has recommended you visit for more information. Some of these links can be very long and painstaking to type, so we’ve shortened them for you to make them easier to visit. We’ve also compiled them into a single list that readers of the print edition can refer to while they read.

Download the list at MicrosoftPressStore.com/ExamRefPL300/downloads

The URLs are organized by chapter and heading. Every time you come across a URL in the book, find the hyperlink in the list to go directly to the webpage.

Errata, updates, & book support

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If you discover an error that is not already listed, please submit it to us at the same page.

For additional book support and information, please visit MicrosoftPressStore.com/Support.

Please note that product support for Microsoft software and hardware is not offered through the previous addresses. For help with Microsoft software or hardware, go to http://support.microsoft.com.

Stay in touch

Let’s keep the conversation going! We’re on Twitter: http://twitter.com/MicrosoftPress.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Loretta Yates for trusting me to write the official Power BI exam reference book, Charvi Arora for handling the project, the editing team for making this book a better read, and everyone else at Pearson who worked on this book to make it happen.

A few people have contributed to my becoming a fan of Power BI. Gabriel Polo Reyes was instrumental in my introduction to the world of Microsoft BI. Thomas van Vliet, my first client, hired me despite my having no prior commercial experience with Power BI and fed me many problems that led to my mastering Power BI.

About the author

DANIIL MASLYUK is an independent business intelligence consultant, trainer, and speaker who specializes in Microsoft Power BI. Daniil blogs at xxlbi.com and tweets as @DMaslyuk.

Chapter 1

Prepare the data

Over the past several years, Microsoft Power BI has evolved from a new entrant in the data space to one of the most popular business intelligence tools used to visualize and analyze data. Before you can analyze data in Power BI, you need to prepare, model, and visualize the data. Data preparation is the subject of this chapter; we review the skills necessary to consume data in Power BI Desktop.

We start with the steps required to connect to various data sources. We then review the data profiling techniques, which help you “feel” the data. Later, we look at how you can clean and transform data by using Power Query—this activity often takes a disproportionate amount of time in many data analysis projects. Finally, we show how you can resolve data import errors after loading data.

Skills covered in this chapter:

Skill 1.1: Get data from different data sources

Skill 1.2: Clean, transform, and load the data

Skill 1.1: Get data from different data sources

No matter what your data source is, you need to get data in Power BI before you can work with it. Power BI can connect to a wide variety of data sources, and the number of supported data sources grows every month. Furthermore, Power BI allows you to create your own connectors, making it possible to connect to virtually any data source.

The data consumption process begins with an understanding of business requirements and data sources available to you. For instance, if you need to work with near-real-time data, your data consumption process is going to be different compared to working with data that is going to be periodically refreshed. As you’ll see later in the chapter, different data sources support different connectivity modes.

This skill covers how to:

Identify and connect to a data source

Change data source settings

Select a shared dataset or create a local dataset

Select a storage mode

Use Microsoft Dataverse

Change the value in a parameter

Connect to a dataflow

Identify and connect to a data source

There are over 100 native connectors in Power BI Desktop, and the Power BI team is regularly making new connectors available. When connecting to data in Power BI, the most common data sources are files, databases, and web services.

Need More Review? Data Sources In Power BI

The full list of data sources available in Power BI can be found at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/connect-data/power-bi-data-sources.

To choose the right connector, you must know what your data sources are. For example, you cannot use the Oracle database connector to connect to a SQL Server database, even though both are database connectors.

Note Companion Files

In our examples, we are going to use this book’s companion files, which are based on a fictitious company called Wide World Importers. Subsequent instructions assume that you placed all companion files in the C:\PL-300 folder.

To review the skills needed to get data from different data sources, let’s start by connecting to the WideWorldImporters.xlsx file from this book’s companion files:

On the Home tab, select Excel workbook.

In the Open window, navigate to the WideWorldImporters.xlsx file and select Open.

In the Navigator window, select all eight check boxes on the left; the window should look similar to Figure 1-1.

[picture]

FIGURE 1-1 The Navigator window

Select Transform Data.

After you complete these steps, the Power Query Editor window opens automatically; you can see it in Figure 1-2.

[picture]

FIGURE 1-2 Power Query Editor

If in the Navigator window you chose Load, the Power Query Editor window would not open, and all Excel sheets you selected would be loaded as is.

Note that the Navigator window shows you a preview of the objects you selected. For example, in Figure 1-1 we see the preview of the Targets for 2022 sheet; its shape suggests we need to apply some transformations to our data before loading it, because it has some extraneous information in its first few rows.

Note Data Preview Recentness

To make query editing experience more fluid, Power Query caches data previews. Therefore, if your data changes often, you may not see the latest data in Power Query Editor. To refresh a preview, you can select Home > Refresh Preview. To refresh previews of all queries, you should select Home > Refresh Preview > Refresh All.

The Navigator window is not unique to the Excel connector; indeed, you will see the same window when connecting to a complex data source like a database, for instance.

We are going to transform our data later in this chapter. Before we do that, let’s connect to another data source: a folder. While you are in Power Query Editor:

On the Home tab, select New Source. If you select the button label instead of the button, select More.

In the Get data window, select Folder and then Connect.

Select Browse, navigate to C:\PL-300\Targets, and select OK twice. At this stage, you should see the list of files in the folder like in Figure 1-3.

[picture]

FIGURE 1-3 List of files in C:\PL-300\Targets

Select Combine & Transform Data.

In the Combine Files window, select OK without changing any settings.

At this stage, you have connected to two data sources: an Excel file and a folder, which contained several comma-separated values (CSV) files.

Although we did not specify the file type when connecting to a folder, Power Query automatically determined the type of files and applied the transformations it deemed appropriate. In addition to Excel and CSV files, Power BI can connect to several other file types, including JSON, XML, PDF, and Access database.

Important Format Consistency

It is important that the format of the files in a folder be consistent—otherwise, you may run into issues. Power Query applies the same transformations to each file in a folder, and it decides which transformations are necessary based on the sample file you choose in the Combine Files window.

Power Query Editor

If you followed our instructions, your Power Query Editor window should look like Figure 1-4.

[picture]

FIGURE 1-4 Power Query Editor after connecting to Excel and a folder

As you can see, after you instructed Power Query to automatically combine files from the folder, it created the Targets query and several helper queries, whose names are italicized—this means they won’t be loaded. We will review the data loading options later in this chapter, and we’ll continue using the same queries we created in this example.

Note Companion Files

You can review the steps we took by opening the file 1.1.1 Connect.pbix from the companion files folder.

Query dependencies

You can check the dependencies queries have by selecting Query Dependencies on the View tab. The Query Dependencies view provides a diagram like the one in Figure 1-5 that shows both data sources and queries.

[picture]

FIGURE 1-5 Query Dependencies view

To view the dependencies of a specific query, select a query, and Power BI will highlight both the queries that depend on the selected query as well as queries and sources that the query depends on.

The default layout is top to bottom; you can change the layout by using the Layout drop-down list.

Change data source settings

After you connect to a data source, sometimes you may need to change some settings associated with it. For example, if you moved the WideWorldImporters.xlsx file to a different folder, you’d need to update the file path in Power BI to continue working with it.

One way to change the data source settings is to select the cog wheel next to the Source step under Applied Steps in Query Settings in Power Query Editor. After you select the cog wheel, you can change the file path as well as the file type. The shortcoming of this approach is that you will need to change settings in each query that references the file, which can be tedious and error-prone if you have a lot of queries.

Another way to change the data source settings is by selecting Data source settings on the Home tab. This opens the Data source settings window, shown in Figure 1-6.

[picture]

FIGURE 1-6 The Data source settings window

The Data source settings window allows you to change the source settings for all affected queries at the same time by selecting Change Source. You can change and clear the permissions for each data source by selecting Edit Permissions and Clear Permissions, respectively. Permissions include the credentials used for connecting to a data source and the privacy level. Privacy levels are relevant when combining data from different sources in a single query, and we will look at them later in this chapter.

Select a shared dataset or create a local dataset

So far in this chapter, we have been creating our own dataset, which is also known as a local dataset. If a dataset already exists that you or someone else prepared and published to the Power BI service, you can connect to that dataset, also known as a shared dataset. Using a shared dataset has several benefits:

You ensure consistent data across different reports.

When connecting to a shared dataset, you are not copying any data needlessly.

You can create a copy of an existing report and modify it, which takes less effort than starting from scratch.

Note Using Shared Datasets

Sometimes different teams want to see the same data by using different visuals. In that case, it makes sense to create a single dataset and different reports that all connect to the same dataset.

To be able to connect to a published dataset, you must have the Build permission or be a contributing member of the workspace where the dataset resides. We will review permissions in Chapter 4, “Deploy and maintain assets.”

You can connect to a shared dataset from either Power BI Desktop or the Power BI service:

In Power BI Desktop, select Power BI datasets on the Home tab.

In the Power BI service, when you are in a workspace, select New > Report > Pick a published dataset.

Either way, you will then see a list of shared datasets you can connect to, as shown in Figure 1-7. Additionally, in the Power BI service, you can select Save a copy next to a report in a workspace to create a copy of the report without duplicating the dataset. This will be similar to connecting to a dataset from Power BI Desktop because you will be creating a report without an underlying data model.

[picture]

FIGURE 1-7 List of available datasets

After you are connected to a shared dataset in Power BI Desktop, some user interface buttons will be grayed out or missing because this connectivity mode comes with limitations. For example, when you connect to a shared dataset, Power Query Editor is not available, and the Data view is missing. In the lower-right corner, you’ll see the name and workspace you’re connected to, as shown in Figure 1-8.

[picture]

FIGURE 1-8 Power BI Desktop connected to a Power BI dataset

You can select Transform Data > Data source settings to change the dataset you are connected to. You can also select Transform Data or Make changes to this model in the lower-right corner to create a composite model, where you can combine data from the shared dataset with other data. Composite models are covered in the “Select a storage mode” section.

If you choose not to create a composite model, note that you can still create measures, and they will be saved in your PBIX file but not in the shared dataset itself. That means other users who connect to the same shared dataset will not see the measures you created. These measures are known as local or report-level measures. Creating measures in general is going to be reviewed in Chapter 2, “Model the data.”

Select a storage mode

The most common way to consume data in Power BI is to import it into the data model. When you import data in Power BI, you create a copy of it that is kept static until you refresh your dataset. Data from files and folders, which we connected to earlier in the chapter, can be imported only in Power BI. When it comes to databases, you can create data connections in one of two ways.

First, you can import your data, which makes the Power BI data model cache it. This method offers you the greatest flexibility when you model your data because you can use all the available modeling features in Power BI.

Second, you can connect to your data directly in its original source. This method is known as DirectQuery. With DirectQuery, data is not cached in Power BI. Instead, the original data source is queried every time you interact with Power BI visuals. Not all data sources support DirectQuery.

A special case of DirectQuery called Live Connection exists for Analysis Services (both Tabular and Multidimensional) and the Power BI service. This connectivity mode ensures that all calculations take place in the corresponding data model.

Importing data

When you import data, you load a copy of it into Power BI. Since Power BI is based on an in-memory columnar database engine, the imported data consumes both the RAM and disk space, because data is stored in files. During the development phase, the imported data consumes the disk space and RAM of your development machine. After you publish your report to a server, the imported data consumes the disk space and RAM of the server to which you publish your report. The implication of this is that you can’t load more data into Power BI than your hardware allows. This becomes an issue when you work with very large volumes of data.

You have an option to transform data when you import it in Power BI, limited only by the functionality of Power BI. If you only load a subset of tables from your database, and you apply filters to some of the tables, only the filtered data gets loaded into Power BI.

After data is loaded into the Power BI cache, it is kept in a compressed state, thanks to the in-memory database engine. The compression depends on many factors, including data type, values, and cardinality of the columns. In most cases, however, data will take much less space once it is loaded into Power BI compared to its original size.

One of the advantages of this data connection method is that you can use all the functionality of Power BI without restrictions, including all transformations available in Power Query Editor, as well as all DAX functions when you model your data.

Additionally, you can combine imported data from more than one source in the same data model. For example, you can combine some data from a database and some data from an Excel file in a single table.

Another advantage of this method is the speed of calculations. Because the Power BI engine stores data in-memory in compressed state, there is little to no latency when accessing the data. Additionally, the engine is optimized for calculations, resulting in the best computing speed.

Data from imported tables can be seen in the Data view in Power BI Desktop, and you can see the relationships between tables in the Model view. The Report, Data, and Model buttons are shown in Figure 1-9 on the left.

[picture]

FIGURE 1-9 Power BI Desktop when importing data

DirectQuery

When you use the DirectQuery connectivity mode, you are not caching any data in Power BI. All data remains in the data source, except for metadata, which Power BI caches. Metadata includes column and table names, data types, and relationships.

For most data sources supporting DirectQuery, when connecting to a data source, you select the entities you want to connect to, such as tables or views. Each entity becomes a table in your data model. The experience is similar to the Navigator window you saw earlier in the chapter when connecting to an Excel file, shown in Figure 1-1.

If you only use DirectQuery in your data model, the Power BI file size will be negligible compared to a file with imported data.

The main advantage of this method is that you are not limited by the hardware of your development machine or the capacity of the server to which you will publish your report. All data is kept in the data source, and all the calculations are done in the source as well.

Data from DirectQuery tables cannot be seen in the Data view of Power BI Desktop; if all tables in a data model are in DirectQuery mode, the Data view button will not be visible, though you can still use the Model view. A fragment of the interface when using DirectQuery is shown in Figure 1-10.

[picture]

FIGURE 1-10 Power BI Desktop interface when using DirectQuery

Live Connection

A special case of DirectQuery, called Live Connection, is available for Power BI service datasets and Analysis Services data models. It differs from DirectQuery in a few ways:

You cannot apply any transformations to data.

It is not possible to define physical relationships in Live Connection.

Data modeling is limited to only creating measures.

You may consider using Live Connection rather than importing data because of the enhanced data modeling capabilities and improved security features in the data source. More specifically, unlike DirectQuery with some databases, Live Connection always considers the username of the user who is viewing a report, which means security can be set up dynamically. Additionally, SQL Server Analysis Services can be configured to refresh as frequently as needed, unlike the scheduled refresh in the Power BI service, which is limited to eight times a day without Power BI Premium.

If you connect to a dataset in DirectQuery or Live Connection mode and add other data, you’ll create a composite model, covered next.

Composite models

A composite model is a data model that combines imported data and DirectQuery or Live Connection data or that uses DirectQuery to connect to multiple data sources. For example, you could be getting the latest sales data from a database by using DirectQuery, and you could be importing an Excel spreadsheet with sales targets. You can combine both data sources in a single data model by creating a composite model.

Important Potential Security Risks In Composite Models

Building a composite model may pose security risks; for example, data from an Excel file may be sent to a database in a query, and a database administrator might see some data from the Excel file.

For each table in a composite model that uses imported data or DirectQuery, the storage mode property defines how the table is stored in the data model. To view the property, you can hover over a table in the Fields pane in the Report or Data view; alternatively, you can view or change it in the Model view in the Advanced section of the Properties pane once you select a table. Note that you cannot change the storage mode of tables that you get from models by using Live Connection.

Storage mode can be set to one of the following options:

Import

DirectQuery

Dual

The Dual mode means a table is both cached and retrieved in DirectQuery mode when needed, depending on the storage mode of other tables used in the same query. This mode is useful whenever you have a table that is related to some imported tables and other tables whose storage mode is DirectQuery. For example, consider the data model from Table 1-1.

TABLE 1-1 Sample data model

Table Name | Data Source | Storage Mode
Sales | Database | DirectQuery
Date | Database | Dual
Targets | Excel file | Import

In this model, the Date table is related to both the Sales and the Targets tables. When you use data from the Date and Sales tables, it is retrieved directly from the database in DirectQuery mode; when you use Date and Targets together, no query is sent to the database, which improves the performance of your reports.

Important Changing Storage Mode

If you change the storage mode from DirectQuery or Dual to Import, there is no going back. If you need to set the storage mode of a table to Dual, you must create a table by using DirectQuery first.

Use Microsoft Dataverse

Power Platform has a family of products that offer similar experiences when you get data in Power BI:

Dataflows

Microsoft Dataverse (formerly known as Common Data Service)

Both Dataflows and Microsoft Dataverse store data in tables, also known as entities. Dataverse also offers a set of standardized tables that you can map your data to, or you can create your own tables.

Connecting to Dataflows only requires you to sign in, and then you’ll see the dataflows and tables you have access to.

To connect to Microsoft Dataverse, you’ll need to know the server address, which usually has the following format: environment.crm.dynamics.com.

Need More Review? Finding Server Addresses

If you want to learn how to find the server name, see the step-by-step tutorial here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/maker/data-platform/data-platformpowerbi-connector.

Additionally, you’ll need maker permissions to access the Power Apps portal and read permissions to access data within entities. Afterward, the connection experience is similar to connecting to a database.

Change the value in a parameter

Query parameters can simplify certain tasks, like changing a data source address or placing a filter in a query. Here are some examples of when you’d use parameters:

Switching between the development and production environments when getting data from a database

Configuring incremental refresh (outside of the scope of this book)

Creating custom functions by using the user interface

Using report templates

Need More Review? Templates In Power BI Desktop

Power BI report templates can be used as a starting point when you analyze data in Power BI. Power BI report templates are out of the scope of this book. More information on how you can create and use report templates is available at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/create-reports/desktop-templates.

Creating parameters

To create a new parameter in Power Query Editor, on the Home ribbon select Manage Parameters > New Parameter. You will then see the Manage Parameters window shown in Figure 1-11.

[picture]

FIGURE 1-11 The Manage Parameters window

For each parameter, you can configure the following options:

Name This will become the parameter name by which you can reference it.

Description This will show up when you hover over the parameter in the Queries pane or when you open a report template that contains the parameter.

Required This determines whether the parameter value can be empty.

Type This is the data type of the parameter. Not all Power Query data types are available. For example, whole number cannot be selected; instead, you can choose decimal number for numerical parameters.

Suggested Values You can choose one of these three options:

Any value This is the default setting, and it allows any value within the limits of the parameter type.

List of values This allows you to type a list of values from which you can choose a parameter. When you use this option, you may also specify the default value, which will be selected if you open a template with this parameter.

Query When this option is selected, you will need to use a query of type list that will feed the list of values.

Current Value This is the value the parameter returns when you reference it.

Important Parameter Type

If you intend to change a parameter in the Power BI service, you must set its data type correctly. Using the Any type will prevent you from editing the parameter value in the Power BI service.

Using parameters

Let’s follow an example of how to use parameters in practice:

Create a new Power BI Desktop file.

Open Power Query Editor by selecting Transform data on the Home ribbon.

Create a new parameter as follows:

Name: Year

Type: Decimal number

Current Value: 2006

Leave all other parameter options as is and select OK.

Now that you have created the new parameter, let’s connect to the CompanySales table from the AdventureWorks OData feed:

Still in Power Query Editor, select New Source > OData feed.

Enter https://services.odata.org/AdventureWorksV3/AdventureWorks.svc/ in the URL box and select OK. If prompted for credentials, select Anonymous.

Select the CompanySales check box and select OK.

In the lower-left corner of Power Query Editor, note that the CompanySales query, which you’ve just created, returns 235 rows. We are now going to use our parameter to filter the query as follows:

Select the filter button on the OrderYear column header and select Number Filters > Equals. You will be presented with the filter options in Figure 1-12.

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FIGURE 1-12 Filter rows options

Select the top 1.2 drop-down list next to equals and select Parameter. Note that the Year parameter we created earlier is automatically selected because it is the only parameter.

Select OK.

The query now returns 50 rows, because it is filtered to only show rows where OrderYear is 2006—the current value of the Year parameter.

Editing parameters

You can edit parameters in Power BI Desktop or the Power BI service. Editing a parameter refers to changing its current value, as opposed to managing a parameter, which refers to changing any parameter attribute.

To continue with our example, you can edit the Year parameter by selecting it in the Queries pane and changing its current value to 2007. Note how the CompanySales query now returns 96 rows instead of 50.

Note Companion Files

You can review this example by opening 1.1.6 Parameters.pbix from the companion files folder.

Note Editing Multiple Parameters

If you had several parameters, it would be more convenient to edit all the parameters at once. In the main Power BI Desktop window, you can select Transform data > Edit parameters; alternatively, in Power Query Editor, select Manage Parameters > Edit Parameters.

You can also edit parameters after publishing your report to the Power BI service. This is done in the Parameters section of dataset settings, as shown in Figure 1-13.

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FIGURE 1-13 Editing parameters in the Power BI service

After you change the parameter value, select Apply.

Need More Review? Power BI Service

We review the Power BI service in more detail in Chapter 4.

Creating functions

Power Query allows you to create your own functions, which can be useful when you want to apply the same logic multiple times. One way to create a custom function is by converting a query to a function. If your query already uses parameters, then those will become the parameters of the new function.

Let’s continue our AdventureWorks example and create a function that will output sales for a particular year based on the year you enter:

Right-click the CompanySales query and select Create Function.

In the Function name box, enter SalesByYear.

Select OK.

This creates the SalesByYear group of queries, which contains the Year parameter, the CompanySales query, and the SalesByYear function.

Now test the new function:

Select the SalesByYear function in the Queries pane.

Enter 2008 in the Year box.

Select Invoke.

This creates the Invoked Function query that returns 73 rows and contains data for year 2008 only, which you can verify by selecting the OrderYear column filter button.

Note that there is a special relationship between the SalesByYear function and CompanySales query: updating the latter also updates the former, which in turn updates all function invocations. For example, we can remove the ID column from the CompanySales query, and it will disappear from the Invoked Function query, too.

Exam Tip

You should be able to identify scenarios when query parameters can be beneficial based on the business requirements of a client.

Connect to a dataflow

In addition to Power BI Desktop, Power Query can be found in the Power BI service: you can prep, clean, and transform data in dataflows. Dataflows can be useful when you want your Power Query queries to be reused across your organization without the queries necessarily being in the same dataset. For this reason, you cannot create a dataflow in your own workspace, because only you have access to it.

To create a dataflow in a workspace, select New > Dataflow. From there, you have several choices:

Add new tables Define new tables from scratch by using Power Query.

Add linked tables Linked entities are tables in other dataflows that you can reuse to reduce duplication of data and improve consistency across your organization.

Import model If you have a previously exported dataflow model file, you can import it.

Create and attach Attach a Common Data Model folder from your Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 account and use it in Power BI.

The Power Query Online interface (Figure 1-14) looks similar to Power Query Editor in Power BI Desktop.

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FIGURE 1-14 Power Query interface when editing a dataflow

Once you finish authoring your queries, you can select Save & close and enter the name of the new dataflow. After saving, you’ll need to refresh the dataflow by selecting Refresh now from the dataflow options in the workspace—otherwise, it won’t contain any data. When a dataflow finishes refreshing, you can connect to it from Power BI Desktop and get data from it.

Skill 1.2: Clean, transform, and load the data

Unless you are connecting to a dataset that someone has already prepared for you, in many cases you must clean and transform data before you can load and analyze it.

Power BI contains a powerful ETL (extract, transform, load) tool: Power Query. Power Query, also known as Get & Transform Data, first appeared as an add-in for Excel 2010; starting with Excel 2016, it has been an integral part of Excel. You can see Power Query in several other Microsoft products, including Power Apps and Power Automate.

When you connected to various data sources and worked inside Power Query Editor earlier in this chapter, you were using Power Query. Besides connecting to data, Power Query can perform sophisticated transformations to your data. In this book, Power Query refers to the engine behind Power Query Editor.

Power Query uses a programming language called M, which is short for “mashup.” It is a functional, case-sensitive language. The latter point is worth noting because M is case-sensitive, unlike the other language of Power BI we are going to cover later, DAX. In addition, M is a completely new language that, unlike DAX, does not resemble Excel formula language in any way.

This skill covers how to:

Profile the data

Resolve inconsistencies, unexpected or null values, and data quality issues

Identify and create appropriate keys for joins

Evaluate and transform column data types

Shape and transform tables

Combine queries

Apply user-friendly naming conventions to columns and queries

Configure data loading

Resolve data import errors

Profile the data

When performing data analysis, you will find it useful to see the overall structure or shape of data, which you can achieve by profiling data. Data profiling allows you to describe its content and consistency. It’s advisable to do data profiling before working with data, because you can discover limitations in the source data and then decide if a better data source would be required. If you analyze the data without profiling it, you may miss outliers, and your results may not be representative of what’s really happening.

Power Query has column profiling capabilities that can be used to profile your data before you even load it. These include column quality, column value distribution, and column profile.

Identify data anomalies

Power Query provides different functionality for identifying data anomalies depending on what you are looking for; you might be looking for unexpected values, such as prices over $10,000 when you analyze sales of a retail store, or you may be looking for missing or error values. In this section, we cover missing or error values, and later in the chapter we look at how you can identify unexpected values.

When you look at a table in Power Query Editor, you can check the quality of each column. By default, each column will have a colored bar under its header, which shows how many valid, error, and empty values there are in each column. To show the exact percentages, select View > Data Preview > Column quality.

Note Companion Files

Open 1.1.1 Connect.pbix from the companion files folder to follow along with the examples.

Figure 1-15 shows the Employee query from our earlier Wide World Importers example with the Column quality feature enabled.

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FIGURE 1-15 Column quality

Note how the Parent Employee Key column has 85% valid values and 15% empty ones. If we didn’t expect any empty values in the column, this would prompt us to investigate the issue. For the column quality purposes in Power Query, empty values are null values or empty strings. There are no errors in this query, so the Error percentage is always 0%.

If we now go to the Customer query and check the Postal Code column, we’ll see that there are <1% error values. Note that Power Query won’t tell you the percentage of valid or missing values when there are errors in a column. For now, we’ll leave this error as is, and we’re going to fix the error in this column later in this chapter.

To copy the column quality metrics, right-click the area under the column header and select Copy Quality Metrics.

Important Data Sample

By default, column profiling is based on the first 1,000 rows of a query. You can use the entire dataset for column profiling by making a change in the lower-left corner of Power Query Editor.

Examine data structures and interrogate column properties

In addition to column quality, you can look at column value distribution. To enable this feature, select View > Data Preview > Column distribution. In Figure 1-16, you can see the Stock Item query with this feature enabled.

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FIGURE 1-16 Column distribution

Note that you can now see how many distinct and unique values each column has, as well as the distribution of column values in the form of a column chart under each column header. Column profiling is shown irrespective of the column type, which you can see to the left of a column’s name.

The distinct number refers to how many different values there are in a column once duplicates are excluded. The unique number shows how many values occur exactly once. The number of distinct and unique values will be the same only if all values are unique.

The column charts show the shape of the data—you can see whether the distribution of values is uniform or if some values appear more frequently than others. For example, in Figure 1-16, you can see that the Selling Package column mostly consists of one value, with four other values appearing significantly less frequently.

To copy the data behind a column chart, right-click a column chart and select Copy Value Distribution. This will provide you with a list of distinct values and the number of times they appear in the column.

Knowing the column distribution can be particularly useful to identify columns that don’t add value to your analysis. For example, in the State Province query, you can see that the following columns have only one distinct value each:

Country

Continent

Region

Subregion

Depending on your circumstances, you may choose to remove the columns to declutter your queries.

Note Understanding Value Distribution

The distribution of values is based on the current query only. For example, the distribution of the Stock Item Key column values may be different in the Stock Item and Sale queries. It’s also worth remembering that the distribution of values may be different if you choose to profile the entire dataset as opposed to the first 1,000 rows.

Need More Review? Table Schema

You can see the advanced properties of columns, such as their numeric precision or whether they are nullable, by using the Table.Schema function. Writing your own M code is outside the scope of this book. For more information about the Table.Schema function, visit https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerquery-m/table-schema.

Interrogate data statistics

You can also profile columns to get some statistics and better understand your data. To enable this feature, select View > Data Preview > Column profile. After you enable this feature, select a column header to see its profile. For example, Figure 1-17 shows the profile of the Unit Price column from the Stock Item query.

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FIGURE 1-17 Column profile

You can now see two new areas in the lower part of Power Query Editor:

Column statistics This shows various statistics for the column. In addition to the total count of values and the number of error, empty, distinct, and unique values, you can see other statistics, such as minimum, maximum, average, and the number of zero, odd, and even values, among others. You will see different statistics depending on the column type. For instance, for text columns you will see the number of empty strings in addition to the number of empty values. You can copy the statistics by selecting the ellipsis next to Column statistics and selecting Copy.

Value distribution This is a more detailed version of the column chart you can see under the column name. You can now see which column refers to which value, and you can hover over a column to apply filters based on the corresponding value. You can copy the value distribution as text by selecting the ellipsis on the Value distribution header and selecting Copy. Also when you select the ellipsis, you can group the values depending on the data type. For example, you can group columns of type Date by year, month, day, week of year, and day of week. Text values can be grouped by text length. Whole numbers can be grouped by sign or parity (odd or even), whereas decimals can be grouped by sign only.

Need More Review? Profiling Tables

If you want to profile the whole table at once, you can use the Table.Profile function, which is not available when you are using the user interface alone, though you can write your own code to use it. For more information about the Table.Profile function, visit https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerquery-m/table-profile.

Resolve inconsistencies, unexpected or null values, and data quality issues

If you followed the Wide World Importers example earlier in the chapter, you’d recall that the Postal Code column in the Customer query had an error in it. Power Query offers several ways to deal with errors or other unexpected values:

Replace values

Remove rows

Identify the root cause of error

Replace values

You can replace undesirable values with different values by using the Power Query user interface. This approach can be appropriate when there are error values in the data source that you cannot fix. For example, when connecting to Excel, the #N/A values will show up as errors. Unless you can fix the errors in the source, it may be acceptable to replace them with some other values.

Since errors are not values as such, the procedure to replace them is different compared to replacing other unexpected values.

To replace errors:

Right-click a column header and select Replace Errors.

Enter the value you want to replace errors with in the Value box.

Select OK.

You can only replace errors in one column at a time when using the user interface.

To replace a value in a column:

Right-click a column header and select Replace Values.

Enter the value you want to replace in the Value To Find box.

Enter the replacement value in the Replace With box.

Select OK.

You can also right-click a value in the column and select Replace Values. This way, the Value To Find box will be prepopulated with the selected value.

For text columns, you can use the advanced options shown in Figure 1-18.

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FIGURE 1-18 Replace Values options

Match entire cell contents With this option checked, Power Query won’t replace values where the Replace With value is only part of the Value To Find value.

Replace using special characters Use this to insert special character codes, such as a carriage return or a nonbreaking space, in the Replace With or Value To Find box.

To replace values in multiple columns at once, you must select multiple columns before replacing values. To do so, hold the Ctrl key and select the columns whose values you want to replace. If you want to select a range of columns based on their order, you can select the first column, hold the Shift key, and select the last column.

The type of the replacement value must be compatible with the data type of the column—otherwise, you may get errors.

Note Null Values In Power Query

Null values are special values in Power Query. If you want to replace a value with a null, or vice versa, enter the word null in the relevant box, and Power Query will recognize it as a special value rather than text.

Remove rows

If there are errors in a column, you may wish to remove the rows entirely, depending on the business requirements. To do so, you can right-click a column header and select Remove Errors. Note that this will only remove rows where there are errors in the selected column. If you wish to remove all rows in a table that contain errors in any column, you can select the table icon to the left of the column headers and select Remove Errors.

Identify the root cause of error

When you see an error in a column, you can check the error message behind the error. To do so, select the error cell, and you will see the error message in the preview section at the bottom.

Note Checking the Cell Contents

In general, you can use this method—selecting the cell—to see nested cell contents such as errors, lists, records, and tables.

Though you also have an option to select the hyperlink, keep in mind that this will add an extra query step, which you will have to remove if you want to load the query later.

Figure 1-19 shows the error message behind the error we saw in the Postal Code column of the Customer query.

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FIGURE 1-19 Error message

After seeing this error message, you know that the error happened because Power Query tried to convert N/A, which is text, into a number. To confirm this, you can go one step back by selecting the Promoted Headers step in the list of Applied Steps—the cell will show N/A, so you must transform the column type to Text to prevent the error from happening, as covered later in this chapter.

Although errors can happen for a variety of reasons, and not all errors occur because of type conversions, reading the error message will usually give you a good idea of what’s going on.

Identify and create appropriate keys for joins

Power BI allows you to combine data from different tables in several ways. Most commonly, you combine tables, or you create relationships between them.

Combining tables requires a join in the query, which in Power Query is also known as merge. Relationships, which you create in the model, not in Power Query, create implicit joins when visuals calculate values. The choice between the two depends on the business requirements and is up to the data modeler. In this section, we are discussing the keys you need for either operation.

Need More Review? Combining Tables and Creating Relationships

We review different methods of combining tables later in this chapter, and we cover relationships in Chapter 2.

When you join tables, you need to have some criteria to join them, such as keys in each table. For example, you join the City and Sale tables by using the City Key column in each table. Though it’s handy to have keys named in the same way, it’s not required. For instance, you can join the Sale table with the Date table by using the Invoice Date Key from the Sale table and the Date column from the Date table.

Each table can be on the one or the many side during a join. If a table is on the one side, it means the key in the table has a unique value for every row, and it’s also known as the primary key. If a table is on the many side, it means that values in the key column are not necessarily unique for every row and may repeat, and such a key is often called a foreign key.

You can join tables that are both on the one side, but such situations are rare. Usually one table is on the one side and one table is on the many side. You can also perform joins when both tables are on the many side, though you should be aware that if you do it in Power Query, you will get duplicate rows.

Keys for joins in Power Query

Power Query allows you to perform joins based on one or more columns at once, so it’s not necessary to create composite keys to merge tables in Power Query.

For joins in Power Query, column types are important. For example, if a column is of type Date, then you won’t be able to merge it with a column of type Date/Time even if the Date/Time column has no Time component.

Keys for relationships

For relationships, Power BI is more forgiving of the data type. If columns that participate in a relationship are of different types, Power BI will do its best to convert them in one type behind the scenes. Although the relationship may still work, it’s always best to have the same data type for columns that are in a relationship.

Power BI only allows you to create physical relationships between two tables on a single pair of columns. This means that in case you have a composite key in a table, you’ll need to combine the key columns in a single column before you can create a physical relationship between two tables. You can do it in Power Query or by creating a calculated column in DAX.

Need More Review? Calculated Columns and Dax

If you use DirectQuery, some calculated columns can still be translated into the native language of the data source efficiently. For example, the COMBINEVALUES function in DAX translates well into SQL. We review DAX in Chapter 2.

There are two ways of combining columns in Power Query:

Create a new column This option keeps the original columns. To add a new merged column, select the columns you want to combine and select Add column > From Text > Merge Columns.

Merge columns in-place This option removes the original columns. To merge existing columns, select the columns you want to merge and select Transform > Text Column > Merge Columns.

Important Column Selection Order

The order in which you select columns matters: the order of the text in the merged column follows the order of column selection. In other words, if you select column A first and then column B, the result will be different compared to your selecting column B first and then column A.

Either way, you’ll be presented with the options shown in Figure 1-20.

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FIGURE 1-20 Merge columns options

You can use one of the predefined separators from the Separator drop-down list, or you can specify your own by selecting Custom from the drop-down list. You’re also given an option to enter the new column name. After you specify the options, select OK.

Evaluate and transform column data types

If the data source does not communicate the type of each column, by default Power Query will do its best to detect the data types automatically if types are not available. So, for example, you’ll get column types from a database but not from a JSON file, so Power Query will try to detect types. It’s important to note that the process is not perfect because Power Query does not always consider all values. As you saw earlier, Power Query may detect data types incorrectly.

Note Disabling Automatic Type Detection

If you find the automatic type detection undesirable, you can turn it off at File > Options and settings > Options > Current file > Data Load > Type Detection.

Power Query supports the following data types:

Decimal Number

Fixed Decimal Number

Whole Number

Percentage

Date/Time

Date

Time

Date/Time/Timezone

Duration

Text

True/False

Binary

Note Complex Data Types

Sometimes you may see other—complex—data types, like Function, List, Record, and Table. You will encounter some of them later in this chapter.

It’s also important to note that not all data types are available once you load your data. For example, the Percentage type becomes Decimal Number. We are reviewing data loading toward the end of this chapter.

Need More Review? Data Types In Power BI

Not all values can be stored in Power BI. For technical documentation on the data types in Power BI, including the supported range of values, visit https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/connect-data/desktop-data-types.

Continuing our Wide World Importers example, we now know that there is an error in the Postal Code column of the Customer query due to data type conversion. Power Query scanned the first few rows and, seeing whole numbers, decided that the type of the column is Whole Number, which you can see from the icon on the left side of the column header.

In our example, you should transform the Postal Code column type to Text to accommodate both numeric and text values.

Note Selecting the Data Type

Occasionally, selecting the data type may not be straightforward. For example, the calendar year number can be both numeric and text, but it is up to the data modeler to decide what the type should be.

In general, if it doesn’t make sense to perform mathematical operations with a column, then you may want to make it Text. In the case of a calendar year number, you may want to use it to apply filter conditions such as “greater than,” so the Whole Number type makes sense. In other cases, like postal codes, you probably won’t need to perform mathematical operations, so the Text type might be appropriate.

To transform the column type, right-click a column header, then select Change Type and select the desired data type. Alternatively, you can select the column type icon on the column header, and then select the data type you want to transform the column to.

Provided the last step in the Customer query is Changed Type and the step is selected, after you try to change the type of the Postal Code column, you will see the message shown in Figure 1-21.

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FIGURE 1-21 Change Column Type dialog box

Since Power Query has already automatically changed the type of the column before, you now have the option to either replace the conversion by selecting Replace current or add a new conversion on top of the existing one by selecting Add new step.

In this case, you should replace the current conversion because otherwise Power Query will try to convert the error value to Text, and it will still be an error. After you select Replace current, you will not see any errors, and you will be able to see the column distribution and other statistics.

Note Caching In Power Query

If you still see errors after transforming type to Text, you should navigate to another query and come back to Customer. This is because Power Query sometimes caches the output and does not immediately update it.

Adding a new conversion step is appropriate in case you cannot convert the type in one step. For example, if you’ve got data in a CSV file, and there’s a column that contains Date/Time values, you will not be able to set the column type to Date. Instead, you should set the data type to Date/Time first, and then add a new conversion step that changes the type to Date. This way, you will get no errors.

If you want Power Query to detect the type of one or more specific columns automatically, you can select the columns, then select Transform > Any Column > Detect Data Type.

Using locale

Occasionally, you will need to transform data by using a certain locale. For example, if your computer uses the DMY date format and you receive data in MDY format, you’ll need to change type with the locale. To do so, right-click a column header and select Change Type > Using Locale. From there, you’ll need to select the data type and locale from drop-down lists.

Note Dates and Locale

In some cases, like monthly data, selecting the incorrect locale may not result in errors, since 1–12 can be either 1 December or 12 January. Therefore, it is especially important to ensure your data comes in the expected format when the values can be ambiguous.

Shape and transform tables

Few data sources provide data in shapes that are ready to be used by Power BI. You’ll often need to transform your data, especially if you work with files. In this section, we review common table transformations in Power Query by transforming the Wide World Importers queries that contain sales targets: Targets for 2022 and Targets.

Note Companion Files

If you want to follow along with the example, use 1.1.1 Connect.pbix from the companion files folder.

In Figure 1-22, you can see the first four columns of the Targets for 2022 query. There are 14 columns and seven rows in this query, which you can check by looking at the lower-left corner of Power Query when viewing the query.

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FIGURE 1-22 Targets for 2022

Note Query Row Count

The row count is based on the query preview, and it may not account for all rows. You’ll get a more accurate figure in the Data view after you load data.

As you can see, the Targets for 2022 query is not yet ready to be used in Power BI for the following reasons:

There are extraneous notes in the first few rows.

There are totals.

There is no date or month column.

Values are pivoted.

Data types are not set.

In Figure 1-23, you can see the Targets query.

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FIGURE 1-23 Targets query

There are several issues with this query, too:

Targets are provided at year level, but we need them to be at month level.

Years come from filenames and have the .csv extension suffix.

Targets are in millions instead of dollars.

After you transform each query, you must combine them. In our example, we’re aiming for a single table with the following columns:

End of Month You’ll need to make a relationship with the Date table later, and you can use a column of type Date for that.

Buying Group Only three values and no totals.

Target Excluding Tax In dollars, for each month.

Working with query steps

To start getting the Targets for 2022 query in the right shape, let’s undo some of the automatic transformations done by Power Query. By looking at the Applied Steps pane, you can see that after navigating to the right sheet in the Excel file, Power Query has promoted the first row to headers, even though the row did not contain column names. It also changed column types, considering column names as valid column values, which led to incorrect data type selection.

Right-click the Promoted Headers step in the Applied Steps pane.

Select Delete Until End.

Select Delete.

This removes the Promoted Headers step and all subsequent steps. The Delete Until End option is especially useful when you have more than two steps you want to remove.

Important Editing Steps

You can remove a single query step by selecting the cross icon. To change the order of steps, you can drag and drop a step. Some steps will have a gear icon—this will allow you to change the step options, if available.

It’s important to note that the query may break if you edit intermediate steps, since the order of steps in a query is sequential and most steps reference the previous step. For example, if you promote the first row to headers first, then change the column types, and then change the order of the last two steps, your query will break because the Changed Type step will be referencing incorrect column names.

As Figure 1-24 shows, you can now see some notes left by a sales planner in the first two rows. Note that columns are now not typed.

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FIGURE 1-24 Targets for 2022 with automatic transformations undone

Reducing rows and columns

Since the first three rows don’t contain any meaningful data, we can remove them. In addition to filtering columns, the Power Query user interface offers the following options for row reduction:

Keep Rows

Keep Top Rows Keeps the specified number of top rows. Works on the whole table only.

Keep Bottom Rows Keeps the specified number of bottom rows. Works on the whole table only.

Keep Range of Rows Skips a specified number of top rows and then keeps the chosen number of rows. Works on the whole table only.

Keep Duplicates Keeps rows that appear more than once. This option can work on the whole table, meaning all column values will have to match for rows to be considered duplicates, or it can work on selected columns only, so values will only need to match in specified columns for duplicates to be kept.

Keep Errors Keeps rows that contain errors. This option can work on the whole table or selected columns only.

Remove Rows

Remove Top Rows Removes a specified number of top rows. Works on the whole table only.

Remove Bottom Rows Removes a specified number of bottom rows. Works on the whole table only.

Remove Alternate Rows Removes rows following a user-supplied pattern: it starts with a specified row, then alternates between removing the selected number of rows and keeping the chosen number of rows. Works on the whole table only.

Remove Duplicates Removes rows that are duplicates of other rows. Can work on the whole table or selected columns only.

Remove Blank Rows Removes rows that completely consist of empty strings or nulls. Works on the whole table only; if you need to remove blank values from a specific column, you can select the filter button to the right of a column’s name and select Remove Empty.

Remove Errors Removes rows that contain errors. Can work on the whole table or selected columns only.

Since notes can potentially change, it’s best not to remove them by filtering out specific values. In our case, Remove Top Rows is appropriate, so we can perform the following steps:

Select Remove Rows on the Home ribbon.

Select Remove Top Rows.

Enter 3 in the Number of rows box.

Select OK.

Now that we have removed the top three rows, we can use the first row for the column names by selecting Use First Row as Headers on the Home ribbon. The result should look like Figure 1-25.

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FIGURE 1-25 Targets for 2022 with unnecessary rows removed and headers in place

Note how Power Query automatically detected column types, this time correctly since only the first column is a text column and all the other columns are numeric.

Next, you can see that the last row is a total row, and the last column, Year Target, is a total column. You need to remove both, because keeping them may result in incorrect aggregation later in Power BI.

There are several ways to remove the last row, and which way is best for you depends on several factors:

If you’re sure that the last row is always going to be a total row, you can remove it in the same way that you removed the top three rows earlier.

If, on the other hand, you’re not sure that the total row is always going to be there, it’s safer to filter out a specific value from the Buying Group column—in our example, Buying Group Total.

Depending on business logic, you can also apply a text filter that excludes values that end with the word Total. This kind of filter relies on actual Buying Group column values not ending with Total.

Important Case Sensitivity In Power Query

Since Power Query is case-sensitive by default, you must exclude the word “Total”; filtering out “total” won’t work.

Let’s say you’re sure that only the total row label ends with the word Total, so we can apply a corresponding filter to the Buying Group column as follows:

Select the filter button on the Buying Group column header.

Select Text Filters > Does Not End With.

Enter Total in the box next to the drop-down list that shows does not end with.

Select OK.

The last row is now filtered out, and you should remove the last column as well, since it contains totals for the year. To do so, select the Year Target column and press the Delete key.

With the totals gone, Power Query Editor should show “13 columns, 3 rows” in the lower-left corner. However, the current Targets for 2022 query still does not meet our goals because we don’t have a single date or month column. Instead, targets for each month appear in a separate column. We’ll address this issue next.

Pivoting columns, unpivoting columns, and transposing

The current Targets for 2022 query is sometimes called pivoted because attributes appear on both rows and columns and the same measure is scattered across multiple columns—just like in an Excel PivotTable.

Power Query provides several options when it comes to pivoting and unpivoting:

Pivot Column This creates a new column for each value in the column you pivot. One scenario when this option can be useful is when you have different measures mixed in the same column. For example, if you have Quantity and Price as text labels in one column and numeric quantity and price values in another column, you could pivot the first column to create separate Quantity and Price columns with numeric quantity and price values, respectively.

Unpivot Columns The selected columns will be transformed into two: Attribute, containing old column names, and Value, containing old column values. In general, unpivoting is useful when the source data has been prepared by using a PivotTable or similar method. This specific option is appropriate when the list of columns you want to unpivot is known in advance.

Unpivot Other Columns All columns except the selected ones will be unpivoted. This option is particularly useful when you only know the list of columns that don’t need to be unpivoted. For example, if you have a file where monthly data is added as columns every month and you want to unpivot months, then you could use this option.

Unpivot Only Selected Columns Despite the names of the previous two options, Power Query tries to recognize when you want to unpivot the selected columns or other columns, so this option allows you to be strict about which columns are unpivoted.

Furthermore, Power Query offers the Transpose feature, which allows you to transpose tables, treating rows as columns and columns as rows. This operation can be useful when you have multiple levels of headers; you can transpose your table, merge the columns that contain headers, and transpose again, so there will be only one row of headers.

Important Table Transposition and Column Names

When transposing tables, remember that you lose column names during the operation, so if you want to keep them, you must demote headers to the first row. You can do so by selecting the Use First Row as Headers drop-down and then selecting Use Headers as First Row.

For our Wide World Importers example, right-click the Buying Group column and select Unpivot Other Columns. This puts all column headers except for Buying Group in a single column called Attribute, and it puts all values in the Value column. The result should look like Figure 1-26.

[picture]

FIGURE 1-26 Unpivoted months

As you can see, months now appear in a single column, which is what we want for Power BI. Now you need to transform month names into date values so you can create a relationship with the Date table later.

Adding columns

You can add a new column in Power Query by using one of the following options on the Add column ribbon:

Column From Examples This option allows you to type some examples in a new column, and Power Query will try its best to write a transformation formula to accommodate the examples.

Custom Column You can type your own M formula for the new column.

Invoke Custom Function This option invokes a custom function for every row of a table.

Conditional Column This option provides an interface where you can specify the if-then-else logic for your new column.

Index Column This option creates a sequential column that starts and increments with the values you specify. By default, it will start with 0 and increment by 1 for each row.

Duplicate Column This option creates a copy of a column you select.

In addition to these options, you can use data type–specific transformations to add columns, most of which are also available on the Transform ribbon. The difference between the Add Column and Transform ribbons is that the former will add a new column whereas the latter will transform a column in place.

Targets For 2022

In the Targets for 2022 query, you must transform month names into dates, and you’ll use the Custom Column option for this as follows:

Select Add Column > Custom Column.

Enter Start of Month in the New column name box.

Enter Date.From([Attribute] & “2022”) in the Custom column formula box. The Custom Column window should look like Figure 1-27.

[picture]

FIGURE 1-27 Custom Column window

Select OK.

Right-click the Attribute column and select Remove.

When entering a custom column formula, you can use the columns available in the table by double-clicking them in the Available columns list on the right; this will insert a column reference into your formula.

Once you complete these steps, the result should look like Figure 1-28.

[picture]

FIGURE 1-28 Targets for 2022 with Start of Month column

Important Custom Column Types

The Custom column feature creates a column without a data type by default; you must set the data type manually before loading to ensure that the data is loaded correctly.

As you can see, the Start of Month column you’ve just created has no column type, and you may want to make it the first column instead of the last. Additionally, you have to rename the Value column by completing the following steps:

Select the ABC123 icon on the Start of Month column header and select Date.

Right-click the Start of Month column and select Move > To Beginning.

Double-click the Value column header.

Enter Target Excluding Tax and press the Enter key.

The Targets for 2022 query is now finished, and we need to transform the Targets query next.

Targets

In the Targets query, you have yearly targets, and you need to have monthly targets. Let’s say that, according to business rules, it’s all right to divide the yearly target evenly across months for years prior to 2022, which this query contains.

There are a few ways to solve this problem, one of which is adding a new column that contains months and expanding it as follows:

Select Add Column > Custom Column.

Enter Months in the New column name box.

Enter {1..12} in the Custom column formula box.

Select OK.

The result should look like Figure 1-29.

[picture]

FIGURE 1-29 Months custom column added to the Targets query

In M, braces signify a list, and a double period signifies a range. When you used {1..12} as a custom column formula, you put a list of numbers from 1 to 12, inclusive, in each cell of the new column. Therefore, you see the List hyperlinks in the Months column cells. Because custom columns by default don’t have a data type set, you see ABC123 as the column type, even though in reality it is of type List.

If you select any List hyperlink, you’ll navigate to a new step that contains one such list. You can also preview the contents of a cell without navigating to the list by selecting a cell without selecting a hyperlink.

You can expand the new column by selecting the double-arrow button on the column header. You’ll then see two options:

Expand to New Rows This option duplicates each table row by the number of list items in the row’s list.

Extract Values This option keeps the number of rows in the table the same, and it concatenates the list items by using a separator you specify, which can be one of the predefined ones or a custom value you provide.

In our example, you use the Expand to New Rows option. The result should look like Figure 1-30.

[picture]

FIGURE 1-30 Expanded Months column

Before you can create a column of type Date, you’ll have to transform the first column, which contains file names. Each file is named after a year and has a .csv extension. There are multiple ways to extract the year number from the column. The most appropriate way depends on the business requirements. In our example, you can extract the first four characters using the following steps:

Select the Source.Name column.

On the Transform ribbon, select Text Column > Extract > First Characters.

Enter 4 in the Count box.

Select OK.

Right-click the Source.Name column header and select Change Type > Whole Number.

Now that you have the year number, you can construct a date from it as follows:

On the Add Column ribbon, select Custom Column.

Enter Start of Month in the New column name box.

Enter #date([Source.Name], [Months], 1) in the Custom column formula box.

Select OK.

Right-click the Start of Month column header and select Change Type > Date.

In the new Start of Month column, we’ve got dates now, as desired. You can now clean up the query in the following way:

Hold the Ctrl key and select the following columns in order:

Start of Month

Buying Group

Target Excluding Tax (Millions)

Right-click the header of any of the selected columns and select Remove Other Columns.

Important Selection Order

The order in which you select columns matters; after you remove other columns, the remaining columns appear in the order in which you selected them.

The Target query now has three columns. The only problem left in this query is to correct the Target Excluding Tax (Millions) column. To do so, complete the following steps:

Select the Target Excluding Tax (Millions) column.

On the Transform ribbon, select Number Column > Standard > Multiply.

Enter 1000000 in the Value box and select OK.

Similarly, select Number Column > Standard > Divide, enter 12 in the Value box, and select OK.

Double-click the Target Excluding Tax (Millions) column header, enter Target Excluding Tax, and press Enter.

The result should look like Figure 1-31.

[picture]

FIGURE 1-31 Transformed Target query

Note how the column names are now the same as those in the Targets for 2022 query—this is on purpose. You are now ready to combine the two queries into one.

Combine queries

There are two main ways to combine queries in Power Query:

Append This stacks queries vertically. In SQL, it’s like UNION ALL.

Merge This combines queries horizontally based on the keys you supply. In SQL, it’s like JOIN.

Append

When you append queries, you combine tables vertically. As a result, you get a taller table. Usually the tables will have the same columns, though this is not strictly necessary. The resulting table will have all columns from all queries, and if some columns were missing in one of the original queries, then they will be populated with null values if values are missing.

You can append queries in two ways:

Append Queries This option appends one or more queries to the selected query and does not create any new queries. This is the default option if you select Append Queries without selecting the drop-down button.

Append Queries as New This creates a new query that contains concatenated rows of the original queries. You can select this option after selecting the drop-down button.

Note Following Along With the Example

If you want to follow along with the example, you can open 1.2.5 Shape.pbix from the companion files folder

In the Wide World Importers example, let’s append the Targets for 2022 and Targets queries as follows:

Select the Targets query from the Queries pane.

Select Combine > Append Queries. You should see the options shown in Figure 1-32.

[picture]

FIGURE 1-32 Options when appending

Select Targets for 2022 from the Table to append drop-down list.

Select OK.

As a result, you will see a new step in the Applied Steps pane called Appended Query. Unless you scroll down, you will not see any new rows because they are appended to the end of the query. In the lower-left corner, you can note the change in the number of rows, which increased to 144 from 108 in the previous step.

To meet our goal of having the End of Month column in the Targets query, let’s transform the Start of Month column:

Right-click the Start of Month column and select Transform > Month > End of Month.

Rename the Start of Month column to End of Month.

Note how you need to apply the transformation only once, even though the current query consists of two queries—Targets and Targets for 2022.

For now, you can leave the Targets for 2022 query as is, although it would be undesirable to load it since now there’s duplicated data in the Targets for 2022 and Targets queries. We will address this issue later in the “Configure data loading” section.

Merge

As discussed earlier, when you merge queries you combine them horizontally; as a result, you get a wider table. When merging, you need a set of keys—columns that have matching values in both tables—telling Power Query which rows of the first table should be combined with which rows of the second table.

Like with the Append Queries feature, you can either merge two queries without creating a new one or you can merge queries as new.

There are six kinds of joins in Power Query:

Left Outer All from first, matching from second

Right Outer All from second, matching from first

Full Outer All rows from both

Inner Only matching rows

Left Anti Rows only in first

Right Anti Rows only in second

You can see the visual representation of joins in Figure 1-33.

[picture]

FIGURE 1-33 Joins available in Power Query

In case your data isn’t perfect, Power Query allows you to use fuzzy matching when performing merges. You can use the following options:

Similarity threshold Can be valued from 0 to 1, where 0 will make all values match each other and 1 will allow exact matches only. The default is 0.8.

Ignore case Lowercase and uppercase letters will be treated as the same.

Match by combining text parts Power Query will try to combine separate words into one to find matches between keys.

Maximum number of matches This option will limit the number of rows from the second table that are matched against the first table, and it can be useful if you expect multiple matches.

Transformation table You can use a column with two columns—From and To—to map values during the matching process. For example, you can map NZ to New Zealand, and the two values will be considered the same for merge purposes.

For Wide World Importers, let’s merge the City and State Province queries using the following steps:

Select the City query in the Queries pane.

Select Combine > Merge Queries on the Home ribbon.

Select State Province in the drop-down list below the City query preview.

Select State Province Key in both tables. The columns should be highlighted as in Figure 1-34.

[picture]

FIGURE 1-34 Merge options

Ensure Left Outer is selected from the Join Kind drop-down list.

Select OK.

After you complete these steps, you’ll see a new column named State Province added to the City query. Note that the new column

Is of type Table

Has Table hyperlinks in each cell

Has a double-arrow button instead of a filter button on its header

If you select any cell in the new column without selecting the hyperlink, you’ll see a preview of the cell contents, and you’ll see a table row in our case.

You can expand the new column by selecting the double-arrow button on its header. There are two ways to expand a table column:

Expand You can select the columns from the joined table that you want to add to the current table. If there is more than one matching row in the joined table, the current table’s rows will be duplicated after expansion.

Aggregate This option aggregates rows and won’t duplicate any rows in the current table. You can apply arithmetic and statistical functions to the columns of the joined table. For example, if it made business sense, you could take the average of State Province Key from the State Province table.

When expanding the table column, you can use the original column name as a prefix. This option can be useful if there are column names that are the same in both tables but their content is different. For instance, if you are merging the Product and Product Category tables and both have a column called Name, then you can use the original column name as a prefix to avoid confusion.

In our example, let’s expand the merged column by completing these steps:

In the City query, select the double-arrow button on the State Province column header.

Clear the Select All Columns check box.

Select the State Province and Sales Territory check boxes.

Clear the Use original column name as prefix check box.

Select OK.

Rename the State Province.1 column to State Province.

Remove the State Province Key column.

The result should look like Figure 1-35.

[picture]

FIGURE 1-35 City query with columns from the State Province query

You’ve merged the City and State Province queries, and you’ve got five useful columns as a result. You don’t need the State Province Key column anymore, and the columns you didn’t include from the State Province query all had one distinct value each.

As is the case for the Targets for 2022 query, the information from the State Province query now appears in two queries, so there’s some data duplication in our queries. Again, we’ll address this later in the chapter.

Apply user-friendly naming conventions to columns and queries

When you create your data model in Power BI, you don’t have to follow any naming conventions to make your data model work. Nevertheless, following user-friendly naming conventions will make your model easier to use and reduce confusion among users.

In Power BI, you are encouraged to name your tables, columns, and measures in ways that are commonly understood by people without a technical background. Contrary to the popular naming conventions in the database world, it’s completely fine to use spaces in names, so it’s not necessary to use underscores or camelCase in Power BI.

Note Data Model Clarity

Having a user-friendly data model is extremely important. In large companies, data modelers and report builders may be different people, and data models must be as easy to understand as possible for report builders.

Furthermore, report viewers can personalize visuals in the Power BI service; while doing so, they can browse the list of fields and tables available in the model, which makes following user-friendly naming conventions even more important.

If you retrieve data from views in a database, they may carry the schema and a prefix, and it’s desirable to remove them. For example, if you connect to a view called vw_Sales in the pbi schema, it will be imported as pbi vw_Sales in Power BI by default. It’s best to rename it to Sales for clarity, since neither pbi nor vw_ may make sense to report builders and viewers.

The Wide World Importers tables contain user-friendly query and column names.

Configure data loading

When you develop your Power BI data model, you can use some helper queries in the process that you may not load to your model. For example, when you combine files from a folder, Power Query automatically creates some helper queries, which you can see in Figure 1-4 earlier in the chapter. The names of queries that aren’t loaded are italicized.

If there’s a query you don’t want to load, right-click it in the Queries pane and clear the Enable load selection. If you have already loaded the query, you may see a warning that data loss may occur.

Note Companion Files

If you want to follow along with the example, open 1.2.6 Combine.pbix from the companion files folder.

You may not want to load queries that were appended to or merged with another query. In the Wide World Importers example, you appended Targets for 2022 to the Targets query, and you merged State Province with the City query. Because you had some data duplication as a result, it would be preferable to not load the Targets for 2022 and State Province queries by performing the following steps:

Right-click the Targets for 2022 query and clear the Enable load selection.

Repeat the previous step for the State Province query.

The names of the queries should be italicized now, like in Figure 1-36.

[picture]

FIGURE 1-36 Queries pane

Once you load the data, the two queries won’t be loaded—they won’t become tables. You can now load the data by selecting Close & Apply on the Home ribbon.

Resolve data import errors

Occasionally, you may see errors after you load data in Power BI. If you followed previous examples, you would see the message shown in Figure 1-37 after you loaded data.

[picture]

FIGURE 1-37 Apply query changes information

Note Companion Files

If you want to follow along with the example, open 1.2.9 Errors.pbix from the companion files folder.

Errors in this context refer to error values. Error values by themselves don’t prevent queries from loading—you’re merely notified about the number of error values for each query. Error values are loaded as blank values.

To view the rows that contain errors in Power Query, you can select the View errors hyperlink. This opens Power Query Editor, and it creates a new query called Errors in Customer, which contains one row. If you check the last column, Postal Code, you’ll see the error you encountered earlier, shown in Figure 1-38.

[picture]

FIGURE 1-38 Postal Code error

The error happens because Power Query is trying to convert the “N/A” value, which is text, into a number. You can fix the issue by changing the data type of the Postal Code column as follows:

Select the Customer query.

Right-click the Postal Code column.

Select Change Type > Text.

Select Replace current.

If you return to the Errors in Customer query, you’ll see that it’s empty. To clean up the queries, you can delete the group that starts with Query Errors.

After you select Close & Apply, you’ll see no error messages.

Chapter summary

Power BI has over 100 native connectors, with more being added all the time, and you can create your own connectors, too.

You can change the data source settings, which include the location of the data source and the permissions associated with it. Changes apply to all queries that use the data source.

Power BI Desktop performs best and allows you to use most of its features when you import data. In some cases, importing data is not feasible—for example, when there is too much data to import, or when data is updated very frequently and business requirements demand always showing the latest data. These issues can be addressed if the data source supports the DirectQuery connectivity mode. With DirectQuery, no data is imported into Power BI. Instead, all data remains in the source, and every time Power BI needs to calculate values, it sends queries in the data source’s native query language. In some cases, you can apply certain types of transformations that can be translated to the native query language. There is a special case of DirectQuery called Live Connection, which is available with Analysis Services and Power BI service data models.

You can create composite models by connecting to more than one data source in DirectQuery or by combining imported data and DirectQuery.

You can connect to Microsoft Dataverse and dataflows, which use Power Query in the cloud. You can also create dataflows in the Power BI service.

You can use parameters in your queries, which help you avoid making changes in several places manually. Parameters can also be useful to create your own functions.

Power Query offers several ways to profile your data, which includes column statistics and distribution, as well as the number of errors.

Some of the most common operations you can perform in Power Query are

Replacing values

Reducing rows

Adding, removing, and splitting columns

Changing column type

Combining queries

Pivoting and unpivoting columns

Queries that don’t need to be loaded can stay as queries if you disable their loading.

If you see errors after loading your data, Power Query can show you the rows that contain errors, allowing you to correct them.

Thought experiment

In this thought experiment, demonstrate your skills and knowledge of the topics covered in this chapter. You can find the answers in the section that follows.

You are a data analyst at Contoso responsible for creating Power BI reports. Contoso has a development and a production environment, both of which use an Azure SQL Database. The production environment contains all historical data since 1990 and synchronizes with the OLTP system every five minutes; the development environment is only refreshed on demand. Additionally, some data is provided in CSV and Excel files.

Since Contoso is just starting with Power BI, they don’t use Power BI Premium yet.

Based on background information and business requirements, answer the following questions:

1. To reduce the load on the production environment, you connect to the development database and develop your reports. Once you publish your report, you need to use the production data instead. Because you’re developing your model iteratively, you need to switch between the environments back and forth. How can you minimize the time spent on changing data sources? The solution must allow for switching the source in the Power BI service.

A. Create a parameter for database location and use it in queries.

B. Change the data source in the Data Source settings.

C. Change the data source in the Source step in each query.

2. You get data from a table in an Azure SQL Database that contains hundreds of millions of rows. Loading the full table takes half an hour. You would like to load a sample of 1,000 rows from the table. How can you achieve this? Your solution must minimize time spent on loading data.

A. Use a report-level filter.

B. Keep top rows.

C. Provide your own SQL statement that has a TOP clause.

3. You get data from a CSV file with over 10,000 rows. You need to ensure one of the columns does not contain any missing values. Which Power Query features should you use?

A. Column distribution

B. Column quality

C. Column profiling based on top 1,000 rows

D. Column profiling based on the entire dataset

4. You are the only developer of Power BI reports in Contoso, and you’re creating the first sales report. Your report must show data no later than 10 minutes from its arrival in the production environment. Which connectivity mode suits best? Your solution must minimize the resources spent.

A. Import mode

B. Live Connection

C. DirectQuery

5. You need to combine the Customer and City tables, both of which have the CityKey column. Each row in the output table must contain a customer name and their city. Which Power Query feature should you use?

A. Group by

B. Merge

C. Transpose

D. Append

6. After you load data from an Excel file, you encounter the error shown in Figure 1-39.

[picture]

FIGURE 1-39 Error message

Which Power Query feature can you use to resolve the error? Your solution must retain all data from Excel.

A. Replace errors

B. Remove rows

C. Change type (add new step)

D. Change type (replace current)

Thought experiment answers

1. The answer is A. Using a parameter allows changing the source of all relevant queries at once, and it allows changing the source in the Power BI service. Although option B also allows changing the source of all affected queries, it does not allow changing the source in Power BI service. Option C requires you to change the source in each query separately, and you cannot change the source in the Power BI service this way.

2. The answer is B or C. Keeping top rows, if applied early in the query, will translate into SQL efficiently, resulting in fast data loading due to filtering taking place in the database. Using your own SQL statement with a TOP clause also filters data in the database, resulting in efficient data loading. Option A requires you to load all data first, which can take a long time.

3. The answer is B and D. Column distribution does not show the number of missing values, whereas column quality does. By default, column profiling is based on the first 1,000 rows; since there are over 10,000 rows in the CSV file, you need to perform column profiling on the entire dataset; otherwise, you risk missing some empty values at the end of the file.

4. The answer is C. The DirectQuery mode allows you to get the latest data as it arrives. Importing data requires refreshing the dataset, which would require Power BI Premium to refresh so frequently. Live Connection would require an Analysis Services model or a Power BI dataset, which are not available in Contoso.

5. The answer is B. Merge combines two tables by joining them based on a set of keys. Group by is for summarizing a single table. Transpose switches rows and columns of a single table. Append is best used to combine tables with mostly same columns.

6. The answer is D. The error is due to a text value being converted to a number, so changing the type to text instead of number would prevent the error from happening. Replacing an error will result in a number or null value, which would mean the original text value would be lost. Removing rows would also result in data loss. Changing type as a new step will not solve the problem as it will apply to the error value.

Chapter 2

Model the data

In the previous chapter, we reviewed the skills necessary to get and transform data by using Power Query Editor—the process also known as data shaping. In this chapter, we examine the skills needed to model data.

Although Power BI allows you to analyze your data to some degree right after you load it, a strong understanding of data modeling allows you to perform sophisticated analysis using rich data modeling capabilities, which includes creating relationships, hierarchies, and various calculations to bring out the true power of Power BI. Previously in the Power Query Editor we used the M language; after we load the data into the model, we use data analysis expressions, more commonly referred to as DAX—Power BI’s native query language.

In this chapter, we review the skills necessary to design, develop, and optimize data models. Additionally, we look at DAX and how it can be used to enhance data models.

Skills covered in this chapter:

Skill 2.1: Design a data model

Skill 2.2: Develop a data model

Skill 2.3: Create model calculations by using DAX

Skill 2.4: Optimize model performance

Skill 2.1: Design a data model

A proper data model is the foundation of meaningful analysis. A Power BI data model is a collection of one or more tables and, optionally, relationships. A well-designed data model enables business users to understand and explore their data and derive insights from it. This step should be taken before you create any visuals by loading your data and defining the relationships between tables. Data modeling often occurs at the beginning phase of building a Power BI report so that you can create efficient measures that build upon your data model. In this section, we design a data model by focusing our attention on tables and their relationships.

This skill covers how to:

Define the tables and design a data model that uses a star schema

Configure table and column properties

Design and implement role-playing dimensions

Define a relationship’s cardinality and cross-filter direction

Create a common date table

Define the tables and design a data model that uses a star schema

Once a query is loaded, it becomes a table in a Power BI data model. Tables can then be organized into different data model types, also known as schemas. The three most common schemas in Power BI are:

Flat (fully denormalized) schema

Star schema

Snowflake schema

There are other types of data models, though these three are the most common ones.

Flat schema

In the flat type of data model, all attributes are fully denormalized into a single table. Because there’s only one table, there are no relationships, and in most cases there’s no need for key.

In our Wide World Importers example, we have a single table that contains all columns from all tables, meaning that the Sale and Targets columns will be in the same table. Because the tables have different data granularity, you run into problems when comparing actuals and targets.

Note Data Granularity

We review the concept of data granularity later in this skill section.

From the performance point of view, flat schemas are very efficient, though there are downsides:

A single table can be cumbersome and confusing to navigate.

Columns and data can often be duplicated, leading to a comparatively large file size.

Mixing facts of different grains results in more complex DAX formulas.

Flat schemas are often used when connecting to a single, simple source. However, for more complex data models, flat schemas should be avoided in Power BI as much as possible.

Star schema

When you use a star schema, tables are conceptually classified into two kinds:

Fact tables These tables contain the metrics you want to aggregate. Fact tables have foreign keys, which are required in order to create relationships with dimensions, and columns that you can aggregate. In our Wide World Importers example, the Sale and Targets tables are fact tables. Fact tables are sometimes also known as data tables.

Dimension tables These tables contain the descriptive attributes that help you slice and dice your fact tables. A dimension table has a unique identifier—a key column—and descriptive columns. In our Wide World Importers example, the City, Customer, Date, Employee, and Stock Item are dimension tables. Dimension tables are also sometimes known as lookup tables.

In a star schema, fact tables are surrounded by dimensions, as shown in Figure 2-1.

[picture]

FIGURE 2-1 Star schema with Sale as the only fact table

The star schema has its name because it resembles a star, with the fact table in the center and dimension tables as the star points. It’s possible to have more than one fact table in a star schema, and it will still be a star schema.

Note Relationships

The lines that connect tables in Figure 2-1 represent relationships. We cover the relationships in more detail later in this section.

In most cases, the star schema is the preferred data modeling approach in Power BI. It addresses the shortcomings of the flat schema:

Fields are logically grouped, making the model easier to understand.

There is less duplication of data, which results in more efficient storage.

You don’t need to write overly complex DAX formulas to work with fact tables that have a different grain.

Snowflake schema

The snowflake schema is similar to the star schema, except it can have some dimensions that “snowflake” from other dimensions. You can see an example in Figure 2-2.

[picture]

FIGURE 2-2 Snowflake schema with State Province snowflaking from the City table

In the Wide World Importers example, if we loaded the State Province query, the data model could be a snowflake schema. This is because the State Province table is related to the City dimension table, which in turn is related to the Sale fact table.

Snowflake schemas can be beneficial when there are fact tables that have different grains.

Need More Review? Dimensional Modeling

In addition to fact and dimension tables, there are other types of tables such as factless facts, junk, and degenerate dimensions. For more information, see “Understand star schema and the importance for Power BI” at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/guidance/star-schema.

Configure table and column properties

Both tables and columns have various properties you can configure, and you can do it in the Model view. To see the properties of a column or a table, select an object, and you will see its properties in the Properties pane.

Table properties

For tables, depending on the storage mode, you can configure the following properties:

Name Enter the table name.

Description This property allows you to add a description of the table that will be stored in the model’s metadata. It can be useful when building reports because you can see the description when you hover over the table in the Fields pane.

Synonyms These are useful for the Q&A feature of Power BI, which we review in the next skill section. You can add synonyms so that the Q&A feature can understand that you’re referring to a specific table even if you provide a different name for it.

Row label This property is useful for both Q&A and featured tables, and it allows you to select a column whose values will serve as labels for each row. For example, if you ask Q&A to show “sales amount by product” and you select the Product Name column as the Row label of the Product table, then Q&A will show sales amount for each product name.

Key column If your table has a column that has unique values for every row, you can set that column as the key column.

Is hidden You can hide a table so that it disappears from the Fields pane.

Is featured table This property allows you to make a table featured, which will allow it to be used in Excel in certain scenarios.

Storage mode This property may be set to Import, DirectQuery, or Dual, as we covered in the previous chapter.

Column properties

For columns, depending on data type, you can configure the following properties:

Name Enter the column name.

Description As you can for tables, you can add a column description.

Synonyms As you can for tables, you can add synonyms to make the column work better with Q&A.

Display folder You can group columns from the same table into display folders.

Is hidden Hiding a column keeps it in the data model and hides it in the Fields pane.

Data type The available data types are different from those available in Power Query. For instance, Percentage, Date/Time/Timezone, and Duration are not available.

Format Different data types will show different formatting properties. For example, for numeric columns, you'll see the following additional properties: Percentage format, Thousands separator, and Decimal places.

Sort by column You can sort one column by another. For example, you can sort month names by month numbers to make them appear in the correct order.

Data category This property can be useful for some visuals, and the default is Uncategorized. Depending on the data type, you can also select one of the following:

Address

Place

City

County

State or Province

Postal Code

Country

Continent

Latitude

Longitude

Web URL

Image URL

Barcode

Summarize by This property determines how the column will be aggregated if you put it into a visual. The options you can choose depend on the data type. For most data types, in addition to Don’t Summarize/None, you can choose Count and Count (Distinct)/Distinct Count, whereas for numeric columns, you can also choose Sum, Average, Minimum/Min, and Maximum/Max. While Power BI will try to automatically determine the appropriate summarization, it’s not always accurate.

Is nullable—You may disallow null values for a column; if during data refresh, a column is determined to get a null value, the refresh will fail.

Exam Tip

You should know the difference between formatting a column and using the FORMAT function in DAX: the former retains the original data type, whereas the latter can be used to create a new column and always outputs text.

Note Measure Properties

You can also configure measure properties, many of which are the same as column properties. Notable exceptions include Sort by column, Summarize by, and Is nullable—these properties aren’t available for measures. We review measures in more detail later in this chapter.

Design and implement role-playing dimensions

In some cases, there may be more than one way to filter a fact table by a dimension. In the Wide World Importers example, the Sale table has two date columns: Invoice Date Key and Delivery Date Key, both of which can be related to the Date column from the Date table. Therefore, it’s possible to analyze sales by invoice date or delivery date, depending on the business requirements. In this situation, the Date dimension is a role-playing dimension.

Note Companion File

If you’re interested in following along the examples in this chapter, you can start with the 2.0 Model.pbix file in the companion files folder. The completed examples are available in 2.1 Design.pbix.

While Power BI allows you to have multiple physical relationships between two tables, no more than one can be active at a time, and other relationships must be set as inactive. Active relationships, by default, propagate filters. The choice of which relationship should be set as active depends on the default way of looking at data by the business.

Need More Review? Active and Inactive Relationships

For a more thorough explanation of when you would use active or inactive relationships, see “Active vs inactive relationship guidance” at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/guidance/relationships-active-inactive.

To create a relationship between two tables, you can drag a key from one table on top of the corresponding key from the other table in the Model view.

Note Automatic Detection of Relationships

By default, Power BI will try to detect relationships between tables automatically after you load data. In doing so, Power BI usually relies on identical column names, and the process is not always perfect. You can turn it off in Options > Current file > Data load if required.

In our Wide World Importers example, you can drag the Date column from the Date table on top of the Invoice Date Key column in the Sale table. This will create an active relationship, signified by the solid line. Next, you can drag the Date column from the Date table on top of the Delivery Date Key column from the Sale table. This will create an inactive relationship, signified by the dashed line. The result should look like Figure 2-3.

[picture]

FIGURE 2-3 Relationships between Sale and Date

If you hover over a relationship line in the Model view, it’ll highlight the fields that participate in the relationship.

Note Cardinality and Cross-Filter Direction

Note how each relationship line in Figure 2-3 has 1 and * at its ends, as well as an arrowhead in the middle. This represents the cardinality and cross-filter direction, respectively, and we review those concepts in the next section.

In our Wide World Importers model, you should also create the relationships listed in Table 2-1.

TABLE 2-1 Additional relationships in Wide World Importers

FROM: TABLE (COLUMN) | TO: TABLE (COLUMN)
Sale (City Key) | City (City Key)
Sale (Customer Key) | Customer (Customer Key)
Sale (Salesperson Key) | Employee (Employee Key)
Sale (Stock Item Key) | Stock Item (Stock Item Key)

Inactive relationships can be activated by using the USERELATIONSHIP function in DAX, which also deactivates the default active relationship, if any. The following is an example of a measure that uses USERELATIONSHIP:

Click here to view code image

Revenue by Delivery Date =
CALCULATE(
    [Revenue],
    USERELATIONSHIP(
        'Date'[Date],
        Sale[Delivery Date Key]
    )
)

To use USERELATIONSHIP, you need to define a relationship in the model first so that the function only works for existing relationships. This approach is useful for scenarios such as the Wide World Importers example, where we have multiple date columns within the same fact table.

Need More Review? CALCULATE and USERELATIONSHIP

CALCULATE is the most important function in DAX, and we review it in more detail later in this chapter. It’s important to be aware of certain limitations of USERELATIONSHIP. For more information, see “USERELATIONSHIP” at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dax/userelationship-function-dax.

If you have a number of measures that you want to analyze by using different relationships, this may result in your data model having many similar measures, cluttering your data model to a degree.

Another drawback of using USERELATIONSHIP is that you cannot analyze data by using two relationships at the same time. For instance, if you have a single Date table, it won’t be possible to see which sales were invoiced last year and shipped this year.

An alternative to USERELATIONSHIP that addresses these drawbacks is to use separate dimensions for each role or relationship. In Wide World Importers, you would have Delivery Date and Invoice Date dimensions, which would make it possible to analyze sales by both delivery and invoice dates.

There are a few ways to create the new dimensions based on the existing Date table, one of which is to use calculated tables. For the Invoice Date table, the DAX formula would be as follows:

Invoice Date = 'Date'

The benefit of using calculated tables instead of referencing or duplicating queries in Power Query is that if you have calculated columns in your Date table, they will be copied in a calculated table, while you’ll need to re-create the same columns if you use Power Query to create the copies of the dimension.

When you’re creating separate dimensions, it’s best to rename the columns to make it clear where fields are coming from. For example, instead of leaving the column called Date, it’s best to rename it to Invoice Date. You can do so by right-clicking a field in the Fields pane and selecting Rename or by double-clicking a field. Alternatively, you can rename fields by using a more complex calculated table expression. For example, you could use the SELECTCOLUMNS function in DAX to rename columns.

Note Calculated Tables

DAX allows you to create far more sophisticated calculated tables than copies of existing tables. We review calculated tables in more detail in Skill 2.2: Develop a data model.

Define a relationship’s cardinality and cross-filter direction

In the previous section, we looked at how you create relationships between tables. In this section, we review the concepts of cardinality and cross-filter direction of relationships.

You can edit a relationship by double-clicking it in the Model view. For example, in Figure 2-4 you can see the options for one of the relationships between the Sale and Date tables.

[picture]

FIGURE 2-4 Relationship options

In the relationship options, you can select tables from drop-down lists. You get a preview of each table, from which you can select a column that will be part of a relationship. Unlike in the Merge operation in Power Query, only one column from each table can be part of a relationship.

The Make this relationship active check box determines whether the relationship is active. Between two tables, there can be no more than one active relationship.

When you’re using DirectQuery, the Assume referential integrity option is available, and it can improve query performance in certain cases.

Note Assume Referential Integrity

There are some requirements that data must meet for the Assume referential integrity option to work properly. For advanced details on this feature, including the requirements and implications of not meeting the requirements with this option set, see “Apply the Assume Referential Integrity setting in Power BI Desktop” at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/connect-data/desktop-assume-referential-integrity.

Two options are worth reviewing in more detail: Cardinality and Cross filter direction.

Cardinality

Depending on the selected tables and columns, you can select one of the following options:

Many to one

One to one

One to many

Many to many

Many to one and One to many are the same kind of relationship, and they differ only in the order in which the tables are listed. “Many” means that a key may appear more than once in the selected column, whereas “One” means a key value appears only once in the selected column. In our Wide World Importers example earlier, the Sale table was on the many side, whereas the Date table was on the one side; a single date appeared only once in the Date table, though there could be multiple sales on the same date in the Sale table.

One to one is a special kind of relationship where a key value appears only once on both sides of the relationship. This type of relationship may be useful for splitting a single dimension with many columns into separate tables. You should only use this if you are confident that no duplicates will appear in this table, because duplicates will cause immediate errors in your data model.

Need More Review? One-To-One Relationships

One-to-one relationships are rarely encountered in real life. For advanced information on this type of relationships in Power BI, see “One-to-one relationship guidance” at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/guidance/relationships-one-to-one.

Many-to-many relationships in this context refer to a direct relationship between two tables, neither of which is guaranteed to have unique keys. We review this type of relationship later in this chapter.

Cross filter direction

This option determines the direction in which filters flow. For many-to-one and one-to-many relationships, you can select Single or Both:

If you select Single, then the filters from the table on the “one” side will filter through to the table on the “many” side. This setting is signified by a single arrowhead on the relationship line in the Model view.

If you select Both, then filters from both tables will flow in both directions; such relationship are known as bidirectional. This setting is signified by two arrowheads on the relationship line in the Model view, facing in opposite directions. When this option is selected, you can also select Apply security filter in both directions to make row-level security filters flow in both directions too.

When editing table relationships, even if you set the relationship cross-filter direction to Both, by default the security filters are only applied in one direction. We noted that there’s an option to control security filtering called Apply security filter in both directions. This means that role filtering applied to a table will also be passed to the filtered table. When this option is disabled, only the table with filtered applied will be affected. This option exists because applying security filters affects the performance of your data model, so in some cases applying it may be undesirable.

Note Security Filters

Security filters refers to row-level security (RLS), a feature in Power BI that allows you to restrict access to data within a dataset based on a set of filters. We review row-level security in detail later in this chapter.

To illustrate how the cross-filter direction works, consider the data model shown in Figure 2-5.

[picture]

FIGURE 2-5 Sample data model

From this data model, you can create two table visuals as follows:

Table 1: Distinct count of Stock Item by Year

Table 2: Distinct count of Year by Stock Item

Both table visuals are shown in Figure 2-6. The first four rows are shown for Table 2 for illustrative purposes.

[picture]

FIGURE 2-6 Table visuals

You can see that in Table 1, the numbers are different for different years and the total, whereas in Table 2, the Distinct Count of Year is showing 6 for all rows, including the Total.

The numbers are different in Table 1 because filters from the Date table can reach the Stock Item table through the Sale table; the Date table filters the Sale table because there is a one-to-many relationship; then the Sale table filters the Stock Item table because there is a bidirectional relationship. In 2019, 2020, and 2021, Wide World Importers coincidentally sold 219 stock items, whereas in 2022, they sold 227 stock items. At the total level you see 228, which is not the total sum of stock items sold across all years. Importantly, the total 228 is showing as the distinct count of stock items when filters from the Date table are not applied.

In Table 2, the numbers are the same because filters from the Stock Item table don’t reach the Date table as there is no bidirectional filter. Even though Wide World Importers only had sales in four years, you see 6 across all rows, which is the number of years in the Date table.

It’s also possible to set the cross-filter direction by using the CROSSFILTER function in DAX, as you can see in this example:

Click here to view code image

Stock Items Sold =
CALCULATE(
    DISTINCTCOUNT('Stock Item'[Stock Item]),
    CROSSFILTER(
        Sale[Stock Item Key],
        'Stock Item'[Stock Item Key],
        BOTH
    )
)

The syntax of CROSSFILTER is similar to USERELATIONSHIP—the first two parameters are related columns. Additionally, there’s the third parameter—direction—and it can be one of the following:

BOTH This option corresponds to Both in the relationship cross-filter direction options.

NONE This option deactivates the relationship, and it corresponds to the cleared Make this relationship active check box.

ONEWAY This option corresponds to Single in the relationship cross-filter direction options.

Bidirectional filters are sometimes used in many-to-many relationships with bridge tables when direct many-to-many relationships are not desirable.

Need More Review? Bidirectional Relationships

For more examples and information on bidirectional relationships, see “Bi-directional relationship guidance” at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/guidance/relationships-bidirectional-filtering.

Need More Review? Relationships Troubleshooting

Relationships may not work as expected for numerous reasons. For a comprehensive troubleshooting guide, see “Relationship troubleshooting guidance” at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/guidance/relationships-troubleshoot.

Create a common date table

By default, Power BI creates a calendar hierarchy for each date or date/time column from your data sources.

Need More Review? Auto Date/Time Hierarchies

For detailed considerations and limitations of the auto date/time feature, see “Auto date/time guidance in Power BI Desktop” at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/guidance/auto-date-time.

While these can be useful in some cases, it’s best practice to create your own date table, which has several benefits:

You can use a calendar other than Gregorian.

You can have weeks in the calendar.

You can filter multiple fact tables by using a single date dimension table.

If you don’t have a date table you can import from a data source, you can create one yourself. It’s possible to create a date table by using Power Query or DAX, and there’s no difference in performance between the two methods.

Creating a calendar table in Power Query

In Power Query, you can use the M language List.Dates function, which returns a list of dates, and then convert the list to a table and add columns to it. The following query provides a sample calendar table that begins on January 1, 2018:

Click here to view code image

let
    Source = #date(2018, 1, 1),
    Dates = List.Dates(Source, Duration.TotalDays(Date.AddYears(Source, 6) - Source),
  #duration(1,0,0,0)),
    #"Converted to Table" = Table.FromList(Dates, Splitter.SplitByNothing(), type
  table [Date = date]),
    #"Inserted Year" = Table.AddColumn(#"Converted to Table", "Year", each Date.
  Year([Date]), Int64.Type),
    #"Inserted Month Name" = Table.AddColumn(#"Inserted Year", "Month Name", each Date.
  MonthName([Date]), type text),
    #"Inserted Month" = Table.AddColumn(#"Inserted Month Name", "Month", each Date.
  Month([Date]), Int64.Type),
    #"Inserted Week of Year" = Table.AddColumn(#"Inserted Month", "Week of Year", each
  Date.WeekOfYear([Date]), Int64.Type)
in

    #"Inserted Week of Year"

If you want to add it to your model, you’ll need to start with a blank query:

In Power Query Editor, select New Source on the Home ribbon.

Select Blank Query.

With the new query selected, select Query > Advanced Editor on the Home ribbon.

Replace all existing code with the code above and select Done.

Give your query an appropriate name such as Calendar or Date.

The result should look like Figure 2-7, where the first few rows of the query are shown.

[picture]

FIGURE 2-7 Sample calendar table built by using Power Query

You may prefer having a table in Power Query when you intend to use it in some other queries, since it’s not possible to reference calculated tables in Power Query.

Creating a calendar table in DAX

If you choose to create a date table in DAX, you can use the CALENDAR or CALENDARAUTO function, both of which return a table with a single Date column. You can then add calculated columns to the table, or you can create a calculated table that already has all the columns.

Note Calculated Tables

We review the skills necessary to create calculated tables in Skill 2.2: Develop a data model.

The CALENDAR function requires you to provide the start and end dates, which you can hardcode for your business requirements or calculate dynamically:

Click here to view code image

Calendar Dynamic =
CALENDAR(
    MIN(Sale[Invoice Date Key]),
    MAX(Sale[Invoice Date Key])
)

The CALENDARAUTO function scans your data model for dates and returns an appropriate date range automatically.

To build a table similar to the Power Query table you built earlier, use the following calculated table formula in DAX:

Click here to view code image

Calendar =
ADDCOLUMNS(
    CALENDARAUTO(),
    "Year", YEAR([Date]),
    "Month Name", FORMAT([Date], "MMMM"),
    "Month", MONTH([Date]),
    "Week of Year", WEEKNUM([Date])
)

Need More Review? Creating Date Tables

For more examples of how you can create a date table, see “Create date tables in Power BI Desktop” at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/guidance/model-date-tables.

Skill 2.2: Develop a data model

Data model development refers to enhancements you add to your model after you’ve loaded your data and created relationships between tables. In this section, we review the skills you need to create calculated tables, calculated columns, and hierarchies, and we demonstrate how to configure row-level security for your report as well as set up the Q&A feature.

This skill covers how to:

Create calculated tables

Create hierarchies

Create calculated columns

Implement row-level security roles

Use the Q&A feature

Note Companion File

The completed examples from this section are available in the 2.2 Develop.pbix file in the companion files folder.

Create calculated tables

Earlier in the chapter, you saw that one way to create a calendar table is to create a calculated table, which is an alternative to using Power Query. Calculated tables are defined by using DAX, and they’re based on the data that is already loaded into the data model or new data generated by using DAX. You won’t see calculated tables in Power Query Editor.

Calculated tables are especially useful when you want to:

Clone tables, including calculated columns

Create tables that are based on data from different data sources

Precalculate measures to improve report performance

This list is not exhaustive—there are other cases when calculated tables are useful.

Cloning tables

You can use DAX to clone a table. To create a table called Invoice Date that’s a clone of the Date table, perform the following steps:

Go to the Data view.

Select New table on the Home ribbon.

Enter a calculated table expression. For example, this formula creates a table called Invoice Date by copying the Date table:

Invoice Date = 'Date'

Press Enter.

Creating tables that are based on data from different data sources

Sometimes—for example, when creating a bridge table—you may need to extract distinct values from more than one table because the distinct values may be different in different tables. In that case, you’d need to take distinct values from both tables, and if they come from different data sources or from different “islands,” or both, the performance may be slow. You can solve this issue by using a calculated table.

For example, you could retrieve the distinct Buying Group values from both the Customer and Targets tables by using the following calculated table formula:

Click here to view code image

Buying Group =
DISTINCT(
    UNION(
        DISTINCT(Customer[Buying Group]),
        DISTINCT(Targets[Buying Group])
)

The DISTINCT function ensures there are no duplicates, and UNION combines values from two tables that come from different sources. UNION acts similarly to appending tables in Power Query, though they combine tables differently:

UNION ignores column names and combines table columns based on their positions. The number of columns between tables must match.

Appending tables in Power Query combines tables based on column names, and it’s possible to combine tables that have a different number of columns.

In addition to UNION, other set functions available in DAX include EXCEPT and INTERSECT, which also require that tables have the same number of columns.

Since the data is already in memory, this process is usually much quicker compared to creating the same table by using Power Query.

Precalculating measures to improve report performance

If you have complex measures that perform poorly, depending on the type of calculation you may want to precalculate them in a calculated table, and then create new measures that aggregate the precalculated values. This approach may not work for some types of calculations, though it usually helps with additive measures.

Aggregations, which are outside the scope of the exam, are an example of calculated tables that precalculate measures and improve performance.

Need More Review? Using Calculated Tables

For more details on how to create calculated tables, see “Create calculated tables in Power BI Desktop” at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/transform-model/desktop-calculated-tables.

Create hierarchies

Power BI allows you to group columns into hierarchies, which you can then use in visuals.

In our Wide World Importers example, you can create a geographical hierarchy as follows:

Go to the Model view.

Right-click the Sales Territory column in the City table.

Select Create hierarchy.

Double-click the newly created hierarchy and rename it to Geography.

In the Fields pane, drag the State Province column on top of Geography.

Repeat the previous step for the City column.

Once created, the result should look like Figure 2-8.

[picture]

FIGURE 2-8 The Geography hierarchy

One column can be part of multiple hierarchies, and you can rename hierarchy items without affecting the original columns. At the same time, you don’t need to sort a hierarchy element by another column, because it inherits this property from the original column. The original column can be hidden, if desired.

A hierarchy can be created using only existing columns, and the columns must be in the same table. To include columns from different tables in the same hierarchy, you have to bring the columns into one table. You can do that by using Power Query or the RELATED function in DAX, for example.

Need More Review? RELATED In DAX

For more information on the RELATED function in DAX, including examples and the requirements for using the function, see “RELATED” at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dax/related-function-dax.

Apart from the convenience of dragging multiple fields to a visual at once in the right order, a hierarchy does not provide any special benefits in Power BI compared to using columns individually, because you can use both hierarchies and multiple individual columns together in fields to achieve the same result.

Create calculated columns

Calculated columns are columns you create by using DAX. Similar to calculated tables, calculated columns can only use the data already loaded into the model or new data generated by DAX, and they don’t appear in Power Query Editor because they are generated after the data has been loaded into the model. By nature, creating calculated columns widens your table, and they are calculated after all your data is loaded, so multiple calculated columns can contribute to slow performance of your data model.

If you’re experienced in Excel, creating calculated columns in DAX may remind you of creating columns in Excel, because DAX resembles the Excel formula language, and there are many functions that appear in DAX and Excel. There are some important differences, however:

In DAX, there is no concept of a cell. If you need to get a value from a table, you have to filter a specific column down to that value.

DAX is strongly typed; it’s not possible to mix values of different data types in the same column.

In general, calculated columns are especially useful when you are:

Creating columns to be used as filters or categories in visuals

Precalculating poorly performing measures

Here’s one way to create a calculated column:

Go to the Data view.

In the Fields pane, right-click a table where you want to create a calculated column.

Select New column.

Enter a calculated column expression by using DAX.

Press Enter.

After you complete these steps, you’ll be able to see the results immediately. The formula that you write is automatically applied to each row in the new column. You can reference another column from the same table in the following way:

'Table name'[Column name]

Though it’s possible to reference a column within the same table by only using the column name, it’s not considered a good practice and should be avoided.

For example, in Wide World Importers, you can calculate total cost in a calculated column in the Sale table by using the following expression:

Click here to view code image

Total Cost = Sale[Total Excluding Tax] - Sale[Profit]

If you want to reference a column from a related table that is on the one side of a relationship, you can use the RELATED function. For instance, in Wide World Importers, you can add a calculated column to the Sale table to calculate the price difference between the standard unit price and the price a product was sold for:

Click here to view code image

Unit Price Difference = RELATED('Stock Item'[Unit Price]) - Sale[Unit Price]

Note RELATED and Inactive Relationships

By default, RELATED uses the active relationship. Though it’s possible to make RELATED use an inactive relationship, it’s much better to use the LOOKUPVALUE function for this. For more information on the function, see “LOOKUPVALUE” at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dax/lookupvalue-function-dax.

RELATED works on the many side of a relationship. If you want to add a column to the one side of a relationship and reference the related rows, you can use the RELATEDTABLE function. For instance, you can add a calculated column to the Customer table to count the number of related rows in the Sale table for each customer:

Click here to view code image

Sales Rows = COUNTROWS(RELATEDTABLE(Sale))

Exam Tip

Unless you want to use the values generated from the calculated column as filters or categories in visuals, you should be creating measures, which we cover in Skill 2.3: Create model calculations by using DAX.

Need More Review? Create Calculated Columns

For more examples and a tutorial on how to create calculated columns, see “Tutorial: Create calculated columns in Power BI Desktop” at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/transform-model/desktop-tutorial-create-calculated-columns.

Implement row-level security roles

A common business requirement is to secure data so that different users who view the same report can see different subsets of data. In Power BI, this can be accomplished with the feature called row-level security (RLS).

Row-level security restricts data by filtering it at the row level, depending on the rules defined for each user. To configure RLS, you first need to create and define each role in Power BI Desktop, and then assign individual users or Active Directory security groups to the roles in the Power BI service.

Note Row-Level Security and Live Connections

Defining roles in Power BI only works for imported data and DirectQuery. When you connect live to a Power BI dataset or an Analysis Services data model, Power BI will rely on row-level security configured in the source, and you cannot override it by creating roles in Power BI Desktop.

In this section, we review the skills necessary to implement row-level security roles in Power BI Desktop. We examine assignment of roles in the Power BI service in Chapter 4, “Deploy and maintain assets.”

Creating roles in Power BI Desktop

To see the list of roles configured in a dataset in Power BI Desktop, select Manage roles from the Modeling ribbon in the Report view. To create a new role, select Create in the Roles section. You’ll then be prompted to specify table filters, as shown in Figure 2-9.

[picture]

FIGURE 2-9 Manage roles

When you create a role, you have the option to change the default name to a new one. It’s important to give roles user-friendly names because you’ll see them in Power BI service, and you need to be able to assign users to the correct roles. All roles are listed in the Roles section of the Manage roles window.

If you right-click on a role or select the ellipsis next to a role, you’ll be presented with the following options:

Create This option creates a new role and is an alternative to the Create button below the list of roles.

Duplicate This option creates a copy of the currently selected role.

Rename Use this option to rename the currently selected role; you can also rename a role by double-clicking on its name.

Delete This option deletes the currently selected role; this action can also be performed by selecting Delete below the list of roles.

For each role, you can define a DAX expression to filter each table. When row-level security is configured, these expressions will be evaluated against each row of the relevant table, and only those rows for which the expressions are evaluated as true will be visible.

You can either enter a table filter DAX expression yourself or use the ellipsis menu next to each table to add an expression that you can then customize. You can also access the menu by right-clicking on a table and choosing from these options:

Add filter This option lists all columns available in the table and lets you hide all rows.

Copy table filter from This option copies a table filter DAX expression from another role that has a filter expression defined for the table.

Clear table filter This option removes any table filter DAX expression from the table. It’s a shortcut to erasing all text from the Table filter DAX expression area manually.

For example, in the Wide World Importers data model that we previously created, you can select the ellipsis next to City > Add filter > [Sales Territory] to insert an expression, as shown in the Table filter DAX expression area:

[Sales Territory] = "Value"

The placeholder expression depends on the data type of the column, and it helps you to write the correct filter expression.

After you modify the expression, you can validate it by selecting the Verify DAX expression (check mark) button above the Table filter DAX expression area. If the expression is invalid, you’ll see a warning stating that the syntax is incorrect below the Table filter DAX expression area. Next to the check mark button is the Revert changes (cross) button, which reverts any changes that haven’t been applied yet.

To hide all rows in a table, right-click on the table and click Add filter > Hide all rows. This will add the following table filter DAX expression:

false

Because false is never going to be true for any row, no rows will be shown in this case.

You can configure row-level security in the Wide World Importers data model. First, create two roles as follows:

Create a new role and call it Southeast.

For the Southeast role, in the City table, enter the following table filter DAX expression:

[Sales Territory] = "Southeast"

Select the Verify DAX expression button above the Table filter DAX expression area.

Right-click the Southeast role and select Duplicate.

Rename the new role to Plains.

For the Plains role, update the table filter DAX expression in the City table as follows:

[Sales Territory] = "Plains"

Select Save.

Important Duplicating Roles

If you duplicate a role before you verify the last added table filter, the table filter will not be copied to the duplicate role.

We can now test the roles in Power BI Desktop.

Viewing as roles in Power BI Desktop

In Power BI Desktop, you can check what the users with specific roles will see even before you publish your report to the Power BI service and assign users to roles. For this, once you have at least one role defined, select View as on the Modeling ribbon in the Report view. You’ll then see the View as roles window shown in Figure 2-10.

[picture]

FIGURE 2-10 View as roles

Note that you can view as several roles simultaneously. This is because you can allocate a single user or a security group to multiple roles in the Power BI service; in this case, the security rules of the roles will complement each other. For example, if you select both the Plains and the Southeast roles, you’ll see data for both territories. For this reason, you should always have clear names for your RLS roles.

Exam Tip

You should know the effect of combining multiple security roles for a single user based on the description of security filters of each role.

When viewing data as roles, you’ll see the bar at the top shown in Figure 2-11.

[picture]

FIGURE 2-11 Now viewing report as

Important Application of Row-Level Security

The filters applied by row-level security are applied only at query time and not at processing time. The implication of this is that the filters won’t change the values of calculated columns and calculated tables.

Another option in the View as roles window is Other user. With this option, you can test dynamic row-level security, which is covered next.

Dynamic row-level security

The roles we’ve created so far have been static, which means that all users within a role will see the same data. If you have many rules that specify how you should secure your data, this approach may mean you have to create a number of roles as well as update the data model every time a new role should be introduced or an old one removed.

There is an alternative approach, called dynamic row-level security, which allows you to show different data to different users within the same role.

Note Dynamic Row-Level Security

Because dynamic row-level security can use a single role, this approach is preferable in large-scale implementations of Power BI where there are many users who need to see different data.

For this approach, your data model must contain the usernames of people who should have access to the relevant rows of data. You’ll also need to pass the active username as a filter condition. Power BI has two functions that allow you to get the username of the current user:

USERNAME This function returns the domain and login of the user in the domain\login format.

USERPRINCIPALNAME Depending on how the Active Directory was set up, this function usually returns the email address of the user.

Note Using USERNAME and USERPRINCIPALNAME

If your computer is not part of an Active Directory domain, both functions will return the same result—domain\login. Once you publish your dataset to the Power BI service, both functions will return the email address of the user.

These functions can only be used in measures or table filter DAX expressions; if you try to use either of them in a calculated column or a calculated table, you’ll get an error.

To see how dynamic row-level security works in our Wide World Importers data model, first create a new security role:

Select Manage roles on the Modeling ribbon.

Create a new security role and call it Dynamic RLS.

For the Dynamic RLS role, specify the following table filter DAX expression for the Employee table:

[Email] = USERPRINCIPALNAME()

Select Save.

Now you can test the new role:

Select View as on the Modeling ribbon.

Select both Other user and Dynamic RLS.

Enter jack.potter@wideworldimporters.com in the Other user box.

Select OK.

Go to the Data view.

Select the Employee table.

Note that the Employee table is now filtered to just Jack Potter’s row, as shown in Figure 2-12.

[picture]

FIGURE 2-12 Employee table viewed as Jack Potter

Although this may be good enough for us in certain cases, it’s a common requirement for managers to see the data of those who report to them. Since Jack is a manager, he should be able to see data of the salespersons who report to him. For that, we can create a new role called Dynamic RLS (hierarchy) with the following table filter DAX expression:

Click here to view code image

PATHCONTAINS(
    PATH(
        Employee[Employee Key],
        Employee[Parent Employee Key]
    ),
    LOOKUPVALUE(
        Employee[Employee Key],
        Employee[Email],
        USERPRINCIPALNAME()
    )
)

This table filter DAX expression keeps those rows where Jack is part of the hierarchy path, which relies on the Employee table having both the ID and parent ID columns.

After you make this change, the Employee table will show four rows: Jack’s row and three rows of the salespersons who report to Jack, as seen in Figure 2-13.

[picture]

FIGURE 2-13 Employee table viewed as Jack Potter

So far, you’ve created the roles in Power BI Desktop. Once you publish the report, you’ll have to assign users or security groups to roles in Power BI service separately. We review these skills in Chapter 4.

Need More Review? Row-Level Security

For more examples of implementing row-level security in Power BI, see “Row-level security (RLS) guidance in Power BI Desktop” at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/guidance/rls-guidance.

Use the Q&A feature

Both Power BI Desktop and the Power BI service allow you to create visualizations that provide answers to specific questions. Although this gives you great control over formatting, it won’t work if you have RLS set up and users only have read access to content.

Another way to explore data in Power BI is to use the Q&A feature, also known as natural language queries. This feature enables you to get answers to your questions by typing them in natural language. Even users with read-only access can query datasets in a natural language.

To start using Q&A in Power BI Desktop, you need to be in the Report view. To insert the Q&A visual, double-click the empty space on the report canvas. Alternatively, you can select Q&A on the Insert ribbon. Either way, you’ll see a visual, as shown in Figure 2-14.

[picture]

FIGURE 2-14 Q&A visual

Although the suggestions may not be immediately useful, you can ask your own questions. For example, you can enter profit by sales territory as column chart, and the result will look like Figure 2-15.

[picture]

FIGURE 2-15 Q&A showing profit by sales territory

Note that the Q&A visual updates its result as you type. Before we typed “as column chart,” the Q&A visual was showing a bar chart.

If desired, you can turn the Q&A result into a standard visual by selecting the button between the question and the cog wheel in the upper-right corner of the Q&A visual.

The Q&A visual depends on the field names as they are defined in the data model. For example, entering units by sales territory in the Q&A visual won’t provide any meaningful results, as seen in Figure 2-16.

[picture]

FIGURE 2-16 Q&A visual showing units by sales territory

This issue can be fixed by teaching Q&A, as outlined next.

Teach Q&A

The Q&A visual didn’t understand the term units because it doesn’t appear in the Wide World Importers data model. The Q&A visual underlines in red the terms it doesn’t understand. If you select units in the Q&A visual, you may be given suggestions to replace units with another term or to define the term. Selecting define units allows you to teach Q&A, as seen in Figure 2-17.

[picture]

FIGURE 2-17 The Teach Q&A window

In the Define the terms Q&A didn’t understand section, you can teach Q&A that units refers to a certain field—for example, quantity—in the following way:

Enter quantity next to Unit refers to.

Select Save.

Close the Q&A setup window.

The Q&A visual now understands the term units, as you can see in Figure 2-18.

[picture]

FIGURE 2-18 Q&A showing units by sales territory

Since teaching Q&A can be time-consuming, you can also add synonyms to your data model if you know them in advance, as covered next. This is another example where naming columns in Power Query Editor with friendly names will make this process easier.

Synonyms

Separately from teaching Q&A, you can introduce your own Q&A keywords and make Power BI recognize them. This is especially useful if your business users use acronyms or unique terminology such as substituting margin for profit. You can create a synonym for the Profit field, which will reduce confusion by your report users:

In the Report view, select Q&A setup on the Modeling ribbon.

Select Field synonyms on the left.

Expand the Sale section. You should see a list of fields in the Sale table, as shown in Figure 2-19.

[picture]

FIGURE 2-19 Field synonyms for the Sale table

Next to Profit, select Add.

Enter margin and press Enter.

Close the Q&A setup window.

If you now enter margin by color in the Q&A visual, you’ll see a bar chart showing Profit by Color, despite not using the term profit explicitly.

Additionally, in the Field synonyms section of Q&A setup, you can exclude specific tables and fields from Q&A if you don’t want Q&A to use the table or field. Hidden objects are excluded by default. This is useful if you need to include staff data in your data model but don’t want users to query this data.

Note Q&A Best Practices

Q&A, when set up correctly, can be a powerful tool that enables data exploration by report consumers. For Q&A best practices, see “Best practices to optimize Q&A in Power BI” at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/natural-language/q-and-a-best-practices.

Skill 2.3: Create model calculations by using DAX

You used some DAX earlier in the chapter to create calculated tables and calculated columns as well as configure row-level security. In practice, DAX is most often used to create measures in Power BI.

Writing your own formulas is an important skill that allows you to perform much more sophisticated analysis based on your data compared to not using DAX.

In this section, we start by reviewing DAX fundamentals; then we look at CALCULATE, one of the most important functions in DAX, specifically in Time Intelligence or time-related calculations, which we review separately.

DAX can help you replace some columns with measures, allowing you to reduce the data model size. Not all DAX formulas need to be complex, and we review some basic statistical functions in this section as well.

This skill covers how to:

Create basic measures by using DAX

Use CALCULATE to manipulate filters

Implement Time Intelligence using DAX

Replace implicit measures with explicit measures

Use basic statistical functions

Create semi-additive measures

Use quick measures

Note Companion File

The completed examples from this section are available in the 2.3 Create.pbix file in the companion files folder.

Create basic measures by using DAX

Although many things can be computed by using calculated columns, in most cases it’s preferable to write measures, because they don’t increase the model size. Additionally, some calculations are simply not possible with calculated columns. For example, to calculate a ratio dynamically, you need to write a measure.

As you saw earlier, quick measures already allow you to perform basic calculations without writing DAX yourself. In this section, you start using DAX to build complex measures.

It’s important to understand that Power BI allows you to aggregate columns in visuals without using measures, a practice sometimes called implicit measures. These can be useful when you want to quickly test how a visual might look or to perform a quick analysis on a column. However, it’s always best practice to create explicit measures by using DAX—even with trivial calculations such as SUM. Here are some reasons it’s preferable to create measures yourself:

Implicit measures may provide unexpected results in some cases due to the Summarize by column property. For example, if you have a column that contains product prices and Power BI sets the summarization to SUM, then dragging the column in a visual will not produce meaningful results. Although you can change the summarization in the visual, following this approach means that you need to pay attention to this property every time you use implicit measures.

Explicit measures can be reused in other measures. This is beneficial because you can write less code, which saves time and improves the maintainability of your data model.

Implicit measures cannot leverage inactive relationships.

Implicit measures are not supported by calculation groups.

Need More Review? Calculation Groups

Calculation groups are outside the scope of the exam, but they can be extremely useful in practice. For more information, see “Calculation groups” at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/analysis-services/tabular-models/calculation-groups.

Note Learning DAX

Teaching DAX is not the purpose of this book. If you want to learn DAX, The Definitive Guide to DAX by Marco Russo and Alberto Ferrari (Pearson, 2019) is a great explanation of DAX and its use.

Measures are different from calculated columns in a few ways. The main difference is that you can see the results of a calculated column immediately after defining the calculation, whereas you can’t see the results of a measure until you use it in a visual. This behavior allows measures to return different results depending on filters and where they’re used.

Another difference between calculated columns and measures is that calculated column formulas apply to each row of a table, whereas measures work on columns and tables, not specific rows. Therefore, measures most often use aggregation functions in DAX.

There are a few ways to create a measure in Power BI Desktop. Here’s one way:

Go to the Report view.

In the Fields pane, right-click a table in which you want to create a new measure.

Select New measure.

Enter the measure formula and press Enter.

You can also create a measure by selecting New measure on the Home ribbon, but you have to make sure you’ve got the right table selected in the Fields pane; otherwise, your measure may not be created in the correct table. If you do create a measure in the wrong table, instead of re-creating the measure you can move it by performing the following steps:

Go to the Report view.

In the Fields pane, select the measure you want to move.

On the Measure tools ribbon, select the table your measure should be stored in from the Home table dropdown list.

For example, to compute the total profit of Wide World Importers, use the following measure formula:

Click here to view code image

Total Profit = SUM(Sale[Profit])

You can compute total sales, excluding tax, by using the following measure formula:

Click here to view code image

Total Sales Excluding Tax = SUM(Sale[Total Excluding Tax])

If you want to compute the profit margin percentage, there are two ways of doing it. You could use this:

Click here to view code image

Profit % =
DIVIDE(
    SUM(Sale[Profit]),
    SUM(Sale[Total Excluding Tax])
)

Note Using DIVIDE

We’re using DIVIDE in the formula to avoid division by 0. DIVIDE has an optional third parameter, which is the value to return in case you divide by 0.

However, this approach involves repeating your own code, which is undesirable because formulas become more difficult to maintain. You can avoid this issue if you reference the measures you created previously:

Click here to view code image

Profit % =
DIVIDE(
    [Total Profit],
    [Total Sales Excluding Tax]
)

Note Formatting Measures

Even though the Profit % measure has a percentage sign in its name, Power BI will format the measure as a decimal number by default. You can change the measure format on the Measure tools ribbon in the Formatting group. Formatting a measure after it’s been created is a great habit to learn.

When you’re referencing measures, it’s best practice to not use table names in front of them. Unlike column names, measure names are unique; different tables may have the same column names, but it’s not possible to have measures that share the same name.

Another feature of DAX that allows you to avoid repeating yourself is variables. Think of a variable as a calculation within a measure. For instance, if you want to avoid showing zeros in your visuals, you could write a measure as follows:

Click here to view code image

Total Dry Items Units Sold =
IF(
    SUM(Sale[Total Dry Items]) <> 0,
    SUM(Sale[Total Dry Items])
)

By using a variable, you can avoid calling SUM twice:

Click here to view code image

Total Dry Items Units Sold =
VAR TotalDryItems = SUM(Sale[Total Dry Items])
VAR Result =
    IF(
        TotalDryItems <> 0,
        TotalDryItems
    )
RETURN
    Result

Variables are especially useful when you want to store computationally expensive values, because variables are evaluated no more than once. As you’ll see later in this chapter, you can use many variables within the same formula.

Use CALCULATE to manipulate filters

Earlier in this chapter, you saw that the CALCULATE function can be used to alter relationships when paired with other DAX measures. The USERELATIONSHIP function with CALCULATE can activate inactive relationships, and CROSSFILTER with CALCULATE can change the filter direction.

The CALCULATE function also allows you to alter the filter context under which measures are evaluated; you can add, remove, or update filters, or you can trigger context transition. We cover row context, filter context, and context transition in more detail later in this chapter.

CALCULATE accepts a scalar expression as its first parameter, and subsequent parameters are filter arguments. Using CALCULATE with no filter arguments is only useful for context transition.

Adding filters

CALCULATE allows you to add filters in several formats. To calculate profit for the New England sales territory, you can write a measure that you can read as “Calculate the Total Profit where the Sales Territory is New England”:

Click here to view code image

New England Profit =
CALCULATE(
    [Total Profit],
    City[Sales Territory] = "New England"
)

Importantly, you’re not limited to using one value per filter. You can calculate profit for New England, Far West, and Plains:

Click here to view code image

New England, Far West, and Plains Profit =
CALCULATE(
    [Total Profit],
    City[Sales Territory] IN {"New England", "Far West", "Plains"}
)

You can specify filters for different columns at once too, which are combined by using the AND DAX function. For example, you can calculate profit in New England in 2020 that reads as “Calculate the Total Profit where the Sales Territory is New England and the Year is 2020”:

Click here to view code image

New England Profit 2020 =
CALCULATE(
    [Total Profit],
    City[Sales Territory] = "New England",
    'Date'[Year] = 2020
)

Removing filters

There are several DAX functions that you can use as CALCULATE modifiers to ignore filters, one of which is ALL. ALL can remove filters from:

One or more columns from the same table

An entire table

The whole data model (when ALL is used with no parameters)

Important Sort By Column and ALL

If you’re removing filters from a column that is sorted by another column, you should remove filters from both columns—otherwise, you may get unexpected results.

For example, you can show profit for all sales territories regardless of any filters on the City[Sales Territory] column:

Click here to view code image

Profit All Sales Territories =

CALCULATE(

    [Total Profit],

    ALL(City[Sales Territory])
)

If you create a table that shows the new measure alongside Total Profit by Sales Territory, you get the results shown in Figure 2-20.

[picture]

FIGURE 2-20 Total Profit and Profit All Sales Territories by Sales Territory

Note that the new measure displays the same value for any sales territory, which is the total of all sales territories combined regardless of sales territory.

Note Filter Functions In DAX

In addition to ALL, there are several other DAX functions that remove filters, such as ALLEXCEPT and ALLSELECTED. Full details of each function are outside the scope of this book. For an overview, see “Filter functions” at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dax/filter-functions-dax.

Updating filters

When you specify a filter such as City[Sales Territory] = "New England", it’s an abbreviated way that corresponds to the following filter:

Click here to view code image

FILTER(
    ALL(City[Sales Territory]),
    City[Sales Territory] = "New England"
)

By adding this filter, you are ignoring a filter by using ALL, and you’re adding a filter at the same time. This allows you to filter for New England regardless of the selected sales territory.

If you create a table that shows Total Profit and New England Profit by Sales Territory, the result should look like Figure 2-21.

[picture]

FIGURE 2-21 Total Profit and New England Profit by Sales Territory

When you have Sales Territory on rows, each row from the Total Profit column is filtered for a single sales territory and the Total row shows values for all sales territories. In contrast, by using the measure above in the New England Profit column, you are filtering regardless of the current sales territory, showing only the New England Profit.

Context transition

Another important function of CALCULATE is context transition, which refers to transitioning from row context to filter context.

In DAX, there are two evaluation contexts:

Row context This context can be understood as “the current row.” Row context is present in calculated columns and iterators. Iterators are functions that take a table and go row by row, evaluating an expression for each row. For example, FILTER is an iterator; it takes a table, and for each row, it evaluates a filter condition. Those rows that satisfy the condition are included in the result of FILTER.

Filter context This context can be understood as “all applied filters.” Filters can come from slicers, from the Filter pane, or by selecting a visual element. Filters can also be applied programmatically by using DAX.

To review context transition, let’s create a sample table in the data model:

On the Home ribbon, select Enter data.

Enter Sample in the Name box.

Enter the data shown in Figure 2-22.

[picture]

FIGURE 2-22 Entering data

Select Load.

Now that you have the table, you can add two calculated columns to it to see the effect of context transition:

Go to the Data view.

Select the Sample table in the Fields pane.

Create a calculated column with the following formula:

Click here to view code image

Sum Number = SUM('Sample'[Number])

Create another calculated column with the following formula:

Click here to view code image

Calculate Sum Number = CALCULATE(SUM('Sample'[Number]))

The result should look like Figure 2-23.

[picture]

FIGURE 2-23 Calculated columns in the Sample table

SUM, as an aggregation function, uses filter context. Because there are no filters in the data model—there are no visuals, and you’re not adding any filters by using DAX—SUM aggregates the whole Number column, so the result in the Sum Number column is 6 regardless of the row.

On the other hand, the Calculate Sum Number column uses the same formula as Sum Number, but importantly has been wrapped in CALCULATE. CALCULATE automatically performs context transition, so the result is different from using the SUM function alone. Context transition takes all values from all other columns and uses them as filters. Therefore, for the first row, you aggregate the Number column, where:

Sample[Letter] is A

Sample[Number] is 1

Sample[Sum Number] is 6

Where the sum of 1 is equal to 1, since there’s only one such row that meets these filters, you get 1. Separately for row 2, the sum of 2 equals 2, and for row 3, the sum of 3 equals 3. Context transition can be made even clearer by modifying the Sample table slightly as follows:

On the Home ribbon, select Transform data.

Select the Sample query.

Select the cog wheel in the Source step.

Change the third row to match the second row, as shown in Figure 2-24.

[picture]

FIGURE 2-24 Modified Sample table

Select OK.

On the Home ribbon of Power Query Editor, select Close & Apply.

If you now look at the Sample table in the Data view, the result will look like Figure 2-25.

[picture]

FIGURE 2-25 Sample table after update

Although the first row is calculated as you saw in the previous example, the second and third rows are now both showing 4. Intuitively, you could expect to see 2 and 2 in each row, though you’re getting 4 and 4. This is because for each row, due to context transition triggered by CALCULATE, you’re summing the Number column, where

Sample[Letter] is B

Sample[Number] is 2

Sample[Sum Number] is 5

Because there are two such rows, you get 2 + 2 = 4 in both rows.

Implement Time Intelligence using DAX

It is common for business users to want to aggregate metrics—for example, revenue—across time, such as year-to-date revenue for a certain date, or prior-year revenue for the comparable period. Fortunately, DAX has a family of functions, referred to as Time Intelligence, that facilitate such calculations.

All Time Intelligence functions require a calendar table that has a date type column with unique values. If the date column is not part of a relationship, the calendar table must be marked as a date table, which can be done as follows:

Go to the Report or Data view.

Select the calendar table in the Fields pane.

On the Table tools ribbon, select Mark as date table > Mark as date table.

Select the date column from the Date column dropdown list.

Select OK.

Note Different Calendars

The Time Intelligence functions in DAX only support the Gregorian calendar. If you use a different kind of calendar—such as a 4-4-5, which is common in retail, or a weekly calendar—then you’ll need to use custom calculations. These types of calculations are out of the scope of this book.

Most Time Intelligence functions return tables that can be used as filters in CALCULATE. For example, you can use the DATESYTD function to calculate a year-to-date amount as follows:

Profit YTD =
CALCULATE(
    [Total Profit],
    DATESYTD('Date'[Date])
)

You can also combine Time Intelligence functions. For example, to calculate year-to-date profit for the previous year, use the following formula:

Click here to view code image

Profit PYTD =
CALCULATE(
    [Profit YTD],
    DATEADD('Date'[Date], -1, YEAR)
)

Some Time Intelligence functions, such as DATESYTD, can accommodate fiscal years. For example, if you had a fiscal year ending on June 30, you could calculate profit year-to-date for the fiscal year as follows:

Click here to view code image

Profit FYTD =
CALCULATE(
    [Total Profit],
    DATESYTD('Date'[Date], "30-6")
)

The Total Profit, Profit YTD, Profit PYTD, and Profit FYTD measures can be seen together in Figure 2-26.

[picture]

FIGURE 2-26 Time Intelligence calculations

Notice how the Profit YTD measure shows the cumulative total profit within each year. The Profit PYTD measure shows the same values as Profit YTD one year before. Profit FYTD shows the cumulative total profit for fiscal years, resetting on July 1 of each year.

Need More Review? Time Intelligence In DAX

DAX includes over 30 Time Intelligence functions. Full details on all Time Intelligence functions are out of the scope of this book. For more details, see “Time intelligence functions” at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dax/time-intelligence-functions-dax.

Replace implicit measures with explicit measures

It is sometimes possible to replace some numeric columns with measures, which can reduce the size of the data model. In our Wide World Importers example, there are several columns that could be replaced with measures.

For example, the Total Chiller Items and Total Dry Items columns in the Sale table show quantity of chiller and dry items, respectively. Essentially, these columns show filtered quantities depending on whether an item is a chiller or a dry item.

Before you replace the two columns with measures, create the following measure, which you’ll reference and build upon later:

Click here to view code image

Total Quantity = SUM(Sale[Quantity])

You can now create the following two measures and use them instead of columns:

Click here to view code image

Total Chiller Items (Measure) =
CALCULATE(
    [Total Quantity],
    'Stock Item'[Is Chiller Stock] = TRUE
)

Total Dry Items (Measure) =
CALCULATE(
    [Total Quantity],
    'Stock Item'[Is Chiller Stock] = FALSE
)

If you remove the Total Chiller Items and Total Dry Items columns from the model, you’ll make it smaller and more efficient.

Another example of a column that can be replaced by a measure is Total Including Tax from the Sale table. Since Total Excluding Tax and Tax Amount added together equals Total Including Tax, you can use the following measure instead:

Click here to view code image

Total Including Tax (Measure) =
SUMX(
    Sale,
    Sale[Total Excluding Tax] + Sale[Tax Amount]
)

Again, once you have the measure, removing the Total Including Tax column would reduce the size of the data model.

Use basic statistical functions

As mentioned previously, it’s best practice to create explicit measures even for basic calculations such as SUM, because you can build upon them to create more complex measures. You’ve already used SUM in our previous examples; here are several other basic statistical measures that are frequently used:

AVERAGE

MEDIAN

COUNT

DISTINCTCOUNT

MIN

MAX

All these functions take a column as a reference and produce a scalar value. In addition, every function except DISTINCTCOUNT has an equivalent iterator function with the X suffix—for instance, SUMX is the iterator counterpart of SUM. Iterators take two parameters: a table to iterate through, and an expression to evaluate for each row. The evaluated results are then aggregated according to the base function; for example, SUMX will sum the results. When you’re learning the difference, it can be helpful to create sample tables similar to the examples shown earlier to visually compare the nuances of the different functions.

Need More Review? Statistical Functions In DAX

There are over 60 statistical functions in DAX, and describing each one is out of the scope of this book. For an overview, see “Statistical functions” at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dax/statistical-functions-dax.

Create semi-additive measures

In general, there are three kinds of measures:

Additive These measures are aggregated by using the SUM function across any dimensions. A typical example is revenue, which can be added across different product categories, cities, and dates, as well as other dimensions. Revenue of all months within a year, when added together, equals the total year revenue.

Semi-additive These measures can be added across some but not all dimensions. For example, inventory counts can be added across different product categories and cities, but not dates; if you had five units yesterday and two units today, that doesn’t mean you’ll have seven units tomorrow. On the other hand, if you have five units in Sydney and two units in Melbourne, this means you’ve got seven units in the two cities in total.

Non-additive These measures cannot be added across any dimensions. For instance, you cannot add up the average price across any dimension, because the result would not make any practical sense. If the average sale price in Sydney was $4.50, and it was $3.50 in Melbourne, you cannot say that across both cities, the average price was $8.00 or even $4.00 because the number of units sold could be very different.

In this section, we focus on semi-additive measures. There are several ways to write a semi-additive measure, and the correct way for you depends on your business requirements. Let’s say your business is interested in inventory counts, and you have the data model shown in Figure 2-27.

[picture]

FIGURE 2-27 Inventory data model

If you have inventory figures for all dates of interest in your data, you can write the following measure:

Inventory Balance =
CALCULATE(
    SUM(Inventory[Balance]),
    LASTDATE('Date'[Date])
)

In addition to LASTDATE and its sister function FIRSTDATE, there are some DAX functions that can help you retrieve the opening or closing balance for different time periods:

OPENINGBALANCEMONTH

OPENINGBALANCEQUARTER

OPENINGBALANCEYEAR

CLOSINGBALANCEMONTH

CLOSINGBALANCEQUARTER

CLOSINGBALANCEYEAR

The functions that start with CLOSING evaluate an expression for the last date in the period, and the functions that start with OPENING evaluate an expression for one day before the first date in the period. This means that the opening balance for February 1 is the same as the closing balance for January 31.

For example, you can calculate the opening month balance for inventory as follows:

Click here to view code image

Inventory Opening Balance Month =
OPENINGBALANCEMONTH(
    SUM(Inventory[Balance]),
    'Date'[Date]
)

The date-based functions listed here only work if you have data for all dates of interest. For example, if you’d chosen to use CLOSINGBALANCEMONTH but your data ends on May 23, 2022, as is the case for sample data, you’d get a blank value for May 2022. For cases such as this, you can use LASTNONBLANKVALUE or FIRSTNONBLANKVALUE as shown here:

Inventory Last Nonblank =
LASTNONBLANKVALUE(
    'Date'[Date],
    SUM(Inventory[Balance])
)

This measure will show the latest available balance in the current context.

The Inventory Balance, Inventory Opening Balance Month, and Inventory Last Nonblank measures can be seen in Figure 2-28.

[picture]

FIGURE 2-28 Inventory measures

Determining which calculation you should use depends on your business requirements—there is no single correct answer that applies to all scenarios. Missing data may mean there’s no inventory, or it may mean that data isn’t captured frequently enough, so the data modeler should understand the underlying data before writing the calculations to ensure the data isn’t represented incorrectly.

Use quick measures

A measure in Power BI is a dynamic evaluation of a DAX query that will change in response to interactions with other visuals, enabling quick, meaningful exploration of your data. Creating efficient measures will be one of the smartest things you can do to build insightful reports. If you’re new to DAX and writing measures, or you’re wanting to perform quick analysis, you have the option of creating a quick measure. There are several ways to create a quick measure:

Select Quick measure from the Home ribbon.

Right-click or select the ellipsis next to a table or column in the Fields pane and select New quick measure. This method may prefill the quick measure form shown next.

If you already use a field in a visual, select the dropdown arrow next to the field in the Values section and select New quick measure. This method also may prefill the quick measure form shown next. If possible, this will add the new quick measure to the existing visualization. You’ll be able to use this measure in other visuals too.

The following calculations are available as quick measures:

Aggregate per category

Average per category

Variance per category

Max per category

Min per category

Weighted average per category

Filters

Filtered value

Difference from filtered value

Percentage difference from filtered value

Sales from new customers

Time Intelligence

Year-to-date total

Quarter-to-date total

Month-to-date total

Year-over-year change

Quarter-over-quarter change

Month-over-month change

Rolling average

Totals

Running total

Total for category (filters applied)

Total for category (filters not applied)

Mathematical operations

Addition

Subtraction

Multiplication

Division

Percentage difference

Correlation coefficient

Text

Star rating

Concatenated list of values

Each calculation has its own description and a list of field wells—you can see an example in Figure 2-29.

[picture]

FIGURE 2-29 Quick Measures dialog box

For example, by using quick measures, you can calculate average profit per employee for Wide World Importers as follows:

Ensure the Sale table is selected in the Fields pane.

Select Quick measure on the Home ribbon.

From the Calculation dropdown list, select Average per category.

Drag the Profit column from the Sale table to the Base value field well.

Drag the Employee column from the Employee table to the Category field well.

Select OK.

Once done, you can find the new measure called Profit average per Employee in the Fields pane.

Note Home Table

Your new quick measure will be created in the last active table. If you’re struggling to find the measure, you can use the search bar in the Fields pane.

To move a measure to a different table, select a measure in the Fields pane and select a new table in the Home table dropdown list on the Measure Tools ribbon.

If you select the new measure, you’ll see its DAX formula:

Click here to view code image

Profit average per Employee =
AVERAGEX(
    KEEPFILTERS(VALUES('Employee'[Employee])),
    CALCULATE(SUM('Sale'[Profit]))
)

You can modify the formula, if needed. Reading the DAX can be a great way to learn how measures can be written.

Need More Review? Quick Measures

For more information on quick measures, including limitations and considerations, see “Use quick measures for common calculations” at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/transform-model/desktop-quick-measures.

Skill 2.4: Optimize model performance

Sometimes after you create the first version of your data model, you may realize that it doesn’t perform well enough. Because of the way Power BI stores data, it may mean that your data model isn’t performing as efficiently as it can. In this section, we review the skills necessary to optimize a model’s performance and learn how you can identify measures, visuals, and relationships that are slow.

When working with imported data in Power BI, keep in mind that it’s a columnstore database, which means that the number of distinct values in a column—also known as cardinality—usually plays a more important role than the number of rows. Therefore, one way to address poor performance is to reduce cardinality levels, which you can do by changing data types or summarizing data.

This skill covers how to:

Remove unnecessary rows and columns

Identify poorly performing measures, relationships, and visuals

Reduce cardinality levels to improve performance

Remove unnecessary rows and columns

In Power BI, it’s preferable to only load data that is necessary for reporting and then add more data later as required. In practice, you should disable loading of queries that aren’t needed for reporting and filter the data to only the required rows and columns before loading into the model.

Remove unnecessary rows

Reducing the number of rows requires some filtering criteria, which can be based on attributes or dates.

For example, instead of loading all Wide World Importers data, you could load data for a specific sales territory if you’re only interested in analyzing that specific sales territory. You can use parameters when filtering to make the process more manageable; this approach will also make it possible to change filters once the dataset is published to the Power BI service.

You can also filter by dates and only load some recent data in case you’re not interested in historical data. In addition to parameters, you can apply relative date filters, such as “is in the previous 2 years.”

Filtering rows after you create reports won’t break any visuals in the existing reports.

Remove unnecessary columns

Columns in a data model usually serve at least one of two purposes: they could be used to support visuals or calculations, or both. It’s preferable to not load columns that aren’t used for any purpose, especially if they’ve got a high number of distinct values.

Some data warehouses include primary keys for fact tables. Although that may be useful for data audit purposes, you should remove primary keys from Power BI data models because they have a unique value for every row, and fact tables can be long. Primary keys of fact tables can occupy over 50% of data model size without bringing any benefit. In the Wide World Importers example, removing the Sale Key column from the Sale table reduces the file size by 43%.

If you need to count the number of rows in a fact table, it’s more efficient to use COUNTROWS than DISTINCTCOUNT of the primary key column.

Removing columns that are used in visuals or calculations is going to break existing reports or even the dataset. You can use the Remove Other Columns functionality in Power Query Editor to have a step to refer to if you need to add a column to your model later. This step will also prevent columns added to the dataset from being automatically brought into your model, such as a new column added to a SQL table by a database administrator.

Identify poorly performing measures, relationships, and visuals

Sometimes you may notice that the report performance is not optimal. Power BI Desktop has a feature called Performance Analyzer, which you can use to trace the slow-performing visuals and to see the DAX queries behind them.

To turn on Performance Analyzer, go to the Report view and select View > Performance analyzer. This opens the Performance Analyzer pane shown in Figure 2-30.

[picture]

FIGURE 2-30 Performance Analyzer

Performance Analyzer works by recording traces, and it then shows you how long each visual took to render. To start recording traces, select Start recording. After that, you need to perform some actions, such as applying filters, that will recalculate the visuals, or you can select Refresh visuals to refresh the visuals as they are. You’ll then see the rendering duration for each visual.

To identify the slowest visuals, you can sort visuals in the Performance Analyzer pane by selecting the arrow next to Duration (ms).

Each visual that contains data has a DAX query behind it, which you can copy by expanding the line of the visual in the Performance Analyzer pane and selecting Copy query. You can analyze the query further in DAX Studio, for example. It’s also possible to export all traces by selecting Export.

To clear the Performance Analyzer pane, select Clear. Once you’re done recording traces, select Stop.

Reduce cardinality levels to improve performance

Power BI employs several compression mechanisms to reduce the size of data, the details of which are outside the scope of this book. One way to decrease the data size, which we cover next, is by reducing the cardinality of columns by changing data types or the default summarization.

Changing data types

In Power BI, two data types can be used for decimal numbers:

Decimal number Can store more than four decimal places

Fixed decimal number Can only store up to four decimal places

If your data contains more than four decimal places for some values and you don’t need that level of precision, you should change the data type to Fixed Decimal Number to save space.

Another way to change the cardinality levels is to split decimal number columns into pairs of whole numbers and decimal numbers, which should be done as close to the data source as possible. Whole numbers can be of any range, whereas decimal numbers should be between 0 and 1. These two columns can then be aggregated by using SUMX in the following fashion:

Click here to view code image

Full number =
SUMX(
    'Fact table',
    'Fact table'[Whole number] + 'Fact table'[Decimal number]
)

Although you’ll get two columns instead of one, in many cases you’ll see improvements in cardinality levels and, as a result, a decrease in the data model size. For the same reasons, in Power BI it’s best practice to split Date/Time columns with Time components into two: Date and Time. This is because you are increasing the number of duplicates in each column, and therefore the column is more efficiently stored in memory.

Some text columns, such as invoice numbers that are stored as text, can also sometimes be reduced in size. For example, if your fact table contains a column with invoice numbers, which always have the INV prefix and eight numbers that follow it, such as INV01234567, you can remove the INV prefix and change the data type of numbers from Text to Whole Number. If the prefix is inconsistent, you can split it and move it to a different column. This is because storing whole numbers is usually more efficient than storing text.

Exam Tip

You should be able to recognize models that would benefit from splitting columns and selecting different data types.

Summarizing data

If your source data provides a level of detail that’s not required by reporting, then you may want to consider summarizing your data to reduce cardinality.

For example, if the source data contains daily sales information but you only report monthly values, you may want to summarize your sales data to be at the month level instead of the day level. This approach will reduce the size of your model dramatically, though it will make the reporting of daily data impossible.

It’s preferable to summarize your data as close to the data source as possible. Power Query also allows you to summarize data by using the Group By functionality on the Transform ribbon.

Data summarization involves a trade-off between data model size and the available level of detail; whether you should summarize data depends on your business requirements.

Need More Review? Data Reduction Techniques

All possible data reduction techniques are outside the scope of this book. For more examples of reducing your data when working with imported data, see “Data reduction techniques for Import modeling” at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/guidance/import-modeling-data-reduction.

Chapter summary

Power BI supports various types of schemas: flat (fully denormalized), star, and snowflake. The preferred schema for Power BI is the star schema.

You can configure various column and table properties in the Model view.

In some cases, it may be preferable to define role-playing dimensions, which allow you to use a single dimension to filter one fact table by using different keys in the table.

Power BI supports the following three cardinality types for relationships: one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many. For one-to-one relationships, the cross-filter direction is always Both (each table filters the other). One-to-many dimensions can have their cross-filter direction be set to either Single (the one side filters the many side) or Both. You choose the cross-filter direction of many-to-many relationships depending on your business requirements. Relationships whose cross-filter direction is set to Both are also known as bidirectional relationships.

For bidirectional relationships, security filters won’t flow in both directions automatically, though you can configure that behavior in the relationship properties.

For best performance, look carefully at the storage mode of each table, the cardinality and cross-filter direction of relationships, and the cardinality of columns (the number of distinct values).

Besides measures, you can use DAX to create calculated tables and calculated columns in Power BI.

You can create a common table in Power BI by using Power Query or DAX, or you can load it from a data source.

Power BI supports the creation of hierarchies, which can be useful to make models more user-friendly, though they have no technical advantages over several fields being used together in a visual without being combined in a hierarchy.

You can secure your data model by using row-level security, which can use static DAX filters on one or more tables, or dynamic row-level security that considers which user is viewing the report.

Power BI allows you to use natural language queries by using the Q&A visual. You can add synonyms to your data model to make Q&A work better.

CALCULATE is one of the most important functions in DAX, and you can use it to manipulate filters. More specifically, you can add, ignore, and update filters. CALCULATE is also used for context transition.

The Time Intelligence family of DAX functions allows you to aggregate values across time; for instance, you can use DATESYTD to calculate year-to-date values, or you can use DATEADD to calculate a value during the same period last year. There are also functions that allow you to create semi-additive measures, such as OPENINGBALANCEMONTH.

Power BI has a feature called Quick Measures, which allows you to define calculations without writing any DAX code.

In some cases, it may be preferable to replace numeric columns with measures to reduce the size of the data model.

In general, you should only load data that is necessary for analysis by removing columns or filtering rows in Power Query, especially for primary keys of fact tables.

Performance Analyzer in Power BI can be useful to identify performance bottlenecks.

You can improve the cardinality of columns by selecting appropriate data types, as well as summarizing data.

Thought experiment

In this thought experiment, demonstrate your skills and knowledge of the topics covered in this chapter. You can find the answers in the section that follows.

You are a data analyst at Contoso responsible for creating Power BI reports.

Management has requested a report based on the historical data available. Based on background information and business requirements, answer the following questions:

1. A data model has a fact table that has over 15 million rows. There is a date/time column called DateTime, which contains both date and time. You need to reduce the size of the data model. Your solution must preserve as much of the original data as possible. Which solution should you implement?

A. Change the data type of the DateTime column to Text.

B. Clean the DateTime column.

B. Split the DateTime column into two separate columns: one column that contains dates, and one column that contains the time portion.

D. Change the data type of the DateTime column to Date.

2. You create a visual that is supposed to show revenue by year. You use the Year column from the Calendar table and the Revenue measure from the Sale table. The formula of the Revenue measure is as follows:

Click here to view code image

Revenue = SUM(Sale[Total Including Tax])

The result is shown in Figure 2-31. After checking data, you can see that in 2021, revenue was $60 million. How can you fix the visual? The solution must use the minimum amount of DAX and ensure that the Calendar table can be used with other fact tables. The solution must also take into account that you may be interested in analyzing other measures based on the Sale table.

[picture]

FIGURE 2-31 Revenue by Year

A. Use the TREATAS function in DAX.

B. Create an active relationship between the Calendar and the Sale tables.

C. Merge the Sale and Calendar tables.

D. Create a calculated table that calculates revenue for each year.

3. There are two roles in a data model: CentralRegion, which filters the Region table to only show the Central region, and AppliancesDepartment, which filters the Department table to only show the Appliances department. A user is a member of both roles. What will they see in a sales report?

A. Sales from the Central region or the Appliances department; they will see all departments in the Central region and all regions in the Appliances department.

B. Sales from the Central region and the Appliances department; they will only see the Appliances department within the Central region.

C. Only one role will be applied, whichever was configured first.

D. The user will see an error message.

4. Your Date table currently consists only of one column called Date, which contains dates. You need to add a column to the Date table that shows month and year in the MMMM YYYY format, e.g., May 2022. What should you do? Your solution must require the minimum amount of effort and storage, and the solution must ensure that the values are sorted chronologically.

A. Create a calculated column that uses the FORMAT function.

B. Create a calculated column that uses the EOMONTH function format as MMMM YYYY.

C. Duplicate the Date column and apply a custom format string.

D. Create a new calculated table called Date – MMMM YYYY and format as MMMM YYYY.

5. You need to write a measure that calculates the monthly balance. Which formula should you use?

A. CALCULATE(SUM(Inventory[Balance]), ENDOFMONTH('Date'[Date]))

B. CALCULATE(SUM(Inventory[Balance]), MAX(Inventory[Date]))

C. CALCULATE(SUM(Inventory[Balance]), DATESMTD(Inventory[Date]))

D. CALCULATE(MAX(Inventory[Balance]), LASTDATE(Inventory[Date]))

6. You inherit a Power BI data model that contains several tables, one of which has many calculated columns that all use the RELATED function. You would like to reduce the size of the model. What should you do?

A. Append tables.

B. Merge tables.

C. Separate tables into several data models.

D. Hide unused columns.

7. You created a sales report and enabled row-level security on it. There are multiple roles, each filtering the dataset to one department. Each role has a corresponding Active Directory group. The report is primarily used by sales managers, each of whom can view their department only. One sales manager has recently moved from one department to another. What should you do?

A. Update role membership in the Power BI service.

B. Change roles in Power BI Desktop.

C. Raise a request to remove the user from their old Active Directory group and add them to the new one.

Thought experiment answers

1. The answer is C. Splitting a date/time column into a date and a time column will keep the original data and reduces the number of distinct values in columns, resulting in a smaller data model. Changing the data type to text, as answer A suggests, won’t change the number of distinct values, and therefore won’t reduce the size of the file. Answer B, cleaning a column, removes nonprintable characters, which does not reduce the number of distinct values when applied to a column of type date/time. If you change the data type of the DateTime column to date in accordance to answer D, you’ll see the reduction in the size of the model, and you’ll lose the time portion, which goes against the requirements.

2. The answer is B. Creating an active physical relationship is the best solution because it requires no DAX, allows the Calendar table to be used with tables other than Sale, and you can use other measures from the Sale table together with fields from the Calendar table. While using the TREATAS function that answer A suggests may work, it requires using unnecessarily complex DAX, especially considering that you may be interested in analyzing measures other than Revenue. The merged table from answer C will either prevent the Calendar table from being used with other tables, or it’ll duplicate data from the Calendar table unnecessarily. Answer D would fix the graph, but it won’t solve the problem when other measures are analyzed by year.

3. The answer is A. Power BI supports multiple roles for a single user, and they are combined by using the union logic, so the user will see all departments within the Central region and all regions within the Appliances department.

4. The answer is B. If you use the EOMONTH function, you’ll get a calculated column that contains the end-of-month dates, and you can then apply a custom format string to show the values in the desirable format. Since the values will still be of type date, they will be automatically sorted in the correct order. If we use the FORMAT function, you’ll get the values in the format that you want, though they will be text values that require a sorting column—otherwise the values will be sorted alphabetically. A sorting column will use extra storage. If you apply a custom format string to a duplicated Date column, the values will look the way you want, though underneath they will still be dates, so there will be more than one value for each month-year combination. By creating a new calculated table as in answer D, you are increasing the data model size and adding unnecessary complexity.

5. The answer is A. SUM will correctly aggregate inventory balances for all dimensions except Date, since ENDOFMONTH will pick the last date of month to show the monthly balance. In answer B, MAX is used as a filter in CALCULATE, and it won’t work because it returns a scalar value instead of a table. Answer C will provide incorrect values in cases where you have daily or weekly inventory balances. Answer D won’t aggregate the balances correctly, since it will pick the maximum balance across the available values.

6. The answer is B. Using the RELATED function in a calculated column often means duplicating data. If columns need to be in the same table—for example, to build a hierarchy—then it may be preferable to merge tables into one. Appending tables, as in answer A, would stack them vertically and wouldn’t provide the desired output. Separating tables in several data models, as answer C suggests, will reduce the size of the model, though it won’t allow you to have the same data. Hiding unused columns as suggested in answer D doesn’t reduce the size of the model.

7. The answer is C. Since the security is managed by Active Directory groups, the user should be removed from their old department security group and added to their new department security group. If you add them to a new role in the Power BI service without affecting their group membership, as suggested in answer A, they’ll see sales of both old and new departments. Changing roles in Power BI Desktop (answer B) won’t help because role membership is managed outside of Power BI Desktop.

Chapter 3

Visualize and analyze the data

So far, we’ve reviewed the skills necessary to prepare and model the data to lay the foundation you need before visualizing the data, the topic of this chapter. Data visualization is a key element of Power BI, and you need effective data visualization to create effective reports. This step becomes the foundation for data analysis, also covered in this chapter.

In Power BI, you can create reports and dashboards to visualize data. One of the things that sets Power BI apart from other visualization tools is that you can create interactive reports—that is, the visuals that can interact with each other by cross-filtering the underlying data.

We start this chapter by reviewing the skills necessary to create reports in Power BI. We then cover how to design and configure a report for accessibility and how to set up page refresh options. We then review how to set up and create dashboards—visuals from multiple reports that can be pinned to a dashboard to create a single screen with the most important visual elements. Finally, we explore the rich set of features designed to improve report usability.

Skills covered in this chapter:

Skill 3.1 Create reports

Skill 3.2 Create dashboards

Skill 3.3 Enhance reports for usability and storytelling

Skill 3.4 Identify patterns and trends

Skill 3.1: Create reports

A Power BI report can be based on only one dataset, and a report may have several pages. Reports can be authored both in Power BI Desktop and the Power BI service.

We start this section by reviewing various visualization items and formatting options available for Power BI reports. We also cover configuring the layout of pages and making reports accessible to users.

This skill covers how to:

Add visualization items to reports

Choose an appropriate visualization type

Format and configure visualizations

Use a custom visual

Apply and customize a theme

Configure conditional formatting

Apply slicing and filtering

Configure the report page

Use the Analyze in Excel feature

Choose when to use a paginated report

Add visualization items to reports

Power BI provides several ways to add a visual to a report page:

Select a visual icon from the Visualizations pane.

Select the check box next to a field in the Fields pane.

Drag a field from the Fields pane onto the canvas.

Select New visual on the Insert ribbon.

Turn a Q&A result into a standard visual.

We describe how to choose an appropriate visualization type in the next section. You can also import nonstandard visuals known as custom visuals, which we review later in this chapter.

In addition to visuals, there are a few other options in Power BI that visualize data, provide information, and improve the usability of your report available on the Insert ribbon:

Text box Can hold formatted text, including hyperlinks

Buttons Can be formatted differently for various states, such as on hover or on press

Shapes Similar to buttons, but the look and formatting options are different

Image A shape that contains an image

Buttons, shapes, and images can be set to perform the following actions:

Back Takes a user back to the previous page; especially relevant after performing drill-through

Bookmark Takes a user to a bookmark you specify

Page navigation Takes a user to a specific report page

Q&A Launches a Q&A pop-up that can only process natural language queries without any extra functionality provided by the Q&A visual

Web URL Takes a user to the specified web URL

Buttons can also perform drill-through, which takes a user to a specific page while carrying the applied filters from the original page. We review the drill-through functionality toward the end of this chapter.

Choose an appropriate visualization type

Besides the Table and Matrix visuals, which we used earlier in the book, Power BI offers over 30 built-in visuals. You can see a fragment of the Visualizations pane in Figure 3-1.

[picture]

FIGURE 3-1 Standard visuals in Power BI.

In this section, we review the visuals and show you how to choose an appropriate visual based on your objectives.

Exam Tip

You should be able to select the right visual for comparing parts to whole, across categories and time, and spatially.

Note Companion File

You can find all visuals from this section in the 3.1 Reports.pbix file in the companion files folder.

Bar charts

Power BI has six variations of bar charts:

Stacked bar chart

Stacked column chart

Clustered bar chart

Clustered column chart

100% stacked bar chart

100% stacked column chart

All six charts have the same four field wells:

Axis Columns to be placed on the horizontal or vertical axis. When using more than one column, users can drill down to the next field.

Legend The categorical column used to color items.

Values One or more numerical fields to be plotted; if you use a legend, you can put only one field into this field well.

Tooltips Additional fields that users can see in the tooltip when they hover over a bar or a column. The default tooltips will be shown when you hover over the bars or columns.

You can see the various bar charts in Figure 3-2.

[picture]

FIGURE 3-2 Bar charts.

It is best to use bar or column charts when you are comparing values across categories. This is because you can directly compare the values against each other. If you want to compare values across time, use a line or area chart, covered next.

Line and area charts

Power BI has a line chart and two types of area charts:

Line chart

Area chart

Stacked area chart

These charts have the following common field wells:

Axis Columns to be placed on the horizontal axis. When using more than one column, users can drill down.

Legend The categorical column used to color items.

Values One or more numerical fields to be plotted; if the chart has a legend, you can use only one field for values.

Tooltips Additional fields that users can see in the tooltip when they hover over a bar or column.

Area charts are similar to the line chart but have a shaded area under the lines. Additionally, the line and area charts have the Secondary values field well, which allows you to use a secondary y-axis if you’re not using the Legend field well.

The three visuals are shown in Figure 3-3.

[picture]

FIGURE 3-3 Line and area charts.

Line and area charts are best used when you want to show historical trends or compare values across time. If you use a secondary y-axis, you should make it clear which line belongs to which axis by including axis titles to avoid confusion.

Combo charts

There are two combo charts in Power BI:

Line and stacked column chart

Line and clustered column chart

Both have the same five field wells:

Shared axis Columns to be placed on the horizontal axis. When using more than one column, you can drill down.

Column series Similar to a legend; one column may be used.

Column values One or more numerical fields to be plotted; if you have a column series, you can use only one field.

Line values One or more numerical fields to be plotted as lines.

Tooltips Additional fields that users can see in the tooltip when they hover over a bar or column.

You can see both charts in Figure 3-4.

[picture]

FIGURE 3-4 Combo charts.

Combo charts can be the appropriate choice when you plot two fields that have different value ranges and you want to use a legend for one of them. For instance, you could plot Profit and Quantity by Year, as shown in Figure 3-4.

By default, the column values appear on the right and the line values appear on the left. In the Format settings, you can switch the axes, as well as hide one or the other, which will align the axes.

Combo charts allow you to show line markers and set the line width to 0, which makes them suitable for comparing values across categories and time, and not only time.

Ribbon chart

The ribbon chart is like a column chart with ribbons between the columns used to highlight changes in the relative ranking of categorical items. The item with the highest ranking will be displayed on top.

The chart has four field wells:

Axis Columns to be placed on the horizontal axis. When using more than one column, you can drill down.

Legend The categorical column used to color items.

Values One or more numerical fields to be plotted; if you use a legend, you can use one field only.

Tooltips Additional fields that users can see in the tooltip when they hover over a bar or column.

Tooltips in ribbon visuals will show additional information compared to the visuals we have covered thus far. When you hover over the ribbons between columns, you’ll see how the values changed between two columns. Figure 3-5 shows the ribbon chart and the tooltips when you hover over a ribbon.

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FIGURE 3-5 Ribbon chart.

The ribbon chart is suitable when you want to show the progression of ranking changes between different categories across time.

Waterfall chart

The waterfall chart shows color-coded values in a running total fashion. By default, positive values are green and negative values red. This visual has four field wells:

Category Columns to be placed on the horizontal axis, where each item is a stage. When using more than one column, you can drill down.

Breakdown You can use one column here to show changes between categories.

Values One numerical field to be plotted.

Tooltips Additional fields that users can see in the tooltip when they hover over a bar or column.

When you’re using the breakdown field well, hovering over a breakdown item will show the change between two categorical items. Figure 3-6 shows the waterfall chart and the tooltips when you hover over a breakdown item.

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FIGURE 3-6 Waterfall charts.

Important Waterfall Total

Be aware that the total column in a waterfall chart is the sum of the categories in the visual, not the total that you would see without filtering the categories. This behavior is especially relevant with semi-additive or non-additive measures, such as balances or averages.

When you use the breakdown field well, only the top five items are shown by default, with the rest grouped into Other. The Other group is yellow by default because it may contain both Increase and Decrease items. You can change the colors, as well as the number of breakdown items, in the Format pane.

A waterfall chart is a good choice when you want to show what caused the most significant changes between time periods. The chart may also be appropriate to illustrate what the total amount is made of while showing the total at the same time for comparison.

Funnel

The funnel chart is like a bar chart with bars centered, and it has three field wells:

Group For one or more categorical columns, where each item is a stage. When using more than one column, you can drill down.

Values One numerical field to be plotted.

Tooltips Additional fields that users can see in the tooltip when they hover over a bar or column.

When you hover over a categorical item in a funnel chart, you see a tooltip with the proportion that category makes up of the first and previous items. It also shows the size of the last item relative to the first one. In Figure 3-7 you can see the funnel chart used with tooltips showing.

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FIGURE 3-7 Funnel chart.

Because of this additional information in the tooltips, a funnel chart can be a proper choice for showing values by stages. This visual can also be used for revealing bottlenecks in a process or tracking workflow.

Scatter chart

The scatter chart can visualize two or more metrics for categorical items. Each item will be plotted according to the x- and y-coordinates, which will be taken from the metrics. When you use a third metric for size, the chart can be called a bubble chart. You can also create a dot plot by using a categorical column on the x-axis.

The visual has the following field wells:

Details You can use one or more categorical columns in this field well to plot points. When using more than one column, you can drill down.

Legend A categorical column used to color items.

X-axis One field to be placed on the horizontal axis.

Y-axis One numerical field to be placed on the vertical axis.

Size For one numerical field to be used for relative bubble sizing.

Play axis You can use a column here, which is usually a time-series column such as Year or Date.

Tooltips Additional fields that users can see in the tooltip when they hover over a bar or column.

An example of a scatter chart is shown in Figure 3-8.

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FIGURE 3-8 Scatter chart.

A scatter chart can be an effective way to show a relationship between two metrics or to highlight outliers.

Pie and donut charts

The pie chart and the donut chart are the same except the latter has empty space in the middle. Both charts have the same four field wells:

Legend For one or more categorical columns used to color items. When using more than one column, you can drill down.

Details Each slice may be split by a categorical column used here.

Values You may use one or more numerical fields here; if you show Details, you are limited to one field only.

Tooltips Additional fields that users can see in the tooltip when they hover over a bar or column.

When hovering over a slice, you’ll see the proportion it makes up. You can see both pie and donut charts in Figure 3-9, with a tooltip showing for an item in the donut chart.

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FIGURE 3-9 Pie and donut charts.

You can use either of these charts to show the relationships of parts to the whole. Both charts are not considered best practice in data visualization with one exception: you may use a pie or a donut chart when there are only two categories. Otherwise, if you are sure that users will not be comparing parts to each other, only to the whole, you may also use these charts. Be aware that having too many items in such a chart will make reading it difficult and take up a lot of real estate in your report. Using donut charts in addition to a card visual in the center of the donut may be helpful.

Treemap

The treemap chart can be thought of as rectangular pie chart because it also shows the relationship of parts to the whole. You can nest rectangles to further divide the whole. There are four field wells:

Group For one or more categorical columns that will define the relative size of rectangles. When using more than one column, you can drill down.

Details Each rectangle can be split by the categorical column used here.

Values One or more numerical fields to be plotted; if you show Details, you are limited to one field only.

Tooltips Additional fields that users can see in the tooltip when they hover over a bar or column.

Unlike the pie and donut charts, the treemap chart does not show percentages in tooltips by default. You can see a treemap chart in Figure 3-10.

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FIGURE 3-10 Treemap chart.

The rectangles in a treemap chart are arranged top to bottom and left to right based on numerical values in descending order.

A treemap visual can be a good choice when you want to show proportions between each part and the whole, as well as highlight the most important contributors and outliers.

Maps

Power BI has several options when it comes to visualizing geospatial data. In this section, we review two map visuals: Map and Filled map (also known as a choropleth map). Each of these visuals has the following field wells:

Location One or more categorical columns that contain locations to be plotted; you can drill down when you use two or more columns.

Legend You can use a column here to color items.

Latitude One field can be used here.

Longitude One field can be used here.

Tooltips Additional fields that users can see in the tooltip when they hover over a bar or column.

Additionally, the Map visual can use the Size field well for different bubble sizes based on a numerical field. If you are using the legend with the Map visual, your bubbles will be turned into pie charts.

Note Mapping Accuracy

To improve the accuracy of maps, you can geocode your fields by selecting an appropriate data category in field properties.

You can see the Map and Filled map visuals in Figure 3-11.

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FIGURE 3-11 Map and Filled map.

Maps are effective when you’re working with spatial data and showing the geographical distribution of values. Power BI will automatically zoom to show the most data based on the size of the visual. You should ensure that users are able to see all fields by using color coding and by choosing between a Map and a Filled map. For example, in Figure 3-11 the External sales territory is easily seen in the Map visual but virtually impossible to notice in the Filled map.

Gauge

The gauge chart can be thought of as one half of a donut chart that compares a value to a target or a maximum value. The gauge chart has five field wells:

Value For a numerical field; displayed in the center.

Minimum value A numerical field may be used as the start of the scale.

Maximum value A numerical field may be used as the end of the scale.

Target value You can use one numerical field here, which is displayed as a line/needle on the gauge.

Tooltips Additional fields that users can see in the tooltip when they hover over a bar or column.

You can see an example of a gauge chart in Figure 3-12.

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FIGURE 3-12 Gauge chart.

Although the gauge visual will be displayed with any of the field wells filled, it should at least have a field in the Value field well. By default, the visual sets the minimum at 0 and the maximum at double the amount of Value, so it will be half-filled.

The gauge is best used to track KPIs or targets, especially those with known maximum values, such as proportions. Other visuals can be used to track key performance indicators (KPIs), which we cover next.

Card, multi-row card, and KPI

Besides the gauge visual, there are three other related visuals that can be used to display KPIs. The card visual has a single field well that accepts one field of any type, and it only displays one value.

The multi-row card visual also has a single field well, but it can accept multiple fields. If at least one of the fields is of type Text, then values are divided into rows, with one row per category.

The KPI visual has three field wells:

Indicator For a numerical field; displayed in the center

Trend axis For a column, preferably one that contains time-series data like year or date

Target goals For one or two numerical fields against which the indicator is compared

The KPI visual displays its values for the last item on the trend axis, which is different from the total value across the whole trend axis.

You can see all three visuals in Figure 3-13.

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FIGURE 3-13 Card, multi-row card, and KPI visuals.

The card visual is best used when there’s only one value to display.

If you want to compare a value against one or two targets, it’s best to use the KPI visual, which can also display a trend in the background. The trend itself contains limited information and is only useful for high-level analysis.

When you want to display several metrics across a category, you may want to use the multi-row card. It’s also a good choice for displaying several unrelated metrics at once.

Note Performance Considerations

Although this is outside the scope of the exam, the more visuals you have on a page, the slower it will be. If you have several card visuals on a page, consider using the multi-row card visual or even a table to reduce the number of visuals.

Artificial intelligence visuals

As of this writing, Power BI has the following generally available artificial intelligence visuals:

Key influencers Helps users understand the main drivers behind a metric and compare the importance of the drivers

Decomposition tree Allows users to perform the root cause analysis or interactive drill-down

Q&A Answers natural language queries visually

We review the key influencers and decomposition tree visuals separately in Skill 3.4: Identify patterns and trends. For the Q&A visual, refer to Skill 2.2: Develop a data model.

Format and configure visualizations

Power BI allows you to format all visuals in various ways so that you can design an effective report. To see the formatting options of a visual, select the visual and then select Format (paintbrush icon) on the Visualizations pane.

Many visuals have some formatting options that are unique to them, but most visuals have these options in common:

General In this section, you can specify x-position, y-position, width, height, and alt text (a description that will be read by a screen reader on selecting the visual).

Title Title text, word wrap, font color, background color, alignment, text size, and font family.

Background Background color and transparency.

Lock aspect If enabled, when you adjust the size of a visual manually, its aspect will be locked.

Border Border color and radius.

Shadow Shadow color, position, and preset.

Tooltips In this section you can choose to use the default tooltip type or to use a specific report page as a tooltip. For default tooltips, you can format the label and value colors, text size, font family, background color, and transparency.

Visual header This section allows you to hide the whole visual header or some of its elements. Additionally, you can format its background, border, and icon colors, as well as transparency. You can also add a visual header tooltip icon here.

Some properties can be formatted conditionally, which we review later in this chapter.

Use a custom visual

In addition to built-in visuals, Power BI offers a way to use custom visuals, or visuals created by using the Power BI SDK. There are two main ways to import a custom visual in Power BI Desktop:

AppSource

From a file

AppSource

First, you may import a visual from AppSource, which you can do in one of two ways:

In the Report view, select Insert > More visuals > From AppSource.

Select the ellipsis on the Visualizations pane, then select Get more visuals.

Either way, you will see the options shown in Figure 3-14.

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FIGURE 3-14 Power BI visuals from AppSource.

In addition to AppSource, which offers publicly available visuals, the Power BI administrator of your organization may add some organizational visuals, which you can select from the My organization section.

From a file

As an alternative to AppSource, you can import a visual from a PBIVIZ file in one of two ways:

In the Report view, select Insert > More visuals > From my files.

Select the ellipsis on the Visualizations pane, then select Import visual from a file.

Either way, before you can import a visual, you may see the caution shown in Figure 3-15.

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FIGURE 3-15 Import custom visual caution.

To import a visual, select Import. You may also prevent this caution from appearing again by selecting the Don’t show this dialog again option.

After you import a visual from AppSource or a file, the imported visual will then become available in the Visualizations pane.

Apply and customize a theme

In many environments, there’s a preferred color palette or a way to format visuals. While you can format each visual individually, you can also apply a theme to the whole report, which can save a lot of time. Power BI Desktop has several prebuilt themes, which you can see in the View tab of the ribbon, as shown in Figure 3-16.

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FIGURE 3-16 Themes in Power BI Desktop.

Besides the prebuilt themes, you can import a Power BI report theme file by selecting Browse for themes, which will prompt you to select a JSON file.

You can also select Customize current theme to customize your theme without writing any code by using the user interface, as shown in Figure 3-17.

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FIGURE 3-17 Themes in Power BI Desktop.

Once you make your changes, select Apply to save the theme. If you’re using a custom theme, you can export it from Power BI Desktop for future use by selecting Save current theme and saving the theme’s JSON file.

Need More Review? Power BI Theme Files

The user interface allows you to customize fewer properties compared to a JSON theme. The details on how to create a JSON theme file are outside the scope of this book. For more details, see “Introduction to report theme JSON files” at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/create-reports/desktop-report-themes#introduction-to-report-theme-json-files.

Configure conditional formatting

Some formatting properties can be specified based on a condition, also known as expression-based formatting.

If a property can be formatted conditionally, it will have an fx icon next to it, as shown in Figure 3-18, where conditional formatting can be applied to Title text and Font color.

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FIGURE 3-18 Conditional formatting icons.

For example, if you select the icon next to Font color, you’ll see options like those in Figure 3-19.

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FIGURE 3-19 Conditional formatting options.

You will see different options depending on the property you’re formatting. For instance, when you’re configuring the color, you’ll see the following options in the Format style list:

Gradient Suitable for continuous color gradients. You can select a field based on which you want to set the color. You can enter the minimum and maximum values for the field and set the corresponding colors. If you want a center color, you can select the Add a middle color option, and you can specify the corresponding value, too.

Rules This option is suitable for discrete colors with no gradients between them. As with the color scale, you can select a field on which you want to base your color. You can then assign colors to value ranges, specific numbers, or blank values.

Field value When you have a field that returns a color code, you can use this option. A color value can be in any of the following formats:

3-, 6-, or 8-digit hex code, like #ABC123

RGB or RGBA value, like RGB(10, 20, 30)

HSL or HSLA value, like HSLA(10, 50%, 50%, 0.75)

Color name, like red or green

When formatting a property other than color, make sure that the field you select returns values in the expected format.

Some formatting properties won’t support all Format by options. For example, for Title text, you can only use the Field value option, because title text can only be a text string.

If you want to remove conditional formatting for a property, select the eraser icon next to it.

Apply slicing and filtering

One of the core features of Power BI is allowing report users to apply filters and see the values change in an instant. Filters can be applied in the following two ways:

Slicers

Filters pane

Slicers

Slicers are visuals that can apply filters to other visuals. Importantly, slicers accept only columns as fields to filter by. You can configure slicers in various ways depending on the data type of the column(s) you use.

Any slicer can be displayed as List or Dropdown. You can add a search bar to a List or Dropdown slicer by hovering over it and selecting More options (the ellipsis) > Search. This is especially useful when you have a number of options within the slicer. Additionally, in the Selection controls section of the Format pane, you can do the following:

Force a single selection.

Select whether the Ctrl key is required for multiple selections.

Show the Select all option.

You can create a Hierarchy slicer by using multiple columns from one or more related tables. Non-hierarchical List slicers specifically can have a vertical (default) or horizontal orientation as well.

Additionally, a slicer that uses a numeric column can also be displayed as:

Between Applies the lower and upper limits for values, inclusive

Less than or equal to Sets the upper limit for values, inclusive

Greater than or equal to Sets the lower limit for values, inclusive

A slicer that uses a date/time column can also be displayed as:

Between Sets the start and end date/time values, inclusive.

Before Sets the end date/time value, inclusive.

After Sets the start date/time value, inclusive.

Relative Date This option can filter for one or more periods, such as days or months, before or after today’s date. It can also filter for the current period.

Relative Time Same as the Relative Date option but for time periods such as minutes or hours.

You can see examples of various slicers in Figure 3-20.

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FIGURE 3-20 Various types of slicers.

Note Ignoring Filters From Slicers

If you want some visuals to ignore a certain slicer, you can configure the interaction between them. This is covered later in this chapter in Skill 3.3: Enhance reports for usability and storytelling.

To clear a slicer selection, select the Clear selections (eraser) icon on the slicer header that becomes visible when you hover over the slicer.

It’s possible to filter the values in a slicer. For this, you need to apply a visual-level filter in the Filters pane, which is covered next.

Filters pane

Besides slicers, you can apply filters by using the Filters pane on the right-hand side of the report, which has three sections:

Filters on this visual These filters apply to a specific visual you select, and this section is visible only when you select a visual. You can use both measures and columns to filter on. Fields that are used in field wells of a visual will automatically appear here.

Filters on this page These filters apply to all visuals on the currently selected page. It’s not possible to make certain visuals ignore these filters, and you can only use columns to filter on.

Filters on all pages These filters apply to all visuals in the report across all pages. You can’t make specific visuals ignore these filters, and you can only use columns to filter on.

You can see the Filters pane in Figure 3-21.

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FIGURE 3-21 Filters pane.

Filters in the Filters pane are shown as filter cards. Cards with applied filters are shaded. In Figure 3-21, the Sales Territory filter card is shaded because it’s filtered to one value: Southwest. There are no filters on Color in Figure 3-21, so the card is not shaded.

You can add a field to the Filters pane in one of two ways:

Drag a field from the Fields pane into a section in the Filters pane.

Right-click a field in the Fields pane and select Add to filters, and then select the section you want to add the field to.

You can apply Basic filtering to any column, which corresponds to the List option in slicers. You can also select the Require single selection option if you want users to select only one value.

Depending on the data type of the field you’re adding, you’ll see different Advanced filtering options you can apply. For example, for Date/Time type columns, you have the option of filtering in a relative or a static time period, such as filtering for the last two calendar weeks. For Text type columns, you can filter when a column contains a certain value.

As with slicers, selections in a filter card can be cleared by selecting the Clear filter button that becomes visible when you hover over the filter card. Other buttons that become visible when you hover over a filter card include the following:

Lock filter This locks the filter selections, preventing report viewers from changing them. To unlock the filter, select the Filter locked button.

Hide filter This hides the filter card from report viewers.

Remove filter This removes a filter card; not available for fields that are used in visuals.

Note Locking and Hiding Filters

Locking and hiding filters works only when you’re viewing a report published to the Power BI service. We review skills related to the Power BI service in Chapter 4, “Deploy and maintain assets.”

Note Filtering Filter Cards

A common technique to show a reduced number of values in a filter card is to add the same field twice and then filter and hide one of the cards. Removing one filter card does not remove the other.

You can search for filters in the Filters pane in the same way you search in the Fields pane. You can also sort and reorder the filter cards.

You can always check which filters affect a certain visual by hovering over its filter button on the visual header, as shown in Figure 3-22.

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FIGURE 3-22 Filters and slicers affecting this visual.

Configure the report page

You can change various page properties by selecting the Format pane after making sure that no visual is selected. You will then see the following sections:

Page information You can change the page name here, as well as allow the page to be used as a tooltip or a Q&A answer, or both. If you choose to use the page as a Q&A answer, you can add alternate names for it, similar to adding synonyms for fields.

Canvas settings Here you can set the vertical alignment—Top or Middle—as well as select one of the preset sizes or specify a custom size in pixels. The preset sizes are as follows:

16:9 (1280 by 720 pixels)

4:3 (960 by 720 pixels)

Letter (816 by 1056 pixels)

Tooltip (320 by 240 pixels)

Canvas background You can select a background color and specify the transparency, or you can choose a background image, specify the transparency, and select how to scale it:

Normal Displays the image in its original size.

Fit Stretches the image to canvas size without keeping proportions.

Fill Stretches the image to touch the canvas from inside, keeping proportions.

Wallpaper This is similar to a page background, except that it also covers the area outside of the page. Wallpaper comes into play when you embed a report and its size does not match the embed area, so you’ll see the wallpaper outside of the report area.

Filter pane You can format the Filter pane here by selecting various colors and sizes.

Filter cards In addition to the Filter pane, you can format filter cards. You can format the available and applied filter cards separately.

If you usually format your pages in certain ways, you may want to format a page once and then duplicate it to create new pages instead of formatting new pages. In corporate environments, you may also want to use a selected company background image so that reports across an organization are consistent.

Use the Analyze in Excel feature

Power BI isn’t the only tool you can use to visualize data from Power BI datasets—you can use other tools, including Microsoft Excel. Once connected to a Power BI dataset in Excel, you can use PivotTables, slicers, charts, and cube formulas to analyze your data.

One way to connect Excel to a Power BI dataset is by opening a dataset in Power BI service, then selecting Analyze in Excel. This will download an Excel file connected to your Power BI dataset with a PivotTable pre-created for you. After you open the Excel file, you may have to select Enable Editing or Enable Content, or both, depending on your security settings.

After you interact with your Power BI data in Excel, you can save your workbook and share it with others. People who open the workbook will see the data as you saved it, which may not be the latest. To get the latest data, you will need to select Data > Refresh All in Excel, which may require signing in to their account.

Note Analyze In Excel and Security

Row-level security is applied when using Analyze in Excel. Furthermore, any user who wishes to refresh data in Excel will need the right permissions for the underlying dataset in Power BI service. We review permissions in Chapter 4.

Choose when to use a paginated report

Although you can print the reports you create in Power BI Desktop, they’re primarily meant to be used online in Power BI service or mobile apps. Usually, the reports are formatted to fit well on a computer or mobile phone screen, and different report pages often serve different purposes.

There are valid use cases for printing reports or sharing them outside of the Power BI service. For example, you may want to print a sales performance report that shows each region on a different page and distribute the report before a meeting. For cases like this, a paginated report would be a good fit. Paginated reports allow report designers to create “pixel-perfect” reports since report designers have full control over the layout. Paginated reports can display a full table that would require scrolling in a regular Power BI report.

Paginated reports are created by using software called Power BI Report Builder. Like normal Power BI reports, paginated reports can be created by using data from various data sources, and you can even use a Power BI service dataset as a data source.

Need More Review? Paginated Reports

Describing how to interact with paginated reports is outside the scope of this book. For more details, see “Paginated reports in the Power BI service” at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/consumer/end-user-paginated-report.

Skill 3.2: Create dashboards

For the most part of this book so far, we’ve worked on building a Power BI report from a single dataset. This in itself can be one of the limitations of a report—it can contain data only from one dataset. There may be a number of scenarios when you want to show users visuals from multiple datasets side by side. To do so, you can display them in a dashboard.

A Power BI dashboard has only one screen, and it can include visuals from a variety of reports based on data from different datasets. Dashboards can be created only in the Power BI service, and they contain features that are not available in reports, such as data alerts. The visuals within a dashboard are called tiles.

This skill covers how to:

Manage tiles on a dashboard

Configure mobile view

Use the Q&A feature

Add a Quick Insights result to a dashboard

Add a dashboard theme

Pin a live report page to a dashboard

Manage tiles on a dashboard

A dashboard tile can show a pinned visual or a variety of other content, such as text, videos, or hyperlinks, to other reports to make navigation and insights easier for users.

You can pin tiles from a variety of sources:

A report

Another dashboard

Excel workbook

Quick insights

Q&A result

Paginated report

To pin a report visual, hover over it when viewing a report and select Pin visual from the visual header. Power BI prompts you to select a dashboard to pin the visual to—you can select an existing dashboard or create a new one, as shown in Figure 3-23.

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FIGURE 3-23 Pin to dashboard options.

To pin the visual, select Pin.

Note Themes

If your report uses a theme, you’ll have the option to keep the report theme or use the dashboard theme. We cover dashboard themes later in this chapter.

In addition to pinning visuals from the dashboard, you can select Edit > Add a tile to add a tile that contains one of the following:

Web content Supports any HTML for content embedding.

Image For publicly accessible images. Access that requires authentication and uploading images aren’t supported.

Text box For entering static text, which can be formatted.

Video For videos hosted on YouTube or Vimeo. Videos can be played on the dashboard without leaving the page.

Custom Streaming Data You can add streaming data sourced from an API, Azure Stream, or PubNub.

To edit a dashboard tile, hover over it and select More options > Edit details. Figure 3-24 shows the details of a pinned tile.

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FIGURE 3-24 Tile details.

For any tile, you can set the title and subtitle. For pinned visuals, you can provide a title and choose to display the last refresh time.

Selecting a pinned tile on a dashboard can take you to the report or workbook it came from. Additionally, for most tiles, you can set a custom link, which can be any external link, a dashboard, or a report in the same workspace as the dashboard.

It’s important to understand that visuals in tiles aren’t as interactive as report visuals; although you may see tooltips, you can’t cross-filter one tile by selecting an item in another tile. Furthermore, if you make changes to a visual that you previously pinned on a dashboard, the changes aren’t going to be reflected in the corresponding dashboard tile, and you’ll need to pin the visuals again to update the tile.

To have interactivity in a tile, you must pin a live report page, which is covered later in this chapter.

Configure mobile view

A Power BI report has a desktop and mobile layout to cater for different screen sizes. Similarly, a dashboard has a web and a mobile layout (also known as a phone view). Figure 3-25 shows an example of a dashboard in web view.

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FIGURE 3-25 Dashboard in web view.

Because this view may not work well on a phone, you can create a mobile layout to optimize the consumption on a mobile device if you have edit rights to a dashboard. Note that the web view doesn’t change when you create a mobile view. To start creating a mobile layout, select Edit > Mobile layout. Figure 3-26 shows the mobile layout editor.

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FIGURE 3-26 Dashboard mobile layout editor.

In the mobile layout editor, you can reorder tiles by dragging them around the screen as well as resize tiles by dragging from the lower-right corner. You can also hide a tile from the mobile layout by hovering over a tile and selecting Hide tile. To add back a tile from the Unpinned tiles pane, hover over a tile and select Add tile.

If your dashboard contains several tiles, you may want to show only a few key tiles for users to refer to quickly. You may want to hide all tiles first by selecting Unpin all tiles in the top menu; then you can readd the desired tiles one by one. To reset the mobile layout to its original state, select Reset tiles.

To go back to the web view, select Web layout from the Mobile layout list in the upper-right corner.

Use the Q&A feature

As you saw in Chapter 2, “Model the data,” Power BI has a feature called Q&A, which allows you to ask questions about your data by using natural language queries. Q&A is available in both reports and dashboards.

To start using Q&A in a dashboard, select Ask a question about your data on the dashboard and enter a question. Figure 3-27 shows a sample Q&A result. From there, you can go back to the dashboard by selecting Exit Q&A, or you can save the result to the dashboard by selecting Pin visual.

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FIGURE 3-27 Sample Q&A result.

If you want to edit a Q&A result that you pinned, select the tile, change the question, and pin the new result.

Note Improving Q&A Results

If you want to improve the results of Q&A, you’ll need to do it in the dataset. Refer to Skill 2.2: “Develop a data model” for more information.

Add a Quick Insights result to a dashboard

If you aren’t sure what to show in your reports or you want to check if you may have missed some insights, you can use the Quick Insights feature in the Power BI service. Power BI will try to build some interesting visualizations from your data automatically, and you can then pin a visual you like to a dashboard.

You can run Quick Insights on a dataset in the following way:

In the Power BI service, go to the workspace that contains the dataset you want to get Quick Insights from.

Next to the dataset, select More options > Get quick insights. If you’ve used the feature on the dataset before, you’ll see the View insights option.

Wait for the algorithms to finish running and select View insights.

An example of Quick Insights is shown in Figure 3-28.

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FIGURE 3-28 Quick Insights.

Each tile is accompanied by commentary to help you make sense of data. If you like a visualization, you can pin it to a dashboard by selecting Pin visual, though the commentary won’t be saved.

Some visualizations may be insightful, whereas others may be completely meaningless. If you want to optimize your dataset for Quick Insights, you should hide fields with no business meaning, such as keys, so that Quick Insights doesn’t include them. You should also hide fields that contain duplicate information, such as product codes and product names, because duplicate information may lead to repetitive insights.

When you hover over a Quick Insights result, you can select Focus mode to apply filters or find related insights by selecting Get Insights. Getting Quick Insights from Quick Insights results is called scoped insights. Figure 3-29 shows an example of related insights.

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FIGURE 3-29 Scoped insights.

From here, you can review the related insights and pin a visual you find useful. To go back to the initial Quick Insights results, select Exit Focus mode.

Add a dashboard theme

You can apply a theme to a dashboard similar to how you apply a theme to a report. This technique can be especially beneficial if you want to apply a uniform theme to a dashboard that has visuals from reports with different themes.

To configure the dashboard theme, select Edit > Dashboard theme. From the dropdown list, select a preconfigured theme, or you can create a custom theme. For example, Figure 3-30 shows the color-blind friendly theme.

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FIGURE 3-30 Dashboard theme options.

If you select Custom from the dropdown list, you can set the background image and color, as well as tile background, font color, and opacity, as shown in Figure 3-31.

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FIGURE 3-31 Custom theme options.

To set a background image, you must provide a publicly accessible URL, because uploading images isn’t supported.

You can download the theme you create by selecting Download JSON theme.

To add a more sophisticated theme, you can upload your own JSON theme by selecting Upload JSON theme.

Note JSON Themes

The structure of a dashboard JSON theme is the same as that of a report theme. The technical details of JSON theme files are out of the scope of this book.

You can download various themes from the Power BI Themes Gallery at https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Themes-Gallery/bd-p/ThemesGallery.

Pin a live report page to a dashboard

There are a couple of limitations of pinned visuals: they can’t cross-filter and interact with each other, and you can pin only one visual at a time.

Pinning a live report page to a dashboard overcomes both limitations. You can simultaneously pin multiple visuals on a dashboard, and the visuals then become interactive.

To pin a live page to a dashboard, go to the desired report page in the Power BI service and select Pin to a dashboard from the top menu. Power BI asks you to select a dashboard to pin the page to, as shown in Figure 3-32.

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FIGURE 3-32 Pin live page.

Selecting Pin live will pin the report page to a dashboard as a tile. You can then edit, move, and resize the tile as needed. Note that visuals within the tile are interactive; as with reports, you can use slicers and filter visuals by selecting other visuals.

Skill 3.3: Enhance reports for usability and storytelling

Power BI reports can be made more user-friendly by adding bookmarks, tooltips, navigation, and interactivity, all of which we review in this section. Taking time to consider usability of your reports when gathering feedback from users can help differentiate between good and great dashboards.

There are several ways to make insights clearer, such as sorting visuals, configuring the interactions between visuals, and setting up drill-through and drilldown.

As you saw with dashboards, reports can also be designed for mobile devices, and we finish the chapter by showing how you can adjust reports for consumption on the go.

This skill covers how to:

Configure bookmarks

Create custom tooltips

Edit and configure interactions between visuals

Configure navigation for a report

Apply sorting

Configure sync slicers

Group and layer visuals by using the Selection pane

Drill down into data using interactive visuals

Export report data

Design reports for mobile devices

Note Companion File

You can see the examples from this section in the 3.3 Enhance.pbix file in the companion files folder.

Configure bookmarks

By using bookmarks in Power BI, you can create compelling data stories and enhance the user experience by creating a step-by-step presentation of key insights, or by hiding and showing certain visuals through the click of a button.

Though one of the defining features of Power BI is its interactivity, in some cases you may prefer to draw the attention of users to specific aspects of your reports. For example, you might want to highlight a certain visual with applied filters that show an interesting insight.

Bookmarks in Power BI allow you to do exactly that: they let you save the states of your pages and switch between them in presentation mode or by linking to them. Bookmarks can save the following:

Filters, including cross-filtering and selections in slicers

Current page

Objects visibility

Sort order

Drill-down level

To create a bookmark, open the Bookmarks pane by selecting View > Bookmarks. Once you apply filters or otherwise achieve the desired state of the page you are on, select Add in the Bookmarks pane. The bookmark will then appear in the Bookmarks pane with a default name of Bookmark 1 or similar. You can rename a bookmark by double-clicking it or by selecting More options (the ellipsis next to a bookmark) and selecting Rename. The More options menu also contains the following items:

Update If you decide to change the state of a bookmark, you can update an existing bookmark instead of creating a new one.

Delete This option deletes the bookmark.

Group You can group bookmarks to tidy up the Bookmarks pane—for example, by moving bookmarks from each page into a separate group. This feature is especially useful when you have many bookmarks.

Data This option determines whether the filter, sort, and drill state of the page is saved in the bookmark. By default, this option is selected. Deselecting it can be useful when you only want to save the visibility of visuals, which is controlled by the Display option.

Display This option, which is selected by default, determines whether the bookmark saves the visibility of visuals. Clearing the selection can be useful when you only want to change filters with your bookmark without changing the visibility of visuals.

Current page By default, this option is selected; it determines whether selecting the bookmark takes you to the page where it was created. Deselecting the option can be useful when you want to change a report-level filter without switching to a different page.

All visuals This option determines whether the bookmark is applied to all visuals or selected visuals only. By default, a bookmark is applied to all visuals.

Selected visuals You can create a bookmark and only apply it to the visuals that were selected at the time you created the bookmark. You can select visuals in the canvas pane or in the Selection pane. It is important to note that you cannot use the Selected visuals option to bookmarks that have already been created.

The visibility of visuals, captured by the Display option of bookmarks, can be configured in the Selection pane, which we review later in this chapter.

In a bookmark, you can highlight a single visual by selecting More options (the ellipsis in the visual header) and selecting Spotlight. After you do this, the visual will be highlighted with a shade around it, and the rest of the report canvas will be tinted. You can see this effect in Figure 3-33.

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FIGURE 3-33 A visual in spotlight.

At this stage, you can create a bookmark by selecting Add in the Bookmarks pane. If you created one bookmark before, the new bookmark would be called Bookmark 2, and so on.

To undo the Spotlight effect, you can select any other area on the report canvas or select another visual in the Selection pane.

After you have created some bookmarks, you can change their order by dragging and dropping them in the Bookmarks pane. When creating multiple bookmarks, make sure that you name each bookmark appropriately and group them where relevant. Note that the Bookmarks pane contains bookmarks from the whole report, not just the current page.

You can navigate between bookmarks by selecting them in the Bookmarks pane, or you can select the View button, which will replace the pages bar at the bottom with the bookmark title bar. Ideally, the order of bookmarks should make sense because some users may navigate the bookmarks by using their keyboard.

When you are in the View mode, also known as presentation mode, you can close or collapse all panes to have more room for your report. Figure 3-34 shows the bookmark title bar in the View mode.

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FIGURE 3-34 View mode.

To exit from the View mode, select Exit in the Bookmarks pane, or select Close (the cross icon) in the bookmark title bar.

You can also use bookmarks for navigation within a report. Configuring navigation for a report is reviewed later in this chapter.

Create custom tooltips

Most Power BI visuals have default tooltips that show the values for a selected data point. In addition to this, Power BI allows you to set custom tooltips for each visual, which can be useful to provide additional context for a data point and allow you to use your page real estate more effectively.

Custom tooltips are report pages that you configure to show instead of the default tooltips. They will then dynamically filter to show data relevant to the data point you have hovered over.

Before you can set custom tooltips, you must create a tooltip page in the following way:

In the Report view, create a new report page by selecting New page (the plus sign) on the page navigation bar.

Right-click the new page on the navigation bar and select Rename Page.

Enter a new name, such as Trend tooltip, and press Enter.

Go to the Format pane of the page, expand Page information, and switch the Allow use as tooltip toggle to On.

Still in the Format pane, expand Canvas settings and select Tooltip from the Type dropdown list. You can also set a custom page size.

Add a visual you want to show in the tooltip. In the Wide World Importers example, you can add a line chart that shows Profit by Year.

Right-click the Trend tooltip page in the page navigation bar and select Hide Page.

You now have a tooltip page, as shown in Figure 3-35.

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FIGURE 3-35 Trend tooltip.

You can now assign the custom tooltip to a visual of your choice by performing the following steps:

On a different page, create a bar chart that shows Profit by Employee.

In the Format pane for the new visual, expand General > Tooltips.

Ensure Report page is selected from the Type dropdown list.

Select Trend tooltip from the Page dropdown list.

At this stage, you can hover over a bar to see the custom tooltip from the Trend tooltip page. Figure 3-36 shows the custom tooltip when you hover over the bar of Anthony Grosse.

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FIGURE 3-36 Trend tooltip shown as report page tooltip.

Note that the tooltip shows the Trend tooltip page that is filtered to show data only for Anthony Grosse.

When creating a tooltip page, you don’t have to show the same values in the tooltip as you show in the main visual—the tooltip can contain any arbitrary information. You can also use any page size for the tooltip page, and you can have more than one visual on it, too. Text may become harder to read when in a tooltip, so be conscious about user experience when creating tooltips.

Edit and configure interactions between visuals

One of the defining features of Power BI is the interaction of visuals with each other. For example, you can select an item in a bar chart, and it will cross-highlight a column chart. This behavior is illustrated in Figure 3-37.

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FIGURE 3-37 Cross-highlighting in action.

In Figure 3-37, we selected a bar that displays Profit for Tailspin Toys. The other bars in this graph then became dimmed, and portions of columns in the other visual became highlighted. These highlighted portions represent Quantity values in each Color that relate to Tailspin Toys. This behavior is called cross-highlighting: selecting a data point in a visual will highlight portions of other visuals.

To change this behavior, you can select the bar chart, after which the Format ribbon becomes visible. Select Format > Edit interactions. If you have more charts on the page, you’ll see new buttons appear in the top-right corner of other charts:

Filter Only shows values that relate to the selected data point

Highlight Highlights portions of visuals that relate to the selected data point

None Ignores any selections

You can see the interaction buttons and the effect of each interaction option in Figure 3-38.

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FIGURE 3-38 Three interaction options.

To hide the interaction buttons, select Format > Edit interactions again.

Not every visual type has all three interaction options; some only have two, such as Filter and None. For example, it is not possible to highlight part of a slicer or a card. In these cases, the default behavior will be Filter instead of Highlight.

Note Default Interaction

Highlight is the default interaction, which you can change to Filter in report settings: File > Options and settings > Options > Current file > Report settings > Change default visual interaction from cross highlighting to cross filtering.

Configure navigation for a report

Besides using the page bar for navigation in the report, you can configure page or bookmark navigators, which work similarly to buttons or slicers. To add a page or button navigator to the canvas, select Insert > Buttons > Navigator > Page navigator or Bookmark navigator.

If we used the same bookmarks as earlier in this section, our bookmark navigator would look like Figure 3-39.

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FIGURE 3-39 Bookmark navigator.

The page or bookmark navigator will update as you add pages or bookmarks, respectively.

Additionally, you can configure some visualization items, such as buttons, to link to specific pages or bookmarks by performing the following steps:

Select an existing visualization item or insert a new one from the Insert ribbon.

With the item selected, in the Format pane set the Action toggle to On.

Expand the Action section.

Select Page navigation or Bookmark from the Type list to go to a page or bookmark, respectively. Depending on your selection, the Destination or Bookmark list will then appear in the Action section.

Select the desired page or bookmark from the Destination or Bookmark list, respectively.

At this stage, if you hold the Ctrl key on your keyboard and select the visualization item, you will be taken to the page or bookmark you linked the item to. You can create more links to other pages or bookmarks for more interactive navigation using the same technique.

Note Power BI Service

When you are in reading view in the Power BI service, you do not need to hold the Ctrl key for navigation by using buttons, shapes, or images.

Apply sorting

When you create a visual, Power BI will try to sort the data in the most appropriate way. For example, column charts are usually sorted in descending order of values. You can apply different sorting according to your business requirements.

To change sorting of a visual, hover over it, select More options > Sort by, and select the field you want to sort by. To sort in descending or ascending order, hover over the visual and select More options > Sort descending or Sort ascending, respectively.

The Table visual supports sorting by multiple columns at the same time. In the Wide World Importers example, you can sort a table by two columns in the following way:

Create a table with the following fields:

Year from the Date table (set summarization to Don’t summarize)

Employee from the Employee table

Profit from the Sale table (set summarization to Sum)

In the visual, select the header of the Year column. Ensure that the arrow in the header points up for ascending order. If it points down, select the header again.

Press and hold the Shift key.

Select the header of the Profit column. Ensure that the arrow in the header points down for descending order. If it points up, select the header again.

The result should look like Figure 3-40.

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FIGURE 3-40 Table sorted by two fields.

Note Sort By Column

As discussed in Skill 2.1: Design a data model, you can also apply different sorting to columns in the data model—this feature is called Sort by column. When you use a sorted column on an axis in a visual, Power BI will usually sort the visual by this column instead of sorting by values.

Configure sync slicers

Report-level filters, which we reviewed earlier in this chapter, can be useful when a filter is applicable to every page, whereas page-level filters are appropriate for page-specific filters. Sometimes there are filters that apply to more than one page, but not to all pages. Although the Filters pane does not offer a way to synchronize filters between only some pages, you can sync slicers between pages to address this scenario.

When you sync slicers, selections on one page are reflected on another page or pages. One way to synchronize slicers between pages is by copying a slicer on a different page as follows:

Select a slicer and press Ctrl+C.

Go to a different report page and press Ctrl+V.

When prompted as shown in Figure 3-41, select Sync.

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FIGURE 3-41 Sync visuals.

Alternatively, you can select View > Sync slicers and the slicer you want to sync, as shown in Figure 3-42.

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FIGURE 3-42 Sync slicers pane.

If you don’t have this slicer on other pages, you can select Add and sync with all pages or you can select specific pages to add the slicer to. Selecting a check box under the Sync column adds the slicer; selecting a check box under the Visible column also makes it visible.

Note Hidden Slicers

If you add a slicer without making it visible, it will be hidden, and it will still affect the visuals on the page. Visual visibility is configured in the Selection pane, reviewed in the next section.

Typically, you sync slicers that use the same columns. It’s also possible to sync slicers that are based on different columns by using sync groups. For this, in Advanced options of Sync slicers, you need to enter the same group name for each slicer, and they’ll sync even if they’re based on different columns, like Invoice Date and Delivery Date.

Finally, you can select Sync field changes to other slicers if you want slicers to be updated in case you change a column in one of them. For example, if you have a slicer on Color, and later you swap the field for Month, then synced slicers will all be updated to have Month as a column. Similarly, selecting Sync field changes to other slicers will update a slicer in case you apply a visual-level filter to one of the synced slicers.

Group and layer visuals by using the Selection pane

The Selection pane allows you to control the visibility of visuals. To open the pane, select View > Selection. In the pane, you’ll see a list of visuals on the current page, which will all be visible by default.

The default names of the visuals correspond to their titles, and if a visual has no title, the visual will have the same name as the chart type. You will also see all visuals that have been hidden in the same pane. As a result, you may see multiple visuals with the same name. In this case, you can give your visuals meaningful names by adding appropriate titles.

To rename a visual in the Selection pane, double-click the visual in the Selection pane and enter a new name. Note that if your visual has a visible title, the title will be updated after you rename the visual in the Selection pane.

The Selection pane allows you to hide visuals by selecting Hide this visual (the eye icon) next to a visual. Note that hiding a visual does not remove it from the page; instead, the visual becomes invisible, but it is still part of the page. One of the implications of this is that hidden slicers can still filter other visuals. However, hidden visuals aren’t evaluated, which results in improved performance. You can see the Layer order section of the Selection pane with one visual hidden in Figure 3-43.

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FIGURE 3-43 Selection pane.

In the Selection pane, you can show or hide all visuals at once by selecting Show or Hide, respectively. You can change the layer order of visuals, also known as z-index or z-order, by selecting a visual and then the up or down arrows at the top of the pane. The layer order of a visual determines which visual gets selected when you click in an area where two visuals overlap.

You can also group, ungroup, and merge groups within the Selection pane. Grouping visuals is useful for some scenarios, such as hiding visuals for bookmarks, moving around the report, or copying a number of visuals to other pages. Merging allows you to merge several groups into a single group without creating nested groups. To group visuals, you need to perform the following actions:

Select several visuals by holding the Ctrl key.

Right-click one of the selected visuals.

Select Group > Group.

Ungrouping and merging are performed in a similar way. You can also rename groups in the same way as you rename a visual.

Exam Tip

You should know the difference between the layer order and tab order, and how each of them contributes to the accessibility of a report.

Drill down into data using interactive visuals

Many visuals allow you to explore data interactively when you use several levels of fields—for example, Year, Quarter, and Month columns on the x-axis in a line chart. Whether you use a hierarchy defined in the data model or several individual columns together has no difference. When you right-click a data point in a visual that uses a hierarchy, depending on the current hierarchy level, you may see the following extra options:

Drill down Goes to the next level of the hierarchy within the selected point. For example, drilling down to Quarter from Year 2020 will show quarters for the year 2020 only.

Show next level Goes to the next level with no filter on the previous level. For example, selecting this option to go from Year to Quarter will show all quarters for all years without showing years.

Expand to next level This option combines the current and next levels. For example, when you select this option to go from Year to Quarter, you’ll see quarters for each year separately.

Drill up Goes back up one level.

When a visual uses a hierarchy, the visual header will have extra buttons that correspond to these options. Figure 3-44 shows the buttons and the effect of each drill-down option.

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FIGURE 3-44 Visual header extra buttons and various drill-down effects.

By default, when you drill down, the corresponding filters may be applied to other visuals on the page. To disable this behavior, perform the following steps:

Select a visual that performs drill-down.

Select the Format ribbon.

Select Selected visual from the Apply drill down filters to list.

Export report data

Power BI allows you to export data from each visual individually. To export data from a visual, follow these steps:

Hover over the visual you want to export data from.

In the visual header, select More options > Export data.

Select the folder you want to export data to.

Enter a new file name and select Save.

This saves data to a CSV file that you can further manipulate in Excel, for example.

Note Export Data Format

Power BI exports data in tabular format. The format of the exported data may not always match the visual representation, which is particularly relevant for the Matrix visual since column headers may become rows.

Design reports for mobile devices

We reviewed mobile views for dashboards earlier in the chapter. Similar to how you work with dashboards, you can create separate views of your report to optimize the experience for smaller screens. In this section, we review mobile views of reports.

To start creating a mobile view for a page, select View > Mobile layout. This opens the mobile layout editor, as shown in Figure 3-45.

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FIGURE 3-45 Mobile layout.

The experience of creating mobile layouts for report pages is similar to that of creating a mobile view of a dashboard. Because not all visuals may be equally important, you can select which visuals appear on mobile view.

To add a visual to the canvas, drag it from the Page visuals pane onto the canvas. You can then move around and resize the visual as needed. You can also remove a visual from the canvas by selecting the cross icon in the upper-right corner of the visual.

To remove all visuals from the canvas, select Remove all visualizations (the eraser icon) in the Visualizations pane.

When you design a mobile view for a page, the original view remains untouched. To exit from the mobile layout editor, select View > Mobile layout.

If you don’t design a mobile layout, the report will automatically appear horizontally in the mobile app.

Skill 3.4: Identify patterns and trends

When you visualize data, you’ll often need to apply some enhancements to your visuals or reports to highlight insights in your data. You can enhance your analysis by employing advanced algorithms built into Power BI. In this section, we review the skills necessary to identify the outliers in your data, group, bin, and cluster data. We also explore using AI visuals and the Analytics pane.

This skill covers how to:

Use the Analyze feature in Power BI

Identify outliers

Choose between continuous and categorical axes

Use groupings, binnings, and clustering

Use AI visuals

Use the Forecast feature

Create reference lines by using the Analytics pane

Note Companion File

You can find the examples from this section in the 3.4 Analyze.pbix file in the companion files folder.

Use the Analyze feature in Power BI

When looking at your data, you may want to analyze the trends and find patterns in your data. For example, you may want to know what caused a year-on-year increase in profit, for which you can use the Analyze feature in Power BI.

For example, if you have a line chart that shows profit by year, you can right-click a data point and select Analyze > Explain the increase or Explain the decrease, depending on the direction of the change. Power BI will then prepare several charts and some commentary that may help you explain the difference, as shown in Figure 3-46.

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FIGURE 3-46 Difference analysis.

When viewing the selection of the charts prepared by the Analyze feature, you can change the types of charts shown by selecting a corresponding icon below a chart. If you decide that a particular graph is useful, you can add it to your report page by selecting Add to page (the plus button) in the upper-right corner.

Identify outliers

When a data point is not in the expected range, it’s called an outlier. Identifying outliers can be useful because they may happen for a variety of reasons, which you may often want to investigate. For example, a negative product unit price may mean a product return, or it may mean there’s a bug in the transactional database, which must be reported and corrected as soon as possible.

When detecting outliers, you need to decide on the business logic behind the outlier—that is, what an outlier would constitute in your case. The logic will allow you to divide all data points into two groups—outliers and data points in the expected range.

You can detect outliers in a variety of ways. Besides data profiling and Quick Insights, which we reviewed earlier in the book, one of the most useful charts for detecting data anomalies is the scatter chart.

One way to use the scatter chart to identify outliers is to use the Details, X Axis, and Y Axis field wells. For example, the scatter chart in Figure 3-47 uses the Wide World Importers data and has Stock Item on Details, Quantity on X Axis, and Profit on Y Axis.

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FIGURE 3-47 Quantity and Profit by Stock Item.

You can immediately see some points standing out. You can hover over the points you’re interested in to get more details and investigate further by cross-filtering other visuals or performing drill-down.

Choose between continuous and categorical axes

When using numeric or date/time columns on an axis, you may be able to set the type to Continuous or Categorical in the axis format options of a visual. Text and logical columns can only be categorical.

The Continuous axis type is useful when there are many values in a column and showing them all at once would make the visual too crowded. In this case, you can use a continuous axis, which will show fewer axis labels. In Figure 3-48, you can see Profit by Unit Price with the continuous and categorical axes juxtaposed.

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FIGURE 3-48 Profit by Unit Price as column chart with a continuous and a categorical axis.

Note the following:

The continuous axis shows axis labels spaced evenly, even if some axis values don’t exist. If there are no values for some axis values, there are going to be gaps. You can select a linear or logarithmic scale type. You cannot sort the axis by data values, and the frequency of axis labels is automatic.

The categorical axis only shows the existing axis values. You can sort the axis by the axis values or data values.

When you use more than one hierarchy level on an axis, depending on the visual, in most cases you can only use a categorical axis, with axis labels concatenated by default. If you sort the axis by the axis values, then you also have an option to not concatenate the labels. Figure 3-49 shows a categorical axis with labels concatenated and displayed in a hierarchical manner.

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FIGURE 3-49 Axis labels.

Use groupings, binnings, and clustering

In addition to data clustering, you can perform grouping and binning of columns in Power BI to bring together data with business logic and higher-level data analysis.

Grouping

Grouping allows you to manually group values in a column by leveraging a user interface instead of having to write DAX. For instance, you can group Sales Territory values into regions by following these steps:

In the Fields pane, right-click the Sales Territory column in the City table and select New group.

In the Name text box, enter Sales Region.

Holding the Ctrl key, select Southeast and Southwest, and select Group.

Enter South as the new group name.

Repeat steps 3 and 4 for the following two groups:

West—Far West, Plains, and Rocky Mountain

East—Great Lakes, Mideast, and New England

Select the Include Other group option. At this stage, the configuration should look like Figure 3-50.

[picture]

FIGURE 3-50 Sales Region group.

Select OK.

After you finish, Power BI creates a new column in the City table that you can use in visualizations and calculations, if needed. For example, you can use the new Sales Region column as the legend in a Filled map, as shown in Figure 3-51.

[picture]

FIGURE 3-51 Sales Region on a map.

You can also create groups by selecting data points in a visual. For example, let’s say you have a scatter chart like the one shown in Figure 3-47. You can group values as follows:

Holding the Ctrl key, select a few data points on the scatter chart.

Right-click one of the selected data points.

Select Group data.

This will create a column with two data groups that you can use as the chart legend.

The default group names are often not very user-friendly; to edit a group, right-click the column in the Fields pane and select Edit groups.

Binning

When you work with categorical values, you can only create groups of type List. When you work with numeric or date/time columns, you can also create bins, which may be more appropriate when there are too many values to group manually.

Binning splits numeric and date/time data into groups of equal size. You can specify the number or size of bins. The default size or count is calculated automatically.

In the Wide World Importers example, you can bin the Profit column in the following way:

Right-click the Profit column in the Fields pane and select New group.

Ensure Bin is selected in the Group type list.

Select Number of bins from the Bin type list.

Enter 10 as Bin count.

Select OK.

This creates the Profit (bins) column, which you can use in a column chart to create a histogram, as shown in Figure 3-52. The histogram uses the count of Sale rows as values.

[picture]

FIGURE 3-52 Profit histogram.

Sale Rows = COUNTROWS(Sale)

You can edit bins by right-clicking the corresponding column in the Fields pane and selecting Edit groups. If you want to change the group type from Bin to List, you’ll need to re-create the group.

Clustering

The scatter chart can also be used to cluster data points, which can often group some outliers together. You can perform clustering in a scatter chart as follows:

Hover over a scatter chart and select More options > Automatically find clusters. Note that this option will be disabled if you use a field in the Legend field well.

If desired, change the name, description, and number of clusters.

Select OK.

Once finished, you’ll see a new field in your model and the Legend field well. In the Wide World Importers example, if you wanted to see five clusters, you’d see the Stock Item (clusters) shown in Figure 3-53.

[picture]

FIGURE 3-53 Stock Item clusters.

You can now see two clusters of outliers: Cluster2 has outliers in terms of Quantity, whereas Cluster5 has outliers in terms of Profit. Note that you can use the new Stock Item (clusters) field in other visuals and filters.

If you want to edit the clusters, right-click the clusters field in the Fields pane and select Edit clusters. A quick way to change a cluster name is by double-clicking it to highlight it and typing the new name.

Use AI visuals

Some visuals in Power BI can leverage AI, allowing you to apply advanced analysis to your data. We’ve already covered the Q&A visual in Chapter 2, “Model the data.” In this section, we cover the Key influencers and Decomposition tree visuals.

Key influencers

The Key influencers visual helps you understand the variables that drive a metric. For example, you may want to understand what influences profit to increase, and you may be looking at factors such as location, buying package, and time of the year. The Key influencers visual will analyze the data you provide and rank each factor in terms of importance.

The Key influencers visual has the following field wells:

Analyze The metric you want to analyze. It can be continuous or categorical.

Explain by The factors you want to check in terms of influence.

Expand by When analyzing a measure or a summarized field, you can increase the detail level without considering these factors as influencers.

In the Wide World Importers example, you can build a Key influencers visual as follows:

Select the Key influencers visual from the Visualizations pane.

Add Profit from the Sale table to the Analyze field well and ensure that summarization is set to Sum.

Add the following fields to the Explain by field well:

State Province from the City table

Buying Group from the Customer table

Buying Package from the Stock Item table

Add Year and Month from the Date table to the Expand by field well.

The result is shown in Figure 3-54.

[picture]

FIGURE 3-54 Key influencers.

You can select each bubble to see how it influences Profit. For instance, the right half of Figure 3-54 shows that when Buying Package is Each, Profit is more likely to increase. Also note that Buying Group is not a major influence on Profit, since it’s not shown in the visual.

Whereas the Key influencers tab in the Key influencers visual shows how each factor individually affects a metric, the Top segments tab shows how a combination of factors influences a measure. The Top segments tab is shown in Figure 3-55.

[picture]

FIGURE 3-55 Top segments.

Below each segment, you can see the average profit in the segment and the population count, or the number of records you have for the segment. Note that in this case average does not mean the average of the Profit column but instead the average of the aggregated Profit value, which in this case is sum.

You can select a segment to see what it consists of and how it compares to the overall population. Figure 3-56 shows an example of a segment.

[picture]

FIGURE 3-56 Top segment example.

The Key influencers visual is appropriate to use when you want to find out the most important factors that affect a metric you select. You can also compare the relative significance of each factor.

Decomposition tree

The Decomposition tree allows you to perform exploratory analysis by successively breaking down a measure by multiple dimensions. In the process, you can select a dimension you want to slice by, or you can make the visual find the split that will provide the highest or lowest value among all selected dimensions.

The visual has the following field wells:

Analyze The measure or aggregated field you want to analyze

Explain by The dimensions you want to analyze by

Tooltips The measures or aggregated fields you want to show when hovering over a bar

Let’s say Wide World Importers is interested in understanding what makes up the total Profit figure in terms of Sales Territory, Customer, Stock Item, and Selling Package. You can see the Decomposition tree visual that can be used for these purposes in Figure 3-57.

[picture]

FIGURE 3-57 Decomposition tree.

When you select the + sign next to a bar, you can select one of the fields from the Explain by field well, or you can find the highest or lowest value among the remaining dimensions. The visual can be compared to a bar chart that offers a user-friendlier way to drill down, and it uses AI to find high and low values in data.

The Decomposition tree is a great choice when you want to perform root cause analysis or ad hoc exploration.

Exam Tip

You should know when the AI visuals in Power BI—Q&A, Key influencers, and Decomposition tree—are appropriate to use depending on the problem at hand. For Q&A, refer to Skill 2.2: Develop a data model.

Use the Forecast feature

For time-series data, you can use the Forecast feature to estimate future values. The Forecast feature is available only for line charts. To add a forecast line, perform the following steps:

Select your line chart.

Open the Analytics pane in the Visualizations pane.

Switch the Forecast toggle to On.

Expand the Forecast section and configure and format as needed.

For example, Figure 3-58 shows a line chart with a forecast line for the next year with monthly seasonality and 75 percent confidence interval, ignoring the last month. When you hover over a forecast line, you’ll see the confidence interval upper and lower bound values in addition to the forecast value.

[picture]

FIGURE 3-58 Forecast line.

To remove the forecast from your line chart, switch its toggle in the Analytics pane to Off.

Create reference lines by using the Analytics pane

Reference lines can be a useful addition to charts to make it easier for users to draw insights. In Power BI, you can add one or more reference lines to a visual from the Analytics pane inside the Visualizations pane. The Analytics pane shows the number of reference lines of each type that were added to a visual.

Depending on the visual and data types used in the visual, you may be able to add some of the following reference lines:

Trend line Fitted straight trend line

X-axis constant line Static vertical line

Y-axis constant line Static horizontal line

Min line Dynamic minimum line

Max line Dynamic maximum line

Average line Dynamic average (mean) line

Median line Dynamic median line

Percentile line Dynamic line for which you need to enter the percentile value

Symmetry shading Shades the regions across the symmetry line

Ratio line Ratio of total for all points of Y values over X values

You can add a new reference line to a visual in the following way:

Select a visual.

Select the Analytics pane.

Expand the relevant section of the Analytics pane.

Select Add or switch the toggle to On as needed.

Depending on the reference line type, you may want to configure it further. You can rename a reference line by double-clicking its name, which can be useful in case you want to display its name as a data label.

For example, Figure 3-59 shows a line chart with a trend and max lines.

[picture]

FIGURE 3-59 Profit trend and max lines.

To remove a reference line from a visual, select the cross icon next to its name in the Analytics pane or switch its toggle to Off, depending on the line type.

Chapter summary

There are multiple ways to add a visual to a report page, one of which is to select a visual icon from the Visualizations pane. Besides visuals, you can add other elements from the Insert ribbon: Text box, Buttons, Shapes, and Image. You can set various actions for these elements such as bookmarks, page navigation, or hyperlinks.

There are a number of built-in standard visuals that you can choose to best represent data:

To compare values across categories, use a bar or column chart.

To compare values across time, use a line or area chart.

When plotting values of different scales, such as units and percentages, use a combo chart or a line chart with dual y-axes.

If you want to show changes in ranking across time, the ribbon chart is appropriate.

The waterfall chart can be suitable to show the changes in categories between time periods.

The scatter plot can show the relationship between two variables, and it can show dynamics across time.

The pie, donut, and treemap charts show the relationships of parts to the whole.

The gauge, card, multirow card, and KPI visuals can be used to show key metrics by themselves or compared to targets.

Map visuals can be used to show spatial data.

In addition to built-in visuals, Power BI supports visuals built by using Power BI SDK, also known as custom visuals. They can be imported from files or AppSource.

Power BI visuals can be formatted in different ways in the Format pane. Some formatting options can be tied to measures—this is known as expression-based or conditional formatting.

You can save time and apply consistent formatting across your report by using a report theme.

To apply filters to visuals, you can use slicers, the Filters pane, or both. Slicers can be used to filter by a single column, or you can build hierarchical slicers. Filters in the Filters pane can be applied to a visual, a page, or the whole report.

For each page, you can configure its size, background, alignment, and wallpaper, as well as format the Filters pane. You can also set a page to be a tooltip page or a Q&A result.

By using Analyze in Excel, you can visualize your data in Microsoft Excel charts, as well as built PivotTables based on data from your Power BI datasets.

Paginated reports in Power BI are a great fit for reports meant to be printed and shared offline.

A dashboard can have pinned visuals from a variety of sources, including Power BI reports. Additionally, you can add tiles that aren’t backed by datasets—for example, videos and web content.

Pinned visuals become dashboard tiles that aren’t fully interactive. To have visuals interact with each other, you can pin a live report page to a dashboard.

Dashboards support the Q&A feature that is also available in reports. Q&A results can be pinned to dashboards.

You can add a theme to a dashboard by selecting one of the preset themes or defining your own. Alternatively, you can upload a JSON theme, which uses the same format as report themes.

Dashboards can have mobile views to optimize the viewing experience for different screen sizes. You can reorder, resize, and hide tiles when creating a mobile view, and the web view remains intact.

Bookmarks can help create data stories or highlight specific insights in the report. A bookmark can be configured to save the state of a page, including filters and the visibility of visuals.

You can override the standard tooltips by configuring a page tooltip for a visual.

Selecting a data point on a visual can cross-highlight, cross-filter, or have no effect on other visuals on the same page, depending on how you configure visual interactions.

In addition to using the page navigation bar, you can employ page and bookmark navigators, as well as buttons to configure navigation for a report by using the Page navigation or Bookmark actions.

Most visuals can be sorted by the fields they use in ascending or descending order. The Table visual supports sorting by multiple fields simultaneously by holding the Shift key.

Sync slicers is useful when you want to synchronize filters between several but not all pages of a report. You can also sync filters between different fields by using the advanced options of Sync slicers.

In the Selection pane, you can hide, rename, and group visuals together. You can also change the layer and tab order of visuals or grouped visuals.

When a visual uses a hierarchy, you can drill down to explore the data points of the visual in more detail.

Power BI reports can be optimized for smaller screens by configuring mobile layouts.

The Analyze feature can explain the differences between values from a chart.

You can identify outliers—unexpected data points—by using data profiling, Quick Insights, and visuals such as scatter charts, which also allow you to cluster values and group outliers together.

A continuous axis shows axis labels evenly even if there’s no data, whereas a categorical axis only shows axis labels that exist in your data.

To enhance your data model, you can group and bin your data by leveraging the Data groups feature in the Power BI Desktop user interface. You can create a group of type List by visually selecting a few data points, or you can create a new data group by manually selecting members for each new group from a list of values. For numerical and date/time columns, you can create bins, which evenly divide values into groups based on ranges. The ranges can be determined by the size of each group or by the number of groups.

The Key influencers visual can help you understand what makes a certain metric go up or down or belong to a certain category. The Decomposition tree allows you to perform root cause analysis or drill down interactively when analyzing a measure.

Reference lines can enhance your charts to make data easier to understand and insights stand out. You can also perform time-series forecasting by using the Analytics pane in Power BI.

Thought experiment

In this thought experiment, demonstrate your skills and knowledge of the topics covered in this chapter. You can find the answers in the section that follows.

You are a data analyst at Contoso responsible for creating Power BI reports. The management requested you to visualize data coming from a Power BI dataset built by your colleague.

Based on background information and business requirements, answer the following questions:

1. Your department wants to see a single visual that explains the factors that contribute to revenue growth the most. Which visualization should you use?

A. Decomposition tree

B. Funnel chart

C. Key influencers

D. Stacked column chart

2. You’d like to create a navigation page in your report that will take users to different pages depending on their choice. Your solution must involve minimal effort, and you must be able to test it in Power BI Desktop. Which element(s) should you use?

A. Buttons with the Bookmark action

B. Buttons with the Page navigation action

C. Table

D. Text box with hyperlinks

3. You need to ensure that users can effectively navigate your reports by using the keyboard. Which property should you configure?

A. Bookmarks

B. Layer order

C. Mobile layout

D. Tab order

4. Your colleague already designed a report page that includes two visuals: a bar chart showing sales by client, and a column chart showing sales by product category. You need to ensure that whenever a user selects a client or product category, the other chart shows only the corresponding sales without showing overall sales. How should you configure interactions?

A. Filter

B. Highlight

C. None

5. You’ve created a bar chart that shows sales by client. You want users to see profit figures when they hover over a client. Which options would work in this case? Each answer presents a complete solution.

A. Add Profit as a visual-level filter.

B. Add Profit to drill-through fields.

C. Add Profit to tooltips.

D. Create a report page that shows Profit and add it as a tooltip.

6. You’d like to add a welcome video that is hosted on YouTube to a dashboard. Users have to be able to play the video without leaving the dashboard page, and your solution must involve the least amount of code. Which kind of tile should you use?

A. Custom streaming data

B. Text box with the video URL

C. Video

D. Web content

7. You need to group the Brand values into Brand Group, which is not available in the model. How would you group the Brand values? Your solution must require minimal effort to maintain.

A. Create a data group of type List.

B. Create a data group of type Bin.

C. Create a calculated column in DAX.

D. Create a custom column in Power Query.

8. You have built a line chart that shows revenue by month. You need to show mean monthly revenue on the same visual. How should you add the value to the visual? Your solution must consider that users may apply product filters and involve minimal effort.

A. Create a measure that uses the AVERAGEX function.

B. Add an Average line from the Analytics pane.

C. Add a Median line from the Analytics pane.

D. Create a calculated column in the Product table that uses the AVERAGEX function.

Thought experiment answers

1. The answer is C. The Key influencers visual shows the most important factors based on the fields you provide. Though it may be possible to get some insight into success factors by using a decomposition tree—option A—doing so would involve significant time and effort. Neither the funnel nor the stacked column chart from options B and D, respectively, will highlight the most important factors out of many.

2. The answer is B. Using the Page navigation action allows you to select the pages you want to navigate to without creating bookmarks, as in option A. Though it’s possible to use a table to drill through to a specific page—option C—doing so would involve considerably more effort than buttons. Option D, text boxes with hyperlinks, would require you to know the URL of each page, and it wouldn’t work in Power BI Desktop.

3. The answer is D. Tab order determines the order in which users switch between visuals when using the keyboard. Bookmarks—option A—aren’t helpful for navigating within each page. Layer order—option B—determines the order in which visuals are layered and may be different from Tab order. Mobile layout—option C—is used to create mobile reports.

4. The answer is A. The Filter interaction filters a chart, and it’s not showing the overall values as Highlight from option B does. If you select None—option C —there will be no interaction between charts.

5. The answer is C or D. If you add Profit to tooltips, you’ll see the corresponding value when hovering over a bar. Similarly, a report page that shows Profit and that’s configured to be the tooltip page will also show a client’s Profit when you hover over a bar. Adding Profit to visual-level filters, as in option A, won’t show Profit anywhere. Similarly, adding Profit to drill-through fields won’t show Profit when hovering over bars in the visual.

6. The answer is C. Using the Video type of Tile allows you to embed a video that can be played without leaving the page, and you only need a video URL. Custom streaming data—option A—is meant for data, not videos. Though you can put a video URL in a text box as option B suggests, a user will have to leave the page to view the video. Although you can use the Web content tile to embed a video by using embed code, doing so requires pasting several lines of code, and the video may have scroll bars in case its aspect ratio is different from that of a tile.

7. The answer is A. The data groups functionality provides a user interface that allows you to maintain groups with the least effort. Option B is wrong because the Bin type does not apply to categorical values. Options C and D are both wrong because they require writing formulas, which involves more effort than data groups.

8. The answer is B. An Average line will show the mean revenue in the visual, and it will automatically respect all filters. Option A is wrong because it requires writing nontrivial code to mimic the behavior of an Average line from the Analytics pane. Option C is wrong because median is not the same as mean or average. Option D is wrong because the calculated column won’t consider any filters that users may apply.

Chapter 4

Deploy and maintain assets

The Power BI service has many features designed for collaboration and sharing the results of your work with others in a secure way. It also allows you to efficiently keep data in your reports up to date.

In this chapter, we first review the skills necessary to refresh datasets on a periodic basis and how to do so incrementally. We also describe the various ways in which datasets can be secured, which includes segregating access to different parts of the dataset for different groups of people. Since it may be useful to reuse a dataset for different purposes, we also look at how you can raise awareness of a dataset you manage.

In the next part of the chapter, we review how to create and manage workspaces, which are meant for collaboration in the Power BI service. Once you’re ready to share the results of your work, you can package the content you created in an app and share it with a wider audience. We conclude the chapter by reviewing data sensitivity labels for workspace content.

Skills covered in this chapter:

Skills 4.1: Manage files and datasets

Skills 4.2: Manage workspaces

Skill 4.1: Manage files and datasets

In the Power BI service, reports and datasets are separate concepts; reports contain visualizations and related information, such as bookmarks, whereas datasets contain only the modeled data. One dataset may potentially have more than one report, whereas one report can be connected to one dataset only.

Keeping data up to date is almost always important, and the Power BI service provides a way to do it at fixed intervals in an efficient manner by refreshing only the latest data, if needed.

You have several options to provide access to a dataset to your users: you can grant full access to the whole dataset, read-only access to the whole dataset, or access to only those rows that you want users to see. Once you are ready to share a dataset with others, you can promote or certify it to facilitate its discovery throughout your organization.

This skill covers how to:

Identify when a gateway is required

Configure a dataset scheduled refresh

Configure row-level security group membership

Provide access to datasets

Manage global options for files

Identify when a gateway is required

If you want to refresh a dataset that uses on-premises data, you need to install an on-premises data gateway on a computer within your network. A gateway can access on-premises and online data sources when you add data sources to it, which may include the connection details and credentials—the gateway acts as a bridge between the Power BI service and your on-premises data sources.

There are two on-premises data gateway modes:

Standard mode Multiple people can use the gateway, and you can use it with other Microsoft services as well, such as Power Automate. This mode is appropriate for corporate environments because you can add each data source once, and then the gateway users will all be able to use it. You can specify generic credentials for data sources.

Personal mode Only one person can use the gateway, and you can use it only with Power BI. This mode is useful only when you don’t plan to share the gateway with others.

Alternatively, if you only need to connect to cloud data sources secured by virtual networks, then you need to use a virtual network (VNet) data gateway. In this case, you don’t have to install a gateway because it’s a service that runs in the cloud.

Need More Review? Data Gateways

Instructions on how to install and configure data gateways are outside the scope of this book. For more details, see “What is an on-premises data gateway?” at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/connect-data/service-gateway-onprem.

Configure a dataset scheduled refresh

When you build a report, a common requirement is to keep the underlying data up to date. You can refresh a dataset manually in Power BI Desktop or the Power BI service, but this approach isn’t viable when you need to refresh data periodically. To address this issue, you can configure a scheduled refresh in the Power BI service.

You configure a scheduled refresh for each dataset individually in the dataset settings. For this, expand the Scheduled refresh section of the dataset settings and switch the Keep your data up to date toggle to On. You will then be able to configure refresh frequency and other settings, as shown in Figure 4-1.

[picture]

FIGURE 4-1 Scheduled refresh settings.

You can configure the following settings for scheduled refresh:

Refresh frequency Specify how often the dataset will be refreshed: Daily or Weekly. If you set this option to Weekly, you can select the days of the week the refresh will run.

Time zone The time zone of refreshes.

Time You can add the time of refreshes in 30-minute intervals. The maximum number of refreshes you can set depends on whether the workspace is backed by a Premium capacity.

Send refresh failure notifications to This option can send an email to the dataset owner in case of a refresh failure. You can enter email addresses of other users who will receive the notifications, which can be useful when multiple people are responsible for the dataset.

After you adjust settings, select Apply. If you select Apply without setting the scheduled refresh time, your dataset will refresh at midnight.

You can see refresh history of a dataset at the top of the dataset settings by selecting Refresh history.

Configure row-level security group membership

Configuring row-level security (RLS) is a two-step process. In Skill 2.2: Develop a data model, we reviewed the first step—implementing RLS roles in Power BI Desktop. In this section, we review the steps needed to complete the RLS setup for a dataset; we assign and test roles in the Power BI service.

Assigning roles in the Power BI service

Once you’ve configured row-level security roles in Power BI Desktop, you need to publish your report to the Power BI service and add members to each role. To do so, go to the dataset security settings by hovering over a dataset in the list of workspace items and selecting More options > Security. If you don’t have any roles defined in the dataset, you’ll see the message in Figure 4-2.

[picture]

FIGURE 4-2 The RLS has moved to Power BI Desktop message.

If you’ve created RLS roles defined in the dataset, you’ll see a page like the one shown in Figure 4-3.

[picture]

FIGURE 4-3 Row-level security role membership.

On the left side of the Row-Level Security page, you can see a list of all roles in the dataset. The numbers in brackets show how many members each role has. On the right, you can view, add, and remove members for a selected role.

To add a member to a role, first select a role on the left, and then enter email addresses or security groups in the People or groups who belong to this role field. After you enter new members, select Add > Save. The changes will be applied immediately.

To remove a member from a role, select the cross next to the member and then select Save.

When you use row-level security in Power BI, you can use an email address for each user. Although this solution works, it can be hard to maintain. For example, consider that you have several datasets that use RLS based on the same rules and it’s viewed mostly by the same users. If a new user joins your company and you need to give them access to those datasets, you will have to update the row-level security settings for each dataset.

In cases like this, you can assign security groups as members of row-level security roles. When a new user joins the company, you will have to add them to the security group only once. The same principles apply to sharing content in Power BI, which we cover later in this chapter.

Need More Review? Creating Security Groups

Instructions on how to create security groups are outside the scope of this book. For more details, see “Create a group in the Microsoft 365 admin center” at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/admin/create-groups/create-groups.

Viewing as roles in the Power BI service

As you saw with the View as feature in Power BI Desktop, you can test roles in the Power BI service. For this, you need to hover over a role on the Row-Level Security page and select More options (the ellipsis) > Test as role. You will then see the way a report appears to the members of the role. For example, Figure 4-4 shows what members of the Plains role would see, which you created in Chapter 2, “Model the data.” The role applies a filter on Sales Territory.

[picture]

FIGURE 4-4 Testing a role in the Power BI service.

If needed, you can test a combination of roles or view as a specific user by selecting Now viewing as in the blue bar at the top and selecting the desired parameters. Once you are satisfied with how the roles work, you can select Back to Row-Level Security.

Important Row-Level Security and Workspace Roles

Row-level security does not work on users who have the Contributor, Member, or Admin role in the workspace in which the dataset resides. Those who have edit rights will always see the whole dataset regardless of the security settings, even though the Test as role feature may show a filtered dataset.

We review workspace roles in Skill 4.2: Create and manage workspaces.

Provide access to datasets

The Power BI service enables collaboration between different users. To let other users build reports based on a dataset that you published, you have to share the dataset with them. There are several ways of achieving this, as described next.

Sharing through a workspace

When publishing to the Power BI service, you can publish to your own workspace or a shared workspace. Contributing users of shared workspaces will automatically have access to the dataset you publish.

Sharing through an app

You can also make your dataset available for others when you share an app with them. For this, you’ll need to grant the app users the Build permission by selecting the Allow all users to connect to the app's underlying datasets using the Build permission check box, as shown in Figure 4-5.

[picture]

FIGURE 4-5 App permissions.

Note Apps

We’re reviewing Power BI apps in more details in Skill 4.2: Create and manage workspaces.

Important Dataset Permissions

Removing app access for a user or a security group doesn’t automatically revoke their access to the underlying datasets. To remove the dataset access completely, you may have to do it by managing permissions of the datasets, as covered next.

Without the Build permission, users won’t be able to connect to your dataset unless they’re contributing workspace members or you give them access to the individual dataset.

Managing dataset permissions

If you want to share an individual dataset, you can do so by managing dataset permissions. To view the permissions of a dataset, select Manage permissions from the dataset menu. You’ll then see a list of users who have access to the dataset, as shown in Figure 4-6.

[picture]

FIGURE 4-6 Dataset access.

If the dataset resides in a shared workspace, you’ll see the role each workspace member has. Users can have the following permissions:

Read The minimum level of access needed to view reports based on this dataset.

Reshare Allows users to reshare reports and dashboards based on this dataset.

Build With this permission, users can build their own reports from this dataset.

To share a dataset with a new user, follow these steps:

Select Add user.

Enter email addresses or security groups under Grant people access.

Select the permissions you want to grant. You can allow recipients to either reshare the artifact or build new content from the underlying datasets.

Select Grant access.

If you want to change the existing permissions for a user or security group, select Permission options (the ellipsis) next to a user or security group and select the desired action, such as add or remove a permission. Note that workspace roles can’t be changed here.

Note Workspace Roles

We review workspace roles in Skill 4.2: Create and manage workspaces.

Impact analysis

For datasets you share, it may be useful to know what other reports or dashboards use this dataset. Since Power BI allows you to use the same dataset across different workspaces, the reports and dashboards that use the dataset may reside outside of its home workspace, and the owner of the dataset may not always have access to the workspace. This information is contained in the dataset’s impact analysis. To see the impact analysis, in the dataset menu select View lineage. You’ll see the information shown in Figure 4-7.

[picture]

FIGURE 4-7 Impact analysis.

Impact analysis shows the list of reports and dashboards across all workspaces related to the dataset. For each item, you can see how many viewers and views it had in the last 30 days, excluding today, and which workspace it’s in. Impact analysis is particularly useful when you’re making potentially breaking changes to the dataset because you know which items are going to be affected, as well as how popular those items are. You can notify contacts of the affected reports and dashboards by selecting Notify contacts.

Manage global options for files

When using Power BI Desktop, you can change some settings that will apply to your general editing experience when working in Power BI Desktop. To see the settings in Power BI Desktop, select File > Options and settings > Options and note the sections under the Global heading. For example, the Data Load section is shown in Figure 4-8.

[picture]

FIGURE 4-8 Data Load section of Options.

In addition to global setttings, there are report-specific settings under the Current File heading. Some of the report-specific settings are also available in the Power BI service. To view report settings, open a report and select File > Settings.

Note File Settings

Describing all available settings is outside the scope of this book. If you want to learn more, see “Change settings for Power BI reports” at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/create-reports/power-bi-report-settings.

Skill 4.2: Manage workspaces

Collaboration in Power BI happens in workspaces, which serve as containers for dashboards, reports, workbooks, datasets, and dataflows. In this section we cover how to create and configure a workspace and illustrate how the Power BI service lifecycle strategy can help you implement phased deployments. We also review the skills necessary to create and manage workspaces, assign roles, publish and update apps and workspace assets, and apply sensitivity labels to workspace items.

This skill covers how to:

Create and configure a workspace

Assign workspace roles

Configure and update a workspace app

Publish, import, or update assets in a workspace

Apply sensitivity labels to workspace content

Configure subscriptions and data alerts

Promote or certify Power BI content

Create and configure a workspace

Each Power BI user has access to their own workspace, called My workspace, and only they can publish to the workspace. Though it’s possible to share content from a personal workspace, the functionality is limited—for example, you cannot create an app in your workspace.

To collaborate with others or package content in an app to share with others, you should create a separate workspace. Doing so will allow others to publish to the same workspace, and you’ll have access to other Power BI features, such as dataflows.

Note Creating Workspaces

A user who wants to create a workspace requires at least a Power BI Pro license.

Figure 4-9 shows a diagram with a simplified relationship between Power BI Desktop reports and Power BI service items.

[picture]

FIGURE 4-9 Power BI workspace contents.

When you publish a Power BI Desktop to a workspace, you publish the visualizations, which become a report in Power BI service. If there was an associated data model, it would become a Power BI dataset. As discussed in Chapter 3, “Visualize and analyze the data,” dashboards can have visuals pinned from reports and directly from datasets. We review Power BI apps later in this chapter in detail.

To create a workspace in Power BI service, follow this procedure:

From the left-hand menu, select Workspaces > Create a workspace.

Enter the workspace name. The name must be unique in the organization.

Select Save.

When creating a workspace, you can optionally set a workspace image and enter a workspace description. Furthermore, you can use the following advanced settings:

Contact list You can select who will receive notifications about issues in the workspace. By default, it will be workspace admins, or you can enter specific users and groups.

Workspace OneDrive To have the option to add items to the workspace from a dedicated OneDrive location, you can enter it here. Note that there’s no synchronization between the Power BI workspace membership and those who have access to the OneDrive location. You should give access to the workspace to the same Microsoft 365 group that owns the OneDrive location. Managing OneDrive is outside the scope of this book.

License mode If your organization uses Power BI Premium and you’re a capacity admin, you can allocate this workspace to a dedicated capacity. Administration of Power BI Premium is outside the scope of this book.

Develop a template app You can develop a template app and share it with users outside of your organization. Template apps are outside the scope of this book.

Allow contributors to update the app for this workspace By default, contributors cannot update workspace apps; you can change this by selecting this check box.

Once you’ve created a workspace, you can change its settings in Power BI service in the following way:

From the left-hand menu, select Workspaces.

Find the workspace of interest, hover over it, and select More > Workspace settings.

Change the settings as desired.

Select Save.

To delete a workspace, select Delete workspace > Delete from the workspace settings.

Assign workspace roles

You can see the list of users who have access to a workspace by selecting Access from the workspace, where you can also add or remove users. To reflect the different needs of users, Power BI offers four workspace roles:

Viewers can

View dashboards, reports, and workbooks in the workspace.

Read data from dataflows in the workspace.

Contributors can do everything that viewers can do and

Add, edit, and delete content in the workspace.

Schedule refreshes and use the on-premises gateway within the workspace.

Feature dashboards and reports from the workspace.

Members can do everything that contributors can do and

Add other users as members, contributors, or viewers to the workspace.

Publish and update the workspace app.

Share and allow others to reshare items from the workspace.

Feature the workspace app.

Admins can do everything that members can do and

Update and delete the workspace.

Add and remove other users of any role from the workspace.

As mentioned earlier in the chapter, there’s a workspace setting that allows contributors to update apps. This setting can be useful when you want a user to be able to update an app but not add other users to the workspace.

Note that giving someone a role in a workspace does not remove the need to give them additional rights. For example, you may make a user an admin of a workspace, but unless they have a Power BI Pro license, they won’t be able to fully use the role.

Important Row-Level Security

Row-level security applies only to viewers since all other roles have full access to all datasets within a workspace.

Exam Tip

You should know which role is appropriate for a user based on the business requirements. In most cases, you should follow the principle of least privilege.

Configure and update a workspace app

When you are ready to share your reports and dashboards with users in your organization, you can publish an app. An app is a collection of Power BI items, such as a dashboard, reports, and workbooks, packaged together. There can be only one app per app workspace.

When creating or updating an app, you can select which content items appear in the app by toggling the Include in app switch to Yes or No, as shown in Figure 4-10.

[picture]

FIGURE 4-10 Include in app switch.

Note that datasets and dataflows cannot be included in the app.

To publish an app from a workspace, select Create app. If an app already exists, you’ll see Update app instead. There are three steps in app configuration:

Setup

Navigation

Permissions

Setup

When you select Create app or Update app, you’ll be taken to app setup, as shown in Figure 4-11.

[picture]

FIGURE 4-11 App setup.

To publish an app, specify the app name and description. Additionally, you’ll see the following options on the Setup screen:

Support site Share where your users can find help related to the app.

App logo By default, the app logo is the same as the workspace image. You can provide a different one here.

App theme color This color will be used for the app menu and navigation.

Contact information You can select the app publisher, workspace contacts, or specific individuals or groups.

Navigation

In the navigation step, you can customize the navigation pane. In addition to selecting the navigation pane width under the Advanced options, you can rename, reorder, hide, and group app content items under Navigation.

To group app content items, you must create a section first by selecting New > Section and giving it a new name. Then you can select an app content item and select a section from the Section dropdown list.

Furthermore, you can add links to the navigation pane. For each link, you can select where to open it:

New tab

Current tab

Content area

You can see the Navigation screen in Figure 4-12.

[picture]

FIGURE 4-12 App navigation.

Permissions

On the Permissions screen, you can select who has access to the app. You can grant access to the entire organization or specific individuals or groups. If you only grant access to specific individual or groups, you can select Install this app automatically so that it automatically appears in the Apps section of the Power BI service for each user—otherwise, each user will have to install the app manually from the Apps section.

Note Access for Workspace Users

Users and groups with access to a workspace can access the corresponding app without you explicitly granting them access.

For users with access to the app, you can grant the following rights:

Allow all users to connect to the app’s underlying datasets using the Build permission Although the datasets won’t show up in the app, this setting allows you to connect to datasets from Power BI or use Analyze in Excel.

Allow users to make a copy of the reports in this app This setting allows users to copy reports to their personal workspaces to customize them. It is available only if the Build permission is granted.

Allow users to share the app and the app’s underlying datasets using the Share permission Note that connecting to the datasets requires the Build permission.

The Permissions screen is shown in Figure 4-13.

[picture]

FIGURE 4-13 App permissions.

App view

Once you publish an app, the result will look like Figure 4-14.

[picture]

FIGURE 4-14 App view.

Note that the interface only has the app navigation; to go back and see the standard Power BI sidebar, you can select Power BI in the upper-left corner.

Update a published app

After you publish your app, you can make changes to it if you are a contributing workspace user. For this, you need to go to the app workspace and make the changes you want; once you have made the changes, go back to the app workspace list of contents and select Update app. You can also update the Setup, Navigation, and Permissions settings that you configured when you created the app, and then select Update app > Update to propagate the app changes.

Note that on the Permissions screen, you will see the app link, as well as dashboard and report links. When you share any of those links, users will see all contents of the app, not just dashboards or reports.

Unpublish an app

If you want to unpublish an app, you can do so from the app workspace by selecting More options > Unpublish app > Unpublish. Doing so will not delete the app workspace contents; instead, the app will be removed from the list of apps of each user and become inaccessible.

Publish, import, or update assets in a workspace

You can publish a report to the Power BI service from Power BI Desktop by selecting Publish on the Home ribbon. To publish a report from Power BI Desktop, you must be signed in. By default, your report will be published to your personal workspace, unless you already published to another workspace in the same session. If you are a contributor in other workspaces, you can select a workspace to publish to.

If the workspace you are publishing to already contains a dataset with the same name, you will be asked if you want to replace it, and you’ll see how many workspace items it affects, as shown in Figure 4-15. This feature can be particularly useful when you’re updating a dataset that has other reports built from it.

[picture]

FIGURE 4-15 Dataset impact.

An alternative to publishing from Power BI Desktop is to publish from the Power BI service by going to a workspace and selecting New > Upload a file. You’ll be given a choice to publish a local file, a file from OneDrive, or a file from SharePoint, as shown in Figure 4-16.

[picture]

FIGURE 4-16 Creating new content from files.

Selecting Local File will prompt you to select a file from your computer to publish, whereas OneDrive and SharePoint options allow you to publish from the cloud. Publishing from OneDrive can be beneficial because you can edit a report locally in Power BI Desktop in a folder that’s synced to OneDrive, and it will be published automatically upon saving and closing the file because Power BI can sync published files from OneDrive.

Apply sensitivity labels to workspace content

Within an organization, different data may have different security levels. For example, some data must not leave a specific department, and other data may be shared publicly. To help users understand the sensitivity level of workspace content, you can apply sensitivity labels.

Note Enabling Sensitivity Labels

For users to be able to apply sensitivity labels, they must be enabled in Power BI admin portal tenant settings, typically by the central IT department in the organization. The admin portal is out of the scope of the exam. For more information, see “Enable sensitivity labels in Power BI” at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/admin/service-security-enable-data-sensitivity-labels.

When information protection is enabled in your Power BI tenant, you can set a sensitivity label for a workspace item in the following way:

Go to the settings of a workspace item.

Select a sensitivity label from the dropdown list under Sensitivity label.

Optionally, check Apply this label to the dataset's downstream content or similar.

Select Apply or Save.

After you set a sensitivity label, it will be displayed when anyone views the item, as well as in the list of workspace contents, as shown in Figure 4-17.

[picture]

FIGURE 4-17 Sensitivity labels.

Note how two reports have sensitivity labels shown in the Sensitivity column. If you hover over a sensitivity label, you’ll see its description.

Configure subscriptions and data alerts

In the Power BI service, you can subscribe yourself and others to individual report pages, dashboards, and paginated reports, which will make Power BI send snapshots of content to your email. When subscribing, you can select the frequency and specific times when you want to receive subscription emails.

Subscribing to content

The process of subscribing to a dashboard, report page, or a paginated report is similar:

Navigate to the content item of interest and select Subscribe.

In the Subscribe to emails menu, select Add new subscription.

Enter the subscription name, addressees, email subject, frequency, time, start and end dates, and other options as needed.

Select Save and close.

You can create several subscriptions to the same content item. Figure 4-18 shows options available when subscribing to a dashboard as an example.

[picture]

FIGURE 4-18 Subscription options.

When creating a subscription, you can select Run now to receive an email immediately. To disable a subscription without deleting it, switch the toggle next to Run now to Off. To delete a subscription, select Delete in the upper-right corner of the subscription settings. The Manage all subscriptions link takes you to a list of all subscriptions you created in the current workspace. Viewing all subscriptions you created is covered in the next section.

Need More Review? Subscriptions In the Power BI Service

For more details on subscriptions, including considerations and limitations, see “Email subscriptions for Power BI reports and dashboards” at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/consumer/end-user-subscribe.

Managing your subscriptions

In addition to viewing workspace-specific subscriptions, you can see all subscriptions you created in the following way:

Go to My workspace.

Select Settings in the upper-right corner.

Select Settings > Settings > Subscriptions.

Figure 4-19 shows a sample list of subscriptions to manage.

[picture]

FIGURE 4-19 List of subscriptions.

While the page says My workspace, it shows subscriptions created across all workspaces. To edit subscriptions, select Edit under Actions. The Overview column shows how many subscriptions to a content item you have.

Promote or certify Power BI content

When you create Power BI content and share it, you can increase its visibility for other users by endorsing it. For example, other users can search for an endorsed dataset and build reports from it. When many datasets are available in the organization, it’s useful to know how reliable each dataset is—some may be created for test purposes only, whereas others may be considered a single source of truth in the company. By default, all datasets look the same when you search for datasets, be it from Power BI Desktop or the Power BI service. In this case, it may be a good idea to endorse datasets—let the reports creators know which datasets are high quality and reliable.

You can endorse datasets, dataflows, reports, and apps. There are two ways to endorse Power BI content:

Promote Promoted content has a badge that signifies that the content is ready to be used by others. Any contributing member of the workspace where the content resides can promote it. Content promotion facilitates the content being reused across the organization.

Certify Content can be certified to show that it’s recommended for use, meaning it is highly reliable and curated. Only people selected by the Power BI tenant admins can certify Power BI content.

Note Endorsing Different Types of Power BI Content

The process of endorsing all content types is the same. For ilustration purposes, next we review how to endorse a dataset.

A dataset can be promoted or certified in the Endorsement and discovery section of the dataset settings in Power BI service, as shown in Figure 4-20.

[picture]

FIGURE 4-20 Endorsement.

Once you select Promoted or Certified, select Apply to save the changes.

Note Dataset Description

To help users understand what they can use a dataset for, you can add a description in the Endorsement section as well.

If the Certified option is inactive, it means you cannot certify datasets yourself. In this case, you should request dataset certification from those who were selected by your Power BI tenant admins to certify datasets. Those who can certify datasets may not always be members of the workspace that contains the dataset. If that’s the case, the person who can certify a dataset will need to become a contributing member of the workspace.

You can see the Certified and Promoted badges in Figure 4-21.

[picture]

FIGURE 4-21 Promoted and Certified badges.

Chapter summary

To ensure that data in your datasets is kept up to date, the Power BI service enables you to configure scheduled refresh. If your dataset is based on on-premises data, you’ll need to use an on-premises data gateway. An on-premises data gateway is available in two modes: personal and standard. Personal mode is for use by a single person; on-premises data gateway in standard mode can be used by the whole company. If you need to use data secured by virtual networks, you can use a virtual network (VNet) data gateway.

To ensure that row-level security (RLS) works on datasets published to the Power BI service, you need to add members to RLS roles in the Power BI service. You can also test roles in the Power BI service in a way similar to how you test them Power BI Desktop. RLS only works for dataset readers, and it won’t work for contributing workspace members.

Datasets can be shared individually, through an app, or through a workspace. Shared datasets can be used to build reports and dashboards in other workspaces. To track the usage of shared datasets, you can perform a dataset impact analysis.

Global settings for files can be changed in Power BI Desktop, whereas report-specific settings can be applied both in Power BI Desktop and the Power BI service.

You can collaborate on developing Power BI content in workspaces. Creating a workspace requires a Power BI Pro license.

Four roles are available in Power BI workspaces, listed from least to most privileged: Viewer, Contributor, Member, Admin. Row-level security only works on viewers; other roles can see all data within a workspace and RLS won’t apply to them.

If you want to share content from a workspace with end users, it’s best to publish an app. An app includes the workspace content that you select, except for datasets and dataflows. You can customize the navigation of an app further by renaming, reordering, and grouping content items. You can also add links to an app. After you publish an app, you can update or unpublish it.

You can publish a report from Power BI Desktop. Alternatively, from the Power BI service, you can upload a local file or a file from OneDrive or SharePoint.

Sensitivity labels allow you to show users the level of confidentiality of each workspace item. To be able to apply sensitivity labels, the information protection settings must be enabled by your Power BI tenant admin.

You can subscribe yourself and others to report pages, dashboards, and paginated reports. Only the person who created a subscription can manage it.

You can endorse Power BI content by promoting or certifying it to denote that it is high-quality and reliable. Any user with at least the Contributor role in a workspace can promote content that resides in the workspace. Power BI content can be certified only by those who were selected by Power BI tenant admins to certify content, which signifies a higher status of endorsement. Endorsed content has specific badges next to it to differentiate it from other content.

Thought experiment

In this thought experiment, demonstrate your skills and knowledge of the topics covered in this chapter. You can find the answers in the section that follows.

You are a data analyst at Contoso responsible for creating and distributing Power BI reports. The management requested that you share your reports with a wider audience.

Based on background information and business requirements, answer the following questions:

1. You’ve created a report that you published to a workspace. A few business users need to have the ability to view the reports. What’s the most appropriate way to achieve this? Your solution must consider that the report audience may change in the future and that you’ve already created other reports in the workspace that will be ready to be shared at a later date.

A. Share an app with individual users.

B. Share an app with a security group.

C. Share a report from the workspace with individuals.

D. Give the users the Viewer role in the workspace.

2. You’re an admin of a workspace, and you’d like to invite a few users to collaborate with you on reports. They need to be able to update reports and the app but not add others to the workspace. Which role should you give the users?

A. Admin

B. Member

C. Contributor

D. Viewer

3. You create a report based on data from Azure SQL Database. You publish the report to the Power BI service, and you need to ensure that the dataset is updated every day at midnight. Contoso does not use any special network configuration. Which gateway configuration do you need to use? Your solution must minimize the configuration effort.

A. On-premises data gateway (personal mode).

B. On-premises data gateway (standard mode).

C. Two on-premises data gateways: one in personal mode, and one in standard mode.

D. No gateway is necessary.

Thought experiment answers

1. The answer is B. Sharing an app with a security group ensures that users can view only the report you include in the app without exposing other workspace assets. It also minimizes the effort to update the list of viewers because you can update the security group membership, which will be used for the Power BI app access. Sharing an app with individual users, as option A suggests, comes close, but adding or removing viewers will require opening the Power BI website and is not considered best practice. For similar reasons, option C is incorrect; additionally, if you share reports individually as opposed to packaging them in an app, then accessing them will be more difficult for users because they won’t be in one place. If you give users the Viewer role in a workspace—option D—they’ll see all reports in the workspace. This does not satisfy the business requirements because some reports in the workspace aren’t ready to be shared yet.

2. The answer is C. Contributors can update reports in a workspace, and they can update the app when allowed in workspace settings; at the same time, contributors cannot add others to a workspace. Options A and B both suggest roles that can add other users to a workspace, which goes against the business requirements. Option D, Viewer, isn’t right because viewers cannot update reports or apps in a workspace.

3. The answer is D. Since Contoso has no special network configuration in place, the Azure SQL Database can be accessed without a gateway. Options A, B, and C are incorrect because they suggest using an on-premises data gateway.

Index

A

accessing shared datasets, 182–185

active relationships, 59

adding

columns, 36–41

filters, 86–87

tiles to dashboards, 137

visualizations to reports, 112

additive measures, 95

ALL function, 87–88

ALLEXCEPT function, 88

ALLSELECTED function, 88

Analytics pane, 168–169

Analyze feature, 158–159

Analyze in Excel feature, 134–135

analyzing data. See data analysis

appending queries, 41–42

apps

configuring, 189–193

sharing datasets via, 182

AppSource, importing custom visuals, 125–126

area charts, 114–115

artificial intelligence visuals, 124, 164–168

assigning roles, 180–181, 188–189

assuming referential integrity, 62

B

bar charts, 113–114

bidirectional relationships, 65

binning for data analysis, 163–164

bookmarks, 144–147

bubble charts, 119

C

caching in Power Query, 30

CALCULATE function, 60, 86–91

calculated columns

creating, 71–72

DAX and, 27

measures vs., 84

calculated tables

creating, 68–70

precalculating measures, 69–70

calculation groups, 84

CALENDAR function, 67–68

calendar tables, creating

in DAX, 67–68

in Power Query, 66–67

CALENDARAUTO function, 67–68

calendars in Time Intelligence functions, 92

card visuals, 123–124

cardinality

reducing levels, 102–104

of relationships, 63

categorical axis, 160–161

certifying Power BI content, 198–199

charts

area, 114–115

bar, 113–114

bubble, 119

column, 113–114

combo, 115–116

donut, 120

funnel, 118–119

gauge, 122–123

line, 114–115

maps, 121–122

pie, 120

reference lines in, 168–169

ribbon, 116–117

scatter, 119

treemap, 120–121

waterfall, 117–118

choosing. See selecting

choropleth maps, 121–122

cloning tables, 69

clustering for data analysis, 164

column charts, 113–114

column value distribution, 21–22

columns

adding, 36–41

calculated

creating, 71–72

DAX and, 27

configuring properties, 57–58

data types for, 28–30

formatting, 58

hierarchies, 70–71

naming conventions, 45–46

pivoting/unpivoting, 35–36

reducing, 33–35

removing, 100–101

combining

queries, 41–45

appending, 41–42

merging, 42–45

tables, 26–28

combo charts, 115–116

common date tables, creating, 66–68

composite models, 11–12

conditional formatting for report visuals, 128–130

configuring

apps, 189–193

column properties, 57–58

data loading, 46–47

mobile view

for dashboards, 138–139

for reports, 156–157

report navigation, 150–151

report page properties, 133–134

RLS (row-level security), 180–182

subscriptions, 196–197

sync slicers, 152–153

table properties, 56–57

workspaces, 186–188

connecting to data sources, 2–6

context transition, 89–91

continuous axis, 160–161

cross-filter direction of relationships, 63–65

CROSSFILTER function, 65

cross-highlighting, 149

custom tooltips in reports, 147–148

custom visuals, importing, 125–126

D

dashboards, visualizations in

live report pages, 143–144

managing tiles, 136–138

mobile view, 138–139

Q&A feature, 139–140

Quick Insights feature, 140–142

themes for, 142

data, importing, 9–10

data analysis

Analyze feature, 158–159

Analyze in Excel feature, 134–135

artificial intelligence visuals, 164–168

binning, 163–164

clustering, 164

continuous vs. categorical axes, 160–161

Forecast feature, 168

grouping, 161–163

outliers, 159–160

Q&A feature, 139–140

Quick Insights feature, 140–142

reference lines in charts, 168–169

data analysis expressions. See DAX

data import errors, resolving, 47–48

data loading, configuring, 46–47

data models

DAX measures

creating, 83–86

manipulating filters with CALCULATE, 86–91

quick, 97–100

replacing implicit with explicit, 93–94

semi-additive, 95–97

designing

cardinality, 63

common date tables, 66–68

configuring properties, 56–58

cross-filter direction, 63–65

defining tables, 54–56

editing relationships, 61–63

role-playing dimensions, 58–61

developing

calculated columns, 71–72

calculated tables, 68–70

hierarchies, 70–71

Q&A feature, 79–83

RLS (row-level security), 73–78

optimizing performance

with Performance Analyzer, 101–102

reducing cardinality levels, 102–104

removing rows/columns, 100–101

purpose of, 53

statistical functions, 94–95

Time Intelligence functions, 91–93

data preparation

column data types, 28–30

combining queries, 41–45

appending, 41–42

merging, 42–45

configuring data loading, 46–47

data sources

changing parameter values, 13–17

changing settings, 6–7

dataflow connections, 17–18

identifying and connecting to, 2–6

Microsoft Dataverse, 13

selecting shared datasets, 7–9

selecting storage mode, 9–12

keys for joins, 26–28

naming conventions, 45–46

profiling data, 19–23

column value distribution, 21–22

data statistics, 22–23

identifying anomalies, 19–20

resolving data import errors, 47–48

resolving data quality issues, 23–26

transforming tables, 30–41

adding columns, 36–41

editing query steps, 32–33

pivoting/unpivoting columns, 35–36

reducing rows/columns, 33–35

data profiling, 19–23

column value distribution, 21–22

data statistics, 22–23

identifying anomalies, 19–20

data quality, resolving issues, 23–26

data shaping. See data preparation

data sources

changing settings, 6–7

dataflow connections, 17–18

identifying and connecting to, 2–6

Microsoft Dataverse, 13

parameters, changing values, 13–17

shared datasets, selecting, 7–9

storage mode, selecting, 9–12

tables from multiple, 69

data statistics, 22–23

data summarization, 103–104

data types

changing, 102–103

for columns, 28–30

data visualizations

artificial intelligence visuals, 164–168

continuous vs. categorical axes, 160–161

in dashboards

live report pages, 143–144

managing tiles, 136–138

mobile view, 138–139

Q&A feature, 139–140

Quick Insights feature, 140–142

themes for, 142

interactions between, 149–150

reference lines in charts, 168–169

in reports

adding, 112

conditional formatting, 128–130

drilling down, 155–156

exporting data, 156

filtering, 130–133

formatting, 124–125

grouping/layering, 154–155

importing custom, 125–126

themes for, 126–127

types of, 113–124

sorting in, 151–152

dataflow connections, 17–18

datasets

endorsing, 198–199

gateways for, 178

local, 7

reports vs., 177

scheduled refreshes, 178–179

shared

access to, 182–185

selecting, 7–9

date tables, creating, 66–68

DAX

ALL function, 87–88

ALLEXCEPT function, 88

ALLSELECTED function, 88

CALCULATE function, 60, 86–91

calculated columns and, 27, 71–72

calendar tables, creating, 67–68

CROSSFILTER function, 65

DISTINCT function, 69

DIVIDE function, 85

measures

creating, 83–86

manipulating filters with CALCULATE, 86–91

quick, 97–100

replacing implicit with explicit, 93–94

semi-additive, 95–97

RELATED function, 71, 72

statistical functions, 94–95

Time Intelligence functions, 91–93

UNION function, 69

USERELATIONSHIP function, 60–61

USERNAME function, 77

USERPRINCIPALNAME function, 77

variables, 86

Decomposition tree visual, 167–168

defining tables in data models, 54–56

dependencies of queries, 5–6

designing data models

cardinality, 63

common date tables, 66–68

configuring properties, 56–58

cross-filter direction, 63–65

defining tables, 54–56

editing relationships, 61–63

role-playing dimensions, 58–61

developing data models

calculated columns, 71–72

calculated tables, 68–70

hierarchies, 70–71

Q&A feature, 79–83

RLS (row-level security), 73–78

dimensions, role-playing, 58–61

DirectQuery, 10–11

DISTINCT function, 69

DIVIDE function, 85

donut charts, 120

drilling down with interactive visuals, 155–156

duplicating roles, 75

dynamic row-level security, 76–78

E

editing

parameters, 16–17

query steps, 32–33

relationships, 61–63

tiles, 137–138

endorsing datasets, 198–199

errors

data import, 47–48

data quality, 23–26

explicit measures, replacing implicit with, 93–94

exporting report data, 156

F

files

importing custom visuals, 126

managing global settings, 185–186

filled maps, 121–122

filters

adding, 86–87

applying to report visuals, 130–133

manipulating with CALCULATE, 86–91

removing, 87–88

updating, 88–89

Filters pane (reports), 131–133

flat schemas, 54

Forecast feature, 168

foreign keys, 26

formatting

columns, 58

measures, 85

visualizations, 124–125

functions, creating, 17

funnel charts, 118–119

G

gateways for datasets, 178

gauge charts, 122–123

global file settings, managing, 185–186

grouping

for data analysis, 161–163

visuals, 154–155

H

hiding visuals, 154–155

hierarchies, creating, 70–71

I

identifying

data anomalies, 19–20

data sources, 2–6

outliers, 159–160

impact analysis, 184–185

implicit measures, replacing with explicit, 93–94

importing

custom visuals, 125–126

data, 9–10

inactive relationships, 59

interactions between visuals, 149–150

interactive visuals, drilling down, 155–156

J

joins, keys for, 26–28

K

Key influencers visual, 165–167

keys

for joins, 26–28

for relationships, 27–28

KPIs (key performance indicators), visuals for, 123–124

L

layering visuals, 154–155

line charts, 114–115

List.Dates function, 66

lists, 39

Live Connection, 11

live report pages, pinning to dashboards, 143–144

loading data, configuring, 46–47

local datasets, 7

locale, 30

M

M code, 19

many-to-many relationships, 63

many-to-one relationships, 63

maps, 121–122

measures

calculated columns vs., 84

creating, 83–86

formatting, 85

manipulating filters with CALCULATE, 86–91

precalculating, 69–70

quick, 97–100

replacing implicit with explicit, 93–94

semi-additive, 95–97

merging

queries, 42–45

tables, 26–28

Microsoft Dataverse, 13

mobile view, configuring

for dashboards, 138–139

for reports, 156–157

modeling data. See data models

multiple data sources, tables from, 69

multi-row card visuals, 123–124

N

naming conventions for columns/queries, 45–46

natural language queries, 79–83

navigation

for apps, 191

of reports, configuring, 150–151

non-additive measures, 95

null values, 25

O

one-to-many relationships, 63

one-to-one relationships, 63

optimizing data model performance

with Performance Analyzer, 101–102

reducing cardinality levels, 102–104

removing rows/columns, 100–101

outliers, identifying, 159–160

P

paginated reports, 135

parameters

changing values, 13–17

creating, 13–15

editing, 16–17

usage, 15–16

patterns. See data analysis

Performance Analyzer, 101–102

performance optimization

with Performance Analyzer, 101–102

reducing cardinality levels, 102–104

removing rows/columns, 100–101

permissions

for apps, 191–192

for datasets, 183–184

pie charts, 120

pinning

live report pages, 143–144

tiles, 136–137

pivoting columns, 35–36

Power Query

caching in, 30

calendar tables, creating, 66–67

column data types, 28–30

combining queries, 41–45

appending, 41–42

merging, 42–45

configuring data loading, 46–47

data sources

changing parameter values, 13–17

dataflow connections, 17–18

identifying and connecting to, 2–6

keys for joins, 26–28

M code, 19

naming conventions, 45–46

null values, 25

previews, refreshing, 4

profiling data, 19–23

column value distribution, 21–22

data statistics, 22–23

identifying anomalies, 19–20

purpose of, 18–19

resolving data import errors, 47–48

resolving data quality issues, 23–26

transforming tables, 30–41

adding columns, 36–41

editing query steps, 32–33

pivoting/unpivoting columns, 35–36

reducing rows/columns, 33–35

precalculating measures, 69–70

preparing data. See data preparation

previews, refreshing, 4

primary keys, 26

profiling data, 19–23

column value distribution, 21–22

data statistics, 22–23

identifying anomalies, 19–20

promoting Power BI content, 198–199

properties, configuring

columns, 57–58

reports, 133–134

tables, 56–57

publishing

apps, 189–193

from workspaces, 193–194

Q

Q&A feature, 79–83, 139–140

queries

combining, 41–45

appending, 41–42

merging, 42–45

dependencies, 5–6

editing query steps, 32–33

naming conventions, 45–46

natural language, 79–83

Quick Insights feature, 140–142

quick measures, 97–100

R

ranges, 39

reducing

cardinality levels, 102–104

rows/columns, 33–35

reference lines in charts, 168–169

referential integrity, assuming, 62

refreshing

previews, 4

with scheduled refreshes, 178–179

RELATED function, 71, 72

relationships

active/inactive, 59

automatic detection, 59

bidirectional, 65

cardinality, 63

cross-filter direction, 63–65

editing, 61–63

keys for, 27–28

troubleshooting, 65

USERELATIONSHIP function, 60–61

removing

filters, 87–88

rows/columns, 100–101

replacing implicit measures, 93–94

report templates, 13

reports

Analyze in Excel feature, 134–135

configuring page properties, 133–134

datasets vs., 177

pagination, 135

pinning live pages to dashboards, 143–144

publishing from workspaces, 193–194

usability

bookmarks, 144–147

custom tooltips, 147–148

drilling down with interactive visuals, 155–156

exporting data, 156

grouping/layering visuals, 154–155

interaction of visuals, 149–150

mobile view, 156–157

navigation, 150–151

sorting in visuals, 151–152

sync slicers, 152–153

visualizations in

adding, 112

conditional formatting, 128–130

drilling down, 155–156

exporting data, 156

filtering, 130–133

formatting, 124–125

grouping/layering, 154–155

importing custom, 125–126

themes for, 126–127

types of, 113–124

resolving

data import errors, 47–48

data quality issues, 23–26

ribbon charts, 116–117

RLS (row-level security), 73–78

configuring, 180–182

dynamic, 76–78

roles

assigning, 180–181

creating, 73–75

duplicating, 75

viewing as, 75–76, 181–182

role-playing dimensions, designing, 58–61

roles

assigning, 180–181, 188–189

creating, 73–75

duplicating, 75

viewing as, 75–76, 181–182

row-level security. See RLS (row-level security)

rows

reducing, 33–35

removing, 100–101

S

scatter charts, 119

scheduled refreshes, 178–179

schemas

flat, 54

snowflake, 56

star, 54–55

scoped insights, 141

security filters, 63

security groups, creating, 181

selecting

shared datasets, 7–9

storage modes, 9–12

visualization types, 113–124

Selection pane, 154–155

semi-additive measures, 95–97

sensitivity labels, 195

settings for data sources, changing, 6–7

shaping data. See data preparation

shared datasets

access to, 182–185

selecting, 7–9

slicers, 130–131

syncing, 152–153

snowflake schemas, 56

sorting in visuals, 151–152

star schemas, 54–55

statistical functions, 94–95

storage modes, selecting, 9–12

subscriptions, configuring, 196–197

summarizing data, 103–104

sync slicers, 152–153

synonyms in Q&A feature, 82

T

Table.Profile function, 23

tables

calculated

creating, 68–70

precalculating measures, 69–70

cloning, 69

combining/merging, 26–28

configuring properties, 56–57

defining in data models, 54–56

transforming, 30–41

adding columns, 36–41

editing query steps, 32–33

pivoting/unpivoting columns, 35–36

reducing rows/columns, 33–35

transposing, 35–36

Table.Schema function, 22

teaching Q&A feature, 81–82

templates for reports, 13

themes

for dashboards, 142

for report visuals, 126–127

tiles, managing, 136–138

Time Intelligence functions, 91–93

tooltips in reports, 147–148

transforming tables, 30–41

adding columns, 36–41

editing query steps, 32–33

pivoting/unpivoting columns, 35–36

reducing rows/columns, 33–35

transposing tables, 35–36

treemap charts, 120–121

trends. See data analysis

troubleshooting relationships, 65

U

UNION function, 69

unpivoting columns, 35–36

unpublishing apps, 193

updating

apps, 193

filters, 88–89

usability of reports

bookmarks, 144–147

custom tooltips, 147–148

drilling down with interactive visuals, 155–156

exporting data, 156

grouping/layering visuals, 154–155

interaction of visuals, 149–150

mobile view, 156–157

navigation, 150–151

sorting in visuals, 151–152

sync slicers, 152–153

USERELATIONSHIP function, 60–61

USERNAME function, 77

USERPRINCIPALNAME function, 77

V

variables, 86

viewing as roles, 75–76, 181–182

visualizations. See data visualizations

W

waterfall charts, 117–118

workspaces

apps, configuring, 189–193

configuring, 186–188

creating, 186–188

publishing from, 193–194

roles, assigning, 188–189

sensitivity labels, 195

sharing datasets via, 182

subscriptions, 196–197

Code Snippets

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