Blog – Page 23 – Prologika

Power BI Slicers and Filters

February 9, 2020 / No Comments »

Besides the built-in cross-filtering and cross-highlighting among visuals, Power BI supports two explicit filtering options: slicers and filters. Which one to use? Traditionally, you would use a slicer when you want the user to easily see what's filtered on the report page. But with the introduction of the new filter pane and slicer enhancements, the choice becomes more difficult. Let's compare the two options: Criteria Slicer Filter Placement Report page (requires space on the page as other visuals) Report pane Filter target Visual, page, report Visual, page, report Configuration Drop-down, list, slider (numbers and dates), "buttons" Basic and advanced TopN/BottomN filtering No Yes Can be hidden Yes Yes Can be visible but read-only No Yes Searching Yes (must be enabled) Yes (automatically enabled for larger lists) Relative dates Yes Yes Can be filtered by measure Yes No Geo location filtering No Yes Cross-filtering fields in same table Automatically cross-filters other...
Power BI Embedded, Service Principals, and SSAS

January 31, 2020 / No Comments »

Power BI Embedded supports two ways that your custom app can authenticate to Power BI using a trusted account: master account (the original option) and more recently service principle. Service principal authentication is preferred because it doesn't require storing and using credentials of a Power BI Pro account. Configuring the service principal and embedding reports with imported data is easy. Not so much with embedding reports connected to on-prem Analysis Services models, mainly because of documentation gaps. Here are some notes you might find useful that I harvested from a recent engagement. Unlike what the documentation states that only SSAS models with RLS requires it, you must grant the service principal ReadOverrideEffectiveIdentity permission. Otherwise, the service principal can't delegate the user identity to the gateway. So, the gateway admin must call the Gateways - Add Datasource User API. TIP: Don't write code but use the documentation page to call the...
Atlanta MS BI and Power BI Group Meeting on February 3rd

January 27, 2020 / No Comments »

MS BI fans, join us for the next Atlanta MS BI and Power BI Group meeting on February 3rd, Monday, at 6:30 PM at the Microsoft office in Alpharetta. Shabnan Watson will discuss how to apply aggregations to Power BI DirectQuery datasets to improve report performance. Melissa will sponsor the meeting. For more details, visit our group page and don't forget to RSVP (fill in the RSVP survey if you're planning to attend). Presentation: Aggregations in Power BI Date: February 3rd, 2020 Time 6:30 – 8:30 PM ET Place: Microsoft Office (Alpharetta) 8000 Avalon Boulevard Suite 900 Alpharetta, GA 30009 Overview: Aggregations are one of the most important optimization methods for managing big datasets in Power BI. Combined with Direct Query storage mode, they allow big datasets to be analyzed efficiently by answering high level analytical queries quickly from memory while sending more detailed queries back to the source database. In this session, you will learn...
Embracing Automated Machine Learning (AutoML)

January 19, 2020 / No Comments »

With the growing demand for predictive analytics, Automated Machine Learning (AutoML) aims to simplify and democratize predictive analytics so business users can create their own predictive models. The promise of AutoML is to bring predictive analytics to business users, just like Power BI democratizes data analytics, Power Apps democratizes app dev, and Power Query democratizes data shaping and transformation. As a business user, the two most popular options for applying Automated Machine Learning for predictive analytics are Power BI and AzureML. Behind the scenes, Power BI AutoML uses the automated machine learning feature of AzureML but there are differences and I summarize below the most important ones. Power BI AutoML AzureML AutoML Licensing Power BI Premium Azure ML (Enterprise Edition recommended) Container Dataflow Experiment Power Query Available Not available Supported data sources Many A few (local files, Azure SQL DB, ADLS, and a few more) Model Not Accessible (Power BI...
Get Power BI Training at Power Platform World Tour

January 15, 2020 / No Comments »

Register for my full-day academy training at #PowerPlatformWT in Atlanta on Feb 10th for only $599 and learn how Power BI can bring your data to life!
Stop Using JavaScript for Data Security

January 10, 2020 / No Comments »

As the poet said, "let me count the ways". I've been amazed by the extent some organizations would go into inconveniencing their employees in the pursuit of better security while they do such dumb things. In one case, an organization would automatically log out login sessions after a certain period of inactivity, allow employees to access Power BI only on company's approved devices, and prevent developers from accessing servers. At the same time, the same organization would configure an Internet proxy server for Basic authentication where user passwords are transmitted in plain text (not even https)! All the hacker must do is to plug into the corporate network and intercept the login passwords. Yet, another organization would require developers to tunnel into a VDI environment, from where they will tunnel one more time into an Azure VM, before they can access Azure resources, such as an Azure SQL DB. Wasn't...
Power BI Pro Storage Quota

January 7, 2020 / No Comments »

Although Power BI has been evolving for almost five years now, basic concepts are sometimes worth revisiting. Recently, I had a discussion regarding the Power BI Pro storage quota on the Power BI MVP list and I want to share the conclusions confirmed by Microsoft. For workspaces in shared capacity licensed with Power BI Pro (not a workspace in a Premium capacity): There is a per-workspace storage limit of 10 GB. So, My Workspace gets 10 GB and so does any org workspace. There is also an unofficial cross-workspace aggregate quota of 10 GB * the number of Pro User Licenses intended as a backstop to prevent abuse so that a Pro user doesn't keep on indefinitely creating workspaces to get new chunks of 10 GB. So, if you have 50 Power BI Pro users, the aggregate cross-workspace storage quota would be 500 GB irrespective if only one or multiple...
Atlanta MS BI and Power BI Group Meeting on January 6th

January 3, 2020 / No Comments »

MS BI fans, join us for the next Atlanta MS BI and Power BI Group meeting on January 6th, Monday, at 6:30 PM at the Microsoft office in Alpharetta. I'll introduce to Power BI Premium Automated Machine Learning (AutoML). Prologika will sponsor the meeting. For more details, visit our group page and don't forget to RSVP (fill in the RSVP survey if you're planning to attend). Presentation: Power BI Automated Machine Learning (AutoML) Date: January 6th, 2020 Time 6:30 – 8:30 PM ET Place: Microsoft Office (Alpharetta) 8000 Avalon Boulevard Suite 900 Alpharetta, GA 30009 Overview: With the growing demand for predictive analytics, Automated Machine Learning (AutoML) aims to simplify this process and democratize Machine Learning so business users can create their own basic predictive models. Join this presentation to learn how to apply AutoML in Power BI Premium to predict the customer probability to purchase a product. I'll show you the end-to-end AutoML process, including: · ...
Applied Power BI Book (5th Edition)

January 2, 2020 / No Comments »

I'm excited to announce the fifth edition of my Applied Microsoft Power BI book! When the first edition was published in January 2016, it was the first Power BI book at that time and it had less than 300 pages. Since then, I helped many companies adopt or transition to Power BI and taught hundreds of students. It's been a great experience to witness the momentum surrounding Power BI and how the tool has matured over time. As a result, the book also got thicker and it now stands at 528 pages. However, I believe what's more important is that this book provides systematic, yet dependent, view by showing what Power BI can do for four types of users (business users, analysts, pros, and developers). To my understanding, this is the only Power BI book that gets annual revisions to keep it up to date with this ever changing technology! Because I had...
Power Platform World Tour

December 18, 2019 / No Comments »

Organized by Microsoft and Dynamic Communities, the Power Platform World Tour will take a place in Atlanta from 2/10-2/12, 2020. I'm teaching Power BI Dashboard in a Day (DIAD) on Feb 10 for a full day. Although this is a paid event ($599), you should get a great business value as the audience will probably be smaller and I'll be able to provide more personal attention. Then, I'll present "Bridge Analytics and Developer Worlds with Power Platform" on Feb 12 and show how Power BI can integrate with Power Apps to allow you to change the data behind a report.