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April 9, 2019

Using PowerShell and the Power BI REST API

Introduction

I think that the Power BI REST API is one of the most overlooked features of Power BI. It is an immensely powerful tool that can save you a lot of time when it comes to maintaining a large number of reports. Especially if you do not have access to some of the admin tools within your organisation.

While a REST API can look like an intimidating task it is far easier than you may think to get up and running with the API.

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January 19, 2019

How to get the most out of Web.BrowserContents()

So back in my post about my submission to a London Power BI Challenge I mentioned how I had issues with the page I was trying to webscrape. This was because the links that I wanted didn’t load immediately but after a short delay. At the time I used a python script work around this. Now this did work for a one off report however due to Power BI lacking of support for refreshing Python code in the service this solution could not be used for a regularly occurring report.

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November 16, 2018

Query Folding with Salesforce

Background

First some background to both Salesforce and Query Folding. Salesforce is a popular cloud enterprise software provider. Which, more importantly for this post, has a Power Query connector. It actually has two, the object and the report connector. However this only applies to the object connector. The object connector allows connection to the underlying tables that sit behind salesforce. Querying salesforce is done with a SQL-like language called Salesforce Object Query Language [SOQL]. You can see easily with the Salesforce Workbench.

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November 14, 2018

Dealing with two level column headers in Power BI

Most of the time tables only have one header, however when there are more than one it can be a challenge to transform it into a useful form.

For this example I’ve created a table that contains made up actuals and budgets broken out by date. This is not an easy format to work with, we need to get it into a tidy unpivoted format that is easy to analyze.

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November 11, 2018

Using functions to create a filter in Power Query

The function Table.SelectRows is a very common power query function that is used to filter a table. It is what is created when you filter rows in a table using the UI. It takes a table and then applies whatever filters are set in the second argument. The following code generates a basic filtered table.

let
    Table = Table.FromRecords(
        {  
            [Id = 1,  Name = "Amanada", Age = 45],
            [Id = 2, Name = "Bob", Age = 13],
            [Id = 3, Name = "Christina", Age = 37],
            [Id = 4, Name = "David", Age = 23]
        }
    ),
    Changed_Type = Table.TransformColumnTypes(Table,{{"Id", Int64.Type}, {"Age", Int64.Type}, {"Name", type text}}),
    Filtered_Rows = Table.SelectRows(Changed_Type, each [Age] > 20)
in
    Filtered_Rows

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October 21, 2018

Types and Folding within Power Query

This appears to have changed since I posted this and now it will query fold when types are changed in either manner.

I recently found this trick to improve folded queries when changing data types. It allows you to do type changes of columns without breaking the query folding. You can see if a step has been folded by right clicking on the step, if “View Native Query” is an option then the step has been folded. (Note that the opposite is not necessarily true, some sources do support some query folding yet do not allow you to see/edit the native queries.)

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October 13, 2018

I passed the Microsoft 70-778 Exam (Power BI Exam)!

So I just took the 70-778 exam online, and I passed! I obviously can’t say what was on the exam but I will say a few thoughts I had about the preparation for and process of doing the exam itself.

In terms of preparation 80-90% of what prepared me was my experience with the Power BI. This isn’t a quick way to learn but it is the best and there is no substitute for it. I did buy the accompanying book by Daniil Maslyuk, which did help for some of the areas I wasn’t very experienced with. For example loading excel workbooks into the service or the administrative side of Power BI. The final piece of preparation that I found useful is a quiz that was made by Rishi Sapra. It has similar questions to what the exam contains. It is a bit out of date now, but it is still worth doing at least once.

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October 6, 2018

TFL cycling data Power BI Report

This Power BI Report was created for the fourth London Power BI User Group [PUG] challenge. This is the second time I have done this challenge but the first I feel I have been pleased with my submission

If you are interested in Power BI I would really recommend going to a PUG. It is great to meet and learn from people who have a similar passion. If you come to the London PUG, take part in the challenges! They are every other month so you have two months to work on the challenge. They get announced at the user groups but also on Prathy’s blog.
The next London PUG is on October 23rd with Susie Bentley, hopefully I will see you there!

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