Posted on DAX

Using DAX variables in iterators

I was having a discussion earlier this week about the use of variables I used in my currency conversion blog post . The question was why I am using 2 different measure to calculate the sales for each currency. So I am using 2 measures together: TrnExchangeRate =MIN ( FactExchangeRate[Factor] ) and TotalSales =IF (    HASONEVALUE ( ReportCurrency[ReportCurrency] ),    SUMX ( FactSales, [Sales] * [TrnExchangeRate] )) As explained in the blog post the SUMX in this calculation will iterate over each row in the fact table which probably will have multiple currencies... Read more

Posted on Power BI

How to enable scheduled refresh for your custom connector

Here is a post that is long overdue as the functionality has been available for almost a year now. Today we will enable scheduled refresh to the Strava custom connector I build before. The trick to this is that we need to extend the code of the Strava connector with a “TestConnection” function as is described here. This will allow the Power BI gateway to know how to test the connection. Of course we will... Read more

Posted on Power BI

Showing only slicer data that have facts in Power BI (and other fun tricks)

As of this month Power BI finally supports filtering slicers down to only show rows that have fact data. Before the only thing you could do to achieve this was some workaround like: I described here where you filter down the dimension using a calc table. The other approach was to use Bi Directional cross filtering which would filter down the dimension table appropriately. This leads to performance issues though. Now you can use a... Read more

Posted on Analysis Services

Monitoring and Auditing your Azure Analysis Services

I have been using SSAS for years, started years before I started at Microsoft, but most of my real world experience is around using SSAS on premises. In the day there was only Profiler, but now we are in a whole new world that is called Azure. Last week I got a question on how to monitor and audit an SSAS server in Azure and I decided to investigate. Turns out it amazing 🙂 so... Read more

Posted on DAX

Get the YTD of the same period last year

I was looking at my blog stats and found that some of the most popular posts are almost 10 years old (yes really). Those topics are actually still relevant so I will be updating some those for Power BI in the coming months. Maybe not everything has changed but it will be a bit different with Power BI. So we will start by reexamining a blog post I did on September 22, 2010 to “Get... Read more

Posted on Power BI

New book “The Absolute Guide to Dashboarding and Reporting with Power BI” is now available.

I am very happy that my new book has been released today! This is a brand new update to the book I released 5 years and now covers everything Power BI. You can order the ebook (a DRM-free copy of the book in all three popular e-book formats: PDF, ePub and Mob) or printed version directly from the publisher here. You can also get it on Amazon of course but the prices are a bit... Read more

Posted on Power BI

Update your report based on a website

A quick hack today. Got this question from someone who needed to be able to update a report and show users that something had changed. This is easy when you have access to a database and can add data to it but in this case that was not possible. So I came up with a hacky (and great :P) way to do this. and wanted to share it in case it came handy in your... Read more

Posted on DAX

Use more variables in DAX to simplify your life

Today I ran across a pretty straightforward DAX challenge that is made so much simpler thanks to variables. So I decided to share it. Remember folks use variables for each and every measure (even if you don’t think you need them). It will prepare you for the toughest challenges :). In this case we had a pretty straightforward table of survey results where we want to visualize the PCT of Yes answers by weight to... Read more