Recently while working with a customer I was presented with a challenge that I hadn’t considered before; they have more than 50 measures in a dataset and asked for the best practices around organizing them. After pausing for a bit too long, I said I would get back to them and provide our recommendations. I then proceeded to spend the better part of 2 days agonizing over how to make a simple yet robust system for organizing measures for both dataset developers and report builders.

DataFlows is one of the more exciting features added to Power BI of late. It allows anyone with experience in Power BI to create full ETL solutions through a few clicks rather than the traditional futzing around with SSIS, Stored Procedures, or any of the other multitudes of products and solutions out there.

Let's step through a common scenario using DataFlows, sourcing some data from SQL server:

This is a continuation of our series on “weird data wrangling” scenarios. In this blog post, I will tackle some interesting data on Major League Baseball play by play data.

Perhaps one of the most crucial steps in creating effective visualization tools in Power BI is modeling your data. As data analysts, our goals are to make data exploration faster, make reports more accurate, and make the data and reports easy to maintain over time. If you model your data correctly, then it makes it possible for these goals to be achievable. With there being so much that goes into data modeling, it can be difficult to know where to start.

Power BI connects to 115+ data sources. A webpage connector is very useful and enables data stored on websites to be mashed up and analyzed. When several webpages in a given URL share the same structure and content (e.g., a page for each year or category), the creation of a parameter for the URL and a function to replicate the Power Query code can import all of the data into a single data-set. This blog post will demonstrate how to do just that.

Business is tough. Your competition is actively trying to bury you, customers are slow to pay you, and the government will abscond with a pile of your cash if you have the audacity to show a profit.  At times it can seem as if the deck is stacked against you.  If those factors weren’t bad enough, here’s another nugget of inspiration for you,

“You’re probably digging the hole, jumping in, and burying yourself.”

The good news is when you stop digging, your competition will become less relevant, and your customers will fuel your growth instead of consuming your cash flow.