Category Archives: Power BI

New Visualization Types in Power BI Desktop

In the July 2015 update for Power BI Desktop there were a load of improvements to the tool including new data sources, new transformations, direct querying of SSAS Tabular Models, new Data and Relationship view, publishing directly to your Power BI site and some new visualization types.

Dashboard report built with Power BI Desktop

The new visualization types added to Power BI Desktop are the Waterfall chart, Area chart, Donut chart Continue reading New Visualization Types in Power BI Desktop

Introduction to Power BI Desktop Video Walkthrough

Last night I finished editing and posting my video walkthrough of Microsoft’s new Power BI Desktop tool. This tool is awesome! If you’re looking for an end to end analytics tool that will allow you to consume all types of data sources, mash it up, and then report on it in one single place, this tool can do that.

So give my video walkthrough a watch to get ramped up on Power BI Desktop and leave a comment down below if you enjoyed and learned something from the video!

Power BI Desktop: My First Run Through

If PowerPivot, Power Query, and Power View had a baby (don’t ask how) that baby would be called Power BI Desktop Designer. Yesterday the Power BI Desktop Designer was released for general availability, which I promptly downloaded last night at 11:30 PM EST and started playing with. Even as my wife turned out the light and begged me to go to sleep, I persisted! I was too excited. So here’s my first run through (I call it run through because it was late and I didn’t spend a ton of time looking at every little thing).

Here are 3 Power BI best practices to follow

Download Power BI Desktop

Ok first things first. Download the Power BI Desktop Designer so you can start playing!

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=45331

Installing it is pretty straight forward so I’ll spare you the details.

Get Data with Power BI Desktop

The first thing I did after installing the Power BI Desktop Designer was Continue reading Power BI Desktop: My First Run Through

My Top Four Books for the MS Business Intelligence Professional

As a Business Intelligence Consultant, I do a decent amount of speaking, interacting with the community, and have written and contributed on a few SQL Server books. A question I’m often asked is if I can recommend any good books which brings me to this blog post. I wanted to make you aware of four books for learning data warehousing and  other MS BI technologies that I’ve found incredibly helpful over the years I’ve spent designing and implementing enterprise data warehouse and business intelligence solutions. Continue reading My Top Four Books for the MS Business Intelligence Professional

Choose Your Weapon: Power BI Edition

With an estimated 500 million Excel users in the world, it’s no wonder that Excel is the #1 business intelligence too in many organizations around the globe. And with the release of Excel 2013, the collection of powerful and flexible data analysis tools built into Excel has only continued to grow. Microsoft is constantly adding new features and functionality to Power BI at pretty fast rate, so now is a great time to start learning about everything that MS Power BI can offer your organization.

Because Excel is just full of a slew of incredible tools, its important for us to understand the difference between the tools, when you should choose each tool, and the Continue reading Choose Your Weapon: Power BI Edition