In today’s business intelligence world, Power BI has become a beloved among many. In this blog, I am going to cover Power BI best practices, that will assistance to you while developing the Power BI report. Company Logo Use the logo in their background. Data Timestamp to show, when it was refreshed last We can implement it, to show the end user, when the data was refreshed last. Less use of scrollable Page End users always feel difficulty when the report has a scrollable page. We do not recommend making the page scrollable if not necessary. Instead of making page scrollable, use Bookmark and Selection Pane. Census dashboard doesn’t have a scrollable page which is good. Use Basic Reporting Filter Power BI provides the following type of filters. Visual Level Page Level Report Level Use the filters wisely as per your requirement. Pull data from views, not tables Importing data from tables in a SQL Server, MY SQL or Oracle database creates strong dependencies between the physical data model and the reporting engine. Whenever table structures change, it’s best to pull relational data from views. Filter before import If you’re importing data into Power BI instead of a live connection, it’s best to limit the amount of processes that happen inside the tool. Power BI has a limit for the amount of data that’s allowed to be imported, so any steps to avoid reaching that limit will be a plus. Narrow tables are faster than short and wide tables If the performance is slowing down as you’re adding data, it’s mostly due to wide tables.  Power BI reacts much faster using narrow and long tables versus short and wide ones. Remove unused fields Whenever adding more and more data, you will notice the pbix file size increasing.  One of the best and quickest ways to reduce the pbix file is to remove any unused fields. How: Click Edit Query > then select the table you want to remove the fields from > Click Choose Columns. Label all of your steps As you’re going through and modifying the imported data, Power BI creates a history that allows you to seamlessly go back and remove any changes that might break the datasets.  Furthermore, labelling each of these steps allows you to easily remember what each does. Limit the visuals in dashboards and reports The Microsoft Power BI performance best practices highlight that placing many visuals in a single report is responsible for it. This is what you need to do in order to limit the number of visuals in dashboards and reports: Limit to a minimum of eight widget visuals in every report page and keep the grids to a minimum of one in every page The pages should be limited to no more than 30 points (cards: 1, gauges: 2, charts: 3, maps: 3, grids: 5) Keep the tiles limited to no more than 10 per dashboard. Remove unnecessary interactions between visuals Do you know the secret of improving Power BI report performance? Here’s a clue! You can make that possible by removing unnecessary interactions between visuals. This is possible because of the reason that all visuals on a report can interact with one another by default. The interactivity should be controlled and modified for optimal performance. Further, you can reduce the number of queries fired at the backend and improve report performance by disabling unwanted interactivity. Enable Row-Level Security (RLS) Power BI only imports the data that the user is authorized to view, with RLS that restricts user access to certain rows in a database depending on the characteristics of the user executing a query. But how to attain substantial performance gains? You can enable this by combining Power BI roles with roles in the backend. Moreover, you need to test all roles prior to rolling out to production. Use Microsoft AppSource certified custom visuals The Power BI certified custom visuals are verified by Microsoft to have robust as well as well-performing code. These AppSource visuals have passed rigorous quality testing and are the only custom visuals that can be viewed in Export to PowerPoint and email subscriptions. Avoid using hierarchical filters We recommend, not to use any hierarchical slicers in the report. Currently, we have observed that no hierarchical slicers are used in the report. Experience an enhanced performance in Power BI by using multiple filters for the hierarchy. Categorize the data for Power BI reports One of the best practices in Power BI is to provide data categorization for the Power BI reports (HBI, MBI, LBI). The Power BI data classification enables you to raise user awareness about the security level that is required to be used. This also helps you to understand the way reports should be shared inside as well as outside the organization. The categories can be listed as: HBI or High Business Impact data, that requires users to get a policy exception to share the data eternally. LBI or Low Business Impact as well as MBI or Medium Business Impact, that do not require any exceptions. Use the On-premises data gateway It is suggestible as well as one of the best practices to use on-premises data gateway instead of Personal Gateway for it takes data and imports it into Power BI. But why Enterprise Gateway? It is more efficient while you work with large databases as Enterprise Gateway imports nothing. Use separate Power BI gateways for “Direct Query” and “Scheduled Refresh” Using the same gateway for Scheduled Data Refresh and Live Connection slows down the Live Connection performance when the Scheduled Data Refresh is active. It is suggestible for you to create separate gateways for Live Connection and Scheduled Refresh to avoid such issues. Test each custom visual on a report for ensuring fast report load time The Power BI team doesn’t thoroughly test the custom visuals that are not certified. So, while handling large datasets or complex aggregations, the custom visuals might perform poorly. What should you do when the chosen visual … Continue reading Top 20 Best Practices of Power BI →

The February 2019 release of Power BI Desktop unveiled a new, out-of-the-box visual to Power BI called Key Influencers. Key Influencers is Power BI’s first Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered visualization. Microsoft has long incorporated AI capabilities in Power BI through features such as Natural Language (Q&A) and Quick Insights. However, with Key Influencers report developers now have explicit control in leveraging AI to discover insights in their data. Even more, Key Influencers is essentially multiple visuals baked into one! The Key Influencers visual is comprised of two tabs: Key Influencers and Top Segments. The Key Influencers tab will display a ranked list of the individual contributing factors that drive the selected condition. The Top Segments tab will take this a step further and display groupings of key influencers and their impact on the selected condition. The Key Influencers tab runs a LOGISTIC REGRESSION to analyze your data and identify the main factors that influence a specific metric or condition. Scenario: The customers of a company are using a particular cloud service. The Product Manager of that company wants to conduct a survey and analyze factors (Key Influencers) that drive the customers to provide a negative feedback i.e low rating after using the cloud service. KEY INFLUENCERS TAB The Top Influencers are:- Role in Org is consumer The people whose role in the organization is consumer have 2.57 times more chances to provide negative feedback than people whose role is adminstrator or publisher. 2. Theme is usability Second most influencing factor is Theme is usability which means the most negative reviews are provided for Usability. All the Key Influencers tab gives us two panes of visuals. For example, on the left-hand pane you have an infographic of the key influencers themselves, ranked based on their relative impact on the condition being analyzed And the right-hand pane will display a chart containing the values of that attribute, along with the average percentage that value matches the condition. All these factors change continuously depending on the parameters.For example if we add a slicer of company size, the top influencers will change- TOP SEGMENTS TAB On the Top Segments tab, you will see how groupings of key influencers affect the selected condition.  The segments are ranked based on the percentage of records where the condition is met. The size of each segment bubble represents how many records (population count) are in the segment. LIMITATIONS The key influencers visual has some limitations: Direct Query is not supported Live Connection to Azure Analysis Services and SQL Server Analysis Services is not supported Publish to web is not supported .NET Framework 4.6 or higher is required. Hope this is helpful! For more such posts visit- https://www.cloudfronts.in/why-you-should-migrate-from-excel-to-power-bi-for-reporting/

The tips for formating SSRS reports have been covered here. The Default margin settings have been given as to avoid the blank page issue And give the report a formal look. Also, how to Align Page Number in center of the page has been showed. Default margin settings:- Aligning Page Number in center of the page :- Select Page Number Text Box-> Format->Center in Form Hope this helps! For more such blogs refer the below link. https://www.cloudfronts.in/how-to-use-level-up-for-dynamics-365-crm/

Microsoft Excel has traditionally been the go-to reporting tool for businesses, but Power BI offers powerful analytics and reporting features for organizations. With faster experimentation with visualizations, statistical functions and calculations across broad datasets and ability to derive answers on the fly through the rapid recombination of fields, it is clear that Power BI delivers far greater insight than Excel. Reasons Why You Should Migrate Reporting from Excel to Power BI: 1. Storing and Accessing Large amount of Data Power BI has very impressive compression abilities for Microsoft Excel and text/.csv files, which allows you to view, analyze and visualize huge quantities of data that cannot be opened in Excel. Large datasets don’t have to be cut down in size and aggregated to show more encompassing analysis. 2.Applications Excel does have some of the newer charts now, they can’t connect to the data model. But Power BI is ideal for Dashboards, alerts, KPIs, and visualizations, including analyzing your data visually. 3.Reports Excel reports are normal and ordinary comparing Power BI whereas Power BI offers Beautiful branded reports comparing Excel. 4.Cross Filtering Power BI allows advanced features in Cross filtering between charts unlike excel. 5.Dashboard Refreshment You can refresh data in Power BI. Excel does not allow dashboard refreshment. 6.DataSet Power BI has the capability of handling larger dataset. Excel can handle limited dataset only. 7. Incredible Cloud-based Features Once you have finished constructing your Power BI analysis, you need a way to publish and disseminate your dashboards and reports. In Excel this would typically involve emailing a large file around, putting it in a shared drive or SharePoint portal, and letting people know it has been updated.With Power BI offered “publish” this process has been completely revolutionized. 8.Natural Language Query This incredible feature allows users to type questions and get an answer, either in a default or user-specified form. This is useful for executives with specific questions and business users who are unfamiliar with Power BI or the data model behind the report. Power BI is an easy tool to use that helps propel organizations into a data driven culture. With powerful self-service abilities, no longer are business users dependent on IT for gathering, transforming and analyzing data. Automation of dataset integration, ease of expansion into new data sources, rapid visualizations, and easily deployable Row Level Security are amongst the many reasons Power BI is a necessity.Additionally, a cloud-based collaboration environment with features like Natural Language Query ease the process of data governance. In the age of analytics, it’s import for organizations to intelligently utilize the data they collect to rapidly evolve with changing business and consumer habits. For more such blogs refer the below link. https://www.cloudfronts.in/how-to-use-level-up-for-dynamics-365-crm/

Introduction: Converting Date/Time values according to a time zone is quite challenging task in SSRS Reporting. For D365 CRM online we can achieve this using CDate Function. I will demonstrate how to use CDate function with a dynamic time-zone parameter. Step 1: Add this reference to the report properties: Click on “References” and then click on “Add” button under “Add or remove assemblies”. Browse the following file from your BIDS folder. Microsoft.Crm.Reporting.RdlHelper, Version=9.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35 Click on Ok button to save the changes. Step 2: Create the parameter in the report data section in the “Parameters” folder as shown below: In the “Default Values” section check the click on “Add” Button. Enter the User Time Zone in the Formula and click on OK to Save the Changes. Step 3: To use this functionality is simply as follows: DateValue(CDate(Microsoft.Crm.Reporting.RdlHelper.DateTimeUtility.ConvertUtcToLocalTime(Fields!msdyn_dateValue.Value, Parameters!CRM_UserTimeZoneName.Value))) Example: If the Expression or Formula is as follow: Last 30 =WeekdayName(Weekday(DateSerial(Year(Fields!msdyn_dateValue.Value), Month(Fields!msdyn_dateValue.Value),”1″).AddMonths(1).AddDays(-30))) The Replace it with: Last 30= WeekdayName(Weekday(DateSerial(Year(DateValue(CDate(Microsoft.Crm.Reporting.RdlHelper.DateTimeUtility.ConvertUtcToLocalTime(Fields!msdyn_dateValue.Value, Parameters!CRM_UserTimeZoneName.Value)))), Month(DateValue(CDate(Microsoft.Crm.Reporting.RdlHelper.DateTimeUtility.ConvertUtcToLocalTime(Fields!msdyn_dateValue.Value, Parameters!CRM_UserTimeZoneName.Value)))),”1″).AddMonths(1).AddDays(-30))) Note: This is an easy way of dynamically converting a time zone from UTC to the user’s local time using CRM Online. We have to replace all the formulae which contain the DateTime field value which is retrieved directly from FetchXML with the above mentioned Function to avoid issues in SSRS reports due to Time Zone Conversion.

In this article, we will embed a Power BI report in a python web application with flask in visual studio 2015. Following are the steps to embed a report. STEPS: Create a new Python Web Project by selecting “Web Project” under Python in Visual Studio 2. If you can’t see this option then first you have to install Python tools for visual studio 2015 2.1 Run the Visual Studio installer through Control Panel > Programs and Features, selecting Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 and then Change. 2.2 In the installer, select Modify 2.3 Select Programming Languages > Python Tools for Visual Studio and then Next: 2.4 Once Visual Studio setup is complete, install a Python interpreter of your choice. Visual Studio 2015 supports only Python 3.5 and earlier; later versions generate a message like Unsupported Python version 3.6 3. Next step to create a Python Virtual Environment. (This is not mandatory but it is advisable to create a virtual environment to avoid changes to global python installation. ) 4. Expand the project in Solution explorer and right click “Python Environments” and select “Add Virtual Environment”. Accept the default environment name “env” and create the python virtual environment. On successful creation of Virtual Environment, Visual studio would automatically point to newly created Virtual Environment instead of Global Python environment 5. Right click “env” (the name of virtual environment) and select “Install Python Package” Provide the name of the Package as “Flask” and leave the installation mode to “pip”. The alternate installation mode is “easy_install”. Wait for the installation to complete and you can view “Flask” and its dependent packages in the Solution Explorer on successful installation Now the environment is all set and the next step is to create the actual web application Add an empty Python file named “OpenPowerBIReport.py” (Solution Explorer => Add => New Item) and set it as start-up file (Right click index.py and select “Set as Start up File” in context menu) Add the below code to OpenPowerBIReport.py . The below code snippet is creates a variable by name “data” and passes its value to “index.html” when the user lands at “root” location (“/”) of the website Add two folders named “Templates” and “Static” to the project. These are the folders Flask would be looking for html files (Templates) and other assets (Static) from flask import Flask,render_template from os import environ app = Flask(__name__) @app.route(‘/’) def index(): weburl=”https://app.powerbi.com/reportEmbed?reportId=df8a34c9-b173-4449-b7e3-2cd29208cd33&autoAuth=true&ctid=26c4b2e4-ec07-4c7b-92e5-97f52865e98b&config=eyJjbHVzdGVyVXJsIjoiaHR0cHM6Ly93YWJpLXNvdXRoLWVhc3QtYXNpYS1yZWRpcmVjdC5hbmFseXNpcy53aW5kb3dzLm5ldCJ9” return render_template(‘PowerBIReport.html’,weburl=weburl) if __name__ == ‘__main__’: HOST = environ.get(‘SERVER_HOST’, ‘localhost’) try: PORT = int(environ.get(‘SERVER_PORT’, ‘5555’)) except ValueError: PORT = 5555 app.run(HOST, PORT,debug=True) Add a new html file named “PowerBIReport.html” inside the templates folder and copy paste the below html snippet to that file <!DOCTYPE html> <html lang=”en” xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml”> <head> <meta charset=”utf-8″ /> <title>Home Page</title> <link href=”/static/styles.css” rel=”stylesheet” /> <style> .button { background-color: #4CAF50; border: none; color: white; padding: 15px 32px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; display: inline-block; font-size: 16px; margin: 4px 2px; cursor: pointer; } </style> </head> <body bgcolor=”#E6E6FA”> <div> <h1>Embed Power BI report in Python web apps !!</h1> <a href=”https://app.powerbi.com/reportEmbed?reportId=df8a34c9-b173-4449-b7e3-2cd29208cd33&autoAuth=true&ctid=26c4b2e4-ec07-4c7b-92e5-97f52865e98b&config=eyJjbHVzdGVyVXJsIjoiaHR0cHM6Ly93YWJpLXNvdXRoLWVhc3QtYXNpYS1yZWRpcmVjdC5hbmFseXNpcy53aW5kb3dzLm5ldCJ9” class=”button” target=”_blank”>Go to Power BI Report In New Tab</a> <button onclick=”location.href = ‘https://app.powerbi.com/reportEmbed?reportId=df8a34c9-b173-4449-b7e3-2cd29208cd33&autoAuth=true&ctid=26c4b2e4-ec07-4c7b-92e5-97f52865e98b&config=eyJjbHVzdGVyVXJsIjoiaHR0cHM6Ly93YWJpLXNvdXRoLWVhc3QtYXNpYS1yZWRpcmVjdC5hbmFseXNpcy53aW5kb3dzLm5ldCJ9‘” type=”button” class=”button”> Open Power BI Report </button> </div> <div> <iframe width=”680″ height=”510″ src=”{{ weburl }}” frameborder=”0″ allowFullScreen=”true”></iframe> </div> </body> </html> Add a new file named “style.css” to the static folder and the below css snippet to the file. This file is explicitly added to the project to show where to place static assets instead of adding inline css in html. .info {     margin:auto;     text-align:center;     padding-top:20% }12. Solution Explorer would look like the below picture after adding html and css 12. The new Embed option is available on the File menu for reports in the Power BI service. Select the Embed option to open a dialog that provides a link and an HTML snippet that can be used to embed the report securely. You’ll need to use your portal’s embed feature or edit the web page’s HTML to add the report. 13.That’s it. Hit F5 and now you can expect a website running similar to the one shown below.

Power BI provides interactive features that allow for easy navigation and filtering of the visual on click. But, we can also set the interaction between the visuals. We can have some of the visuals default to a filter functionality whereas other visuals use the highlight method. Type of Interaction No-way – no interaction between visuals One-way – interaction occurs from one visual to another, but not in the reverse direction Two-way – interaction occurs between one visual and another in both directions How to set the interaction? Go to the Edit Interactions button on the Format tab of the ribbon in Power BI Desktop. Once you click the Edit interactions button, you can now edit the interactions between the different visuals. As we can see for the Day wise Revenue card we disabled the interaction for the Month range filter and for Total Month Revenue we disabled interaction for the Day range filter. As if we select the day from the dropdown filter we can see that there is no change in Total Month Revenue. Hope this helps!

This blog will explain how to synch Slicer in Power BI desktop. In slicer syncing, all the pages where slicer has been applied will get synchronized. How to apply slicer syncing? Step1: Select “Date Selection” slicer > Open View Menu > Click “Sync slicer”. Step 2: When we click on slicer syncing it will open the setting for the slicer. Based on our requirement we can select the different combinations to apply slicer and it will get synch across all tabs. Hope this helps!

One can make better and faster-informed decisions when they use Microsoft Power BI Integrations. The business data that is there on your systems have a lot of information that can help you to scale up your business. You can unlock its true potential when you use business intelligence software. Microsoft is the leading company when it comes to creating products that help a business to expand beyond leaps and bounds. It is easy to learn and use. But, unfortunately not many people struggle with the software once they install it as they do not know how to use it. For example, removing duplicate in power query might look like a real struggle if you do not know how to do it. In this blog, we are going to see how to remove duplicate from the column using Power Query, as we know that we can directly apply a transformation on the column and then use remove duplicate. But there is situation when remove duplicate does not work. Situation 1:- Consider the following scenario, we have the same GUID but the case is different in that case duplicate will not get removed. Solution:- Power Query is case sensitive language here both abcdefg123  and Abcdefg123 are considered as different. If you are going to do remove duplicates despite their case of letters, then you have to apply a transformation to change them all to one case; either UPPERCASE or lowercase. Situation 2:- In other scenarios sometimes we have data with leading or trailing space is present so changing it to UPPERCASE, you would still have the extra space, which makes the two texts differ. So, to deal with that we have to use Trim Transformation to remove extra space.

Microsoft Power BI Integrations, in a nutshell, is nothing but a Power BI (business intelligence) software that provides a business analytics solution. It helps companies to visualize their data and to share observations and insights across all the departments in the organizations. Management teams can make crucial decisions based on the information that comes from these reports.  Your decision making is going to be a lot better and faster when you use this particular software. In other words, it is going to make the life of every employee better as they can see where they are doing well and where exactly they need to improve. Companies can scale up high using the data.  Here’s everything that you would want to learn about this product In this blog, we are going to see how to set the default value for value in report filter pane in Power BI. Sometimes we came with a requirement to set default values in a day filter to Current Month as default. Since we cannot use DAX in report level filter directly but we can work around this issue in the following way by creating the following DAX Default Filter = IF(MONTH(Calendar[Date])=MONTH(NOW()) && YEAR(Calendar[Date])=YEAR(NOW()),”This Month”,””) You can drag the filter in the report level filter and select the value as “This Month”.