A quick post today about Last refresh Data/Time on a Power BI Service. The Last Refresh Date/Time alerts users how new the data is for the report. You can visualize the Last refresh Date/Time with a card that shows the date and time that the data for the report was last updated. On Power BI Desktop and Power BI Report Server, you can use  DateTime.LocalNow() to get the Last refresh Date/Time for a report. When you publish the same report to Power BI Service, you will get an incorrect refresh Date/Time. Here is a quick way to workaround it, using the DateTimeZone.SwitchZone: Step 1. Create ..read more

Power BI recently announced an amazing feature called Power BI Desktop Developer Mode. In today’s post, we will discuss how you can use the Power BI Desktop project to track version history and compare the differences. With this feature, you can do the following: Collaboration: Source control allows multiple team members to work simultaneously on the same Power BI project without the fear of overwriting or losing changes. It enables collaboration by providing a centralized repository where everyone can access and contribute to the project. Version Management: Power BI source control enables yo ..read more

If your data is stored on an internal server, then you need an On-Premises Gateway for data refresh on Power BI Service. In today’s post, we will discuss how to determine the correct sizing for your On-Premises Data Gateway machine. Determining the correct sizing for your Gateway machine can depend on the following : For Import mode: The type of the datasource The size of the data to import to Power BI Transformations required by the Power Query mashup engine The size of the data to publish to the Power BI service The number of concurrent dataset refreshes Cache data workloads require enoug ..read more

O365 for Applications = OneLake for Data. OneLake is a single place for all your analytics data. Every tenant has exactly one OneLake. Fabric stores Lakehouses, Warehouses, and other items in OneLake. Microsoft Fabric Lakehouse is a platform designed to store, manage, and analyze structured and unstructured data in a single location. To create a Lakehouse with OneLake , you first need to enable Microsoft Fabric in your Tenant, and the Fabric trial license if you don’t have Fabric Capacity. Step 1. To enable Fabric : Go to settings, at the top right of Power BI Service -> Select Admin portal ..read more

In today’s post, we will discuss how to get metadata for requested list of workspaces in Power BI, using the Power BI scanner API. This shows data sources and connection details used by each Workspace, data sources used by each datasets and reports connected to each dataset. For datasets, you can also extract the metadata like tables, column names and so on. To accomplish this, we will use 4 Scanner APIs: GetModifiedWorkspaces WorkspaceGetInfo WorkspaceScanStatus WorkspaceScanResult The user must be an administrator to run the APIs. These APIs support both public and sovereign clouds. Also ..read more

A quick post today about the different types of groups used in Power BI service. Microsoft Groups are a collection of users that drive teamwork across Microsoft 365. With Microsoft 365 Groups, you can give a group of users access to a collection of shared resources like Power BI. When sharing Power BI content to a large audience, a more efficient way is to use Groups. It can be time-consuming to share to individual users. Below are Microsoft groups used in Power BI. To compare the groups in more detail, check here: Compare Groups Happy collaboration The post Microsoft Groups used in Power BI ..read more

Manage gateway installers On Power BI service Manage gateways or Power platform Admin center, a Global admin or a Power BI service admin can use Manage gateway installers to manage who can install an on-premises data gateway in a tenant. This feature does not apply to personal gateways. A Power BI idea for approval process before gateway becomes active has been completed. However, to restrict or prevent users from installing personal gateways in a Power BI tenant, you use PowerShell. Note: PowerShell 7.0.6 or higher is required to install the DataGateway module. Let’s walk-through the step ..read more

In this post, we will discuss how to convert Hours into Minutes and add it to the existing Minutes to get a whole number. I tried two different methods and got the same result, so I decided to share it with you. Let’s walkthrough the steps: I have a simple table with a Ticket and Time columns. I need to convert the Hours to Minutes and add it to the existing Minutes in the Time column to get a whole number. Method One In Power Query Editor, create a Custom Column and add the following formula: =Time.Hour([Time]) * 60+Time.Minute([Time]) M Query = Table.AddColumn(#”Renamed Columns”, “Minutes ..read more

A quick post today about how to calculate Average for a column with text data type in Power BI. In Power BI, you can only count the the number of rows in a column that has a text data type under summarization, other summarizations are not available for a text data type. If you attempt to use an Average function in a measure for a text column, you will get an error message like the one below: To calculate the Average of a text column, you divide the count of the column by the distinct count using a DAX measure. For the below example, I have 2 columns with text data types and I want the averag ..read more

I was working on a project last week to filter a Stacked bar chart for multiple selections on a slicer with AND condition, so I decided to write a blog post about it. Let’s start by creating a simple Stacked bar chart in Power BI for all Products: The issue : By default, when you select multiple items on a slicer to filter the result in a Stacked bar chart, it displays the result even if one condition is met, i.e. (OR condition). From screenshot below, I selected “Black”, “Red”, and “Yellow” on the slicer to filter the Stacked bar chart. The chart displays Products with Sales Amount for at le ..read more