Many organizations deploying Power BI rely on one or more standardized template (.PBIT) files. Especially when paired with a custom theme, templates help create consistency for branding or other reasons.

Perhaps you want to open the same PBIT (or PBIX) every time you open Power BI and don’t want to rely on finding and opening the file directly. Or, perhaps your organization deploys software using a tool such as Microsoft Configuration Manager, and you want to ensure that report authors start with a consistent experience working from the same template.

This setup is simple with the use of Windows shortcuts that can be conveniently placed wherever you find them useful.

The following small shortcut modification works easily for the manual installation (non-Store version) of Microsoft Power BI by copying an existing shortcut. It may be a bit trickier to for the Microsoft Store version, but you could try browsing to C:\Users\[User]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps\Microsoft.MicrosoftPowerBIDesktop[random] to create a shortcut for the PBIDesktop.exe you’ll find there for the Store version.

1. Create a copy of an existing Power BI Desktop shortcut like the one you might find on the Windows desktop or taskbar.
2. Right-click on the shortcut and select Properties.
3. Append the path of a PBIT or PBIX file to the end of the Target.
4. Click OK to save the shortcut, and put it to use!

In the following screenshot, you can see the sample file path after the primary PBIDesktop.exe location (which you should not change). The screenshot shows double quotation marks because there is a space in my file name, but these would not be required if your file path does not contain spaces.

This post was inspired by a recent question by Tom Martens, co-author of the awesome new book Pro DAX with Power BI.

The post Power BI Quick Tip: Use Windows Shortcuts to Open Power BI with a Default File appeared first on DataVeld.

Last year, I compiled a hex color reference for the (then eight) built-in themes. Power BI now has a lot more themes from which to choose in addition to easily building your own. It’s time for an update.

The following embedded report shows all theme colors with their sequence. If you want to copy a hex value, right-click on it, then choose Copy and Copy Value.

With the earlier updates to my color reference, I had to painstakingly obtain the colors manually. To do this, I used a tool called Instant Eyedropper. It sits in the system tray, and with a simple click, I get any onscreen color value. My former colleague Jason Thomas recommended this small app to me years ago when he worked for BlueGranite. It’s free and easy to use, and I rely on it a lot.

But I no longer need to obtain Power BI Theme colors manually… WHAT???

The December Power BI Desktop update allows users to export theme files. This is currently a Preview Feature that needs to be enabled in Options and Settings. You are not limited to exporting themes that you define. You can also export the JSON for built-in themes (except Default and Classic). In the Theme area in the View tab, there is a new Export Current Theme option.

With this capability, I exported all the theme files. Those files have the detail on the hex colors and sequence for each theme. Did I then simply open up and grab the hex colors manually? No!

Since Power BI reads JSON, I used the Folder data source and pointed it to the folder where all my theme files resided.

After some transformation, the JSON objects from the file appeared in the Name column. The values that I was after were under dataColors, which appear as a List.

I couldn’t simply filter down to dataColors and then expand the list to a table of records though. A key part of this effort is to preserve the color sequence. Expanding the list and then loading the data as-is would not allow me to sort properly, so I needed an index along with the color values. Power BI has the ability to add an index easily for all records in a table, but I needed the index to reset for every theme. Here is where some valuable work from Ken Puls came in with his guidance to number rows by group. Note in the following screenshot how the Index resets with the next theme once the values are expanded.

From here, I only needed to do some filtering and basic cleanup. Each theme contains 32 colors with only the first eight visibly represented in Power BI. For my reference, I filtered down to eight as well.

With the resulting table of data, I dropped the colors into a Matrix visual and added two sets of conditional formatting:

• Background Color is the obvious one with the color set to the field value.
• Font Color is also conditionally formatted. If you look at some of the matrix text, you’ll notice that some fonts are black while most are white. In this case, Daniil Maslyuk provided the measure necessary to dynamically select the font color based on the background color. This provides contrast so that the font and background do not blend too much.

Thanks to both Ken and Daniil for their indirect contributions to this now-data-driven effort. I hope that some people continue to find this level of detail useful.

Here is a static image to save if needed.

The post Data Color Reference for Power BI Themes (as of December 2019) appeared first on DataVeld.

UPDATED 12/31/2019:

As of December 2019, Power BI includes a new ribbon and many more themes. I’ve updated the color reference in this post: Data Color Reference for Power BI Themes (as of December 2019)
https://dataveld.com/2019/12/31/data-color-reference-for-power-bi-themes-as-of-december-2019/

LEGACY:

Power BI now includes eight built-in themes in addition to the countless JSON variations that you could import. If you are interested in the hex color values in order to use them in Power BI or elsewhere, here is a basic quick reference to the built-in themes. I’ve only included the initial eight colors in each theme. As I discussed in my original Color Reference post on the default theme, themes start to vary after a certain amount of colors but in a different shade or tint. Many of the built-in themes start to repeat after eight base colors while some repeat after ten. I may revisit this guide later to be more precise with themes that include more than eight colors, but for now, here are the primary eight data colors for each.

Power BI Themes – Primary Data Color Reference

City Park

Classroom

Colorblind Safe

Electric

High Contrast

Sunset

Twilight

UPDATE 26 October 2018: I submitted a pull request with an abbreviated version of this table to the Power BI docs site. It is now live in the Report Theme documentation!

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyWe5-Lx84g1JrDY6Zh_dfV2oO-Cy3frl&layout=gallery[/embedyt]

The post Data Color Reference for Power BI Themes appeared first on DataVeld.

I’ve recently been working with my BlueGranite colleague and Microsoft MVP Melissa Coates on getting data from the Office 365 Management API. The specific use case is to obtain Power BI’s audit logs, which are available as RecordType 20 under Audit.General. While this post will not go into detail on the exact solution or share that code, the basics originated from this Microsoft repository: https://github.com/OfficeDev/O365-InvestigationTooling

The focus here is to document two specific steps for adapting a locally executed PowerShell script for an Azure Automation runbook. In addition to standard work in Automation to add credentials/connections and create parameters where needed, the following changes were required to adapt a local script for my runbook.

1) Add -UseBasicParsing to Web Requests

The Management API script is filled with various requests using Invoke-WebRequest. Initially, I received numerous errors stating that the Internet Explorer engine is not available.

Invoke-WebRequest : The response content cannot be parsed because the Internet Explorer engine is not available, or 
Internet Explorer's first-launch configuration is not complete. Specify the UseBasicParsing parameter and try again. 
At line:46 char:9
+ $subs = Invoke-WebRequest -Headers $headerParams -Uri "https://manage ...
+         ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : NotImplemented: (:) [Invoke-WebRequest], NotSupportedException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : WebCmdletIEDomNotSupportedException,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.InvokeWebRequestCommand

To overcome this, I needed to add the parameter UseBasicParsing. In PowerShell 6, this should no longer be necessary. Since Automation currently runs 5.1.15063.726 though, it is. Locally, this parameter is not needed even running PS version 5.x.

Original: $oauth = Invoke-RestMethod -Method Post -Uri $loginURL/$tenantdomain/oauth2/token?api-version=1.0 -Body $body

Adapted: $oauth = Invoke-RestMethod -Method Post -Uri $loginURL/$tenantdomain/oauth2/token?api-version=1.0 -Body $body –UseBasicParsing

2) Alter $ProgressPreference

PowerShell shows progress using $ProgressPreference, which defaults to “continue”. For Automation, I needed to change the option to “silently continue” and suppress progress bars. Locally, the progress can be convenient to see, but it was causing issues with Automation.

The post Caveats when Invoking Web Requests with PowerShell in Azure Automation appeared first on DataVeld.

In the following example, I show you how to add custom Google Fonts and combine them with an icon from the Microsoft Office UI Fabric. The primary disadvantage is that the fonts and icons are limited to a single visual and not available for formatting other visuals. On the other hand, advantages of using the HTML Viewer for a custom textbox is greater control over the output including positioning and style, the ability to easily combine text with images, and the quality remains constant regardless of how large or small you scale an image in the HTML Viewer.

Google Fonts

On the Modeling tab, select New Table and enter the following DAX. The DATATABLE function creates a new disconnected table with the custom HTML in a field for later use in the HTML Viewer. The head contains the link to two free fonts from Google called Gaegu and Uncial Antiqua, which are pipe-separated. The body contains the text elements with inline CSS styling. I tried using CSS with <style> tags in <head>, and while some styling worked, the fonts did not work in Power BI. I intentionally chose outlandish fonts to stand out (with Gaegu in particular rivaling Comic Sans for the crown of Font to Avoid on a Real Report), but there are hundreds of others available on the Google Fonts site.

Google Fonts = DATATABLE (
    "HTML Text", STRING, {
        {
            "<head>
                <link href='https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Gaegu|Uncial Antiqua' rel='stylesheet'>
            </head>
            <body>
                <p style='font-family:Uncial Antiqua;color:#017CBA;font-size:72px;text-align:center;margin:0;'>Custom web fonts in </p>
                <p style='font-family:Gaegu;color:#E78E46;font-size:96px;text-align:center;margin:0;'>Power BI</p>
            </body>"
        }
    }
)

When you add the field to an instance of the HTML Viewer custom visual, the output appears like so.

Microsoft Office UI Fabric

Going a step further, the Microsoft Office UI Fabric is a framework for styling an application or site like MS Office. In this case, I’ll use a small piece of the Fabric capabilities to add a Power BI logo icon that will scale with good quality regardless of how large I make the image.

On the Modeling tab, select New Table and enter the following DAX.

Microsoft Office UI Fabric = DATATABLE (
    "HTML Text", STRING, {
        {
            "<head>
                <link href='https://static2.sharepointonline.com/files/fabric/office-ui-fabric-js/1.4.0/css/fabric.min.css' rel='stylesheet'>
            </head>
            <body>
                <i class='ms-Icon ms-Icon--PowerBILogo' style='font-size:96px;color:#443322;transform:translate(10px,30px);' aria-hidden='true'></i>
            </body>"
        }
    }
)

Adding this new field to the HTML Viewer visual shows the Power BI logo.

Combine the Two

It’s possible to combine both as well. After all, flexibility is one of the main strengths of the HTML Viewer.

Combined = DATATABLE (
    "HTML Text", STRING, {
        {
            "<head>
                <link href='https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Gaegu|Uncial Antiqua' rel='stylesheet'>
                <link href='https://static2.sharepointonline.com/files/fabric/office-ui-fabric-js/1.4.0/css/fabric.min.css' rel='stylesheet'>
            </head>
            <body>
                <p style='font-family:Uncial Antiqua;color:#017CBA;font-size:72px;text-align:center;margin:0;'>Custom web fonts in </p>
                <p style='font-family:Gaegu;color:#E78E46;font-size:96px;text-align:center;margin:0;'>Power BI</p>
                <i class='ms-Icon ms-Icon--PowerBILogo' style='font-size:96px;color:#443322; display:inline-block;width:100%;text-align:center;transform:translate(0px,40px);' aria-hidden='true'></i>
            </body>"
        }
    }
)

While this has some very obvious limitations and won’t bring custom fonts to all of your visuals, it could provide some unique experiences with titles, images, and more. I’m curious to see if anyone takes advantage of this method for custom web fonts and icons in Power BI.

The post Custom Web Fonts and Icons in Power BI appeared first on DataVeld.

In the June update, the Donut chart received an Inner Radius property while both the Pie and Donut received a Label Position option. Before anyone tries to comment about how round things do not belong in data visualization, know that I hear you. It’s not this post’s topic though. Besides, with a theme file, you can prank your donut-loving colleagues by setting the inner radius to 100. Try doing that in Power BI’s Format area, which only allows you to set a radius to 95…

You might assume that with a new option named Inner Radius under Shapes that the theme might look something like this:

"shapes": [{
    "innerRadius": 90
}]

That’s wrong though and won’t work. The actual addition to the JSON is this:

"slices": [{
    "innerRadiusRatio": 90
}]

Huh? Slices??? Inner Radius Ratio??? How can we figure that out without endlessly guessing? When changes like this occur, you can immediately adjust your Theme files for the new properties using the following process:

1. In a Power BI Desktop report, add the visual you want to theme and save the report as a Template. I started using .pbit files for this type of work instead of copying and pasting my .pbix. There’s less chance of me messing up my main report accidentally.
2. Extract/unzip the contents of the .pbit file and find the Layout file.
3. Open the Layout file in a text editor and search for the visual you want (use Find to help navigate as there’s a lot of text to look through). The inner radius example looks like this:

   slices\":[{\"properties\":{\"innerRadiusRatio\":{\"expr\":{\"Literal\":{\"Value\":\"40L\"}}}}}]}

4. Add the new option you find to your theme file (an entirely new section in this case is slices while the new option is innerRadiusRatio).

Ironically, with the donut’s inner radius set to 0, we get a pie chart. Power BI now has two ways to make a pie chart. Do we still need a separate pie chart visual? Think how avant-garde it would be if Power BI removed pie charts. The marketing would be something like “FIRST BI TOOL TO ABOLISH PIE CHARTS” with Satya waving his hand while they all disappear. All this while secretly retaining the ability to create them using donuts…

I’ve updated my Pie and Donut template files with the new options. We can also update Power BI’s documentation on GitHub and submit pull requests. Maybe our Power BI community could do that too for this and other functionality.

The post Updating Power BI Theme Files With New Options appeared first on DataVeld.

About three years ago, Tableau introduced Level of Detail (LOD) expressions in version 9. In Power BI terminology, a Tableau LOD changes the filter context. For Power BI readers who may not be familiar with LOD expressions, there are three keywords that help change that context: FIXED, INCLUDE, and EXCLUDE. Tableau has a whitepaper that explains each type as well as shows how they evaluate within a filtering hierarchy. There are also numerous blog posts from Tableau community members that help explain LOD expressions.

Oversimplified for this post, the FIXED LOD specifies an exact level of detail. In Power BI, one way to approach this is to use the ALLEXCEPT function to preserve a filter on a given column.

The example LOD I use in this post is from Tableau’s #5 New Customer Acquisition calculation from their Top 15 LOD Expressions blog post. The Tableau calculation is:

{FIXED [Customer ID]: MIN([Order Date])}

This sets a “fixed” value of the minimum order date for the associated Customer ID on each row.

For new Power BI users attempting to recreate this in DAX, an equivalent approach could be to create the following new measure:

CALCULATE(
    MIN('Table'[Order Date]), 
    ALLEXCEPT('Table', 'Table'[Customer ID])
)

In this particular case, since you are working with dates, you could also use the FIRSTDATE function in place of MIN.

CALCULATE(
    FIRSTDATE('Table'[Order Date]), 
    ALLEXCEPT('Table', 'Table'[Customer ID])
)

Here is the result in Power BI:

Going a step further, you can used FIXED with multiple dimensions. In Power BI, simply add additional ALLEXCEPT functions as filters for CALCULATE.

{FIXED [Customer ID], [Product Name]: MIN([Order Date])}

CALCULATE(
    FIRSTDATE('Table'[Order Date]), 
    ALLEXCEPT('Table', 'Table'[Customer ID]),
    ALLEXCEPT('Table', 'Table'[Product Name]),
)

I’m not an expert when it comes to DAX, but there are plenty of great resources to help learn more for Power BI. What are some that I regularly reference? I recommend checking out Curbal’s DAX Fridays! video series on YouTube and reading material from Alberto and Marco as well as Matt Allington.

NEXT: Learn how to “translate” an EXCLUDE LOD expression to DAX – Tableau to Power BI: EXCLUDE Level of Detail Expressions

The post Tableau to Power BI: FIXED LOD Expressions appeared first on DataVeld.

Before creating Themes in Power BI, it would be helpful to review the documentation on Report Themes. I had a lot of trouble and confusion with how the properties for all visuals are presented together in the documentation, so I split things out into separate visuals and also filled in some gaps. This made it easier for me to compare what I was seeing in a visual’s Format menu with what I was adding to a theme file.

–>> Get them from GitHub or view the list of individual links below: PowerBI-ThemeTemplates repository<<–

If you notice an issue, log it in the GitHub repository. Better yet, fork it, fix the problem, and submit a pull request.

Glancing at any of the JSON files, you should notice that there are properties with names that do not align with what you see in Power BI’s Format menu. Properties used in Themes are based on the code used in the visual and not the display name that users see in Power BI. Sometimes these names match but usually they do not. For example, in the screenshot above for a Shape, “Rotation” in Power BI Desktop corresponds to “angle” in the JSON.

These template files function as a quick reference for anyone who does not simply want to rely on using wildcards (*) and who may not want to dig through the report theme documentation to figure it out on their own. Remember, these are not final theme files. They are more of a reference for the structure. Many of the values are not Power BI’s defaults but are set to easily verify a format change. In other words, these settings are often intentionally ugly so that I could easily check whether something changed.

Feel free to combine visuals, omit properties you don’t need, and change the sample values to what you want. Use these templates as guides to building your own themes.

Available Visuals:
Area Chart
Card
Clustered Bar Chart
Clustered Column Chart
Donut Chart
Filled Map
Funnel Chart
Gauge
Hundred Percent Stacked Bar Chart
Hundred Percent Stacked Column Chart
Image
KPI
Line Chart
Line and Clustered Column Chart
Line and Stacked Column Chart
Map
Matrix
Multi-row Card
Pie Chart
Ribbon Chart
Scatter Chart
Shape
Shape Map
Slicer
Stacked Area Chart
Stacked Bar Chart
Stacked Column Chart
Table
Treemap
Waterfall

The post Template Theme Files for Power BI Visuals appeared first on DataVeld.

DISCLAIMER: I do not know if this is or will be officially supported or documented (UPDATE: it’s not and won’t be), so the following tooltip functionality may change at any point. I’m hopeful that it does not, and that Power BI may add similar functionality for its other visuals. In the meantime, don’t put this into a production report with the expectation that it will always work. 

How is this enhanced formatting accomplished? Most visuals in Power BI have a dedicated Tooltip field, but the ArcGIS map does not. Instead, for maps that only rely upon Latitude and Longitude, you can create a calculated column and add it to the unused Location field. The calculated column contains a series of concatenated strings that blend DAX with HTML. Hopefully when or if a real Tooltip field is added, you can use the same column and simply add it to Tooltip in place of Location.

For my custom tooltip, I used an <img> tag to add my company’s BlueGranite logo to the outage map that I discussed a few days ago. I then combined my Power BI column references with their “Reported” and “Restoration Estimate” labels. Finally, I added a table using the <table> tag and added references to the appropriate Power BI columns within the HTML. Basic inline CSS also works, which provides a different color for the table headers.

It’s even possible to handle conditional formatting with DAX. I used IF() to supply alternate colors in the table details, which you can see in action in the following GIF.

If you are interested in trying it out on your own, here’s the latest version of the code that built my sample tooltip:

In case you are wondering, I also tried this with the Tooltip field in other Power BI visuals, but it only displays the text and does not render the HTML.

What clued me in on the new enhanced tooltip? If you add a reference layer to your ArcGIS Map, you can click on various features and will not only see formatted text, but charts in tooltips! Lukasz Pawlowski from the Microsoft Power BI team has a good video demonstrating the new maps on his blog, which shows off the enhanced tooltip starting at around the 2:40 mark. (CLARIFICATION: Those charts are built-in. This method is a DAX hack).

Finally, here is a running list of what works and does not. If anyone with better skills in this area would like to test it out and potentially improve upon or correct the items, I would be grateful.

Working

• line break <br> tags
• paragraph <p> tags
• bold and italics with <b> and <em>
• tables with <table> tags
• lists with <ol> and <ul> tags – lists do not show bullets or numbers though
• inline CSS styling

Not working

• link <a> tags – href links appear but do nothing when you click on them
• iframes with <iframe> tags – frame border appears but does not work
• various <input> tags – appear, but of course there’s nothing to do with the input
• inline Javascript with <script> tags – in-progress attempts to use basic Javascript have not worked

Read 10 Ways to Create Maps in Microsoft Power BI.

The post Adding an HTML Tooltip in ArcGIS Maps for Power BI appeared first on DataVeld.

Instead, use Code with the IPython IFrame import:

from IPython.display import IFrame

powerBiEmbed = 'https://app.powerbi.com/view?r=[...]'

IFrame(powerBiEmbed, width=800, height=600)

The post Embed a Live Microsoft Power BI Report in Jupyter appeared first on DataVeld.