BI Projects, Microsoft BI Platform

Doing Power BI the Right Way: 6. Validating data model results – Part 2

Paul Turley

Moving important business data into a data model for analytic reporting can often be a two-edge sword. Data retrieval is fast and can support all kinds of analytic trending and comparisons. But, data in the model may be one or two layers away from the original source data, making it more challenging to compare with familiar user reports. Often the first validation effort after transforming and loading data into the model and then visualizing the initial results is having a business user say “yeah, that looks about right.” Then, sometime later after more development and extensive user testing, the feedback might be “hmm, that looks a bit off.” …not exactly scientific.

I have been doing a lot of data validation work lately – both formally and informally. Informally: Validating calculation results from a Power BI data model is just a normal part of the development process. Formally: After developing and delivering an entire business dashboard solution, a formal validation process is used to validate the ongoing results after future data refresh cycles and to certify reports so that business leaders know they can trust them.

BI Projects, Microsoft BI Platform

Doing Power BI the Right Way: 6. Validating data model results – Part 1

Paul Turley

Moving important business data into a data model for analytic reporting can often be a two-edge sword. Data retrieval is fast and can support all kinds of analytic trending and comparisons. But, data in the model may be one or two layers away from the original source data, making it more challenging to compare with familiar user reports. Often the first validation effort after transforming and loading data into the model and then visualizing the initial results is having a business user say “yeah, that looks about right.” Then, sometime later after more development and extensive user testing, the feedback might be “hmm, that looks a bit off.” …not exactly scientific.

I have been doing a lot of data validation work lately – both formally and informally. Informally: Validating calculation results from a Power BI data model is just a normal part of the development process. Formally: After developing and delivering an entire business dashboard solution, a formal validation process is used to validate the ongoing results after future data refresh cycles and to certify reports so that business leaders know they can trust them.

Business Analytics, Data Visualization, Microsoft BI Platform, Power BI, SSRS Design

Doing Power BI the Right Way: 9. Choosing the right report type: analytic or paginated

Paul Turley

Writing this blog series while juggling other commitments has brought me to two realizations: 1. Posting articles in the series will be sporadic, and 2. The topics will be in fairly random order based on the projects I’m working on and the topics that are most top-of-mind at the time.

This brings me to the subject of this post: Paginated and Analytic reports.

Microsoft BI Platform

Doing Power BI the Right Way: 2. Preparing, shaping & transforming source data

Paul Turley

Second post in the “Doing Power BI the Right Way” series. In a business intelligence solution, data must be shaped and transformed. Your data is rarely, if ever, going to be in the right format for analytic reporting.

Microsoft BI Platform

Doing Power BI the Right Way: 1. Futureproofing Power BI solutions

Paul Turley

When starting a Power BI project, you have many choices to make. Decisions like how to source your data, where and how to create queries to cleanse, transform and reshape the data; where and how to create calculations and the nuances of modeling are just the tip of the iceberg.

Microsoft BI Platform

Power BI External Tools: Reading the Tea Leaves

Paul Turley

This week, Christian Wade from Microsoft announced on the Microsoft Power BI blog that a new ribbon “External Tools” was added to the preview features of Power BI Desktop in the July update. In earlier posts, Christian has promoted community developed tools such as Tabular Editor, DAX Studio and the ALM Toolkit that can be used as replacements or extensions to the Power BI development experience. These three tools are autmatically added to the ribbon by default if they are installed, but you can add your own applications by following the instructions in the this Microsoft document titled Using external tools in Power BI.

BI Industry, BI Projects, Microsoft BI Platform, Power Query, Self-service BI

Doing Power BI the Right Way

Paul Turley

This is an introduction to a series of posts and pages that will provide a comprehensive set of best practices for successful Power BI solutions. In previous posts. Let’s start with a simplified flowchart and condensed decision tree. This first whiteboard drawing is the first half of the Power BI design process, ending with the data model, before measures, visualization and solution delivery. There is a lot more but I think this is a good starting point. Let’s start the conversation here and then I will enhance this post with a more complete list of topics.

Microsoft BI Platform

I Am Done Using Visual Studio …for BI data model development

Paul Turley

…for BI data model development.
For several years, Visual Studio has been my go-to tool for designing semantic data models used for Business Intelligent reporting. Back in 2005, I used the Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) Visual Studio add-in for SSIS, SSRS and SSAS projects to develop BI solutions with multidimensional cubes. In 2012 when Microsoft began the transition from on-disk cubes to in-memory SSAS Tabular models, I used SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) to create tabular models. It was a rocky road at first. The Tabular design was fragile to put it mildly.

Microsoft BI Platform

Demystifying the Power BI XMLA Endpoint

Paul Turley

Using the XMLA endpoint, the Power BI Premium service now includes the capabilities of SQL Server Analysis & Azure Analysis Services combined with newer data modeling capabilities of Power BI. Data models published to the Power BI service now support version control, scripted builds and team application life cycle management, enterprise IT tooling and scripted object management.

Microsoft BI Platform

Countries with Improved COVID-19 Recovery Rates

Paul Turley

Is there any good news in the COVID-19 Coronavirus data? Everyone is familiar with the tragic growing number cases and fatalities globally and in most countries that have high populations. However, several countries have increasing recovery rates. You can click here to view the new report shown in the image below.

The experts keep taking about looking for “the peak”, when the number of people recovering from infection increases faster than new cases. We’re not there yet but where is the recovery rate increasing? The “Recovery Rate (3 Day Change)” measure is the Recovery Rate (e.g. The number of confirmed cases divided by the number of recovered cases) from three days prior to the most recent report date. This report ranks countries by this measure.

Microsoft BI Platform

I Need Your Questions about Power BI and Paginated Reports

Paul Turley

For a new series of posts to include tutorials and “how to” demonstrations for Power BI, SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) and Paginated Reports, I need your help to know what questions are most compelling and top of mind.

Please scroll to the Comments section at the bottom of this post and help me create a list with your questions and suggested topics.

Microsoft BI Platform

New Coronavirus (COVID-19) Daily Updates Report

Paul Turley

There are now three different ways to access the COVID-19 Daily Updates Power BI dataset & report:

Microsoft BI Platform

COVID-19 Coronavirus Daily Updates in Power BI

Paul Turley

This is a Power BI report that I have developed and published with public access to the web to be shared with anyone who needs access to this information. It contains daily updates from the Center for Disease Control using data curated by the John Hopkins University Center for Systems Science & Engineering. To the best of our collective ability, the data is accurate but I cannot make any guarantees. Please validate with other sources before making any decisions with this information.

I’m very hopeful that the this report will be a valuable resource. It’s been a labor of love and as usual, considerably more work that I envisioned. But, I will continue to work on enhancements and corrections as I am able based on feedback. Please post comments here or contact me through Twitter, if you have feedback, comments and questions.

Microsoft BI Platform

Correlating Corona Virus Outbreaks with Business Data using the ESRI Map in Power BI

Paul Turley

At the time of this post, the world is dealing with a serious health and economic crisis. The COVID-19 Corona Virus is impacting the lives of people around the world and in turn, it is affecting world markets and industries and many different ways. This demonstration shows you how to create a multi-layer map to correlate current outbreak case locations with your own data, using Power BI and the ESRI map visual.