Barbee I August 2018 update is here I
bring you the highlights including Q&A
in desktop dax measures that can draw
and a lot more I'll be covering only the
key updates but down in the comments let
me know which one was your favorite
feature out of this update now if you
want to become a power bi Pro make sure
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you're notified whenever I go live to
answer your power bi questions let's
start with Q&A and desktop and how I was
not sure about this I almost left it out
of this video but here it is and number
one not because so I'll I'll admit Q&A
in my experience has been a hit or miss
when I've tried Q&A with just kind of a
model as I built it it was problematic
the only situation scenario where I've
had success with this where I created a
model specifically tuned for Q&A so
again it's a bit of a hit or miss but
Q&A is not about the state of where
things are but where they are headed and
that's where you need to you need to
squint your eyes a little bit and ignore
the minor you know things you might see
in Q&A right now but imagine the future
that's coming and by the features that
Microsoft keeps rolling in around QA we
know that this is gonna be a key pillar
and I can see that and so let me just
show you a quick demo so now with the
latest feature is the Q&A is now
available in desktop mode and they have
been other features like ask a question
has been around the Q&A Explorer this
one was covered in the April 2018 update
and I'm gonna link that in the notes so
you can get more details on that but now
Q&A with being available in power bi
desktop you can pretty much double click
anywhere and just ask a question so I
can say sales by country and you know
let me say I've change this one to a pie
chart so you can see kind of the same
chart that I have down here that one I
created using Q&A as well
I can go say sales and order quantity uh
well I got a type somewhere sales and
order quantity
by I'm not sure by country what that's
what I had right so you can see it just
builds it for you there and of course
the last one that I have is stop
customers by order quantity so yeah I
got reasonable results and of course
there are functionalities here including
synonyms and such so that you can make
you an a more robust but but again I'm
really encouraged by kind of the future
and of course a lot of these elements
are already functional and being used in
production but I'll just say it's taken
with a grain of salt expect that you're
gonna have to optimize your model for QA
for it to work reliably for your users
but but again it's a it's a great sign
of the future where we headed
self-service bi right that's the goal so
that was that was the biggest highlight
and in my mind and the next one of
course you know this one is close to my
heart as well data categories for
measures that kind of sounds weird let
me just show you what that's about
so in here if we go to measures now what
we're talking about here is if you
selected any for example I'll show you
in my territories table I have
territories table where are you my
friend do you are and if you notice the
region image now this one I can
categorize this is actually you can see
this is this is the URL of an image so I
can I can specify that show this to me
as an image or I can or a hyperlink URL
now earlier you could only do this as
I'm demonstrating here with columns so
that's the big change
now you can specify this data category
this data categorization for measures as
well so that's a big change and let's
see how it's going to look like so in
this case I have a measure saying
variance percentage indicator right so
in here it's returning a URL based on
the specific variance so what is the
value and now I can add this to my table
now if you just do it
like that it's not gonna give you the
desired results is just showing in the
URL but that's the feature released in
this update which is now you have
control about setting the data category
so of course whichever applies whether
this can be a hyperlink URL being
returned by the measure or in this case
it for me it's the image URL so I'm
gonna click that to image URL and notice
it's now rendered as an image now this
one interestingly so of course there are
quite a few other scenarios which are
enabled by this and you can see some of
that in the detailed complete video by
Microsoft power bi team for this update
but I would say that I had covered a
playlist which I'm gonna link as well
about power bi KPI indicators and what I
just showed you becomes kind of a fourth
way to do it I show you kind of like
three different ways to do this in KPI
but now that we have data categories for
measures the one that I just showed you
is an additional way to do that let's go
to the next one conditional formatting
by values so what we have here is I can
go to okay I just reset that as I was
playing with it so here in my table
you've probably already been playing
with a lot of conditional formatting
options but now if I select let's say
background color I can specify a field
value which again could be a measure so
let me actually show you the measure
first so imagine a measure and of course
you know you know I love Dax like I love
Dax measures because they give you the
ultimate flexibility in total control
about how your logic works in this case
well it's pretty simple but based on the
various percentage I'm just returning a
color now you can also return the hex
code here so it writes a hex code of a
very specific color they do you want to
return you know I just for this demo I
just said red yellow green so now if if
I say conditional formatting background
color I can choose field values this is
a new option here and there I can
specify a Dax measure which returns the
color that needs
to be render so here I can go to my
budget table and the variance percentage
color the measure that I just showed you
and it's gonna look ugly I'm gonna warn
you so yeah there you go it's it's a you
know it's yeah not very pretty but yeah
you get the idea so the color can be
really controlled in your programming by
your tax measure so it gives you a lot
of flexibility here let's go to the next
one which is slicer Restatement now
again I'm not a huge fan of the way
Microsoft names it what essentially that
is is you see the slicer label up top
here you can have this reflect what is
being selected right now so I have it
turned on in this graph and all you have
to do is I think go to selection
controls and well nope not here ah there
we go
slicer header filter Restatement so
again not a huge fan of the term but
basically it's saying just showing me in
the title show me what is selected right
now and you can see this is showing all
right now so again if I turn it off
notice it doesn't show anything
blue-gray right all of that but now that
I turn it on notice what happens here
let's try it this way
so if I go black it's it shows what is
selected now of course this can be
really useful in some scenarios
especially imagine if your your
drop-down was kind of scrunched like
that and something down below was
selected which wasn't even visible at
least in the header you will see that
the color white has been selected but my
friends you know I love Dax measures and
sure this is great but you can do that
and quite a bit more with measures so
let me just show you a counter example
or just another example of that so here
what happens here is if I select black
notice I this is this by the way is a
measure and notice what happens here in
the filter Restatement when I select
multiple ones
it just says multiple selected not bad
but you can do better
notice here selected color black and
blue and of course if you go more and
more and more it can just can
Adonai of course at some point you can
say you know more than the three colours
selected or something like that instead
of trying to show all of them so yeah so
this is great but you can also kind of
get similar results by tax print reports
through export to PDF now this was
apparently a very heavily requested
feature and that's great I understand
that some scenarios where you do need to
print it's needed now the odd thing is
that this is available on power bi
desktop you can go in there and just say
kind of export to PDF and it cycles
through all the pages all the visible
pages to be to be accurate and just
prints out a PDF for that and and it
looks pretty good so on power bi com you
have the print current page feature so
it doesn't print all the pages so I hope
there's gonna be parity soon between
those two and and of course on power bi
rockem you do have export the power
point feature as well so it's a
smattering of that now of course in
general I understand there's need to
print but in general you should enable
your users so that they can consume the
reports and dashboards on a device of
their choice so make sure that you know
you've customized a mobile layout and
make sure that looks and works for them
educate your users on using that as well
hopefully minimizing some need of
printing out creating bookmark groups
now I'm not sure I have a warning around
bookmarks let me just show you the
feature and then we'll talk about it so
the feature is if if you had bookmarks
now you can group them you can notice
here that it's kind of navigation is
kind of grouped and you can just select
a few bookmarks and click on that and
say create a new group give it a name
all of that now of course if you're
using bookmarks heavily then this can be
pretty handy you can have these other
scenarios and you can step into the
storytelling mode by clicking view for
that specific bookmark set so when I
click view it's only stepping through
the ones that are grouped in this so
five of them and you can see notice that
at the bottom and you can you know kind
of storytelling can go from one to the
next to the next to the next now this is
great although I have been noticing
hearing this so this was
were heard on the Microsoft campus by
well yeah so somebody was saying that oh
I don't need em and DACs
I can do anything in bookmarks if you
find yourself there you probably not on
the right path so bookmarks are great
but usually they work best if you use
them with with some control and
restraint and you can't swap building a
good model in power bi using m and ax
for that so again and if you are
interested in building a good model a
good starting points would be to go to
my channel and look for the power bi
tutorial playlist and the data modelling
playlist it's it's right up under the
playlist ones let's talk about the
custom visuals and the three that I
found interesting for this launch where
small multiple so now I am a huge fan of
Stephen few and you know his book
information dashboard design is pretty
much my Bible and a Steven whew if I can
encapsulate his his you know philosophy
about building dashboards he talks about
being less is more so less bling let
your data shine and small multiples he
does talk about that and it's a very
effective way to communicate a kind of a
specific story in a compact format so
this one is it is promising although
it's still limited I really wish that
the support for small multiple was kind
of inbuilt pretty much for all visuals
now maybe that's asking for too much but
yeah I would love to see just all of
these visuals should be small multiples
enabled ironically back and Power View
anybody remembers that they did have
small multiples for different graph
types the next one was the pivot slicer
I found it a little bit hard to use but
so it's more for the analyst who's kind
of slicing and dicing data and and yeah
I didn't find it intuitive enough that
if I have kind of layman or new users of
power bi I probably would stick to
simple slicers before if you have like
an analyst you know audience set or you
want to use it for yourself it does have
a lot of bells and whistles which lets
you slice and dice data in a lot of
different ways and the next one was a
column chart
seemed promising it shows you
essentially the plan forecast and the
variance in kind of a compact graph
although um I wasn't quite sure if this
was you know really far superior than
something you can get using
out-of-the-box visuals I I know this is
kind of more compact with the everything
tied in so my friend that's a good note
to end on I will say that it might feel
if you're feeling overwhelmed by this
non-stop train of power bi updates I
would really say don't and I would like
you'd like to remind you that less is
more if you focus on the 20% the right
20% then that gives you the 80% of the
results and if you ask me the core 20%
of power bi that gives you that biggest
bang for your buck is really what's
under the hood is that it's the em it's
the DAX it's building the model and
after that everything else the
visualization part becomes easy and and
in that portion building the model there
hasn't really been any big update in the
past several years so those concepts are
rock-solid and again if you would want
to get a head start on that a good place
to start would be my power bi tutorial
all right my friend until next time
power on hey keep watching more videos
and deep learning power bi but if you
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