We have a number of different business units each managing their own separate (but consistent) data sets in separate Excel spreadsheets. I've created a multi page pbix file that has queries looking at one of those spreadsheets and the users are happy with how it all looks.
What I'd like to be able to do, now the design is accepted, is to duplicate the existing pages and change the data source (on just the duplicate pages not all of them) to the other spreadsheets without having to rebuild all the graphs and apply all the formatting etc again from scratch.
Is this possible? and if not what would be the best approach, save as new pbix, change queries, then merge everything as a dashboard?
I'm relatively new to Power BI so still wrapping my head around how best to structure things.
thanks in advance!
After a bit of experimentation the simplest route I found was:
Added an extra column in the source data for Business Unit
Create queries for each Excel file
Create an append query pulling all the queries together
Built out the charts etc using the append query
Duplicated the page so there was one for each business unit
Then went back through each page and used a Page Level Filter using the Business Unit column to filter back to the required business unit
It definitely pays off to plan your structure in advance (if you can) as it saves a lot of rework!
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I have a report in Power BI that cannot refresh because the data from the table is too large:
The amount of data on the gateway client has exceeded the limit for a single table. Please consider reducing the use of highly repetitive strings values through normalized keys, removing unused columns, or upgrading to Power BI Premium
I have tried to shrink the columns used in the data set to the best of my ability, but it is still too large to refresh. I did a test where, instead of using just a single query to retrieve the data, I made two queries that split the columns roughly half and half and then link them back together in Power BI using their ID column. It looked to me that the test data refresh started working upon splitting up the table's data into two separate queries.
Please correct me if there is a better method to trim the data down to allow the data set to refresh, but for now this is the best solution I see. What I am wondering is, since now my data is split into two separate queries, what is the best way to adapt the already existing visualizations I have that are linked up to the full, non-refreshable query to the split, refreshable queries? It looks to me like I would have to recreate the visuals from scratch, but if there is a way to simply do a mass replace of the fields that would save so much time. The split queries I created both have the same fields as the non-split query.
Guys this is a bit of newbie question. Ive tried to google it and understand how they work but im not having much luck. I have a datasets created by colleague that connect to one of our systems.
I want to look at using it and trying to make some changes. I can see Its create a .pibx file when i saved a copy of the dataset. i want to look at model section and see if i can pull some further fields(column) into table on the dataset that already links some corresponding data from two other tables. Id like to add more fields(columns) that are not currently in that table
However i don't want to affect other datasets and or the data on the system it is communicating with.
Can anyone advise me if this is the case.
As i really only want to test things for now and not make any changes that might affect other people
You can create duplicate for original table( Query ) then play with that duplicat
I've got a power bi report built. I want to change the data source. The new data source has 4-5 new columns. How should I do this?
This is a difficult job but not impossible. You said you have 4/5 new columns in your new data source. Which is not an issue if you have all existing columns available in the new source that are already in used in the Report and Data Model. There are different approach and manual work to achieve the requirement. Please check This Tutorial where I found a detail and good explanation for your case.
I have a PowerBI report that has a few different pages display different visuals. The report uses the same table of data (lets call it Jobs).
The previous author of this report has created two queries in the data section that read off this base table of data, but apply different transformations and filters to the underlying data. Then, the visuals use either of these models to display their data. For example, the first one applies a filter to exclude certain columns based off a status field and the other applies a different filter, and performs transformations on some of the columns
When I manually refresh the report, it looks like the report is retrieving data for both of these queries, even though the base data is the same. Since the dataset is quite large, I am worried that this report has been built inefficiently but I am not sure if there is a better way of doing this.
TL;DR; The Source and Navigation of both of queries is exactly the same - is this retrieving the data twice and causing my report to be inefficient, and if so, what is the approrpiate way to achieve what I am trying to do?
PowerBi will try to parallelize as much as possible. If you have two queries that read from the same table then two queries will be executed.
To avoid this you can:
create a query which only gets the necessary data from the table.
Set this table not to be loaded in the model (toggle "Enable Load")
Every other table that starts from this table won't be a clone of this but will reference it.
In this way, the data will be fetched once from the source and then used to create other tables using PowerQuery.
I have a PowerBI that pulls from an excel spreadsheet a current inventory of statuses of a system, lets make it easy and say I have a single measure that reads "40% complete".
If I refresh the PowerBI dataset and it now says "60%", is there any way to have a KPI automatically show +20%? Every example I've found requires you to have another dataset that keeps the historical data, and that's not really an option in this situation. Is there any way to calculate it or store it within the PowerBI query itself?
Power BI is not designed to store historical data. This is what a database is for.
In order to calculate that 20% difference, you need to store historical data somewhere but Power BI's purpose is to connect to sources and load data and then visualize it, not to act as a data repository.