The Baretta

What  Had an issue in the last few days (approx 30/08/2018) where a Excel Report & a Power BI Report was failing to refresh.  The reports were pulling data from a SharePoint Online List. Here's the error I was getting Error: The column 'Activities' of the table wasn't found Why When I built these reports, I used Power Query to import the SharePoint List Data & then to make the data easier to look at, I removed all the System Columns that I didn't need to see.  One of these System Columns was called 'Activities'. Anyway, I'm not sure why, but for some reason when I now get data from SharePoint Lists, the 'Activities' column no longer exists, so the refresh was breaking because it couldn't remove a column I wasn't even using! How to fix I just opened up the advanced editor, found the line where I was removing columns, and deleted the reference to "Activities". Done! let     Source = SharePoint.Tables(...

some brief notes on what was learnt in this MS Ignite session Link to session video:   https://msftignite.com.au/sessions/session-details/1776/power-bi-the-developer-edition-dat341 Covered in the session: A feature to publish Power BI Desktop reports to SQL Reporting Services is coming soon! The Power BI Team is working on tiles able to be embedded on a web page and viewed by anonymous viewers.  Will be able to embed entire dashboard at some point. Link for developer information is at the bottom of power BI home page (https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/developers)  How to extend Power BI using custom visualisations Can embed Power BI Tiles into PowerPoint presentations REST Api's are available to do things like  list all tiles & dashboard & datasets and tables and groups Can find approved custom visuals here: http://app.powerbi.com/visuals Can't pin custom visuals to dashboards yet.  team estimates late December You can download Custom Vi...

I'm presuming you've seen the god-like feature set of Power BI.  I reckon you've probably even opened up browser edition and had a quick play.  Then you've come to the realisation that yeah it is just as awesome as that presenter advised!   But how does it fit together with the rest of the Office 365 suite, and why are there so many different ways to use it!? Here's a quick historical view of the product and a brief introduction into the pros/cons of each option to help you choose a path based on what your business requirements are.  Truth is, you'll probably want all options available to you, however each new solution might require a certain platform. If you take ANYTHING away from this post, remember there are three ways you can use the Power BI suite:  Excel Add-Ins, Power BI Online App, Power BI Desktop App... Excel Power BI Suite (PowerPivot, PowerQuery, PowerMap, PowerView) Before Power BI became an entity of its own, it was initially birthed as ...

Link to Session:  https://msftignite.com.au/sessions/session-details/1611/real-world-power-bi-techniques-dat343 About the Session: First off, I'd just like to say that Grant stole my idea of starting off the session with a chant of 'Power BI'!  Reckon he must have heard me chanting it on the way into the previous session.  I'm sure he didn't steal it, but was a surreal coincidence haha. This was the final Power BI Session of the week, which is strange because it was the first session to run through step-by-step how to pull back real world data and report on it.  I would have thought the order would have started with the simple sally session then built up to the developer sessions through the week.  No bother for me, but something to consider for the next MS Ignite. Session tips for speeding up your power reports: Clean up your data using Power Query first Create measures to display totals at the bottom of your raw data list. Use brushing / ratios to ...

Today we will be learning how to create a excel report connected to a SharePoint library using Power Query.  I will also address all issues found along the way. The reason we are connecting to our library via Power Query instead of via the 'Export to Excel' option is because our library contains InfoPath forms that have repeating table data in the columns that we need to report on. Power Query   Is a free excel add-in available from Microsoft for both Excel 2010 Professional Plus & Excel 2013.  It is used when you need a way to transform data that isn't quite in the format you need. Step 1: Connecting to your SharePoint Library via Power Query. Open up Excel.  Click Power Query Tab > From Other Sources > From SharePoint List > Insert SharePoint Site URL Here's our first issue.  Only Lists are appearing in the Navigator.  Not to worry, Right-Click any of the Lists showing and click Edit to open up the Query Editor.   You should ...