Karen drives a Ford

 

Ever wonder what "Karen" drives?  You are looking at it.  Karen loves his Ford F-150 Pick-em Up Truck.  Karen also enjoys cutting people off, break-checking, and then yelling at people for not following their rules of the road, as well as frightening little girls with his own personal brand of crazy and profanity.  If you see Karen, stay away.  He is considered armed with a head full of lunatic and dangerous.  His mother should be proud that he is such a good Christian.

Power BI Snacks Intermission

In case you missed it, we have been walking through how to get yourself going with Power BI Online through little snack size posts over on Viva Engage and Teams.

We learned some terms, grabbed some data, imported it, and created our first simple visual.

There are definitely more exciting things to come!

It seems everyone was out for a super-fabulous holiday weekend, so I thought I might just do a quick recap this week.  Use this opportunity to explore what we have done already, simply catch up, work on your tan, or all of the above.

Below are links to what has been covered so far, to help you in those efforts ... sunscreen not included.

• Power BI DIY Snacks! Starting off with Power BI Online - Snack 1
• Power BI Terms - Snack 2
• Power BI Side Bar - Snack 3
• Power BI Report Data Import - Snack 4
• Power BI Report Simple Table Visual - Snack 5

See you for the next round?

As an interesting side note, I only just now discovered Mina Saad over on LinkedIn wrote along similar lines about a year ago.  Super informative posts on the topic and even tinier bites.  That's where I hijacked this week's image.

Another Fourth of Arkansas

 

It probably comes as no surprise that we again returned to Arkansas for this fourth of July.  It is becoming quite habitual in nature.   The crew of a few grew to a crew of seven on this particular expedition south in the north central area of the state.

The journey offered up a few new intrigues by way of Boliver, Springfield, and the Peel Ferry.  Our ongoing investigation into the location included visits to the usual haunts along the Mossy Bluff and the Sugar Loaf.

The fourth of July exploded all around, fitting with the regular expectations.  Heber Springs stood apart this year, holding its return fire until Saturday the 5th.  That seemed to work well for folks further south, enabling them to stick around in Little Rock for the main event, and arrive the following down for the closer.

The return trip was nothing to write home about but did give up a story idea and some new scenery.  Otherwise, we put our effort into avoiding lake traffic, of which there turned out to be very little.  One can never be too cautious though, especially with boat-trucks unable to maintain their lane.

Tao Verse 7

By having no claims to life, they cannot be claimed by death.

Power BI Report Data Display - Snack 5

Slightly funny story.  Someone contacted me last week and said they can't see anything in their report.  

We only imported the data last time.  

Now, we will visualize it and this won't take any time at all.

Head back over to the Power BI service online and let us see what we can see.

1. Click "Workspaces"
2. Click "My workspace"
1. At least two things are listed and for me, those are:
1. Financial%20Sample
1. Type = Semantic Model
1. This is the data!
2. FinancialSample
1. Type = Report
1. This is the report you created based on that data.
3. Open the one where Type = Report
1. A blank screen appears!!
4. Click "Edit"
5. In the right sidebar is the imported dataset
1. For me, it is simply named "financials"
1. Yours might be "Report-Result1" or "Worksheet" or "Sheet1" or whatever the Excel worksheet was named.
2. Click the little " > " next to the dataset name
1. A list of all the columns that were in the spreadsheet appear.
6. Under "Visualizations" in the right sidebar,
1. Click the little button that looks like a table.
1. That is the one that has a white grid, not the one that is partially blue.
1. See the attached screenshot that has a little red box around this feature.
2. On the left of the screen, a box appears that says "Select or drag fields ..."
7. Under "Data" in the right sidebar, quite literally do what that box says to do.
1. Use the check boxes that appear there or click on those column names and drag them over into the box on the left of the screen.
1. Make absolutely certain one of the columns is a date.
1. Add them all if you like, or just the ones you have a greater appreciation for.
2. If another box appeared when you went through this, that is ok.
1. For the empty one you would like to get rid of ...
1. Hover over the box and a little menu will appear above it.
1. Click the " . . . "
2. Choose "Remove"
8. File > Save

Your screen should look somewhat similar to the screenshot.  That with your data box has handles you can grab and stretch it out to see more of your data.

You might have noticed that the date looks kind of funny too.

This is what is called a hierarchal view.  

Power BI always displays dates in that format by default. 

We will get that fixed next time.

Questions? As always, post them up below.