Most people land on a Power BI post here because something broke and a search engine sent them. If that’s you, this is the rest of it, roughly in the order you tend to hit things.
I’ve been using Power BI since it was more or less an Excel add-in. Everything below is something I actually ran into, not a syllabus.
Before you build anything
Two bits of vocabulary that save an argument later.
- How is Power BI different from Microsoft Fabric?. The short version is that Power BI is a component inside Fabric, and knowing that saves a licensing conversation.
- What is DAX and how does it relate to Dynamics 365?. It means two different things depending on who’s talking. Worth knowing which one you’re in.
The reports people actually ask for
In my experience it’s almost always financials and utilization.
- Easily building an income statement in Power BI. A separate date table and a real P&L structure. This is the one I get asked about most.
- How to add comments to financial statements in Power BI. Free text commentary on a statement, without building a whole Teams approval flow to get it there.
- Calculate utilization from Dynamics 365 with Power BI and ChatGPT. Every professional services company wants this one. Here’s the whole build.
The four that cost me an afternoon each
These are the ones I’d bet you came here for.
- Create PivotTable unsuccessful in Power BI and Excel. Connecting Excel to a Power BI model and getting nothing back. I got zero search results for this one, which is why it exists.
- Not all my records are showing up in my Power BI groups. Groups you created quietly not covering everything, and the reason why.
- How to filter a Power BI report on YTD data. Filtering to year to date when your calendar table is doing something odd.
- Easily filter by multiple values in a single column. A delimited column with several values in it, and you only want to match one of them.
Once the basics work
This is where it stops being reporting and starts being useful.
- Updating data in Dynamics 365 from Power BI. Pushing a flag back into CRM instead of copying it across two windows by hand.
- How to use Azure Maps paths and points in Power BI. Paths and points layered on the same map. Someone asked, so I built it.
- Power BI Copilot and how to turn it on. It needs capacity, and the Fabric free trial isn’t it. Here’s what actually switches it on.
- 10 things I’ve done with the Power Platform. A tour of what the wider platform is good for, if you’re deciding where to spend your time next.
- What does the future look like for business intelligence?. Where I think dashboards go once the tools stop waiting on a human to act.
Working through one of these right now? Grab 20 minutes on my calendar. No pitch, just a conversation. I answer every message personally.
Rather write? Email me.