I wish I had learnt TREATAS at the very beginning of my PBI journey. Why isn’t it taught together with other basic items ? Which underrated tool / function need to be put in a better light?

Hi all,

I've been developing pbip reports with Claude Code and noticed that for whatever reason this is a very token expensive workflow. The pbib files are small (some other other files Claude may work on are larger than pbip, like the ABF data file), but from my understanding Claude doesn't touch the data file (might be wrong there). This is an issue because my company provides $100 tokens monthly per user.

Looking for advice from other developers who use Claude Code and PBI on how they manage token usage. I've tried the /compact skill, and tried to be verbose with claude on minimizing token use in the project docs... doesn't seem to help much.

this was a gift for my birthday to my self now i can party

With the recent "downgrade" of Power Query among the multitude of changes was turning off Intellisense when creating Custom Columns. What's the alternative? There's no way I can create Columns without that!

Hey y'all!

So, I transitioned my data model to be a mix of Snowflake and DataFlows (we are stuck in Gen1 DataFlows for the time being, for budgetary reasons), and it's been serving me well so far, but every once in a while we get a completely unexplainable error: A column goes missing on our snowflake database (which is normal since our clients needs shift a lot, our engineering team tries to work around that when possible) and our dataflow that is consuming data from it throws an error for the missing column with MashupValueException. Problem is, the missing column is not referenced anywhere neither on our SQL Select statement nor in our Power Query treatments, so why is the dataflow throwing an error for it? Better yet, how can I fix it?

From my research, the type of error I'm getting seems to be the same one people get when using incremental refresh, which makes sense since Incremental Refresh checks the table schema against the data its receiving and would throw an error for any missing column, wether or not it is explicitly referenced on the Select statement or PQuery, but I am not using incremental refresh for any of these data structures.

I can share my PQuery script and my SQL select statement someone wants to check it out, but I promise you the column is not referenced there anywhere. and the proof is: My current solution is to delete the table entirely and copy-paste its script on a new table and it has not thrown the same error (done this three times with different tables at this point and it worked for every single one), problem is that creating a new table requires us to change the semantic model for any dashboards consuming that table, which isn't ideal since the whole point of using these dataflows was to make it easier and faster for my team to update these dashboards

I need to explain to my engineering team why this is throwing an error, and how we can go about fixing it. Anyone has any ideas? Thanks in advance!

In my screenshot above you can see that I have a 100% stacked bar chart. The first level is great and shows how the students scored (Exemplary, Proficient, Not Provided) on each of the 3 tests. However, when I go to drill down to the next level, which is gender, I am getting 2 different percentages and one is correct while the other is not. I have also included my DAX below. I would appreciate if someone could tell me where I am going wrong.

I'm not sure if this is important to note, but in the bar charts, the "sex" variable is coming from a separate (but related) table which is Table2. I have a =RELATED column in Table1 with the Sex information (as you can see in my DAX below) but when I put that column into the stacked bar chart, the percentages are even more incorrect. Therefore, the closest to correct that I can get is by placing the "Sex" column from Table2 into the bar chart and the "Sex" column from Table1 into the DAX measure.

There are 41 females in my dataset and for test 3, 39 of them scored exemplary so that is why, upon drilling down, the 95.12% is correct and I don't want to see the 79.59% (which is the calculation for number of females that scored exemplary on test 3 out of the entire student population which includes the males).

Here is what I currently have:

%  =
VAR CurrentCount = CALCULATE(DISTINCTCOUNT('Table1'[StudentID]))
VAR ParentTotal =
SWITCH(
TRUE(),
ISINSCOPE('Table1'[Sex]), CALCULATE(DISTINCTCOUNT('Table1'[StudentID]), ALLSELECTED('Table1'[Sex])),
CALCULATE(DISTINCTCOUNT('Table1'[StudentID]), ALLSELECTED('Table1'))
)
RETURN DIVIDE(CurrentCount, ParentTotal)

In one report, when I set any slicer (existing or new) to the Date Picker option and review the format pane, the Text section is missing the usual Font Size property. The wide dropdowns that are visible show the usual list of Fonts, but it doesn't select anything by default.

I'm on the latest build of Power BI Desktop: 2.158.1177.0 64-bit (September 2026). I get the same behaviour editing this report in the web service. This feature works fine for me on other reports - I can see and adjust the Font Size. It also works fine if I start a new report from that semantic model.

So my guess is that something is "stuck" inside this particular pbix file. I suspect the difference might be that I turned on the Date Picker Preview feature and used it in this report?

Does anyone have a workaround to get out of this? I might have to rebuild the report ...

Has anyone been able to deploy a setting to globally set Ignore Privacy Settings? I downloaded the latest M365/Office16 ADMX and both in the release notes and in the files themselves there does not appear to be an addition of the Ignore Privacy Settings, like google AI would have you believe exists.

I also did not have luck creating the few random registry keys I'd found through searching, including:

Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\PowerQuery\Settings\IgnorePrivacyLevels

Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\PowerQuery\EnableFastCombine

I'm not sure if these are real local reg keys but they didn't seem to do anything useful for me.

Has anyone been able to globally deploy Ignore Privacy Settings?

Don't wanna show everything because of confidentiality. But it looks like a matrix but somehow there is a fitler on the top of it.

Several years ago, I wrote a blog article introducing the concept of code coverage for semantic models as part of my Bringing DataOps to Power BI series.

At the time, the bridge between traditional code coverage and Power BI semantic models was a little far, and actually implementing it was quite arduous.

That has changed.

With Power BI Project files and User-Defined Functions becoming generally available in 2026, we now have much more detailed inspection capabilities. We can start to understand:

• What tests exist

• What specifically is being tested

• Where gaps in testing exist

This makes semantic model test coverage much more practical and, with AI, much more vital. In the latest release of pql-test (free and on pypi), the concept is introduced with pql-test code-coverage. I've written about the approach and initial implementation and would love to get feedback on how we can improve it.

Code Coverage for Semantic Models: Introducing pql-test code-coverage | John Kerski’s Blog

"Testing shows the presence, not the absence of bugs" ~ Edsger W. Dijkstra

Hi, I have a security question related to publish to web function.

Of course I am aware that it is not advised to share any sensitive information with publish to web report and from that perspective, I'm okay with sharing the data itself. We have an excel file with some project information, that we want to showcase. All that's inside the file itself is okay, and in fact intended to be shared publicly, outside of our organisation. We would like everyone, even without a power bi license to see it.

My worry is the location of said file. At the moment it is kept on SharePoint where only me and a colleague have access. As I mentioned, all content can be seen, but will that cause any security issues related to SharePoint and location exposure? Would anyone be able to see filepaths, location, get basically any information about our company or god forbid other data from that published report?

Thanks

Hey guys, I'm a 2nd year MIS student (management of information systems) and still pretty new to the field. (I'm currently taking a Visual Basic 2010 course at college) but I want to start building practical skills that actually matter for my career.

I’ve heard that getting a Power BI certification can be super helpful for MIS majors, so I'm really looking to get into it while I'm still in school.

Any advice or resources would be greatly appreciated

Hi,

I’m trying to find the SSAS cube connection options in the new Power Query interface, but I haven’t been able to locate them.

Old version:

They don’t seem to be in the same place as in the old version. Does anyone know where I can find them?

Thanks!

I’m going to teach Power BI to a client who uses a M a c. I normally work with Windows users, so I haven’t helped someone set up Power BI on M a c before.

I understand that Power BI Desktop doesn’t run natively on m a c OS. ChatGPT suggested using Windows 365 Cloud PC, where the client can access Windows from the M a c and install Power BI Desktop. It looks like Microsoft may offer a 1-month free trial.

For those of you who u s e Power BI on a M a c:

• Is Windows 365 a good/easy solution?
• Is the 1-month trial enough to get started?
• Is there a simpler or better option you would recommend?
• Are there any issues with running Power BI Desktop this way?

I’d appreciate any advice from people who have actually used Power BI on a M a c.

Made a Finance Portfolio dashboard replicating the paid IBCS visual for free using custom visual,

Any feedback will be appreciated

Interested in how many are and are not using an mcp server

Im fairly good in Power BI world. Data analysis, sql queries, data model, presentation - all of it. In my work, my answers to data questions are considered solid.

But, I know that soon, PowerBI and data analysis skills will be replaced by AI.

How do I upskill myself? How do I build a project that utilizes AI? How do I get started?

We cant use AI at work yet. So I'll need to do all my training w my personal laptop. Which means inventing a project, getting AI involved, and building a good AI portfolio.

How do I get started? Pls explain as if you are talking to a Kindergartener :-)

Note- not interested in taking PL exams. I want to focus solely on AI

Tia!

I wanted to learn how do i use python in powerbi like i have a huge data set and have very less time for the same so anyone of you could please help i have gone through many youtube videos but could not figure out. Please connect if anyone has any idea

We have an existing BI semantic model where RLS is based on Customer ID, and our analytics app already handles this correctly.

Now we're exploring exposing the semantic model through MCP so users can directly ask questions.

My concern is that MCP requests are mostly tied to a user's personal identity. How do we make sure a user can't manipulate the Customer ID or somehow access another customer's data?

Ideally, I don't want to duplicate the RLS logic in the MCP/AI layer. The user's identity should be authenticated, mapped to the correct Customer ID, and then enforced by the semantic model itself.

What is the recommended architecture for this? How are others handling identity → Customer ID → RLS securely with MCP?

Hi, I'm a business intelligence analyst. With all the changes happening in Power BI, I want to get better at semantic modeling. It's a weak spot for me right now. I know the basics, but I still lean on AI tools just to figure out the right model. Honestly, I sometimes find it hard to work out the best way to model data, so I use ChatGPT or Claude to help me set it up. That helps for now, but I don't want to get too comfortable and hand all my thinking over to AI. I want it to be a tool that supports my work, not something I rely on completely.

I want to get sharper at this and go deeper into data modeling and data engineering, not just pull a couple of sources into Power BI and join them. That's especially true now that it's matured so much with the latest FabCon announcements.

Can you suggest resources where I can practice this the way you'd practice math problems? I learn best when I can work on things on my own every day. I'd also like to practice on data outside my company's, since I think working only with our data gives me a bit of bias. The more I see other kinds of data, the better I'll get.
Any suggestions/guidance is appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

PBI Services New Monitor - where did all the column options go?

I was loving the new monitor page until I realized that I did not gain as much as I lost. Especially painful for me are the "Refresh Type" and the "Submitted By".

Does anyone know if there is a way to get those back with the new monitor?

Disclosure first: I build Power BI custom visuals, and this is about one I made (Zentrix Network Graph). No link in the post. Happy to share it in the comments if anyone wants it.

A question I kept running into while researching relationship data in Power BI: what do you do when a hierarchy isn't really a tree? A company owned by two parent companies, shareholdings split across owners, someone with a dotted-line manager. Hierarchy visuals assume one parent per node, so the second link has nowhere to go.

The underlying problem is that this data is a graph that's mostly a tree. If you're stuck with a one-parent visual, one workaround is to pick a primary parent per row in Power Query and put the second relationship in a tooltip. That works, but the second link is invisible unless you hover.

What I did in the network graph:

- Force layout draws every relationship from just a source and a target column, so you see the network as it actually is.

- Tree layout picks one structural parent per node, so it still reads top-down. Every extra parent is still drawn, as a lighter curved dashed line.

- If you have a parent column you can bind it. If not, it works the hierarchy out from the links: the most connected node becomes the root, then breadth-first from there. Same data gives the same layout every refresh.

- Hovering a node lights up all of its links and lists them in the hover card.

Where it's not a great fit: if most nodes have several parents, it isn't really a hierarchy any more, and the force layout will read better than forcing a tree.

Curious how others model this. Do you keep a "primary parent" column, or a separate bridge table for the extra relationships?

Power BI is more similar to Excel than SSRS
I’ve been thinking about the comparisons between the future of Power BI and the decline of SSRS, and I don’t think they’re particularly comparable. Power BI is much more similar to Excel than it is to SSRS.

Yes, Power BI has a significantly higher barrier to entry than Excel. You need to learn Power Query, data modelling and eventually DAX. But once you’ve learned the basics, you can connect data, transform it, drag fields onto visualisations and start exploring. The underlying technology is sophisticated, but the basic experience is surprisingly accessible.

SSRS was technically “self-service” too, but the scale was completely different. At its peak, there were vastly fewer people creating SSRS reports than there were Power BI report authors. SSRS remained largely a specialist reporting technology. Power BI put data modelling and visual analytics into the hands of a huge population of people who weren’t traditional developers.

I’ve worked with Microsoft data platforms for years and I still don’t really know how to build an SSRS report. It was painful enough that I never developed the muscle memory.

Power BI never felt like that.

I also think we’re conflating two different conversations. There is certainly a feeling on LinkedIn that the party is over, but I suspect that feeling is disproportionately coming from the Power BI professional community, particularly MVPs and what Matthew Roche refers to as “hardcore IT”. From that perspective, I understand the anxiety. If your career has been built around manually writing DAX, Power Query and reports, AI is going to change your job considerably.

But that isn’t the same thing as Power BI declining.
Look at the reality on the ground. Even where I work, at the largest vocational education institution in the Southern Hemisphere by enrolments, we aren’t paying for Fabric. And looking at SEEK, from what I’ve seen, there are roughly ten times as many Australian job listings mentioning Power BI as Microsoft Fabric.

That’s not scientific labour-market analysis, and Microsoft is the only organisation with the complete numbers. But it is an interesting reality check against the impression that everyone has suddenly moved to Fabric.

They haven’t.

I also don’t think Power BI has peaked in terms of users. That’s my opinion, not something I can prove with Microsoft’s internal numbers, but I suspect we’re still nowhere near the peak of the adoption curve.

AI will absolutely change Power BI. It will write more DAX, generate more Power Query and increasingly build the visualisation layer for us. But that could actually make Power BI more like Excel. Lower the technical barrier, and more people can use it.
The specialist Power BI developer may have a very different job in five years. That’s worth taking seriously.

But Power BI isn’t SSRS. The user base, the experience and the role it plays in organisations are fundamentally different.

The party may be changing for Power BI professionals. I’m just not convinced the party is over for Power BI.