My Favourite Power BI Tips and Tricks

Hello everyone!

Happy Wednesday.?

Today I will be sharing some tips and tricks for Power BI.

I have been using Power BI for a very long time now, and it’s a platform I’ve grown to love - especially as a Microsoft MVP.

Whether you’re a beginner or someone who has been using Microsoft Data products for all of your career like me, hopefully some of these tips will prove useful to you!

Maximise Your Layout

Remember that even though we might be data experts when creating dashboards, the end users are often not. So you need to choose a dashboard that has an intuitive and easy to read design for managers, stakeholders and non-technical team members.?

A foolproof layout consists of key KPIs on the top left of your dashboard and no more than 5 graphics or visuals on any one page. Be sure to use correct navigation buttons to help users easily transition through pages, too. And make sure to provide context through titles, labels and strategic use of colours. A landing page should always stay focused on the most important data categories - in other words, those that have contributed most to your end result.

Custom Tooltips

This is a great tip that will make your life easier as a dashboard designer and impress end users.?

To create custom tooltips, you first need to design a separate page by clicking on the + icon. You can then place your chart into this new page and design it - make sure the tooltip is not too big. When designing, go to the “page information” tab. If you want this tooltip to appear on other visuals, be sure to turn on the tooltip option. Now, the page is ready to be used as a tooltip elsewhere on your dashboard and in your report.

The last step is to select the “page size” option and switch from the default option to the tooltip.?

The image may appear too large because Power BI always switches the pages by default to fit the page. So when you’re designing your tooltip, be careful to switch the page view to actual size to get an idea of how much space you are actually taking up on the page.?

You can add this tooltip to any visual by choosing “Visualization” and then “Tooltip.” The “Page” field will be set to the default option, so switch over to the tooltip page you have just created.?

Dynamic Chart Titles

Dynamic titles are a great way to provide additional context and help end users understand exactly what they are looking at.

Power BI allows heavy filtering, cross-filtering, slicing and dicing, so end users often have difficulty telling which filters are enabled at any one point in time. So if you can add dynamic chart titles, these will show the filters that have been enabled and also add a more interactive component to your dashboards.

DAX Best Practice

There are some Microsoft-recommended rules I like to keep in mind for performance optimization of DAX expressions in Power BI.

They are:

• Use the DIVIDE function for division
• Avoid using the IFERROR function
• Ensure column references are fully qualified
• Ensure measure references are unqualified
• Measures should not be direct references of other measures
• No two measures should share the same definition
• Use the TREATAS function rather than INTERSECT for virtual relationships

Lock Object

This is more of a precautionary tip for when you’ve created a highly detailed visual, but it’s accidentally moved, altered or resized. We’ve all been there!

To prevent this, I like to freeze the visuals on my page once I’m happy with them.

To do this, choose your visualisation and then press View → Page Options → Lock Objects.

Your end users can now view your dashboard without any worry for you of them changing it!?

I hope you found these tips helpful.

Let me know if you have any questions or have any tips of your own to share.?

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