Notes from the workshop.
How we build Power BI visuals, what we learn from the marketplace, and how to get more out of the ones you already use.
Actual vs target in Power BI: bullet chart or gauge, bands, and the DAX behind them
Why a gauge struggles with more than one KPI, how a bullet chart reads, the YTD, full-year and run-rate measures it needs, and the five places actual vs target quietly goes wrong.
Calendar heatmap in Power BI: the date table, missing days, week start and the colour scale
How to build a day-by-day calendar heatmap in Power BI, why a missing day is not a zero, how weeks break at the year boundary, and which colour scale survives one extreme day.
Days since last incident in Power BI: the DAX recipe, and why the card goes stale
The DATEDIFF and TODAY() pattern for a days-since counter, why it freezes between refreshes and rolls over at UTC midnight in the Service, the DAX that fixes the time zone, and when a ticking visual is the better fix.
Head-to-head comparisons in Power BI: the data shape, the DAX and a board you can read across the room
Team vs team, region vs region, this year vs last: which table shape to start from, the lead and tie measures, why blanks and ratios break the result, and how to make the answer readable on a wall screen.
KPI status thresholds in Power BI: good, warning, bad, and which way is up
How to define on target, within tolerance and below target in DAX, handle lower-is-better and zero targets, keep forecast apart from actual, and avoid the traffic-light pitfalls that make a scorecard lie.
Set overlap in Power BI: the data shape, why Venn breaks after three sets, and how to read an UpSet plot
Multi-select survey answers and product holdings in Power BI: the table shape that keeps the base honest, the DAX for overlaps, why circles stop working at four sets, and how to read the UpSet plot that replaces them.
Before and after in Power BI: slope chart or dumbbell, and how to shape the data
When a slope chart beats a dumbbell, the two data shapes that feed them, the DAX for start, end, % change and rank move, and how to read rank changes without fooling yourself.
Tornado chart in Power BI: the sensitivity analysis recipe, and how to read it
The low / base / high data shape, the DAX that turns it into a tornado on a native bar chart, sorting by swing, and why a butterfly chart is not a sensitivity analysis.
Your NPS went up by 3. Is that real?
The margin of error on a Net Promoter Score, why its variance is not what a proportion calculator says, how to test a wave-over-wave change, and what to do with the answer in Power BI.
The Pareto chart DAX recipe for Power BI, and the three ways it breaks
The RANKX cumulative-percentage pattern, why it fails on ties, slicers and sort order, and what a correct Pareto needs beyond the line.
D7, D30 and rolling retention: three definitions that give three numbers
Classic, rolling and sequential retention computed on the same ten users, the denominator each pairs with, and why a chart must name its definition.
Critical path in Power BI without Microsoft Project
What the critical path is, why DAX cannot compute it, why Power Query and Python versions go stale, and what changes when the visual computes it.
Gantt chart in Power BI: native workarounds versus custom visuals
The stacked-bar trick, the matrix heat-grid and the free Gantt visuals, what each can and cannot do, and what a project-management Gantt needs.
Why your Power BI radar chart changes shape every time you click
Autoscaling under slicers, pinned axis bounds, stable axis order, normalization for mixed units, and when a radar is the wrong chart.
Cohort retention in Power BI: the DAX recipe, and where it breaks
The five-part DAX recipe for a retention triangle written out in full, and the three places it quietly produces wrong numbers.
From question to chart: Conversational analytics in Power BI
Ask in plain English and get a chart in seconds - inside Power BI.