General Discussions

Hi Everyone!  

I'm Anton, a Product Manager on the Data Insights team here at Vena. I've been at Vena for 4 years, working as a consultant followed by some solution management work before taking on my current role. Before my time at Vena, I worked in corporate finance, specializing in FP&A and predictive forecasting. 

I am so excited to host the first edition of the #ExpertExchange, where every week industry experts will join our forum to share knowledge, answer questions and help you grow your Vena skills. 

Since my focus at Vena is on data intelligence, this week's #ExpertExchange will be about enabling Power BI adoption across your organization. If you have questions or comments about Power BI and Vena, please drop them in the thread. I'm looking forward to connecting, learning and growing with you all! 

Power BI is a powerful tool for gaining insights at scale. Using the analogy of a construction site to represent analytical processes within an organization, I like to think of Excel as the shovel. It's the trusty tool you can always turn to for ad-hoc querying. And Power BI is the powerful excavator, the piece of equipment that really gets the job done. With great power comes complexity, so here are a few tips for building #PowerBI reports that are intuitive for anyone to use. 

Use slicers for variance analysis.  

Variance analysis remains the bedrock of how we evaluate our businesses. Being able to instantaneously calculate year-over-year growth or variances to budget using different slices of our data provides us with the insights we need to make intelligent decisions. It is simply not enough to know that sales are favourable to budget by 5%, we need to know WHY! That's where we, as finance people, rely on our business stakeholders to help us advance our understanding. To enable these stakeholders, we need to ensure our tools are intuitive for everyone. One stellar example of how we can make analytics tools, specifically variance analysis, available to all users throughout our organization is through the use of slicers. Slicers are visuals that act as filters for the other visuals on the page.  

Here is a quick guide on how these can be set up to scale your analytics: 

Voila, now your users can quickly slice visuals to draw out insights without needing to manually drag and drop columns into the Filter pane. 

Link for slicers: 

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/visuals/power-bi-visualization-slicers?tabs=powerbi-desktop 

Link for DAX tips: 

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dax/calculate-function-dax 

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dax/selectedvalue-function 

Create a calendar table. 

Data types are a powerful feature in the Microsoft ecosystem, especially when it comes to dates. Using the Date data type allows users to perform time-intelligent calculations such as year-over-year growth. Additionally, this data type allows users to drill into any time axis, seamlessly going from an annualized view of your data, to semi-annual, quarterly, etc.! Best practice states we should create a table to hold our calendar logic; this ensures that Year, Month, any other time context has its' own column, so when you apply this table in filtering logic it stays cohesive. The steps to accomplish this are: 

Here is a simple table for pulling out Years, Months, and Quarters: 

VAR CalendarVar = CALENDAR(DATE(1990, 1, 1), DATE(2030, 12, 31)) 

Return 

ADDCOLUMNS( 

    CalendarVar, 

    "Fiscal Year", YEAR([Date]), 

    "Fiscal Period", MONTH([Date]), 

    "Fiscal Quarter", ROUNDUP(MONTH([Date])/3,0) 

) 

You can now use these columns in slicers, visuals, and other DAX calculations to perform intelligent time calculations. 

Link: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/guidance/model-date-tables 

Link: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dax/time-intelligence-functions-dax 

What other tips would you share with the community to help us all level up together? 

#expertexchange @Giovanna Reinking @Rachel Taguicana

Hi Everyone!  

I'm Anton, a Product Manager on the Data Insights team here at Vena. I've been at Vena for 4 years, working as a consultant followed by some solution management work before taking on my current role. Before my time at Vena, I worked in corporate finance, specializing in FP&A and predictive forecasting. 

I am so excited to host the first edition of the #ExpertExchange, where every week industry experts will join our forum to share knowledge, answer questions and help you grow your Vena skills. 

Since my focus at Vena is on data intelligence, this week's #ExpertExchange will be about enabling Power BI adoption across your organization. If you have questions or comments about Power BI and Vena, please drop them in the thread. I'm looking forward to connecting, learning and growing with you all! 

Power BI is a powerful tool for gaining insights at scale. Using the analogy of a construction site to represent analytical processes within an organization, I like to think of Excel as the shovel. It's the trusty tool you can always turn to for ad-hoc querying. And Power BI is the powerful excavator, the piece of equipment that really gets the job done. With great power comes complexity, so here are a few tips for building #PowerBI reports that are intuitive for anyone to use. 

Use slicers for variance analysis.  

Variance analysis remains the bedrock of how we evaluate our businesses. Being able to instantaneously calculate year-over-year growth or variances to budget using different slices of our data provides us with the insights we need to make intelligent decisions. It is simply not enough to know that sales are favourable to budget by 5%, we need to know WHY! That's where we, as finance people, rely on our business stakeholders to help us advance our understanding. To enable these stakeholders, we need to ensure our tools are intuitive for everyone. One stellar example of how we can make analytics tools, specifically variance analysis, available to all users throughout our organization is through the use of slicers. Slicers are visuals that act as filters for the other visuals on the page.  

Here is a quick guide on how these can be set up to scale your analytics: 

Voila, now your users can quickly slice visuals to draw out insights without needing to manually drag and drop columns into the Filter pane. 

Link for slicers: 

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/visuals/power-bi-visualization-slicers?tabs=powerbi-desktop 

Link for DAX tips: 

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dax/calculate-function-dax 

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dax/selectedvalue-function 

Create a calendar table. 

Data types are a powerful feature in the Microsoft ecosystem, especially when it comes to dates. Using the Date data type allows users to perform time-intelligent calculations such as year-over-year growth. Additionally, this data type allows users to drill into any time axis, seamlessly going from an annualized view of your data, to semi-annual, quarterly, etc.! Best practice states we should create a table to hold our calendar logic; this ensures that Year, Month, any other time context has its' own column, so when you apply this table in filtering logic it stays cohesive. The steps to accomplish this are: 

Here is a simple table for pulling out Years, Months, and Quarters: 

VAR CalendarVar = CALENDAR(DATE(1990, 1, 1), DATE(2030, 12, 31)) 

Return 

ADDCOLUMNS( 

    CalendarVar, 

    "Fiscal Year", YEAR([Date]), 

    "Fiscal Period", MONTH([Date]), 

    "Fiscal Quarter", ROUNDUP(MONTH([Date])/3,0) 

) 

You can now use these columns in slicers, visuals, and other DAX calculations to perform intelligent time calculations. 

Link: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/guidance/model-date-tables 

Link: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dax/time-intelligence-functions-dax 

What other tips would you share with the community to help us all level up together? 

#expertexchange @Giovanna Reinking @Rachel Taguicana

Hi Everyone!  

I'm Anton, a Product Manager on the Data Insights team here at Vena. I've been at Vena for 4 years, working as a consultant followed by some solution management work before taking on my current role. Before my time at Vena, I worked in corporate finance, specializing in FP&A and predictive forecasting. 

I am so excited to host the first edition of the #ExpertExchange, where every week industry experts will join our forum to share knowledge, answer questions and help you grow your Vena skills. 

Since my focus at Vena is on data intelligence, this week's #ExpertExchange will be about enabling Power BI adoption across your organization. If you have questions or comments about Power BI and Vena, please drop them in the thread. I'm looking forward to connecting, learning and growing with you all! 

Power BI is a powerful tool for gaining insights at scale. Using the analogy of a construction site to represent analytical processes within an organization, I like to think of Excel as the shovel. It's the trusty tool you can always turn to for ad-hoc querying. And Power BI is the powerful excavator, the piece of equipment that really gets the job done. With great power comes complexity, so here are a few tips for building #PowerBI reports that are intuitive for anyone to use. 

Use slicers for variance analysis.  

Variance analysis remains the bedrock of how we evaluate our businesses. Being able to instantaneously calculate year-over-year growth or variances to budget using different slices of our data provides us with the insights we need to make intelligent decisions. It is simply not enough to know that sales are favourable to budget by 5%, we need to know WHY! That's where we, as finance people, rely on our business stakeholders to help us advance our understanding. To enable these stakeholders, we need to ensure our tools are intuitive for everyone. One stellar example of how we can make analytics tools, specifically variance analysis, available to all users throughout our organization is through the use of slicers. Slicers are visuals that act as filters for the other visuals on the page.  

Here is a quick guide on how these can be set up to scale your analytics: 

Voila, now your users can quickly slice visuals to draw out insights without needing to manually drag and drop columns into the Filter pane. 

Link for slicers: 

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/visuals/power-bi-visualization-slicers?tabs=powerbi-desktop 

Link for DAX tips: 

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dax/calculate-function-dax 

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dax/selectedvalue-function 

Create a calendar table. 

Data types are a powerful feature in the Microsoft ecosystem, especially when it comes to dates. Using the Date data type allows users to perform time-intelligent calculations such as year-over-year growth. Additionally, this data type allows users to drill into any time axis, seamlessly going from an annualized view of your data, to semi-annual, quarterly, etc.! Best practice states we should create a table to hold our calendar logic; this ensures that Year, Month, any other time context has its' own column, so when you apply this table in filtering logic it stays cohesive. The steps to accomplish this are: 

Here is a simple table for pulling out Years, Months, and Quarters: 

VAR CalendarVar = CALENDAR(DATE(1990, 1, 1), DATE(2030, 12, 31)) 

Return 

ADDCOLUMNS( 

    CalendarVar, 

    "Fiscal Year", YEAR([Date]), 

    "Fiscal Period", MONTH([Date]), 

    "Fiscal Quarter", ROUNDUP(MONTH([Date])/3,0) 

) 

You can now use these columns in slicers, visuals, and other DAX calculations to perform intelligent time calculations. 

Link: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/guidance/model-date-tables 

Link: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dax/time-intelligence-functions-dax 

What other tips would you share with the community to help us all level up together? 

#expertexchange @Giovanna Reinking @Rachel Taguicana

Hi Everyone!  

I'm Anton, a Product Manager on the Data Insights team here at Vena. I've been at Vena for 4 years, working as a consultant followed by some solution management work before taking on my current role. Before my time at Vena, I worked in corporate finance, specializing in FP&A and predictive forecasting. 

I am so excited to host the first edition of the #ExpertExchange, where every week industry experts will join our forum to share knowledge, answer questions and help you grow your Vena skills. 

Since my focus at Vena is on data intelligence, this week's #ExpertExchange will be about enabling Power BI adoption across your organization. If you have questions or comments about Power BI and Vena, please drop them in the thread. I'm looking forward to connecting, learning and growing with you all! 

Power BI is a powerful tool for gaining insights at scale. Using the analogy of a construction site to represent analytical processes within an organization, I like to think of Excel as the shovel. It's the trusty tool you can always turn to for ad-hoc querying. And Power BI is the powerful excavator, the piece of equipment that really gets the job done. With great power comes complexity, so here are a few tips for building #PowerBI reports that are intuitive for anyone to use. 

Use slicers for variance analysis.  

Variance analysis remains the bedrock of how we evaluate our businesses. Being able to instantaneously calculate year-over-year growth or variances to budget using different slices of our data provides us with the insights we need to make intelligent decisions. It is simply not enough to know that sales are favourable to budget by 5%, we need to know WHY! That's where we, as finance people, rely on our business stakeholders to help us advance our understanding. To enable these stakeholders, we need to ensure our tools are intuitive for everyone. One stellar example of how we can make analytics tools, specifically variance analysis, available to all users throughout our organization is through the use of slicers. Slicers are visuals that act as filters for the other visuals on the page.  

Here is a quick guide on how these can be set up to scale your analytics: 

Voila, now your users can quickly slice visuals to draw out insights without needing to manually drag and drop columns into the Filter pane. 

Link for slicers: 

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/visuals/power-bi-visualization-slicers?tabs=powerbi-desktop 

Link for DAX tips: 

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dax/calculate-function-dax 

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dax/selectedvalue-function 

Create a calendar table. 

Data types are a powerful feature in the Microsoft ecosystem, especially when it comes to dates. Using the Date data type allows users to perform time-intelligent calculations such as year-over-year growth. Additionally, this data type allows users to drill into any time axis, seamlessly going from an annualized view of your data, to semi-annual, quarterly, etc.! Best practice states we should create a table to hold our calendar logic; this ensures that Year, Month, any other time context has its' own column, so when you apply this table in filtering logic it stays cohesive. The steps to accomplish this are: 

Here is a simple table for pulling out Years, Months, and Quarters: 

VAR CalendarVar = CALENDAR(DATE(1990, 1, 1), DATE(2030, 12, 31)) 

Return 

ADDCOLUMNS( 

    CalendarVar, 

    "Fiscal Year", YEAR([Date]), 

    "Fiscal Period", MONTH([Date]), 

    "Fiscal Quarter", ROUNDUP(MONTH([Date])/3,0) 

) 

You can now use these columns in slicers, visuals, and other DAX calculations to perform intelligent time calculations. 

Link: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/guidance/model-date-tables 

Link: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dax/time-intelligence-functions-dax 

What other tips would you share with the community to help us all level up together? 

#expertexchange @Giovanna Reinking @Rachel Taguicana

Hi Everyone!  

I'm Anton, a Product Manager on the Data Insights team here at Vena. I've been at Vena for 4 years, working as a consultant followed by some solution management work before taking on my current role. Before my time at Vena, I worked in corporate finance, specializing in FP&A and predictive forecasting. 

I am so excited to host the first edition of the #ExpertExchange, where every week industry experts will join our forum to share knowledge, answer questions and help you grow your Vena skills. 

Since my focus at Vena is on data intelligence, this week's #ExpertExchange will be about enabling Power BI adoption across your organization. If you have questions or comments about Power BI and Vena, please drop them in the thread. I'm looking forward to connecting, learning and growing with you all! 

Power BI is a powerful tool for gaining insights at scale. Using the analogy of a construction site to represent analytical processes within an organization, I like to think of Excel as the shovel. It's the trusty tool you can always turn to for ad-hoc querying. And Power BI is the powerful excavator, the piece of equipment that really gets the job done. With great power comes complexity, so here are a few tips for building #PowerBI reports that are intuitive for anyone to use. 

Use slicers for variance analysis.  

Variance analysis remains the bedrock of how we evaluate our businesses. Being able to instantaneously calculate year-over-year growth or variances to budget using different slices of our data provides us with the insights we need to make intelligent decisions. It is simply not enough to know that sales are favourable to budget by 5%, we need to know WHY! That's where we, as finance people, rely on our business stakeholders to help us advance our understanding. To enable these stakeholders, we need to ensure our tools are intuitive for everyone. One stellar example of how we can make analytics tools, specifically variance analysis, available to all users throughout our organization is through the use of slicers. Slicers are visuals that act as filters for the other visuals on the page.  

Here is a quick guide on how these can be set up to scale your analytics: 

Voila, now your users can quickly slice visuals to draw out insights without needing to manually drag and drop columns into the Filter pane. 

Link for slicers: 

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/visuals/power-bi-visualization-slicers?tabs=powerbi-desktop 

Link for DAX tips: 

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dax/calculate-function-dax 

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dax/selectedvalue-function 

Create a calendar table. 

Data types are a powerful feature in the Microsoft ecosystem, especially when it comes to dates. Using the Date data type allows users to perform time-intelligent calculations such as year-over-year growth. Additionally, this data type allows users to drill into any time axis, seamlessly going from an annualized view of your data, to semi-annual, quarterly, etc.! Best practice states we should create a table to hold our calendar logic; this ensures that Year, Month, any other time context has its' own column, so when you apply this table in filtering logic it stays cohesive. The steps to accomplish this are: 

Here is a simple table for pulling out Years, Months, and Quarters: 

VAR CalendarVar = CALENDAR(DATE(1990, 1, 1), DATE(2030, 12, 31)) 

Return 

ADDCOLUMNS( 

    CalendarVar, 

    "Fiscal Year", YEAR([Date]), 

    "Fiscal Period", MONTH([Date]), 

    "Fiscal Quarter", ROUNDUP(MONTH([Date])/3,0) 

) 

You can now use these columns in slicers, visuals, and other DAX calculations to perform intelligent time calculations. 

Link: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/guidance/model-date-tables 

Link: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dax/time-intelligence-functions-dax 

What other tips would you share with the community to help us all level up together? 

#expertexchange @Giovanna Reinking @Rachel Taguicana

Hi Everyone!  

I'm Anton, a Product Manager on the Data Insights team here at Vena. I've been at Vena for 4 years, working as a consultant followed by some solution management work before taking on my current role. Before my time at Vena, I worked in corporate finance, specializing in FP&A and predictive forecasting. 

I am so excited to host the first edition of the #ExpertExchange, where every week industry experts will join our forum to share knowledge, answer questions and help you grow your Vena skills. 

Since my focus at Vena is on data intelligence, this week's #ExpertExchange will be about enabling Power BI adoption across your organization. If you have questions or comments about Power BI and Vena, please drop them in the thread. I'm looking forward to connecting, learning and growing with you all! 

Power BI is a powerful tool for gaining insights at scale. Using the analogy of a construction site to represent analytical processes within an organization, I like to think of Excel as the shovel. It's the trusty tool you can always turn to for ad-hoc querying. And Power BI is the powerful excavator, the piece of equipment that really gets the job done. With great power comes complexity, so here are a few tips for building #PowerBI reports that are intuitive for anyone to use. 

Use slicers for variance analysis.  

Variance analysis remains the bedrock of how we evaluate our businesses. Being able to instantaneously calculate year-over-year growth or variances to budget using different slices of our data provides us with the insights we need to make intelligent decisions. It is simply not enough to know that sales are favourable to budget by 5%, we need to know WHY! That's where we, as finance people, rely on our business stakeholders to help us advance our understanding. To enable these stakeholders, we need to ensure our tools are intuitive for everyone. One stellar example of how we can make analytics tools, specifically variance analysis, available to all users throughout our organization is through the use of slicers. Slicers are visuals that act as filters for the other visuals on the page.  

Here is a quick guide on how these can be set up to scale your analytics: 

Voila, now your users can quickly slice visuals to draw out insights without needing to manually drag and drop columns into the Filter pane. 

Link for slicers: 

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/visuals/power-bi-visualization-slicers?tabs=powerbi-desktop 

Link for DAX tips: 

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dax/calculate-function-dax 

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dax/selectedvalue-function 

Create a calendar table. 

Data types are a powerful feature in the Microsoft ecosystem, especially when it comes to dates. Using the Date data type allows users to perform time-intelligent calculations such as year-over-year growth. Additionally, this data type allows users to drill into any time axis, seamlessly going from an annualized view of your data, to semi-annual, quarterly, etc.! Best practice states we should create a table to hold our calendar logic; this ensures that Year, Month, any other time context has its' own column, so when you apply this table in filtering logic it stays cohesive. The steps to accomplish this are: 

Here is a simple table for pulling out Years, Months, and Quarters: 

VAR CalendarVar = CALENDAR(DATE(1990, 1, 1), DATE(2030, 12, 31)) 

Return 

ADDCOLUMNS( 

    CalendarVar, 

    "Fiscal Year", YEAR([Date]), 

    "Fiscal Period", MONTH([Date]), 

    "Fiscal Quarter", ROUNDUP(MONTH([Date])/3,0) 

) 

You can now use these columns in slicers, visuals, and other DAX calculations to perform intelligent time calculations. 

Link: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/guidance/model-date-tables 

Link: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dax/time-intelligence-functions-dax 

What other tips would you share with the community to help us all level up together? 

#expertexchange @Giovanna Reinking @Rachel Taguicana