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Choose between continuous and categorical axes

Tuesday, February 1st, 2022

The PL-300 exam skills guide has a topic, “choose between continuous and categorical axes,” but I couldn’t find any documentation the option to format an axis as categorical or continuous. I did see that when I created a line chart, the format pane has the option to se the x-axis as categorical or continuous.

Based on what I’ve seen by experimenting with the settings:

  • formatting the x-axis as categorical will mean that the axes labels are correspond to the level of detail on the chart.
  • formatting the x-axis as continuous will mean that the axis labels do not correspond to the level of detail in the chart.

This correspond to the definitions of categorical (also called discrete) and continuous. Categorical values are separate and distinct, while continuous values exist anywhere along a range.

x axis format with type continuous or categorical

I created two identical line graphs, but one with the continuous setting and the other with categorical:

continuous and categorical x-axis for line graph

These look pretty much identical, but then I clicked the “expand hierarchy” button on both:

Both line graphs now have more detail, but the x-axis that is set as continuous hasn’t changed, while the x-axis set as categorical has labels that correspond to the increased detail.

When I click expand again, the categorical x-axis gets a scroll bar in order to accommodate all the labels:

Download Power BI workbook for continuous-vs-discrete

 

 

Creating a histogram

Monday, May 17th, 2021

Right-click on Quantity and select New Group

Group types can be bin or list. Choose bin.

Adding a row count measure can show how many rows had quantity in a given range. For example, here we see 216 rows where Quantity = 3.

Download workbook.

Changing Interactions

Wednesday, May 12th, 2021

Select the visual on the left to change how clicking on it causes changes in the visual on the right:

Try clicking Filter

Now you see that selecting bars on the right filters the pie chart on the left:

Change to None and nothing will happen when you select the bars on the left.

Conditional Formatting

Wednesday, May 12th, 2021

Load the Salary Sample data in PowerBI Desktop and create a table showing average salary by company:

Click the down arrow next to salary:

Select Conditional formatting – Background color

Color scale:

 

Drill Through

Wednesday, May 12th, 2021

Open the Salary Sample and create a Salary By Title view:

And a Title Detail view:

On the Title Detail page, drag Tile to the “Add drill-through field here” area:

Turn on Cross-report drill-through to allow other reports to use this page as a drill-through target:

Now when we go back to the “Salary By Title” page and right-clicking on one of the bars, you’ll see the drill-through option:

Download this workbook.

Turn on Dashboard Tile Flow

Wednesday, May 12th, 2021

Dashboard Tile Flow will automatically reposition tiles to keep your dashboard organized. To turn it on, click the elipsis next to one of your dashboards, then choose settings.

Scroll down and click to turn on tile flow:

Pin a live page

Wednesday, May 12th, 2021

On the Power BI Service, select a report. Then, on the navigation bar, select the ellipsis icon and then Pin to a dashboard:

Obseve the note – “Pin live page enables changes to reports to appear

If I go back to PowerBI desktop, make a change, and publish, the change will be reflected on the dashboard:

The new changes are reflected on the dashboard:

Filter Customizations

Wednesday, May 12th, 2021

Disabling Search

Select File, then Options and Settings

Uncheck “Enable search for the filter pane”

After you click OK, you should see that the search box no longer appears in the filter pane:

Hide Filter for Report Readers

Easy, just click the eye icon:

Lock or Disable a Specific Filter for Report Consumers

Again, easy, just click the Lock icon to prevent a report consumer from changing it.

 

Use an image for navigation

Wednesday, May 12th, 2021

Starting with this workbook and on the Insert tab select Image.

Use this paperclip image.

Turn the action on,

Turn on the action, set he type to bookmark, and choose Page1 or Page2

In the final view, the paperclip image can now be used to navigate to another page.

Download workbook.

Use bookmark and buttons for navigation

Wednesday, May 12th, 2021

Connect to the shipping cost data

Create a couple pages:

Add bookmarks for Page 1 and Page 2

Rename the bookmarks so that it’s clear which goes with which page

On Page 3, add buttons of type Bookmark:

Using the Format button menu, set the bookmark action:

Turn on the title and set it to Page1:

The view now looks like this. Hold down the control key and click the bookmark button to navigate.

You don’t need to use bookmark buttons. You can also use different button types:

With the Arrow button selected, set the Action type to Boomark:

Select Page1 or Page2

CTRL+click will send you to Page 2

Download the completed workbook.

About the Author: Lukas Halim

I earned a Masters in Analytics from NC State in 2013 and now work as a data analyst in the health insurance industry. Using tools such as SAS, Tableau, and Teradata, I conduct analysis to help my company improve healthcare affordability and customer engagement.

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