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