There are some cases that we want to add a leading zero to a digit, such as showing 01 instead of 1, 02 instead of 2 and so on. We have two options to do this in Power BI, doing it in Power Query or doing it with DAX.
Adding a Leading Zero in Power Query
The first method is doing it in Power Query using the Text.PadStart() function.
Here is how the syntax of the function:
Text.PadStart(text as nullable text, count as number, optional character as nullable text)
And here is how the function works:
Text.PadStart(input string, the length of the string, an optional character to be added to the beginning of the string util we reach to the string length)
For example, Text.PadStart("12345", 10 , "a") returns aaaaa12345 and Text.PadStart("1", 2 , "0") returns 01.
Let’s create a list of integer values between 1 to 20 with the following expression:
{1..20}
Creating a List of Integer Values Between 1 to 20 In Power Query
Now we convert the list to a table by clicking the To Table button from the Transform tab:
Converting a List to a Table in Power Query
Now we add a new column by clicking the Custom Column from the Add Column tab from the ribbon bar:
Adding a New Custom Column to a Table in Power Query
Now we use the following expression in the Custom Column window to pad the numbers with a leading zero:
In 2020, the world celebrated the new year with many uncertainties. Well, life is full of uncertainties, but, this one was very different. The world was facing a new pandemic that never experienced before. The first COVID19 case in New Zealand was confirmed in February 2020. In March 2020 the entire country went to lockdown for the first time. The world was experiencing a massive threat changing everyone’s lives. I was no different. Every day was starting with bad news. A relative passed away; a friend got the virus; the customers put the projects on hold etc. Nothing was looking normal anymore. You can’t even go to get a proper haircut, because everyone is in lockdown. This is me trying to smile after getting a homemade haircut. I bet many of you have done the same thing.
Soheil’s Homemade Haircut
One day, I checked my email and saw a message from Packt Publishing. They wanted to see if I am interested in writing a book about Power BI. That was a piece of good news after a long time. I always wanted to write a book about Power BI. Indeed, I attempted for the first time in 2016, but I couldn’t manage to get my ducks in a row to grasp the publishers’ attention.
I was not unfamiliar with writing books; indeed, I wrote my first book back in 2006 about Multimedia Applications in Persian. One of my passions in life is listening to music. And CDs were the most accessible music source with high-quality sound. I recall I saved money for some months, and I bought a Discman to listen to the music on the go. But CDs are rather bulky, and you could not have many of them in your pocket. So the next project was to save even more money to buy an MP3 player. But, converting Audio CDs to MP3 without compromising a lot on the sound quality was a real challenge for many people. And, that was my motive to write my first book in Persian to share my little knowledge with everyone.
It’s been a while that I use Microsoft To Do to organise my daily tasks. From work-related tasks to buy groceries. While Microsoft To Do is super easy to use but there are some challenges in using it more efficiently, especially when you have multiple O365 accounts within different organisations. Here are some of the challenges I faced; you may face other challenges too:
The Microsoft To Do app for Windows devices is very user friendly with amazingly good features like the ability to add multiple To Do accounts. However, we currently have to select which account we would like to use and the app shows all our tasks within that specific account. This means we can not see all our tasks from all our accounts in a single place.
The Microsoft To Do app for iOS devices is also very handy to use, but it lacks adding multiple accounts. Hence we cannot see all our tasks from multiple O365 accounts on the app. 🙁
We can use the Tasks within the Microsoft Outlook desktop application (I used the Windows version) which is by far the most comprehensive one with tons of features. While we can see tasks from multiple accounts in a single place, it is a real challenge if I want to know which task is assigned to which account. Besides, it is really hard to answer some questions like, how many high-priority tasks I have for today or the week ahead. I know, we can group tasks, but, it is still not so intuitive.
For the above reasons, I searched for a product that can do all the above at once. After spending some hours, I thought, well, I have to do it myself.
With that, let’s go ahead and see how we can get the job done in Power BI.
Note:
This method is not working for Microsoft To Do using personal accounts such as Outlook, Hotmail or MSN. If anyone knows how to add those, please let us know in the comments section below this post.
This is a long post that took me a reasonable amount of time to write. So I added the following table of contents so you can quickly jump to a subject of your interest.
Microsoft Power BI is NOT a reporting tool only. We can connect to many data sources, mix and match the data, create data models and visualise the data. So it should be possible to connect to multiple To Do accounts, append the data, create a simple data model on top of that, and visualise the data to answer our questions or our customers’ questions. The Microsoft To Do data is accessible via the Microsoft Exchange Online connector available in Power BI. The rest depends on our requirements and what questions we would like to answer.
In my case, in which I am the end-user of the report, I would like to be able to know:
Today’s tasks: All tasks that their StartDate or DueDate is today or the Tasks without any StartDate and DueDate
Number of tasks
Number of important tasks
Tasks by mailbox
Tasks details
Task list
Task description
Status
Start date
Due date
A link to the task itself that I can update if I want to
All Tasks
All above plus
Number of open tasks
Number of completed tasks
You or your customer(s) might have different requirements, but once you understand how to get the To Do data from Microsoft Exchange Online and do some data explorations to find out what you are after, you’ll be good.
Microsoft Excel is one of the most common data sources for Power BI. We can store Excel files in various storage types. The way we get data from Excel varies depending on the storage type. In this post, I quickly show two methods to connect to an Excel file stored in SharePoint Online.
Method 1: Getting the Excel File Path from the Excel Desktop App
This method requires you to have the Excel application installed on your machine. In this method, we open the Excel files stored in SharePoint Online in the Excel Desktop App in our machine and get the file path from there.
In SharePoint Online go to the desired document library then follow these steps to make it work:
Select the Excel file
Click the Open button
Click Open in app
Opening Excel file from SharePoint Online in Excel Desktop App
This opens the Excel file in the Excel Desktop application. In the Excel follow these steps:
Click the File menu
Click Info
Click the Copy path button
Copying Excel Path from Excel Desktop App
So far we got the Excel file path. The step is to get data from the copied path in Power BI Desktop.
Open Power BI Desktop and follow these steps:
Click Get data
Click Web
Getting data from Excel stored in SharePoint Online in Power BI Desktop
Paste the path we copied from Excel in the URL text box
Delete the ?web=1 from the end of the copied path
Click OK
Modifying the path copied from Excel to get the data in Power BI Desktop
