Ryan McCauley – Page 4

Choosing which version of Power BI Desktop opens a PBIX file

When you have both the “Report Server” and “Regular” version of Power BI Desktop installed, double-clicking on a PBIX file will open it in whichever one you updated last (most likely the non-RS version, since its updated every month). Unfortunately, I want to open PBIX files in my RS version, since that’s where most of the development for my job occurs.

I got tired of fixing the shortcut links every time I updated the Desktop, so I just added two new right-click options for PBIX files – “Start in RS version” and “Start in regular version. When it’s done, it looks like this (with the new options highlighted in red):

To add them, just take the code below and save it into a file with a .REG extension, and then double-click it to add it to your registry.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PowerBI.File]
@="Microsoft Power BI Desktop Document"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PowerBI.File\DefaultIcon]
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Power BI Desktop RS\\bin\\PBIDocument.ico\""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PowerBI.File\shell]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PowerBI.File\shell\Open in RS Version]
@="Open in RS Version"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PowerBI.File\shell\Open in RS Version\command]
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Power BI Desktop RS\\bin\\PBIDesktop.exe\" \"%1\""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PowerBI.File\shell\Open in regular version]
@="Open in regular version"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PowerBI.File\shell\Open in regular version\command]
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Power BI Desktop\\bin\\PBIDesktop.exe\" \"%1\""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PowerBI.File\shell\Open]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PowerBI.File\shell\Open\Command]
; Uncomment this one if you want the public version to be the default
;@="\"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Power BI Desktop\\bin\\PBIDesktop.exe\" \"%1\""

; Uncomment this one if you want the server version to be the default
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Power BI Desktop RS\\bin\\PBIDesktop.exe\" \"%1\""

You can also download the .REG file (you may need to right-click and save it).

(Update – added the switcher at the end so you can choose which edition opens up the PBIX file when you double-click on it!)

Let me know if you have any issues!

Import first sheet of an Excel workbook into Power Query, regardless of its name

I recently had to import a large number of Excel workbooks into Power Query (using “From Folder” – if you haven’t used this feature, it’s a huge time-saver when you’ve got a ton of matching files to import). The problem was that each workbook had a different name for the first tab and the import process gets data from tabs with the same name (assuming all your files match).

By default when you create a workbook, Excel names the first sheet “Sheet1”, but if the files you’re importing have sheets with different names, you can tell Power Query to load the first sheet of each file, regardless of the name – here’s the process (skip to step 5 to see the specific M-query solution):

Select “Get Data” -> “From File” -> “From Folder” – this lets you import all the files from a folder at once (assuming their format matches).
Select the folder where your files are stored (I have three files in the folder in this example).
Select an example file and which sheet you’d like to import – this is what you’ll use to create your transformations (before the files are merged together) – in this example, my sheet is called “Bob’s sheet” (which is specific to just that single file).
When you select “Import”, you’ll receive the error “[Expression.Error] The key didn’t match any rows in the table.” – this is because the other workbooks don’t contain any sheets with that name (though the error is a bit cryptic).
If you double-click on the “Data Files” query with the error, you can see that it loaded the data from the first file, but nothing from the others:
To correct this issue and tell Power Query to just use the first tab in the workbook in every case, open the “Transform Sample File from Data Files” query and click “Advanced Editor”.
You’re now looking at the M-query behind this object (if you want it, here’s a great video on M if you’ve never worked it before and want a primer – I watched a bunch of different videos and this one really connected the dots for me). The section with the sheet name is highlighted:
Replace the highlighted text with “Item=Source{0}[Item]” so that it looks like this:
(The “0” refers to the first sheet – if you want the second sheet, you’d use “1” and so on). If you’re using an XLS file rather than an XLSX file, the text looks a little bit different: “Name=Source{0}[Name]“. The XLSX file has a Name field as well, but it can vary from the “Item” column.
Once you make change, you can see in the Power Query window that it’s now getting data from every file.
Once you click “Close and Load” to get back to Excel, click on the “Refresh All” button to force a data refresh and you’ll see it import all the files, regardless of their sheet name:

That’s it – you’re pulling in all the workbooks regardless of their sheet name!

I’d never used the “From Folder” feature, but I’d definitely recommend trying it out – it was a huge time-saver for me and allowed me to import hundreds of matching Excel files into a single model in minutes!

Update: When you’re using older XLS files

Somebody brought to my attention that this technique doesn’t work when you’re using XLS files, only when you’re using the XLSX/XLSB format (I won’t call it new as it’s been around since Office 2007, but still – newish).

If you’re using XLS files, you need to change step 6 slightly as M uses a different syntax to drill into sheets in those files. Here’s what the M query looks like when you drill in manually:

Replace the highlighted portion ([Name=”Sheet1″]) with just an index number – “0” in this case:

Once you do that, Power Query will drill into the sheet in the the first row of your dataset.

However, I did notice an issue – the sheet in position “0” wasn’t the first sheet in the workbook. I added a number of sheets in my Excel doc, but I did it them in a random order (I renamed “Sheet1” to “Original” and then created the others in the order they’re named):

However, when you import the workbook in Power Query, the physical order isn’t reflected – it seems to be the order they were created, but with the original sheet always last (not sure what the thinking is there – maybe something in the physical file format?):

If you want the “Original” sheet, you can use the Power Query step “Keep Bottom Rows” and give it a value of “1”:

If you want one of the other sheets, though, and the name keeps changing, I’m not sure how you’d handle ensuring you get the right one. If you’ve got suggestions, I’d love to hear them and I’ll include them here!

Update 2

Another question from the comments – what if you want to get the last sheet in the workbook, not the first one? We can make that happen with one additional line right after Source and right before the line where you select the sheet:

"Kept Last Rows" = Table.LastN(Source, 1),

This is the command you get when you select “Keep Rows” -> “Keep Bottom Rows” from the toolbar up top, and you’ll be left with a single row to drill into. You’ll still need to drill into it as Row 0 so that it will work no matter what the sheet name is.

Client certificate error with Office 365 and Blackberry Hub

Our office recently implemented two-factor authentication with Office 365 and it caused some issues with my Activesync account in Blackberry Hub (running on my Android Pixel 2. I would receive email intermittently – an hour on, a few hours off, and then a random bunch of email again. Then I started receiving the following error message:

The client certificate for (your mail account) must be allowed for use in establishing secure email connections. Do you want to do this now? [Password may or may not be required.]

Before the two-factor change, out email configuration required that we user a client certificate that was issued to our phone through Microsoft Intune (called “Company Portal” on our phones). Once two-factor was enabled, leaving the certificate selected gave that error message. Instead, email needed to have the certificate removed as follows:

Here was the big change: instead of my domain password, Hub required me to generate an app-specific password using the following process:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/create-an-app-password-for-office-365-3e7c860f-bda4-4441-a618-b53953ee1183

The mobile version of office.com doesn’t allow you to generate an app password, but you can tell the Chrome on your phone to view the full desktop version of the site and it will allow you to generate a password. Copy it, use it in Blackberry Hub (without the certificate selected), and you’re back to receiving your email!

Passing multi-value report parameters to SSRS using the URL querystring

Passing parameters to reports in SSRS using the URL can be really helpful, especially when you want to link to a report with some of the data aleady filled out. We had an email alert that some accounts in active directory were incorrect, and we wanted a way to link to a report that provided some additional detail for those accounts. Querystring parameters aren’t very well documented (and I couldn’t find anything on multi-value parameters), and I hope this saves you some time if you’re in the same situation.

There’s a pretty good reference on Technet, but it’s got some gaps (for me, the biggest was even mentioning multi-value/multi-select parameters). The basic syntax is pretty straightforward – normally, a report is called with a URL like the following:

http://YourSsrsServer/Reports/Some%20Folder/YourReportName

From there, you can select the parameters and run the report. To provide a link to the report with the parameters already filled out (if they’re blank or if you gnat to override the defaults), just append this to the end of the URL:

?ReportParam1=SomeValue&ReportParam2=SomeOtherValue

You can pass any type of parameter with this same syntax – text, datetime, integer, float, or boolean (use Yes/No). Your full url would look like this:

http://YourSsrsServer/Reports/Some%20Folder/YourReportName?ReportParam1=SomeValue&ReportParam2=SomeOtherValue

To do a multi-value parameter, you repeat the name of the parametr to provide it multiple values:

http://YourSsrsServer/Reports/Some%20Folder/YourReportName?ReportMultiParam=SomeValue&ReportMultiParam=SomeOtherValue

If this is the only parameter on the report and it doesn’t need any other user input, the report will automatically execute because it has everything it needs. If you want the report to wait for the user to hit “View Report”, you need to leave at least one parameter empty.

Two quick notes if you’re having trouble:

Use the parameter name, not the prompt text. If your parameter is called “Office” but the prompt says “Which office?”, use “Office”. Parameter names aren’t always intuitive and you may need to open the report in Visual Studio to get these names if you can’t guess them.
In the same way, you need to use the field’s value, not the label. If the dropdown contains the full name of the office, but the value behind the list is the office number, you’ll need to provide the numbers on the querystring.

Good luck!

Microsoft Connect item for an SSRS pre-report canvas

Current state:

About six months ago, I submitted a connect request for SQL Server (my first one) to suggest an improvement to the SSRS interface – a customizable canvas that’s displayed before an SSRS report renders, while parameters are being entered. My issue was that there was information I wanted report users to have (like expected wait time, suggestions for the parameters, the report title and a short description that might help them, etc.) and there was no way to get it to them.

With a giant empty screen staring at them, it seemed like a great place to add that information:

The suggestion:

Ideally, while the user is considering parameters, I’d love to see something like this (ignoring that it’s not a super-photogenic report):

This would be a great place for details about the report that help the user before (or while) they run it, like:

The name of the report (not always clearly visible in the URL or browser title bar, especially when you’re Sharepoint-integrated. Especially helpful if they’ve left multiple report tabs open or if report generation fails, they’re often left with a white screen and no easy way to tell the tabs apart.
A short description of the report, including when you’d use it or any notable caveats.
An estimated runtime – this isn’t always possible exactly as parameters vary, but even a general estimate (or better yet, an average or a 95% confidence range, pulled from the report server database) would be better than the complete blank they get today.
Suggestions/restrictions on the parameters – If a report can’t be run for all offices at once, you can say so here. If running it for everybody at once means you can’t export to Excel because it’s too large, let the user know.
A mock-up/screenshot of the report – so they user can see if it’s the one they want. They may be looking for a report with a specific chart, and waiting for 3 minutes for each one to render may not be ideal.
A link to any other documentation/resources, or related reports, or pretty much anything else.

It wouldn’t need to be anything fancy – I’d even settle for text you can format, or some kind of additional panel on the report that you can design, but isn’t rendered with the report itself. Access to data (to pull estimated on execution times or dynamic owner/description details, for example) would be nice, but not required – I’d rather have a design-only, no-data canvas than nothing at all.

The plea:

Thanks to the motivation from the folks at Brent Ozar Unlimited, I’m asking for your help in voting for this suggestion (if you think it would be beneficial, of course). As part of T-SQL Tuesday, they’ve asked people to find a connect request that they’d like to see filled and post about it, so here I am asking humbly for your support. : )

If you like the idea, please vote for it – if you don’t, please comment and let me know why not (I’m always open to understanding the opposition). There are a ton of great Connect items out there and this is only one, but I think it would help out (especially for our longer-running reports).

Thanks for your help!

Direct URL for the Connect item: https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/2809098/ability-to-customize-report-splash-screen-during-parameter-submission

Side note:

I’ve attached the two images (current/proposed) to my connect item three different times and they’re still not showing up there – if anybody knows how to get those images published, people can see what I’m talking about when I describe my suggestion! : )