New External Tool to Create Practice Datasets

[GuyJohnson]

Sorry, never mind will withdraw.

[sam.mckay]

Wow amazing Brian. Look forward to trying this out

[BrianJ]

@sam.mckay,

Thanks! Planning to put together a short video on this tonight.

• Brian

[Alex7891]

Hi @BrianJ

Thanks for the post ! I did not know about the external tools yet and btw your External Tools ribbon looks nice
Would you mind explain how you also integrated the DAX Formatter Chrome, DAX.Guide Chrome ?
Also you made me curious about the other ones: Themes, Charts, Layouts, Scrims… what are they

Would appreciate your advise & comments. Thanks!

Alexandre

[hafizsultan]

Hi @BrianJ,

Thank you for providing such a valuable external tool. It would be really helpful. AS @Alex7891 mentioned, your external tools list looks amazing and it would be great if you can share how to integrate those in Power BI and how to use them efficiently. I believe it would make us much more productive.

Kind Regards,
Hafiz

[BrianJ]

@Alex7891,

Oh man, you’re in for a treat! The External Tools menu is one of the best new features in Power BI. We’ve actually accumulated quite a bit of information in the Software and Tools section of the forum. Here are the “big three” that I think everyone who does serious work in Power BI should have loaded in their external tools. These are full-blown add-ons that actually connect to your Power BI data model and add major functionality. (There’s a fourth one called ALM Toolkit that a lot of people also have loaded, but frankly I don’t really understand what that one does, and the other three have kept me plenty busy learning new functionality).

The Big Dogs

Thread: Tabular Editor

Another tool for the Power BI toolbox. Brian Tabular Editor (link) Easily build, maintain and manage Tabular Models Tabular Editor provides an intuitive hierarchical view of every object in your Tabular Model metadata. Columns, Measures and Hierarchies are arranged in Display Folders by default. You can edit properties of one or more objects, by (multi)selecting them in the tree. A DAX Editor with syntax highlighting lets you easily edit the expressions of Measures, Calculated Columns and C…

The one current downside to Tabular Editor is that it doesn’t include IntelliSense. However rumor has it that v3,0 will be coming out very soon, and will include IntelliSense along with a bunch of other new features. If that is in fact true, it will be an incredible replacement for the current built-in DAX editor which is woefully insufficient.

Thread: Dax Studio

This is a useful tool for working with PowerBI/DAX that I use: Any updates to the product or if you want share how to use / functionality…

Analyze in Excel for Power BI Desktop

Forum Members, The new External Tools menu introduced in last month’s PBI update is already starting to pay huge dividends. SQLBI just released their Analyze In Excel add-in that lets you directly connect your Power BI model to Excel, which is incredibly useful for debugging and validating complex calculations. I’m sure they will be releasing more documentation and videos on this soon, but here’s the link to download the add-in and an introductory video: [Announcing Analyze in Excel…

The Enterprise DNA Tools. These external tools linkages were developed by @samaguire and @Greg, and basically just call the web versions of Analyst Hub and DAX Cleanup. No additional functionality gained by putting them in the External Tools menu, but very convenient to have them accessible all in one place.

Analyst Hub external tool for Power BI Desktop

I made this and find it useful. This will add an external tool menu entry to the Power BI Desktop that opens your default web browser to the Enterprise DNA Analyst Hub landing page. You will need administrator rights to do this. To install, copy the attachment to the location “C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Power BI Desktop\External Tools” analysthubenterprisedna.pbitool.json (4.2 KB) [image]

Analyst Hub external tool for Power BI Desktop

Hi All. From my personal development efforts, I use the eDNA DAX Clean Up Tool extensively, much more often that the other tools, so I wanted to reduce my click count. I extended @samaguire’s analyst hub external tool link; this one goes directly to the DAX Clean Up tool. [External Tool DAX Cleanup] Thought I’d share it in case anyone might find it useful. Greg Just download the daxcleanuptoolenterprisedna.pbitool.json (7.6 KB) file to the C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Sha…

The rest, called through Business Ops Manager. The Power BI Tips guys have done something pretty interesting, which is to develop sort of a meta-manager for external tools utilities. Through this I’ve installed most of the other tools on my External Tools menu toolbar.

Business Ops External Tools Manager

For all you fellow External Tools junkies (what up, @marcster_uk ?), I think this is a pretty cool gadget. The guys at powebi.tips have created a group installer that lets you easily choose from a long (and growing) list of external tools you can have added to your Power BI menu, and install them all with a single click. Even though it’s just in beta at this point, it worked flawlessly on my machine. Here’s the link to the software and the full description from the developers. Brian De…

I hope that’s helpful, and gives you some cool new toys to play with.

• Brian

P.S. Just finished recording a YouTube video on the Practice Dataset tool, which should post soon after it comes back from the editor.

[Alex7891]

Great @BrianJ
Thank you.

[BrianJ]

Forum Members,

Thanks to an incredibly quick turnaround by the @EnterpriseDNA team, my video on the Perpetual Practice Dataset external menu tool already has been posted on the Enterprise DNA TV YouTube channel:

How To Install Practice Dataset Power BI Tool

Big thanks to Aikeen and Sheila for the rapid turnaround on the video.

• Brian

[Frede]

This is fantastic!!

[markperrone]

I installed the tool but when I try to use it - power bi closes but the practice dataset never opens. suspect there is an issue with the powershell script. I can’t open power - message cannot access specified path or file. After about a minute I can open the desktop. Anyone else having this issue ?

[BrianJ]

@markperrone,

Hmmm…sorry it’s causing you problems. 3 questions:

• what browser are you using?

• 32 or 64 bit PBI?

• direct install or installed via MS Store?

• Brian

[markperrone]

Firefox but I also have chrome
64bit
DIrect install https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=58494

Whats the difference between opening pbix directly and using external tool ?

[GuyJohnson]

Same issue here.

Chromiun Edge
64 bit
MS Store

Guy

[BrianJ]

@markperrone,

Not much difference really. I like having it immediately accessible within PBI, but putting a shortcut to the PBIX on your desktop will provide the same basic functionality.

If others are having similar problems, let me know in the thread with answers to the three questions above. I will compile the info and circle back with @samaguire to see if there might be a simple fix.

• Brian

[Keith]

Hi there,

I have the same issue,

I use firefox,
64 bit
ms store

thanks
Keith

[samaguire]

Hey - sorry I’m late to the party.

I find it a little odd that the PBID instance closes - that would suggest Power BI Desktop crashed when you’ve tried to run the external tool.

Can I confirm the version of Power BI Desktop you are running?

[samaguire]

Hi All

I’ll do my best to work through the issues.

As a starting point, if you’re having trouble running the tool can you please provide the session diagnostics. This can be copied from the about windows in Power BI.

It would also be great if you can give me the location of the executable if you can. Which you can get by:

• opening task manager (right click on the taskbar),
• enabling more details (lower left corner),
• selecting the details tab (top right),
• scrolling to PBIDesktop.exe,
• right clicking on PBIDesktop.exe and selecting open file location,
• copy the path from the new windows explorer windows (top section of the window).

[Keith]

Hi there,

I’m running under C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\ as i’m pulling the information software from Microsoft store.

that might be the issue.

thanks
keith

[samaguire]

The script should pickup a windows store installed version. At least on my machine it does.

Are you clicking yes when it asks to run with elevated privelages?

[Keith]

yes…i am