Thank you for your feedback Brian! I really appreciate your kind words ! It boosts my motivation to improve even more!
@Hideo, your report is very creative! I also like the interactions, the tooltips, the overall theme and the fact you kept it simple and to the point! Great contribution! 
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Hello everyone this is my data model for challenge 7. At the moment, i am struggling to calculate the date diffs between the PO dates in the Purchases table and Posting Date in the Received table.
And also calculating the diff between the Bill Date in the Billing table and the dates in the received table.
Any clues will be greatly appreciated
Thank you so much for a nice and warm feed back, especially from like you who got on the top of effort and talent of this challenge series.On this report, I felt like why I am doing this complex and time consuming alignment etc…but now it all paid off 
Thank you again for your comment.
All the best
Hideo
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@amal.rebai1995, I really like your report ! The information you chose to present is useful, clear and straight to the point. I also like the groups for sales and billing.
When I started looking at your report I thought that the groups should have been sorted by number of days, but after couple of seconds I realised that it’s actually better to present it as it is.
For the improvement side, I think that the report could look better without the blue line around the different sections and by taking off the red colours of the table. I think that the white space and the limited colour will only emphasis even more the insights.
@Eze You can create active relationships between dates and can also look at @sam.mckay model for reference. I used the lookupvalue function to create additional column in “Received” extracting PO Date from “Purchases”. Then you can calculate the difference between the dates.
OR
You can also look at @BrianJ write up as to how he built his model for this challenge.
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WOW!!! Awesome work everyone you’ve really made it easy for me this week 
!!!
No but seriously the knowledge share and vast array of ideas on display is immense.
Some epic write ups too appreciate you all putting in the effort to make these challenges a success.
Loads to come in the wrap up shortly, speak soon.
Haroon
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A little late to the party but hope this finds everyone safe and healthy.
I revised this a few times and sure it can be tuned even further but I think I covered all the requirements.
DATA MODEL
Like others noticed PO and Material were in every table but also the customer because its tied to the PO. Where customer was not specified, I used “Unknown”. I cheated a little by creating the PO, Material, Customer table in another excel sheet. I could have done this with power query but if this were a database, I would have done this with SQL.
So, we have a conforming dimension which ties to all the fact tables (purchasing, receiving and billing) and lets us drill through across the different fact tables. We can use bidirectional relationships because there are no ambiguity issues, and we adhere to strict 1:M rules
I wanted to see how each fact progressed over time and since each fact has a date, I created an Activity fact, each date we see what happened across purchases, posting and billing.
The other activity was the days between each process – purchasing to posting, posting to billing along with the first/last date of each process – all this broken down by customer, PO and material. This is Activity 2 (didn’t take the time to come up with a better name for this table).
VISUALS
I concentrated primarily on the requirements but also considered “what would I want to see” and came up with the avg purchase-to-post visuals with the top & bottom 10 performers. I like to see KPI at the top, visuals next and finally some aggregated detail.
FILTERS
I implemented a pop-up filter to save screen real-estate. Straight-forward technique using bookmarks, selection pane and images. Here is the link to video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OjY6bcyMg4. This can also be done with buttons, but I thought the images were a little easier to work.
NOTE: I noticed there were 3 large spikes in the billing would have skewed some of the charts, so I suppressed them in the model.
OBSERVATIONS
Other than unknown, all customers were in the red.
VERSION 2 - I’ll be re-visiting this after checking out some other examples of business processes - cash flow, supply chain, etc.
I just started with Power BI/Enterprise DBA and once I get all the plumbing complete I’ll get a link and upload the data source and PBIX. Looking forward to the next challenge
For the attached pbix, you will need to alter the source line in power query and
Happy visualizing.
challenge71forum.pbix (259.3 KB)
Data Challenge 7(1).xlsx (196.7 KB)
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Wow! Quite a way to introduce yourself to the Challenges. I really love everything about this entry - the information you’ve chosen to focus on, the color theme and organization of the visuals, the use of the small tables at the bottom, and the slicer pop-out from the filter button at the top, among a lot of other things. Also interested to take a deeper look at your data modeling approach, since it’s unique among the entries to date.
Also, thanks for the detailed write up. This did jump out at me:
What is your background that you were able to do this after just starting with Power BI?
Thanks for participating – can’t wait to see what you do in Challenge #8 and beyond.
- Brian
I worked with qlik for a few years at Ford and I’ve read several books by Edward Tufte and Stephen Few several times and never looked back. I’ve been learning power bi on my own now for a few months (Curbal, Enterprise DNA, SQL BI) but these challenges (5-7) have really honed my skills. Also, I’ve been programming for near 35 years so its pretty much in my blood. I also a deep background in art, music and other right brain ideas. BI is an ideal match.
FYI - the color scheme is from Enterprise DNA.
yes, looking forward to challenge 8. Do they take suggestions ?
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Yes! Actual scenarios and real-world data are preferred. Contact @haroonali1000, who coordinates the challenges.
Totally agree with you re: Tufte - I’ve got all his books in my collection and have taken his seminar twice. Really like Few’s Makeover Monday book, and just heard an interview with Marco Russo where he said Few’s “Show Me the Numbers” is essential .
- Brian
This video from the creators of South Park is in my list of favorites. Great storytelling advice.
I try to apply these concepts in my visuals.
Thanks - great video.
35 years of data analytics, Tufte and South Park. I’m beginning to think we were separated at birth… 
- Brian
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LOVE THIS APPROACH. I’m actually working on something similar for work and your submission has given me more ideas.
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@Hideo,
You submitted a report that is a beautiful, interactive , creative and full of information.
Great job.
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Thank you so much for your comment. Sometimes it is hard to judge the report by myself so it’s nice to hear from close participants 
Regards,
Hideo
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There are many free sites that can generate colours and I use a couple one to generate a range of shades off one base colour (able to get 2 - 25 different shades).
Another one I use is one where you can upload a picture and extract colours from the image, so useful for corporate images and alternate schemes, this generates five colours from the image but also allows a ‘shuffle’ function to capture another five colours from the image.
https://icolorpalette.com/color-palette-from-
images
I find them useful, hope you do!!
Dave Hampson
4 Likes
Hello Everyone,
Sorry for the late submission. I was busy for the last two weeks and I thought I should work on and submit Challenge 7 first before diving into Challenge 8.
Data Model:-
The challenging part for me was creating a Data Model that is efficient, and it took me awhile to come up with one that works well for the requirement.
I created the following three dimension tables and fact tables in Power Query :-
There are four dimension tables created after extracting distinct values of the Purchase Orders, Materials, Customers and a new Date table.
In order to create some of the calculations needed for this report, the three tables provided were merged using a left join starting with the biggest table which is invoices table in Power Query.
Visualizations:-
I created the visuals on this report after learning from my fellow participants on how to create a tool tip visual and some other techniques.
So thanks every one for the continuous learning experience I am having and for your support.
Regards,
Nebiyu
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Hi @Neba,
Great effort, covered some solid analysis and looks very elegant.
Some great techniques on display and kudos to you for taking the time out to go back and complete challenge 7.
See you on challenge 8.
Haroon
1 Like