Wow! It looks like we hit the jackpot on the November 2021 update out today:
Major upgrade to the formatting panel
Goals visual now in the Desktop, not just the service
Full rich-text formatting of text, with bold, underline, italics, superscripts, subscripts, etc.
Bookmarks and page navigators to dramatically simplify process of creating and maintaining bookmarks and page nav
Google Sheets connector (finally!)
Charticulator visual update
Sort legend
and lots more!
Remember, there’s no December update, but this definitely has enough to carry us through til January. I know it’s early, but I’m rating this one “trunk full of puppies”.
I totally agree that at times this whole area moves and changes so quickly that it can be intimidating. My advice is to do your best to learn from others, but not compare your progress to theirs – each of our situations are entirely different, in terms of family and work commitments, pace and style of learning, etc. I would say to just pick a personal project that you’re really energized about and work through that, preferably in community. Also, don’t try to tackle everything at once – just pick a manageable scope, work on that and build from that as your base.
One resource definitely take a look at is the LinkedIn group being created by new Enterprise DNA member @StuartFlint . Stuart is a terrific follow on LinkedIn and a very dedicated mentor, and in this recent post announced that he is creating a group that will focus on supporting each other’s work on personal and professional projects over the next 2.5 months. Here’s the link to his post:
This might be a great way to gain focus with the support of a small community trying to do the same.
@Keith I totally understand how you feel, I feel like that quite often too.
I’ll see reports created & posted online and I’m utterly awed thinking I’m not close to that standard, then I take a step back and realise the people posting these are actually right at the top of the tree in terms of their skill. I didn’t enter the EDNA Challenges as early as I could have due to being a bit intimidated by the quality of the entries, so I spent time downloading the entries & picking them apart and started to realise that what they created was still outstanding, but it was not as complex as I made them out to be.
I try to spend at least 5 mins every day learning, most days I do a fair bit more than that but 5mins is the minimum. Whether it’s an EDNA YouTube video, checking out Power BI Posts on Linkedin, saving down pictures of great looking reports for inspiration, EDNA courses, blogs of “other Power BI websites”, Power BI Books. I’ll confess, I still think my DAX & understanding of it is still pretty poor but I realise to build great reports you can still do so with relatively straightforward DAX, Power Query work & simple visualisations. Work through the Accelerator programme that EDNA are running (which reminds me I’ve got 5 outstanding weeks to complete), no one was born an expert except for @BrianJ & @AntrikshSharma
Just keep working away, don’t be too hard on yourself, don’t be afraid to make mistakes or ask for help, any learning or work you do today is money in the bank for later.
LOL, no. To disabuse you of that notion, just look at some of my early posts where I wrapped everything in CALCULATE because duh…they were calculations and I wanted them to calculate.
@DavieJoe hahaha not me as well, @BrianJ is an expert in 10 other things as well (one of them is using words that you might think are typos), I just happen to understand one thing very well
Um, we are not supposed to do that?
i am a new self taught user, gong through the DNA trainings. it is daunting, sometimes i feel like it takes me days of “formula and hope” i even lined up a power bi guy on freelancer.com to help me when i need it. its daunting, and our data is so bad.
Looking forward to this update too. Looks pretty yummy.
@Keith . Don’t be initimidated by this stuff. I wrote some decent stuff for the motor dealerships I worked for before I retired. DAX might have been rubbish and there was a general lack of star schema, especially early on in my learning.
Important thing is the end user doesn’t see the DAX, so as long as gives the right result and is quick to respond who cares.
Now semi retired, I’m setting up a Power BI consultancy business, but would never put myself alongside @BrianJ or any of the other EDNA gods (sorry meant experts). So got time to walk the accelerator stuff and maybe some challenges too. There is always a nugget from the gods here too and that is helping me consolidate knowledge.
Be good to get a client or two though
Anyway back to the update rather than me rambling. Yes lot of good stuff in there.
