Thread: Monkey Tools

Power BI Software & Tools
1

All,

This is a set of tools that just came out this week that looks like a promising addition to the Power BI toolkit.

  • Brian

Monkey Tools is a brand-new set of tools developed by Ken Puls (Power Query Academy and Excelguru) that is intended to help you:

  • Build models more rapidly
  • Follow recommended practices
  • Document your work
  • Audit files that you receive

Monkey Tools allows you to do things such as:

  • Inject useful new queries into your data model
  • Trace query dependency chains
  • Trace DAX dependency chains
  • Time refresh speeds of Excel models
  • Run model analysis reports
  • And more!

For more information on the various tools and how to use them, check out the Monkey Tools Installation & Feature Guide .

6 Likes
2

Thank you @BrianJ for always providing this group with new updates and great solutions.

3

Thanks for announcing this.
I’m using it and it’s really helpful.

4

@cristian.angyal,

I’ve recently begun using it as well. What modules are you finding most useful?

  • Brian
5

Hey @BrianJ,

My clear favorites are QuerySleuth and DAXSleuth.
I also love the fact that I can import a PBI Model and run a Model Summary with the push of a button (there are actually two clicks … but still :wink: )
What do you like most?

Cristian

6

@cristian.angyal,

Totally agree with you regarding QuerySleuth - great to be able to browse the M code in a structured, clearly formatted way. Model reporting is also really nice.

However, disappointing about how much of the functionality doesn’t currently work for Power BI models (Time Sleuth and Unused Columns/Measures are the ones I’m missing most). Hopefully, when they get the Import Model into Excel functionality added that will resolve these problems.

How are you getting DAX Sleuth to work? I have all my measures in measure tables, and all I get is this:

image

and everything in DAX Sleuth shows up blank.

Thanks.

  • Brian
1 Like
7

Hi @BrianJ,

Having the measures in separate tables does show in MonkeyTools.

Ken Puls wrote an article about having the Measures table. Check it out here:

Hope this helps.

Cristian

8

@cristian.angyal,

Thanks – I read that, but am still going completely bonkers trying to get DAX Sleuth to recognize my measure tables. I thought it might be because I was deleting the empty “Column 1” created when you build a new measure table, but I tested that and even leaving it in, Monkey Tools still didn’t recognize my measure tables.

Can you please post a PBIX file where you’ve gotten it to recognize your measure table, plus a screenshot of the DAX Sleuth settings you used, so that I can figure out what I’m doing wrong?:

image
image1334Ă—200 12.2 KB

Thanks very much.

  • Brian
9

@cristian.angyal,

Please ignore the last request. I finally got it to work - it was related to retaining that empty “Column 1”, but after reading the data model into Excel, I still had to hit “Refresh”, and now it’s finally working fine …

  • Brian
1 Like
10

Comprehensive two-part video on how to use Monkey Tools, by its creator, Ken Puls:

https://smartable.ai/apps/powerbi/learning/videos/power-bi-tips-powerbitips-tutorial-monkey-tool-introduction-part-1/

  • Brian

P.S. For fellow Monkey Tools users, I had some problems over the past week or so with the latest version registering a false positive in Malwarebytes. However, they pushed a new version this week with the issue fully resolved.

3 Likes
11

Thanks a lot, @BrianJ for this announcement.
I’m going to explore it now. :slightly_smiling_face:

12

@quantumudit,

I watched the videos this weekend, and found them really interesting and surprising, even though I’ve been using Monkey Tools for a while. The thing that really took me aback was Ken saying that he still does almost all of his data modeling in Excel and only pulls that into Power BI for advanced DAX functions and visualization. Even though I’ve used Excel for 30 years or so, I now basically only use it as a means to pull data into Power BI, or occasionally to debug complex analyses using the Analyze in Excel external tool.

Was really interesting to hear the opposite perspective from someone with extensive expertise in both platforms.

  • Brian
1 Like
13

Yeah, I mean it’s SUPERB !!!