If you like using custom visuals, there’s a great new way to explore AppSource to find highly rated visuals that meet your needs.
Gil Raviv (of the excellent DataChant blog) has published a new report that uses an undocumented API for AppSource to download and analyze the data for every available custom visual. You can filter by name, certified/uncertified, rating, publisher, and popularity. By searching for highly rated, low popularity visuals, you can identify some hidden gems you’ve probably never heard of before. It’s a really well-done report and a much better way to explore custom visuals than through the native AppSource search mechanisms.
If you’re interested, there are some workarounds for this. Here’s a GIAC video that goes through some options:
When I wanted a personal account to play around with, what I did was go to namecheap.com and bought a business domain name (.tech ones are cheap) and just created an account for myself under that domain, which I could then use to sign up for a Power BI account. I think the whole thing cost me about 25 bucks per year.
Actually just checked namecheap and they have a big summer sale starting July 27, with domains up to 84% off. Good, cheap way to pick up an address that will work with Power BI.
Happy to answer questions - that’s why we’re here…
Here’s some more info about top-level domains:
When I referred to a business domain name, I meant to pick one that Microsoft will definitely interpret as a business address, e.g., .com, .co, .org, .edu, .tech, .biz, etc. rather than the ones that are clearly hobbies or non-business domains. I don’t know what they count as a “work” address, but I’m sure if you pick something in the group in the prior sentence it will work. When I bought mine, they were running a special on .tech names. Just pick whatever’s cheapest from that group.
