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Notes from a Power BI developer

Deep dives, measured results and hard-won lessons on Power BI, DAX and performance. Written for people who have to make the report actually work.

Pixel-art arcade finish: a Deneb ninja knocking down a Power BI matrix, health bars reading 206 ms and 11,065 ms
Featured Power BI DAX Performance

The Ultimate Guide to the Power BI P&L Style Matrix

Timothy Osborn 1 September 2026 15 min read

Financial statements break Power BI capacities at month end, and the usual fixes aim at the wrong thing. Nine builds of the same statement take an eleven second matrix down to 206 milliseconds.

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A Power BI line chart with the green Microsoft Fabric logo on the left and Anthropic's orange Claude spark on the right. The line between them runs from green through blue and violet to orange like a lightning strike, behind a large VS.
Fabric Apps Claude Dashboards Semantic model

Fabric Apps vs Claude Dashboards

23 October 2026 9 min read

I gave Claude the same brief and data as my Claude Dashboards post and asked for a Fabric App instead. From one prompt it built a better report at a fifth of the cost, and every number sits in a semantic model you can check. Fabric Apps won this round.

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The top of the Delivery phases page of the Release Gantt report: a navy header, four KPI tiles and a Gantt chart called Release pipeline with blue Development bars and teal Testing bars.
Power BI Gantt chart Core visuals

How to Build a Gantt Chart in Power BI With the New Core Visual

21 October 2026 18 min read

Power BI finally has a native Gantt chart. Here’s what it can do, how people reacted, and every click it takes to build my release pipeline chart from a blank page, with the .pbix to download.

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A Power BI line chart with the yellow Power BI logo on the left and Anthropic's orange Claude spark on the right. The line between them runs from yellow to orange like a lightning strike, behind a large VS.
Power BI Claude Dashboards Semantic model

Claude Dashboards vs Power BI

15 October 2026 13 min read

I built a dashboard with Anthropic’s new Claude Dashboards. With the right setup, it’s a better report builder than I expected. It sits on a much thinner platform, though, and instead of competing with Power BI, I actually think it works well alongside it.

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Two Power BI charts headed Data Labels for Line and Column Charts. Left, standard labels overlap the columns. Right, the sneaky workaround puts them in a tidy row below the x axis.
Power BI Core visuals Report design

The Cost of Sneaky Power BI Workarounds

25 September 2026 19 min read

Core Visual workarounds allow you to get some pretty cool looking visuals. But every one of these has a hidden cost. I look into a few of my own workarounds and the knock on effects of these hacks.

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Three Power BI report canvases drawn nested at true relative scale: 1280 by 720 labelled the old default, 1920 by 1080 highlighted as the new default, and 2560 by 1440
Power BI Report design Canvas size

The Ultimate Guide to Power BI Canvas Size

18 September 2026 30 min read

New pages now start at 1920×1080. What actually changed across the 2026 releases, what a bigger canvas costs you in exports, mobile and embeds, and measured numbers for what it costs at render time.

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A DAX measure reading Colour 1Primary equals hash 005376, with lines running out to a KPI card, a column chart, a table and a button, each picking up the same colour
Power BI DAX Report design

Power BI Hex Codes in Measures for Colour Consistency

8 September 2026 11 min read

Store hex codes in DAX measures and every visual reads the same colour standard. Colours in hex codes, theme colour names, the secret transparent hex code, and how to find colours that go together.

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A Power BI scatter chart with a dotted ratio line through it, beside a card reading 1.19 Ratio and a table of above and below values
Power BI DAX Report design

Power BI Scatter Chart Ratio Line

30 May 2025 5 min read

The scatter chart draws a ratio line and shows you no numbers at all. Here is what it actually calculates, and the DAX that puts the value and the variance back on the page.

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More posts on the way

An ongoing series on Power BI performance, modelling and report design. New pieces land here as they are written.

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