Power BI Insights: Calculation groups; Confidential data; Dataflows; ADLS Gen2

Azure pros share their thoughts on calculation groups, confidential data, dataflows, and ADLS Gen2. Also, in case you missed it: check out our new interview with Microsoft MVP and Power BI consultant Matt Allington? 

Controlling default format strings with Power BI calculation groups

Gilbert Quevalliers, writing on Four Moo, noted that he was recently working with customer data and discovered that a Calculation Group failed to return a Format String. Building on previous blogs about Calculation Groups, he used Tabular Editor 3, going into the Calculation Group navigating to Currency Symbol and Metric Currency.

Quevalliers copied the Format String expression into DAX studio. Plugging in the default values for the sales measure, he used double quotes to show where the DAX compiler runs. 

 "It is always important to make sure that when creating a Power BI report, that it is easy for the users to read and explore their data. Whilst this is a small fix, it is often critical when working with different currencies. It saves the users a lot of time trying to figure out if it is in the base currency or an alternate currency," he wrote.

Masking for confidential data

Gil Raviv, writing on DataChant, revisited a technique he last blogged about four years ago that involves masking confidential data in Power BI reports. Leveraging Power Query, he randomized data during refresh. The approach means users have no need to change the data on the external data source, prevents other users from reverse engineering confidential information, and masked values are able to retain dimensional identities.

Sharing the M code, Raviv wrote: