Microsoft Power BI and Data Platform News and Tips

An updated version of the Power BI College Finder is now available.  It has been enhanced to allow filtering based on the 25th percentile and 75th percentile ACT scores.  I also added a new page to allow you see the percentage of students that submit SAT scores and ACT scores by state. Let me know what you think in the comments. Link is Power BI College Finder Screenshots are below.

This an example of using Power BI to search for colleges.  It uses the 2014-2015 college survey Access database from the National Center for Education Statistics  (NCES).  Download link is https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/Section/accessdatabase/  for reference. It is still a work in progress, but let me know in the comments what else you would like to see. Power BI College Finder

  Microsoft Power BI recently added support for custom color schemes.  While the standard color palette that Power BI provides is not bad, many organizations have a strong sense of branding and want that to carry over into their visualizations.  This is even more critical for organizations that choose to publish their visualizations publicly, for example embedding them in their website.  Report theming is currently a preview feature available as part of the March 2017 Desktop Update.     If you don't have a specific theme that you need to follow for your organization, but just want something more attractive than the standard colors, you can leverage the theme gallery.  This lets you choose from a growing number of themes, including ones optimized for color-blind users.   Links:   Report theming announcement: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/power-bi-desktop-march-feature-summary/ Theme gallery announcement: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/power-b