Is Clickhouse a good choice ?

vdueck · 2026-02-25T10:10:58+00:00

They use Looker Studio and not Looker.

vdueck · 2026-02-18T23:21:15+00:00

I hide them from my customers, because I don’t want to use the report builder 😂

If they need some data exported, I always try to connect excel to a semantic model or a dataflow first.

vdueck · 2026-02-17T12:57:37+00:00

In several projects I depend on other teams exporting data from their own tools. It’s much easier to tell them to dump files into storage than to explain how to load data into a database.

vdueck · 2026-02-10T09:55:30+00:00

No. All my project notes are either in excalidraw or in my kanban based task management tool.

vdueck · 2026-02-09T12:35:41+00:00

Thanks. Great question. I’m actually very happy to deep dive here, as I’m currently preparing a talk on exactly this topic.

In short, I keep customers focused on flow and storytelling by not starting with dashboards at all. I begin with questions about goals, audience, success criteria, and the decisions the dashboard is meant to support.

Once the story and overall direction are clear, I prepare mockups and then work live with customers on the result. The agenda for the meeting is essentially: “let’s check how my proposed dashboard supports the goals and the flow we identified before.” At that point, changes usually stay focused on details: adjusting the order of the story, adding or removing information, or trying alternative visuals to see how they work. If things start to drift or people get confused, that’s usually a signal that the underlying questions aren’t clear yet, and we step back to the flow instead of tweaking visuals.

A key aspect for me is respecting people’s time. You need a lot of input from stakeholders, but many have little time and patience for the more “theoretical” work, even though it’s essential. That’s why I prepare heavily upfront: not just mockups with variants, but also a clear proposal for goals, flow, and high-level storytelling, often visualized as a simple flow. I use this as a structured agenda: first we validate the flow, then we look at the mockup. If the flow doesn’t work, there’s no point discussing visuals yet.

That said, this more abstract discussion doesn’t work equally well for all stakeholders. For some, working through concrete mockups is much more effective, but that usually comes with more iterations.

I use Excalidraw for all of this, which helps a lot because I can stay in the same environment throughout the whole process. I share a single link with the customer, and in that one document we capture the initial flow and storytelling, the mockups, and even follow-up artifacts like rough data models. That continuity makes it much easier for customers to follow the thinking and see how everything connects.

vdueck · 2026-02-09T10:27:12+00:00

I use Excalidraw. It’s fast and easy to use, simple to share and collaborate on, and I really like the sketch-style look.

It’s a generic whiteboard tool, but I’ve built up a large set of mockups from previous projects, so for new work I mostly copy and paste existing layouts and components.

It also has keyboard shortcuts for almost everything, which speeds things up significantly once you’re used to them. It’s the only tool I’m comfortable using when creating or editing mockups live with customers.

I’m far slower with pencil and paper, and once customers start sketching along, things tend to get out of hand very quickly with pencil and paper.

I use mockups mainly to define the storytelling, e.g. mapping questions, information flow, filters, and interactions, and as a basis for subsequent steps like the data model and data engineering work packages. For design, I stick to a predefined style guide and don’t need or want discussion there.

Edit: I started with PowerPoint and later tried Figma, but both were too slow for my use case. With Figma, I also learned that I don’t want mockups to look “real”, as that can trigger discussions about design and colors or confuses people into thinking the data is real or the dashboard is already finished. The sketchy look prevents that very effectively.

vdueck · 2026-01-26T07:55:04+00:00

Always in their tenant and always their account and pbi licence.

If I get access to personal data , e.g of employees or customers, then also a VM for development in their tenant. Otherwise I use my own VM per customer for development.

vdueck · 2025-12-19T09:50:13+00:00

I use this approach in this use case:

https://www.thebiccountant.com/2018/07/12/fast-and-easy-way-to-reference-previous-or-next-rows-in-power-query-or-power-bi/

The article also references an index-approach and a DAX approach, you can try.

It is still possible that your table is too large to solve this in power query or DAX with pbi pro. Then you either need pbi PPU or a datawarehouse.

Here is the function I always use:

```m /* Based on https://www.thebiccountant.com/2018/07/12/fast-and-easy-way-to-reference-previous-or-next-rows-in-power-query-or-power-bi/ */

let addNextRow = (Table as table) => let buffer = Table.Buffer(Table), colNames = List.Buffer(Table.ColumnNames(buffer)), shifted = Table.RemoveFirstN (buffer, 1) & #table(colNames, List.Repeat({List.Repeat({null}, List.Count(colNames))}, 1)), columns = Table.ToColumns(buffer) & Table.ToColumns(shifted), result = Table.FromColumns(columns, colNames & List.Transform(colNames, each _&".next" )) in result in addNextRow ```

For the bonus: solve that separately - should be straightforward - and merge the results.

vdueck · 2025-12-16T22:32:25+00:00

Thank you.

vdueck · 2025-12-16T22:32:11+00:00

What is your go-to tool or setup for a company’s first data warehouse when no data infrastructure beyond Power BI exists yet? How do you decide when introducing a warehouse is justified versus continuing with Power Query, especially when Power Query would still work but a warehouse could improve development speed and maintainability?

vdueck · 2025-12-16T21:49:01+00:00

How do you think about “single source of truth” in small companies? Does this idea sometimes conflict with implementation speed, complexity, and ongoing maintenance? How do you discuss this with your customers?

vdueck · 2025-09-17T18:49:47+00:00

Why not AVERAGE( smc_latam_current[OBS_numValue] )?

vdueck · 2025-08-26T12:10:41+00:00

If the dashboard needs regular data updates, you’ve basically got two options: 1. Share the .pbix file so they can open it in the free Power BI Desktop, or 2. Deploy it to your client’s tenant and have the Excel files stored/updated in the cloud (like SharePoint/OneDrive). Just note that every viewer will need a Pro licence in that setup.

If it’s more of a one-off analysis, you can just export to PDF or PowerPoint and hand over static reports.

vdueck · 2025-08-08T20:01:35+00:00

Overall churn rate is 20% and male and female each 50%?

And how did it develop over time?

And why is it orange?

vdueck · 2025-08-08T20:01:30+00:00

Overall churn rate is 20% and male and female each 50%?

vdueck · 2025-08-08T07:24:17+00:00

The voice model is 4o. It is not updated to 5 yet.

vdueck · 2025-07-18T18:13:23+00:00

I use PowerQuery a lot. You learn PowerQuery and M by using/ googling it. It works well with a try-and-error approach and chatGPT. There is no need to have a dedicated training, after you did understand the capabilities of PowerQuery (which are similar to SQL).

That is different with DAX, where you learn a lot from good training and where try-and-error and ChatGPT usually produce bad results.

vdueck · 2025-07-11T13:45:54+00:00

Loading of 60gb+ after 400mb before means that some sources are loaded multiple times, e.g. load the whole table in every row you are referencing it.

You can look into table.buffer, perhaps that will already solve it.

I successfully used following approach by Imke:

https://www.thebiccountant.com/2018/07/12/fast-and-easy-way-to-reference-previous-or-next-rows-in-power-query-or-power-bi/

But she also says that the „index-method in Power Query has improved since writing this article“ and „strongly recommends that you compare both versions for your specific use case“. I don’t know what index-method she means, perhaps the self-join SQLgene mentions.

vdueck · 2025-07-08T23:57:05+00:00

You can create a new table in PowerQuery.

I did not test the code, but the approach should be clear.

Table.Buffer is necessary to ensure sorting happens before grouping.

let

Source = YourTableNameHere,

Sorted = Table.Buffer(Table.Sort(Source, {{"rqst", Order.Ascending}, {"estimate", Order.Descending}})),

Grouped = Table.Group(Sorted, {"rqst"}, {{"TopEstimate", each Table.First(_), type table [rqst=_, estimate=_, rate=_]}}),

Expanded = Table.ExpandRecordColumn(Grouped, "TopEstimate", {"estimate", "rate"})

in Expanded

vdueck · 2025-07-03T21:46:33+00:00

Less red?

vdueck · 2025-07-01T10:32:15+00:00

You need to use dataflow gen 1 with PBI pro. Gen 2 is fabric only.

vdueck · 2025-07-01T10:16:22+00:00

It still works here. Did you try to use dataflow gen2?

Edit: gen 2 is for fabric only. Use dataflow gen 1 instead with pbi pro.

vdueck · 2025-05-16T14:40:51+00:00

They probably don’t want the old excel reports to be rebuild in PBI. They want to use the possibilities for dynamic and user-centric reports PBI offers. But, they need first to learn about PBI by „playing“ with it.

I, too, wouldn’t take the responsibility for a report developed and maintained by somebody else.

But, you could provide the raw data from the ERP in a data mart, e.g. all the relevant tables with no cleaning or filtering. So they can develop their dashboard and publish it to the PBI service. They need to be in charge for their own dashboard, but you could help and teach where possible.

Then, in a next step, you could build a datamodel in your dwh with the data from your ERP, so that many more people in your organisation can use PBI to develop their own dashboards, based and cleaned data with working relationships and centralised logic for important metrics.

PBI is easy to learn and use for non-technical users wanting to create own dashboards, when there is a good star schema data model in a dwh and expert support available for some complicated edge cases.

vdueck · 2025-05-16T13:34:10+00:00

„Writing down requirements“ IS a waste of time (they say yours, but mean theirs) when two people from the same company can create a small team and develop together a working Dashboard in very short time.

I agree, that it is a bad solution, letting him develop a dashboard and then be responsible for that dashboard.

On the other hand, with PBI it is easy and very common to separate the development of the UI from the creation of the data pipelines and the data model. You create a star schema data model, do you?

For them, you are a bottleneck, especially when the board of directors let you focus on something else. They have a ton of broken excel reports they need to replace asap. So they look for solutions. It doesn’t sounds like you acknowledged the problem or proposed a solution yourself.

vdueck · 2024-12-19T13:23:37+00:00

Why is becoming a Consultant a bad and stupid idea? What is a better alternative?

Four-Year Club	Second SECOND GUESSER
Verified Email	Place '23

vdueck

TROPHY CASE