What is Power BI Auto Calendar
The automatic calendar is the icon that appears to the left of any Date field in our Power BI data models.
Honestly, it’s a great way for most people who open Power BI for the first time and load data to analyze to be able to work directly and analyze by date.
Of course, without having the slightest idea what’s going on????
Let’s say it’s an option for beginners, so that they don’t get frustrated and give up as soon as they get there.
But be careful, keep reading and I will explain below how one of my clients multiplied the database size by 10 times and how we solved the problem.
When to use automatic calendar in Power BI
Do you want a quick answer? I never use it”????
Well, let’s go with a longer answer: “almost never” ????
Only when you start using the tool, because it’s better to have Power BI do certain things automatically to avoid you not being able to do even basic temporal analysis for years, quarters, months and days, due to ignorance. So you better do it.
Or when you’re doing a quick test and it doesn’t matter at all because then you disable it and create your own “Date Dimension” (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, here are the essential basics and fundamentals of stellar modelingwithout them you will never understand Power BI).
How and why did the automatic calendar multiply the database size by 10 times for one of my clients
To facilitate this explanation, I have prepared a detailed video where you will see in detail:
- 3 examples of Power BI files and very different sizes
- What factors occurred in this client for this increase in size to reach x10 of its database?
- How did we find out what was happening?
- How can you now apply these techniques and ensure that you do not make this serious mistake?
- What solution did I propose to you and how can you apply it too?
I know you tend to be in a hurry, we all have little time, but if you want to understand the whole problem, the proposed solutions and the conclusions I’m about to tell you, you have to see it from start to finish.
Don’t worry, there’s less than 10 minutes left. I always get to the point, all the details I tell are important.
I hope this helps you!
- 0:00 Reduce the database by a tenth!!
- 1:13 Files with the same data and different sizes
- 1:47 Power BI using automatic calendars
- 2:48 Understand what’s inside these automatic calendars
- 3:47 Preservation analysis with the vertipaq analyzer
- 4:51 Where does the table that multiplies the size x10 come from?
- 5:51 How to solve it? Reduce this database by 90%
- 7:41 How to disable automatic calendars in Power Bi Desktop
- 8.21 Conclusions
- 9:00 A gift for you
Conclusions about calendars in Power BI
Every professional who uses Power BI must acquire knowledge of the fundamentals of Business Intelligence and apply them to Power BI, forget (among other things) about automatic calendars and build their own Date Dimension adapted to the needs of their Business.
If you want to master Power BI and better deal with the Calendar and a rich temporal analysis, I invite you to read this other article and see the conference I held a few years ago: on The definitive guide to the Time dimension in a Data Warehouse.
Despite the time that has passed, it is still a 100% current topic.
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