Power BI Governance & Administration - Naming Conventions

 

Governance and administration, quite the exciting and popular topic. No? Well, it should be!
As I mentioned in my previous post about Governance and Administration, I have quite some experience and ideas around this topic. I thought it was time to share some of this knowledge and write it down.
I did a few posts on the topic already, including on PowerShell, the Power BI REST API and organizational visuals.

Let's Talk Naming Conventions

So let's start with the question:

What is a naming convention?

"Naming conventions are general rules applied when creating text scripts for software programming."

That's the Techopedia definition, which mostly applies to (traditional) software programming. This still applies to using it while programming SQL, M or DAX for example.

It can be any agreed syntax like one of the following:

• ThisIsPascalCase
• thisIsCamelCase
• this-is-kebab-case
• this_is_snake_case

But I think it's much broader than using only programming naming conventions these days.

In the context of Power BI, you can use naming conventions in (literally) all things that need a name, like gateways, workspaces, apps, etc.

Why

So why would you want to set up a naming convention for anything?

"They have many different purposes, such as adding clarity and uniformity [to scripts], readability for third-party applications, and functionality in certain languages and applications."

That still mostly applies to programming. I'd argue that in the context of Power BI it's also easier to find things in your Power BI ecosystem. Not only for Power BI/IT Admins, but also for report builders and end users.

How

And how do we set up a naming convention? I would say "it depends". 😁 Take a look at the never ending discussion around spaces or tabs.

I think it's not a matter of how you implement it, but the fact that you think about it, implement it and enforce and/or govern it. It's better to actually think about and agree upon a certain convention then to do nothing.

Where

And where do we use naming conventions? Because they started in traditional programming languages the logical place(s) to start are M and DAX.

I think the below 2 are the best known once for DAX:

• Always write a Column in the format TableName[Column Name]
• Always write a Measure in the format [Measure Name]

There are already quite some good resources available that talk about M and DAX:

• Power BI Antipatterns #13: Naming conventions in DAX by Daniil Maslyuk (@DMaslyuk | B)
• Power BI Datasets: Types And Naming Conventions by Sam McKay
  
• Naming Tables, Columns And Measures In Power BI by Chris Webb (@cwebb_bi | B), on using human-readable names, correct business terminology and being consistent.
• Power BI Best Practices by Matt Allington (@ExceleratorBI | B), where he talks about naming conventions in the 1st paragraph
• Naming temporary columns in DAX by SQLBI.com
• Naming variables in DAX by Marco Russo (@marcorus | B)

But besides using naming conventions in programming languages, good places to (start) using them are also:

• Gateways
• Gateway cluster/installations itself
• But also the Data sources in the gateway
• I like to include the type of gateway (File/SQL/...), location/server/database and the username, because that's still not visible in the new Power Platform Admin Center...
  You can vote for the idea View Username Of A Gateway In Data Source Settings :-) 
• Workspaces
• Marc Lelijveld (@MarcLelijveld | B) already did a comprehensive overview of workspace setup and naming conventions in this blog post.
• The name of a workspace can be 256 characters long, but just because you can, doesn't mean you should, right?!
• I also find the Implementation Planning docs very helpful, especially the don'ts in a workspace name:
• The word workspace
• The words Power BI
• The name of the organization, unless B2B is used
• Apps
• These don't always have to be the same name as the workspace, as the App is usually what all end-users see, and the workspace access is limited to a subset of people.
• Melissa Coates (@SQLChick | B) does a great job explaing Why to Use a Power BI App
• Dataflows
• Have a look at Marc's post How to keep your Power BI dataflows organized and optimized
• AAD-groups (used for Power BI)
• If the groups are used in a workspace, try to include the name/naming convention of the workspace itself, and maybe add the group(s) of users, like [workspace name]-admins/members/viewers
• Premium Capacities
• In case you only have 1, then it might make less sense, but in case you have multiple capacities, for me it makes sense to incorporate the type of the capacity in the name. So either P1/2 or the number of v-Cores asigned to that instance
• Identity & Access Management
• This might slightly be off-topic for most Power BI users, but if Power BI Admins are working closely with the IT/IAM team/system, and users need to get access to workspaces/apps via IAM, syncing the naming between Power BI, AAD(-groups) and IAM requests might be a good case
• ...?

Closing

I mentioned a lot of places where naming conventions can be beneficial. I use them because they promote consistency, and can provide more readability and clarity.

Have you implemented naming conventions anywhere? How do you use them? Or why not?

Certification Updates!

Last week was already a great week with these amazing things:

• My Microsoft Data Platform MVP renewal
• The delivery of an MVP thank you kit, containing an MVP mug, hoody and sticker, by the MVP team

Thanks @Microsoft @MS_KellyKaye and @TinaStenderup for this amazing MVP gift package! https://t.co/HprkpcYF1n pic.twitter.com/3V8hhg9EW4

— Nicky van Vroenhoven (@NickyvV) July 6, 2022

But aparently there was more! 😀

I noticed this weekend that several other people received their results on the DP-500 exam:  Designing and Implementing Enterprise-Scale Analytics Solutions Using Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Power BI, so I thought I'd check out mine too.

And you might have already guessed it: I passed! 🥳

DP-500 History

Almost 2 months ago I took the (then beta) exam DP-500, on which I wrote about earlier how to master this exam.

As the name of the exam suggests, this is not an exam for beginners. To recap a little bit from my previous blog post, the exam covers the following products/services:

• Microsoft Power BI, including some external tools
• Microsoft Purview (a.k.a. Azure Purview)
• Azure Synapse Analytics
• Azure Data Lake Gen2
• DevOps

At the end of June, the exam went live, so it's no longer in beta. This also means there is now an official course available. Although I think you could manage just fine with all the online material there is already. I mentioned quite a few in my last post. And new materials have already been added to that list, for example the newest course on PluralSight, called Optimize Enterprise-scale Data Models - DP-500, by friend and fellow MVP Nikola Ilic (@DataMozart, B).

But depending on the type of learner you are, you might do better with an in-class training, so it all depends... 😁

Never stop learning

I honoustly did not think I passed the exam, because it covers quite a few topics I do not master yet, or haven't touched that often. 

DP-500 Score report

And according to the scoring report I received, I still have some things to do on the following topics:

• Query and transform data (mainly Synapse questions for me I think hope 😀)
  This part of the exam covers:
• Query data by using Azure Synapse Analytics
• Ingest and transform data by using Power BI
• Explore and visualize data (also mainly Synapse, and some R/Python in Power BI probably)
  This part covers:
• Explore data by using Azure Synapse Analytics
• Visualize data by using Power BI

You can check out the detailed outline and all the subtopics off the exam here.

Renewed Certification

Last but not least, I also renewed my PL-300 certification (a.k.a. DA-100), the Power BI Data Analyst Associate. I got a notification that renewal was possible. It only took me 15-20 minutes, online behind my laptop. So no exam site or proctored exam room this time.

I made it with 96% of the questions right, I missed (I think) 1 question in data modeling 😇

Do you have any plans for exams? Did you get any certifications lately?

If you have any remarks and/or questions about one of these topics I mentioned, please let me know!

Power BI Governance & Administration

Today I'm writing a short post to try to get back into the habbit of writing. Because finding (and keeping) motivation can be hard, you know. 

I've actually started writing several posts, but I either hit a wall, found other (short-term) inspiration to start another post, or just never finished it. 

Now to the post of today. I've worked as a Power BI Service (and Power Platform) Administrator quite a while. I started doing admin tasks when I was working for Van Lanschot Kempen, and now at Powerdobs I'm often asked similar questions at clients. So I often run into things related to governance and administration of Power BI and Power Platform environments.

Earlier, I already wrote quite a few posts around these topics:

• Installing the PowerShell Power BI Management cmdlets
  
• and how to use those cmdlets to Refresh a Dataset with PowerShell
• How To Administer Organizational Visuals in Your Tenant
• My First Look at Read/Write XMLA Endpoints in Power BI Premium when that went in preview a while ago, which has gone GA in January of last year
• Using the Power BI REST API as Admin

I plan on doing more of these posts, including the following topics:

• Power BI Premium
• New and/or interesting features
• How to Monitor Power BI Premium
• Workspace and Gateway administration
• Managing data sources
• Naming conventions
• Tenant settings
• Power Platform environments for the Power BI Admin

If you're interested in any of these or other related topics, please let me know.
You can do that below in the comments or on Twitter!