Here are our first courses of 2018, register now to get the Early Bird discount!

	New York • Mar 12-14 - Mastering DAX • Mar 15-16 - Optimizing DAX
	Amsterdam • Mar 21-23 - Mastering DAX

To see other scheduled dates, please visit our Training page.

New conferences and Power BI updates

	• See you at SQLBits 2018 / SQL Server Konferenz 2018 Marco Russo and Alberto Ferrari will be speakers at SQLBits 2018 in London on February 21st-24th and at the SQL Server Konferenz 2018 in Darmstadt on February 27th-28th.
	• Power BI Desktop January update Power BI Desktop January update is available. There are mainly minor new features to control report layout. As usual, update is strongly suggested to get latest bug fixes. Read more »
	• PowerApps custom visual for Power BI The PowerApps custom visual for Power BI is available in preview. This allows the integration of PowerApp within a Power BI report. The current preview does not support Power BI Desktop and Power BI Mobile. Read more »
	• Power BI writeback Teo Lachev shows how to use the PowerApp integration in Power BI to enable a writeback scenario. It is a good proof of concept, but don't assume it is like the writeback in Analysis Services multidimensional: allocation of data through dimensions does not come for free. Read more »
	• Embedding images in Power BI using Base64 Jason Thomas published an interesting technique to embed images in Power BI using Base64 strings in place of image URLs. Read more »
	• Storing images in a Power BI/SSAS data models And to create a Base64 string for existing pictures, Gerhard Brueckl also suggests a technique in M (Power BI / Power Query). Read more »
	• "Year in Review" contest with Power BI Microsoft launched a new data stories contest, offering a Surface Pro as grand prize. Entry submissions closes on January 31, 2018. Read more »
	• Control Power BI font selection with themes David Eldersveld describes how to use Power BI themes to easily customize the font families in your Power BI report, also suggesting some caveats to avoid rendering issues on different browsers and devices. Read more »

FILTER vs CALCULATETABLE: optimization using cardinality estimation

A common best practice is to use CALCULATETABLE instead of FILTER for performance reasons. This article explores the reasons why and explains when FILTER might be better than CALCULATETABLE. Read more »