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Calendar Table for Oil & Gas Data (Date Dimension)

Dates in the Oil & Gas industry data can be a little tricky.

Especially when aggregating data, such as production volumes, to a daily level, and trying to connect multiple tables with date columns.

Some tables, such as tank levels or production volumes, could be based on a Gauge Date (aka Report Date) since the data is measured, aggregated, reported or “gauged” on that date (today), but in essence it is yesterday’s data, or to be more accurate, it is the data for the 24 hour period that began yesterday at the contract hour (e.g. 6am) and ended today at that same time, or the Production Date.

Other tables could have actual dates, such as sales tickets, run tickets, operation logs, etc.

Continue reading “Calendar Table for Oil & Gas Data (Date Dimension)”
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Build a Nutritional Power BI Dashboard in a few minutes

Most websites that offer Nutrition Facts and Food data lookup functionality seem to offer a top down, food driven search function. First you select or search for a food and they return the nutrition facts for your selection. I was looking for the opposite and I couldn’t find it. Thanks to Power BI, I was able to build one in minutes, here’s how I did it…

Continue reading “Build a Nutritional Power BI Dashboard in a few minutes”
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Never again forget to send that email sitting in the Drafts folder!

One evening last week I wrote an important email to a client and I thought I sent it but I didn’t. I wanted to let the client know their project is ready so in the morning they can start using it. And after I finished writing that email, while checking for typos, I got distracted by something, and by another thing…and I never sent it that night.

Continue reading “Never again forget to send that email sitting in the Drafts folder!”
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Using Power BI to replace a legacy desktop application

GrainSelectorTool

Over a decade ago I had the pleasure to create a small desktop application for Chammas Cutters, this was the Grain Selector tool pictured above, and it helped their clients quickly determine how much gas-generating grain to use in the application of their chemical cutter tool.

While pretty basic (and written in it) the desktop application served a good purpose for the past 10 or so years. Prior to the desktop application, clients would have to resort to a rather bulky and complicated spreadsheet-type catalog tables, which can be more time confusing and can lead to human error.

Now that it needed to be improved or rewritten, I decided to replace it with a Power BI report that took just a few hours to create. Here’s why I chose that path:

Continue reading “Using Power BI to replace a legacy desktop application”
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Linear and Log in Power BI with Charturo Custom Visual

A while back on the blog we did a series that touched on changing between linear and log scales on the fly in Power BI. In this post, we’re going to see how using the Charturo custom visual from the Power BI Appsource simplifies the process of adding this functionality to Power BI Reports and the functional benefits of using Charturo over the standard Line Chart.

Charturo is an interactive line chart Mi4 has developed that allows the end users to switch between log and linear axes directly on the chart surface. It also allows inverting the Y axis, but we will spend most of this post talking about the Linear & Log functionality. Continue reading “Linear and Log in Power BI with Charturo Custom Visual”

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We ❤ Power BI so much we created a custom visual

About a year ago (March 2020) We needed a line chart that can do the following:

  • Allow the viewer of the report to change the Y axis scale on the fly
  • Allow the X axis to be placed near the top of the chart
  • Have the ability to invert the Y axis*

When we started, we didn’t want to reinvent the wheel, so we searched first but couldn’t find a chart on the App Source marketplace that could do all of these thing I listed above*. So we started creating our first custom Power BI Chart Visual: CHARTURO

Continue reading “We ❤ Power BI so much we created a custom visual”
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Power BI Small Multiples Preview Feature

A new Small Multiples visualization feature has been released for public preview in Power BI. I was thrilled to see this first announced on the roadmap and am looking forward to putting it through its paces now that it is out in preview.

“Small Multiples” use multiple similar views to show different partitions of a dataset. Small multiples are sometimes called trellis or grid charts and until now, you have had to use custom visuals or some SVG tricks to get the functionality in Power BI. Continue reading “Power BI Small Multiples Preview Feature”

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Productioneer Production Review Dashboard Update

We are happy to announce that in December 2020 Mi4 released an update to the Production Review Dashboard with new features and functionality. This dashboard is available to all Productioneer customers and allows oil and gas organizations to efficiently aggregate and analyze oil and gas production across a diverse collection of assets quickly and efficiently in one report. 

The Production Review Dashboard offers oil and gas companies a modern dashboarding tool without procuring any software licenses or building it in house.

Continue reading “Productioneer Production Review Dashboard Update”

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Azure Data Factory Date Parameters with Timezone Sensitive Default or Adhoc Values

Date and time values have been the bane of programmers’ existence since Pandora opened a box several millennia back……at least it feels that long. I wanted to share with you how we implemented flexible date parameters for an Azure Data Factory pipeline in a recent project.

Names, places, industries, widgets and other identifying information have been changed for entertainment purposes. Continue reading “Azure Data Factory Date Parameters with Timezone Sensitive Default or Adhoc Values”

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