Power BI Helper is getting new features every time, and this time, we got some exciting features; You can now get your M (Power Query script) code beautified and colorful with version 4.0 of Power BI Helper. We also get the row-level security information exposed through the Helper application. Both information above will be now available when you export the model information to a document. If you like to learn more about Power BI Helper, read this page.
If you are new to Power BI Helper, read below posts to learn what are existing features of this product:
- Version 0.1: Tables and Columns used in the visualization
- Version 0.2: Search a field or table in visualizations and filters
- Version 0.3: Measure dependency tree
- Version 1.0: Export entire M script
- Version 2.0: Connection Types, Multiple PBI files, Relationship advise, and Not used tables
- Version 3.0: Export Model documentation
Download
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Beautified M Script
We are very excited to let you know that your M script is not documented all black text, you get a beautiful color coding with that now. Here is a sample output of Power BI Helper for M script;
As you can see the color coding above shows comments in greet, reserved words as blue, and function names as purple. You can get this output after three steps in Power BI Helper, Open Power BI Helper (we’ve got a new icon now 😉 )
First Select your *.Pbix file in the Config tab.
Then in the second step, you can extract the M code in a text box. Note that the text box here shows only the content in text format. the colored output comes in the next step;
In the last step, you can click on Beautify M Script;
This action will open the Beautified M Script tab with an output of color-coded beautified M script code;
You can also see the output in an exported document;
The HTML export documented output of Power BI Helper, will have the beautified M script at the end of it
Reading the M script of Power Query, or exporting it in a readable format, been always a challenge. Power BI Helper is making this process simpler and faster for you 🙂
Row-Level Security
Another important information in a Power BI solution is row-level security implementation. The new version of Power BI Helper will reveal this information for you in the Analytics tab. You will have all the information now in there. You can also export the information into a document.
Here is an example row-level security implementation in Power BI file;
In the new version of Power BI Helper, the Analytics tab has a section for roles and tables involved in each role, plus the expression for every table;
You can also get this information exported into HTML output format as below;
Summary
Power BI Helper version has great feature of M script beautifier and also the row-level security information revealed. both this information can be exported into Power BI documented output. Power BI helper is evolving every month. This is a free tool, and will remain a free tool to help the Power BI community. Please help us with your feedbacks and suggestions about features you would love to see in next versions 🙂
Reza is author of more than 14 books on Microsoft Business Intelligence, most of these books are published under Power BI category. Among these are books such as Power BI DAX Simplified, Pro Power BI Architecture, Power BI from Rookie to Rock Star, Power Query books series, Row-Level Security in Power BI and etc.
He is an International Speaker in Microsoft Ignite, Microsoft Business Applications Summit, Data Insight Summit, PASS Summit, SQL Saturday and SQL user groups. And He is a Microsoft Certified Trainer.
Reza’s passion is to help you find the best data solution, he is Data enthusiast.
His articles on different aspects of technologies, especially on MS BI, can be found on his blog: https://radacad.com/blog.