Power BI Sidetools is a free Power BI external tool intended to increase productivity during reports development in Power BI desktop.
Transfer DAX and M formulas to files
With just one click, you can transfer M and DAX formulas into a folder named like your report. The very first use case will probably be to save your different versions in backups. Right-click on your report name and select “Send to/Compressed folder”.
View your DAX and M formulas in Visual Studio Code
With just one click, you open Visual Studio code to view your DAX and M formulas.
Visual Studio Code is a lightweight but very powerful free source code editor created by Microsoft. Its functionalities are really amazing :
- Powerful editing capabilities including advanced search and replace across multiple files
- Flexibility splitting the editor to display multiple files simultaneously
- Themes
- Plugins
- syntax highlighting and/or IntelliSense (DAX, M , R, Python, SQL, Json … )
- GIT functionalities
- And much more …
Discover VSCode with videos : https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/getstarted/introvideos#VSCode
Setup
- Extract files from the downloaded ZIP file and launch Setup.exe. As the software is not signed, you will get a warning window. So, click on the link and click on “Execute”.
- Download Visual Studio Code from Microsoft website : https://code.visualstudio.com/download
- Install plugins in Visual Studio Code :
- Power Query / M language or Power Query M language
- DAX for Power BI
Some functionalities of Power BI Sidetools depend on XMLA endpoint access. As it is really a preview feature in Power BI desktop, at the moment, I recommend you use it on copies of your reports.
It’s just the beginning…
You probably have a question right now: Will it be possible to modify DAX and M formulas within Visual Studio Code? The answer is …yes …most probably.
Please stay tuned to discover more functionalities coming soon. You may subscribe to new content clicking here.
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