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I meant to post this a few weeks ago. At this time of writing, there’s still some refinements I would like to make and additional datasets that would be interesting to mix in there. I’ll try working on that as time permits.

Just a side note, most of the items on my wish list are just items I like or expect to purchase in the future – I don’t expect anyone to buy this stuff for me, especially the high priced car parts! The content is just intended for this post. Do consider, however, donating to Autism Speaks, as listed in the Power BI with the hyperlink to their donation page. Click on the full screen button in the bottom right corner to expand the Power BI dashboard.

We can officially say it’s the holiday season and chances are people are already asking what gifts you want. Whether you like the whole idea of gifting or not, it’s not a bad idea to keep a list. Usually what happens is I’ll see something I would like as a gift, like a specific SuperSonics sweatshirt, and totally forget about it when someone asks if I want anything for Christmas. In all honesty, I’m totally happy with absolutely nothing, but most people don’t like that response.

The last few years, I have made a wish list in Excel that contains the item, description, any additional notes and a weblink to find the item. This really helped my girlfriend (now fiancé) save time on trying to figure out what I would like and where to find these gifts. Not only that, if the item is no longer available, she can improvise and find a similar gift since she already knows what I like.

This year, I’m importing this Excel file into Power BI and posting it here so that I don’t have to forward the Excel file to multiple people. I mean, c’mon, I’m a Power BI developer…I kinda want to do this! You can easily share it with people in many ways, via social media or just tell them, “go to my site”. You can add all kinds of slicers to your wish list – mine can be sliced by product, category and price range.

A cool thing I discovered is the visual ‘Image’ by CloudScope that you can import from Power BI Visuals Marketplace. It displays images using the image address URL in your data. For each item in my wish list, I found a picture of the item and pasted the image URL into a field I named ‘Image URL’. When the report is filtered down to a single record, the visual will show the image for that item. In my report, you can filter down to an item by using the product selector or simply clicking on one of the items in the table. When the report is not filtered down the visual selects one of the images to display; I’m not sure how the image is selected, but it’s good enough for now.

Once you have finished your dashboard in Power BI Desktop, publish the report to your Workspace by clicking on the Publish button within the Home tab.

Go to your online report and click on ‘Publish to web’ under File.

After accepting everything, you will see a box that says Embed Code. You will be using the html code to paste into your blog or website.

When creating your blog post, paste the html embed code along with any other images or text.

If you have any questions, please leave a comment or select the question button in the Power BI wish list to see my email address. Yeah, I know I can give you my email address here, but I’m just showing off that cool feature.

-thesmoothman

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This blog is intended to be a collection of my interests and experiences. I will probably write about Audi and other cars, men’s fashion, DIY projects, my travels, and perhaps some data analysis.

I know, that may sound like a random list of things to write about. Where some people may think it’s random, others may think of it as well rounded. In reality, I’m not the smoothest person on this planet, but I try to be well rounded in knowledge and hopefully this blog of random subjects will help any guy become the smooth man.

Please contact me or leave a comment if you have any suggestions for a blog post.