10 Power BI Best Practices You Should Know
By Manpreet Ragi
10 Power BI Developer Habits That Will Save You Hours.
Power BI is a powerful tool—but like any tool, its effectiveness depends on how you use it. Over the years, I’ve seen dashboards that are fast, scalable, and easy to maintain—and others that are, well, not.
Here are 10 best practices I recommend to anyone building Power BI reports, whether you’re just starting out or looking to level up your data modeling game.
1. 📅 Use a Custom Date Table
Avoid relying on Power BI’s auto-generated date tables. Instead, create a custom date table with full control over fiscal periods, holidays, and formatting. This improves performance and ensures consistency across reports.
Bonus: Mark it as a “Date Table” in the model to enable time intelligence functions.
2. 📦 Organize Measures into a Dedicated Table
Create a “Measures” table to store all your DAX measures. This keeps your model tidy and makes it easier for users to find what they need.
Tip: Use
Enter Datato create an empty table, then move your measures into it.
3. ➕ Create Explicit Measures
Avoid dragging and dropping fields into visuals without defining measures. Instead, write explicit DAX measures using SUM(), COUNTROWS(), etc. This gives you more control and improves performance.
4. 🏷️ Name Queries and Tables Clearly
Use descriptive, consistent names for your queries and tables. Avoid names like Table1 or Query2. Good naming helps with collaboration and makes your model self-documenting.
5. 🧹 Hide Unused Fields
If a column isn’t used in visuals or calculations, hide it from report view. This declutters the field list and improves the user experience.
Especially useful for technical columns like surrogate keys or raw IDs.
6. ⭐ Build a Star Schema
Design your model using a star schema: fact tables in the center, surrounded by dimension tables. This structure is optimized for Power BI’s engine and simplifies relationships.
Avoid snowflake schemas unless absolutely necessary.
7. 🧽 Filter Out Unnecessary Data (At least during Dev)
During development, limit your data volume by filtering out irrelevant rows or columns. This speeds up refreshes and makes debugging easier.
Use parameters or filters in Power Query to control what loads.
8. 🚫 Avoid Bi-Directional Relationships
Use single-directional relationships unless you have a strong reason not to. Bi-directional filters can lead to performance issues and ambiguous results.
If you must use them, document why and test thoroughly.
9. 🧭 Use Field Parameters and Bookmarks
Leverage field parameters to let users switch between measures or dimensions dynamically. Combine with bookmarks for guided storytelling and interactivity.
Great for executive dashboards and self-service reports.
10. 🧮 Use Calculation Groups
Calculation groups (via Tabular Editor) allow you to apply logic like time intelligence across multiple measures with minimal code duplication.
Example: Create a “Time Intelligence” group with YTD, QTD, MTD, etc.
🎯 Wrapping Up
These 10 habits and features are small tweaks with big impact. Mastering them will make your Power BI models more scalable, maintainable, and developer-friendly — and ultimately save you hours in rework.
Which ones are part of your workflow already? Which ones are you adding to your toolkit?
What are your favorite Power BI best practices? I’d love to hear.
If you looking for a more structured appraoch to learning Power BI then do check out my Power BI course on Udemy - Look for the training tab above.