How to Display the Current Academic Year in Power BI
In the realm of data analytics, especially in educational institutions, one common requirement is to dynamically showcase the current academic year within dashboards and reports. This feature is crucial for administrators, teachers, and students to have real-time insights based on the current academic calendar. Power BI, Microsoft's interactive data visualization tool, offers robust functionalities to manipulate and display data in a comprehensible manner. One powerful feature of Power BI is Power Query M language, which offers an extensive suite of data transformation capabilities. This article walks you through how to display the current academic year in Power BI using Table.SelectRows in the Power Query M language.
Understanding the Requirement
Before diving into the technical solution, it's essential to understand the requirement clearly. Academic institutions typically operate on a distinct academic year, which might not align with the calendar year. For example, an academic year might run from September 1, 2022, to August 31, 2023. Displaying the relevant academic year dynamically in your Power BI reports ensures that the data reflected is relevant to the current period of study.
Step-by-Step Solution
To solve this requirement, we will leverage Power BI's Power Query Editor and the M language syntax. Here's how you can dynamically display the current academic year in Power BI:
Step 1: Importing and Preparing the Data
The first step involves preparing your dataset. Assume you have a dataset with columns YearCode
, YearStart
, and YearEnd
, representing the academic year identifier and its start and end dates, respectively.
let
Source = Table.FromRows(Json.Document(Binary.Decompress(Binary.FromText("i45WMjIwMtA3VNJRMtSz0ANxgExjQz1zENtQKVYHrMJQ3wihwhBJhRFMhZG+MUKFEZIKY6XYWAA=", BinaryEncoding.Base64), Compression.Deflate)), let _t = ((type nullable text) meta [Serialized.Text = true]) in type table [YearCode = _t, YearStart = _t, YearEnd = _t])
Step 2: Adding a Custom Column
Next, we add a custom column to the table to dynamically determine which row represents the current academic year. We achieve this by applying Table.SelectRows
within a column formula.
#"Added Custom" = Table.AddColumn(Source, "YearCodeToday", (t) => Table.SelectRows(Source, each DateTime.Date(DateTime.LocalNow()) >= DateTime.Date(DateTime.FromText([YearStart])) and DateTime.Date(DateTime.LocalNow()) <= DateTime.Date(DateTime.FromText([YearEnd]))){0})
Step 3: Expanding the Custom Column
After adding the custom column, we need to expand it to display the corresponding YearCode
of the current academic year.
#"Expanded YearCodeToday" = Table.ExpandRecordColumn(#"Added Custom", "YearCodeToday", {"YearCode"}, {"YearCode.1"})
Get a Free AI Website Audit
Automatically identify UX and content issues affecting your conversion rates with Flowpoint's comprehensive AI-driven website audit.
Step 4: Finalizing and Using the Result
Once you have expanded the custom column, you effectively have a column (YearCode.1
) that dynamically reflects the YearCode
of the current academic year. You can now use this column in your Power BI reports to filter or display data relevant to the current academic period.
Why This Approach Works
This technique is effective because it leverages Power BI's date and time functions to compare the current date with the start and end dates of academic years. By utilizing Table.SelectRows
, we efficiently filter down to the row that meets our criteria, thus identifying the current academic year.
Benefits of Using Power BI for Academic Year Display
- Dynamic Update: The solution automatically updates as time progresses, ensuring that your reports always reflect the current academic year without manual intervention.
- Flexibility: The Power Query M language offers extensive flexibility to manipulate and prepare data to meet various reporting requirements.
- Scalability: This approach can be easily adapted to include more complex logic, such as handling special cases in academic calendars.
Conclusion
Displaying the current academic year dynamically in Power BI reports is straightforward with the power of the Power Query M language. By following the steps outlined in this guide, educational institutions can ensure their reports are always relevant and up-to-date. Remember, a data-first approach is essential for insights-driven decisions, and tools like Power BI play a crucial role in enabling this.
And for those looking to dive deeper into understanding website user behavior or enhancing conversion rates, Flowpoint.ai offers advanced analytics features, including behavior analytics and AI-generated recommendations, to identify all technical errors impacting conversion rates and generate recommendations to fix them.