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Guide Notes & Explanation
Accompanying breakdown for this slide deck
- Is Your Report Slowing You Down?
The Performance Problem
- Reports feel slow and unresponsive
- Users complain about long loading times
- You are unsure which visual is the culprit
- Hard refresh or browser close is a common fix
- This frustration hurts user adoption and trust
- Identifying the issue feels like guesswork
Meet Your New Tool
- The Performance Analyzer is built into Power BI Desktop
- It records the load time of every report element
- It reveals exactly which visuals are slowing you down
- No more guessing where the bottlenecks are
- It provides a clear, data-driven path to optimization
- This tool is completely free to use
How To Start
- Open your report in Power BI Desktop
- Find the Performance Analyzer pane under the View tab
- Click the Start Recording button
- Interact with your report as a user normally would
- Click Stop Recording when finished
- The pane will populate with detailed timing metrics
Reading The Results
- Each visual in your report is listed
- See total duration for each visual to load
- Review DAX query time (the formula engine)
- Check visual display time (the rendering engine)
- Identify the highest duration times instantly
- Sort the list to immediately spot the worst offenders
Common Culprits
- Overly complex DAX formulas in measures
- Importing excessively large data tables
- Using too many visuals on a single page
- Custom visuals with poor optimization
- Inefficient data models and relationships
- Lack of filters or slicers to limit data
Quick Fixes
- Simplify or rewrite slow DAX measures
- Reduce columns and rows in your data imports
- Break one busy page into multiple pages
- Replace slow custom visuals with native ones
- Add effective filters to limit data per visual
- Use aggregations for very large datasets
Rinse And Repeat
- After making changes, run the analyzer again
- Compare new results to your original baseline
- Celebrate the performance improvements you made
- Continue this process for other slow visuals
- Make performance checks part of your regular workflow
- Ensure every new visual is optimized before publishing
Your Action Plan
- Open Power BI Desktop right now
- Pick your slowest, most important report
- Run the Performance Analyzer on it
- Identify the top three slowest visuals
- Apply one or two of the quick fixes
- Measure the improvement and share your win