Category Archives: Power BI Desktop Designer

Making Sense of the Power BI Ecosystem Presentation Materials

I just wrapped up my first presentation on Making Sense of the Power BI Ecosystem at SQL Saturday #755 in Davie, Florida at Nova Southeastern University. The room was full and unfortunately people had to stand or sit in the back, but the audience was great and we had lots of fantastic questions!

Download the presentation materials for Making Sense of the Power BI Ecosystem

As I mentioned during my session, you can download my Power BI Architecture Diagram hereContinue reading Making Sense of the Power BI Ecosystem Presentation Materials

Microsoft Data Insights Summit Day 2 Recap: Timeline Storyteller, Future of Power BI Desktop, and Freakonomics

The theme of day 2 of the Microsoft Data Insights Summit was sessions, sessions, sessions! There were a ton of different sessions for attendees and for us to watch! In total, there are 75 different videos between the keynotes and the individual sessions posted on the Microsoft Power BI YouTube channel that you can go back and watch anytime, which is pretty amazing!

Read my Microsoft Data Insights Summit Day 1 Recap here!

Obviously I haven’t watched all 75 different videos, but I did watch a few so I’ve included some of the things I learned, announcements on new features, links to some of the especially interesting sessions, and my notes from a couple of those sessions below. Continue reading Microsoft Data Insights Summit Day 2 Recap: Timeline Storyteller, Future of Power BI Desktop, and Freakonomics

Power BI NFL Fantasy Football 2016 Reports

If you have followed my blog for the past year or so you may remember when I posted a Power BI workbook I created to analyze the previous season’s NFL player stats to help me with my fantasy football draft. I know, its nerdy, but I like Power BI and I like fantasy football so I thought why not?

Download the latest version of the NFL Fantasy Football reports here!

With the new NFL season upon us, I thought I’d update my fantasy football report with the stats from the Continue reading Power BI NFL Fantasy Football 2016 Reports

Introduction to Power BI Desktop – Session Materials Available

imageFor my second time, I was afforded the great opportunity to present virtually to the great people of the Madison Power BI User Group. I’m always really excited when someone invites me back a second time to speak because that means that the first time wasn’t completely awful! We had a great time last evening discussing Continue reading Introduction to Power BI Desktop – Session Materials Available

Introduction to Power BI Desktop – Recording Now Available

Thank you to everyone that attended this past Tuesday’s webinar hosted by Pragmatic Works called Introduction to Power BI Desktop. We had a great turn out! If you missed the webinar, you can view the recording here.

Check out these five Power BI tips!

There were lots of great questions and far too many to answer during the webinar so I thought I’d answer a few of the questions here.

Continue reading Introduction to Power BI Desktop – Recording Now Available

June 2016 Release of Power BI Desktop is Here!

POWER BI DESKTOPLast night at approximately 9:28 PM EST the June 2016 release of Power BI Desktop dropped, which you can download here.  The June update is pretty extensive and includes a bunch of new features and improvements. Here’s some of the biggest new features and some of my favorites.

Check out these 5 Power BI Tips

Continue reading June 2016 Release of Power BI Desktop is Here!

5 More Power BI Tips

I’ve had this blog post in my mind to write for the past month or so and I’m finally just getting around to it while I’m waiting to board my flight back home.

Check out my first 5 Power BI Tips here

These are just five more Power BI tips and tricks that I think everyone should know in order to get the most out of Power BI and produce better, more useful, and more powerful Power BI reports for their users. So without further ado, here are five more Power BI tips in no particular order. Enjoy!

Continue reading 5 More Power BI Tips

Power BI Architecture Diagram v2 is Now Available

Download the latest version of the Power BI Architecture Diagram here!

I finally finished putting together version 2 of my Power BI architecture diagram. I previously put together an architecture diagram but as fast as Power BI is changing, v1 of the diagram was quickly obsolete. I always wanted to come back and add more to the diagram to make it more complete but now that SQL Server 2016 is generally available and enhancements have been made to Power BI to facilitate integration with Excel and SSRS, it made sense to do another diagram.

The reason I originally created this diagram was to use as a tool during conversations with my customers. But I’ve also used the diagram in other presentations and found it beneficial while teaching about how Power BI works. I wanted to make this resource available to others for their benefit. So here’s v2.

Click here to download a .zip file with the .pdf and .png files.

Power BI architecture v2

I’ve included a few new things to make the diagram up to date with the latest changes to Power BI, SQL Server Reporting Services, and Excel.
This document includes components to illustrate:

  • Publishing Power BI desktop files and Excel workbooks to Reporting Services
  • Publishing Excel workbooks to a Power BI site
  • Browsing Power BI data models with Excel
  • Publishing Reporting Services content to the Report Server
  • Browsing Reporting Services mobile reports and KPIs using Power BI apps

Feel free to download this content and use it in your presentations, discussions, and for your own learning. I hope you find it useful and if you do, share it with a friend.

Feedback?

Do you have any feedback on this diagram or anything you’d like to see me change? Leave a comment or let me know! Thanks!

Power BI Desktop May 2016 Update Info: Conditional Formatting and Quick Calc

*Update: The Power BI team has finally published a blog post with all the new features and its glorious! Read about all the new enhancements and changes to Power BI Desktop right here.

So it appears that the May 2016 update to Power BI Desktop has dropped without any notification from the Power BI team on their blog or  a notification within Power BI Deskop. So I figured I’d take a moment to point out of the new enhancements to Power BI Desktop.

New to Power BI Desktop? Get started here.

1. Conditional Formatting on Tables

This one is awesome and has been a feature that we’ve all been waiting on for a while. Continue reading Power BI Desktop May 2016 Update Info: Conditional Formatting and Quick Calc

Microsoft & R Programming Session Materials & Resources Available

Last Thursday night I had the pleasure of speaking with Gregory Kramer and his friends at the Madison, WI Power BI User Group. We took an introductory look at how Microsoft’s acquisition of Revolution Analytics is making serious waves across the Microsoft data platform. We also walked through leveraging R in Power BI and SQL Server 2016.

New to R & Power BI? Start here.

R visuals in Power BI

Continue reading Microsoft & R Programming Session Materials & Resources Available