Atlanta Microsoft BI Group Meeting on April 1st (Real-Time Analytics with Microsoft Fabric: Unlocking the Power of Streaming Data)

Atlanta BI fans, please join us in person for the next meeting on Monday, April 1st at 6:30 PM ET. Aravinth Krishnasamy (Principal Architect at Ecolab) will provide an end-to-end overview of Microsoft Fabric real-time analytics capabilities. Your humble correspondent will help you catch up on Microsoft BI latest. CloudStaff.ai will sponsor the event. For more details and sign up, visit our group page.

Presentation: Real-Time Analytics with Microsoft Fabric: Unlocking the Power of Streaming Data

Delivery: In-person

Date: April 1, 2024

Time: 18:30 – 20:30 ET

Level: Beginner/Intermediate

Food: Pizza and drinks

 

Agenda:

18:15-18:30 Registration and networking

18:30-19:00 Organizer and sponsor time (events, Microsoft BI latest, sponsor marketing)

19:00-20:15 Main presentation

20:15-20:30 Q&A

Overview: This session will provide an end-to-end overview of Microsoft Fabric Real-Time Analytics capabilities. We will go over the following topics:
1. Introduction to Real-Time Analytics: Overview of the platform and its capabilities
2. Data Ingestion: How to ingest data from various streaming sources into Fabric
3. Data Analysis & Visualization: How to analyze and visualize data using Real-Time Analytics and Power BI
4. Use Cases: Real-world use cases for Real-Time Analytics.

Speaker: Aravinth Krishnasamy is a Principal Architect at Ecolab, where he focuses on business intelligence, data warehousing and advanced analytics applications. Aravinth holds numerous technical certifications and has over 18 years of IT experience.

Sponsor: CloudStaff.ai

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Atlanta Microsoft BI Group Meeting on March 4th (Navigating Microsoft Fabric – Choosing the Right Workload for Your Needs)

Atlanta BI fans, please join us in person for the next meeting on Monday, March 4th at 6:30 PM ET. The famous Patrick LeBlanc (Guy in the Cube) will take a deep dive into the Microsoft Fabric ecosystem, from Lakehouse to Warehouses and Power BI, ensuring you can make informed decisions about your data processing needs. Your humble correspondent will help you catch up on Microsoft BI latest. CloudStaff.ai will sponsor the event. For more details and sign up, visit our group page.

Presentation: Navigating Microsoft Fabric – Choosing the Right Workload for Your Needs

Delivery: In-person

Date: March 4

Time: 18:30 – 20:30 ET

Level: Beginner/Intermediate

Food: Pizza and drinks

 

Agenda:

18:15-18:30 Registration and networking

18:30-19:00 Organizer and sponsor time (events, Microsoft BI latest, sponsor marketing)

19:00-20:15 Main presentation

20:15-20:30 Q&A

Overview: As businesses transition to the cloud and leverage advanced analytics, understanding the nuances of data infrastructure becomes paramount. Microsoft Fabric offers a suite of powerful tools designed to handle various data workloads, but the key to harnessing its full potential lies in understanding which tool to use and when. This session provides a deep dive into the Microsoft Fabric ecosystem, from Lakehouse to Warehouses and Power BI, ensuring that participants can make informed decisions about their data processing needs. We’ll also look at current limitations that will help guide you.

Speaker: Patrick LeBlanc is a currently a Principal Program Manager at Microsoft and a contributing partner to Guy in a Cube. Along with his 15+ years’ experience in IT he holds a Master of Science degree from Louisiana State University. He is the author and co-author of five SQL Server books. Prior to joining Microsoft, he was awarded Microsoft MVP award for his contributions to the community. Patrick is a regular speaker at many SQL Server Conferences and Community events.

Sponsor: CloudStaff.ai

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Atlanta Microsoft BI Group Meeting on February 5th (Power BI – Time to Git CI/CD)

Atlanta BI fans, please join us for the next meeting on Monday, February 5th at 6:30 PM ET. Note that this will be an online meeting via MS Teams and non-Atlanta BI fans are also welcome. Kristyna Hughes (Senior Consultant with 3Cloud) will show us how to implement source control for Power BI reports. Your humble correspondent will help you catch up on Microsoft BI latest. For more details and sign up, visit our group page.

Presentation: Power BI – Time to Git CI/CD

Delivery: Online

Date: February 5

Time: 18:30 – 20:30 ET

Level: Intermediate

Food: NA

 

Agenda:

18:15-18:30 Registration and networking

18:30-19:00 Organizer and sponsor time (events, Microsoft BI latest, sponsor marketing)

19:00-20:15 Main presentation

20:15-20:30 Q&A

Overview: As report developers, requirements for reports are constantly evolving which leads the reports themselves to change. However, inevitably, there will be one party who uses that report and was unaware of changes. They may request a list of changes or want that report rolled back to a previous version. With git, we can provide a list of changes and roll back to any version requested.

Taking a page from application developers, Power BI developers can now develop reports in branches and merge changes using git and Azure DevOps! If half those words are new to you and you’re looking for a better way to manage version history, come to this session! We will go through the basics of git including what branches are, how to use them, and some best practices while working with git. Git has a few tricks that we will go through as well like fetching a branch, in-line comparisons, and pulling to avoid merge conflicts. Don’t worry, we will also touch on how to resolve merge conflicts as well as how to avoid them. After the basics of git, we’ll walk through how to use git with Power BI workspaces and Azure DevOps.

Speaker: Kristyna Hughes is a senior data & analytics consultant at 3Cloud. Her experience includes implementing and managing enterprise-level Power BI instance, training teams on reporting best practices, and building templates for scalable analytics. Passionate about participating and growing the data community, she enjoys co-writing on Data on Wheels (dataonwheels.com) and has co-founded Data on Rails (dataonrailsblog.com). She also is a co-organizer for Lexington Data Technology Group and co-host of Wednesday Lunch & Learns on YouTube with Chris Wagner.

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Atlanta Microsoft BI Group Meeting on January 9th (Getting Started with Power BI Paginated Reports)

Atlanta BI fans, please join us for the next meeting on Monday, January 8th, at 6:30 PM ET. Eric Flamm will review paginated (SSRS) reports in Power BI. Your humble correspondent will help you catch up on Microsoft BI latest. For more details and sign up, visit our group page.

Presentation: Getting Started with Power BI Paginated Reports

Delivery: In-person

Date: January 9

Time: 18:30 – 20:30 ET

Level: Beginner

Food: TBD

 

Agenda:

18:15-18:30 Registration and networking

18:30-19:00 Organizer and sponsor time (events, Power BI latest, sponsor marketing)

19:00-20:15 Main presentation

20:15-20:30 Q&A

 

Venue

Improving Office

11675 Rainwater Dr

Suite #100

Alpharetta, GA 30009

 

Overview: Power BI Paginated Reports are the successor to SQL Server Reporting Services reports (although SSRS is still part of the SQL Server BI Stack). Using the same RDL (report definition language) as SSRS, Power BI Paginated Reports enable report developers to create “pixel-perfect” reports with complete control over item placement, pagination, row and column grouping and subtotals, etc. In this demo-centric session, we’ll use Power BI Report Builder on the desktop to design reports using datasets from local sources as well as Azure databases. We’ll look at parameterization and custom expressions and publish our report to the Power BI service. If time permits, we’ll take a look at building paginated reports in the online service, a capability Microsoft released last year.

 

Speaker: Eric is an independent Business Intelligence consultant, serving a range of clients including service and manufacturing enterprises, startups, and non-profit organizations. His practice includes SQL Server-based projects as well as Excel, Office Automation, and the occasional Microsoft Access project. Eric works with the Atlanta PASS Chapter as the webmaster and has volunteered with SQL Saturday Atlanta since the first event (SQL Saturday #13). Recently, he has presented to SQL Saturday Atlanta, SQL Saturday Chicago, Atlanta Code Camp, the Atlanta Power BI chapter, and the Kennesaw (GA) Amazon Web Services Meetup group.

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Atlanta Microsoft BI Group Meeting on December 4th (Financial Modelling in Microsoft Fabric)

Atlanta BI fans, please join us for the next meeting on Monday, December 4th, at 6:30 PM ET. William Rodriguez will review the key Fabric components whilst walking through a full Financial deployment: data engineering with a tiered medallion architecture, data science with forecasting and other advanced analytics, and data analysis with Power BI. Your humble correspondent will help you catch up on Microsoft BI latest. For more details and sign up, visit our group page.

PLEASE NOTE A CHANGE TO OUR MEETING POLICY. WE HAVE DISCONTINUED ONLINE MEETINGS VIA TEAMS. THIS GROUP MEETS ONLY IN PERSON. WE WON’T RECORD MEETINGS ANYMORE. THEREFORE, AS DURING THE PRE-PANDEMIC TIMES, PLEASE RSVP AND ATTEND IN PERSON IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN THIS MEETING.

Presentation: Financial Modelling in Microsoft Fabric

Delivery: In-person

Date: December 4

Time: 18:30 – 20:30 ET

Level: Intermediate

Food: TBD

 

Agenda:

18:15-18:30 Registration and networking

18:30-19:00 Organizer and sponsor time (events, Power BI latest, sponsor marketing)

19:00-20:15 Main presentation

20:15-20:30 Q&A

 

Venue

Improving Office

11675 Rainwater Dr

Suite #100

Alpharetta, GA 30009

Overview: Fabric is a powerful integrated BI platform. This presentation will review they key components whilst walking through a full Financial deployment: data engineering with a tiered medallion architecture, data science with forecasting and other advanced analytics, and data analysis with Power BI.

Speaker: William Rodriguez is the founder and lead consultant of Analytical Ants, an analytics company focused on procuring insights via data engineering, data science, and data analysis. William has led multi-million-dollar construction projects, acted as financial controller managing million-dollar monthly check productions, and built and deployed BI infrastructures at companies large and ‘small’ ($60M Revenue). Academically, he has his master’s in business, two undergraduate business degrees, four active Microsoft certifications, and over 70 accredited SQLBI training hours. William loves spending time with his amazing family and knows that he would be nowhere without Christ.

Sponsor: TBD

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Atlanta Microsoft BI Group Meeting on November 6th (Exploring Bravo for Power BI)

Atlanta BI fans, please join us for the next meeting on Monday, November 6th, at 6:30 PM ET. Macro Russo will introduce us to the community tool Bravo for Power BI. Your humble correspondent will help you catch up on Microsoft BI latest. I’ll sponsor the event. For more details and sign up, visit our group page.

PLEASE NOTE A CHANGE TO OUR MEETING POLICY. WE HAVE DISCONTINUED ONLINE MEETINGS VIA TEAMS. THIS GROUP MEETS ONLY IN PERSON. WE WON’T RECORD MEETINGS ANYMORE. THEREFORE, AS DURING THE PRE-PANDEMIC TIMES, PLEASE RSVP AND ATTEND IN PERSON IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN THIS MEETING.

Presentation: Exploring Bravo for Power BI

Delivery: In-person

Date: November 6

Time: 18:30 – 20:30 ET

Level: Beginner

Food: Pizza and drinks will be provided

Agenda:

18:15-18:30 Registration and networking

18:30-19:00 Organizer and sponsor time (events, Power BI latest, sponsor marketing)

19:00-20:15 Main presentation

20:15-20:30 Q&A

Venue

Improving Office

11675 Rainwater Dr

Suite #100

Alpharetta, GA 30009

Overview: Bravo for Power BI is a free external tool to analyze a model, format DAX, export data, and manage dates table and time intelligence calculations. We will explore this tool’s capabilities, with additional insights on the time intelligence calculations feature that can be customized by creating new templates. Some features are also available in more advanced tools like DAX Studio, but the goal in Bravo is to make them available to all Power BI users providing a simpler user interface that is good for the more common use cases.

Speaker: Marco Russo is a business intelligence consultant and mentor. He first started working on Analysis Services in 1998, back when Analysis Services was known as OLAP Services. Marco wrote several books about Power BI, Analysis Service, and Power Pivot with Alberto Ferrari. They also regularly write articles and white papers that are available on sqlbi.com.

Sponsor: Prologika

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Atlanta Microsoft BI Group Meeting on October 2nd (30 Power BI Tips and Tricks)

Atlanta BI fans, please join us for the next meeting on Monday, October 2nd, at 6:30 PM ET.  Michael Hewitt will share 30 tips to make you more productive with everything Power BI. Your humble correspondent will help you catch up on Microsoft BI latest. For more details and sign up, visit our group page.

PLEASE NOTE A CHANGE TO OUR MEETING POLICY. WE HAVE DISCONTINUED ONLINE MEETINGS VIA TEAMS. THIS GROUP MEETS ONLY IN PERSON. WE WON’T RECORD MEETINGS ANYMORE. THEREFORE, AS DURING THE PRE-PANDEMIC TIMES, PLEASE RSVP AND ATTEND IN PERSON IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN THIS MEETING.

Presentation: 30 Power BI Tips and Tricks

Delivery: In-person

Date: October 2nd

Time: 18:30 – 20:30 ET

Level: Beginner to Intermediate

Food: Sponsor wanted

Agenda:

18:15-18:30 Registration and networking

18:30-19:00 Organizer and sponsor time (events, Power BI latest, sponsor marketing)

19:00-20:15 Main presentation

20:15-20:30 Q&A

Venue

Improving Office

11675 Rainwater Dr

Suite #100

Alpharetta, GA 30009

Overview: This session offers 30 tips and tricks born from years of working with Power BI in the trenches and teaching Power BI to others. We’ll cover many facets of Power BI including DAX, Power Query, visualization, external tools, and more! These tips aim to be practical and useful to Power BI users of all skill levels so that you can take them back to work and level up your Power BI solutions.

Speaker: Michael Hewitt leads the BI and Analytics team at Hunt Brothers Pizza, based in Nashville, TN. He enjoys data visualization and working with business users to help them leverage data more effectively in their daily jobs. In previous roles, Michael has delivered Microsoft based BI solutions in the healthcare, distribution, and manufacturing industries. He has also had the privilege of developing and delivering custom Power BI training for the Department of Defense. Outside of work, Michael is a husband, father of 3 children, is a leader in his local church, co-organizes the Nashville Modern Excel and Power BI user group, and enjoys drumming, woodworking, and hiking.

 

Speaker: TBD

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Atlanta Microsoft BI Group Meeting on September 11th (Introducing Lakehouse in Microsoft Fabric)

Atlanta BI fans, please join us for the next meeting on Monday, September 11th, at 6:30 PM ET.  Shabnam Waston (BI Consultant and Microsoft MVP) will introduce us to the Lakehouse engine in Microsoft Fabric. Shabnam will also sponsor the meeting. Your humble correspondent will help you catch up on Microsoft BI latest. For more details and sign up, visit our group page.

PLEASE NOTE A CHANGE TO OUR MEETING POLICY. WE HAVE DISCONTINUED ONLINE MEETINGS VIA TEAMS. THIS GROUP MEETS ONLY IN PERSON. WE WON’T RECORD MEETINGS ANYMORE. THEREFORE, AS DURING THE PRE-PANDEMIC TIMES, PLEASE RSVP AND ATTEND IN PERSON IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN THIS MEETING.

Presentation: Introducing Lakehouse in Microsoft Fabric

Delivery: Onsite

Date: September 11th

Time: 18:30 – 20:30 ET

Level: Beginner to Intermediate

Food: Sponsor wanted

 

Agenda:

18:15-18:30 Registration and networking

18:30-19:00 Organizer and sponsor time (events, Power BI latest, sponsor marketing)

19:00-20:15 Main presentation

20:15-20:30 Q&A

 

VENUE

Improving Office
11675 Rainwater Dr
Suite #100
Alpharetta, GA 30009

Overview: Join this session to learn about Lakehouse architecture in Microsoft Fabric. Microsoft Fabric is an end-to-end big data analytics platform that offers many capabilities including data integration, data engineering, data science, data lake, data warehouse, and many more, all in one unified SaaS model. In this session, you will learn how to create a lakehouse in Microsoft Fabric, load it with sample data using Notebooks/Pipelines, and work with its built-in SQL Endpoint as well as its default Power BI dataset which uses a brand-new storage mode called Direct Lake.

Speaker: Shabnam Watson is a Business Intelligence consultant, speaker, blogger, and Microsoft Data Platform MVP with 20+ years of experience developing Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence solutions. Her work focus within the Microsoft BI Stack has been on Analysis Services and Power BI and most recently on Azure Synapse Analytics. She has worked across several industries including Supply Chain, Finance, Retail, Insurance, and Health Care. Her areas of interest include Power BI, Analysis Services, Performance Tuning, PowerShell, DevOps, Azure, Natural Language Processing, and AI. She is a regular speaker and volunteer at national and local user groups and conferences. She holds a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering and a master’s degree in computer science.

Sponsor: Shabnam Watson

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Atlanta Microsoft BI Group Meeting on August 7th (Introducing Microsoft Fabric)

Atlanta BI fans, please join us for the next meeting on Monday, August 7th, at 6:30 PM ET.  James Serra (Data & AI Solution Architect at Microsoft) will join us remotely to introduce us to Microsoft Fabric. For more details and sign up, visit our group page.

PLEASE NOTE A CHANGE TO OUR MEETING POLICY. WE HAVE DISCONTINUED ONLINE MEETINGS VIA TEAMS. THIS GROUP MEETS ONLY IN PERSON. WE WON’T RECORD MEETINGS ANYMORE. THEREFORE, AS DURING THE PRE-PANDEMIC TIMES, PLEASE RSVP AND ATTEND IN PERSON IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN THIS MEETING.

 Presentation: Introducing Microsoft Fabric

Delivery: Speaker will join us remotely via Teams

Date: August 7th

Time: 18:30 – 20:30 ET

Level: Beginner

Food: Sponsor wanted

 

Agenda:

18:15-18:30 Registration and networking

18:30-19:00 Organizer and sponsor time (events, Power BI latest, sponsor marketing)

19:00-20:15 Main presentation

20:15-20:30 Q&A

ONSITE

Improving Office
11675 Rainwater Dr
Suite #100
Alpharetta, GA 30009

 

Overview: Microsoft Fabric is the next version of Azure Data Factory, Azure Data Explorer, Azure Synapse Analytics, and Power BI. It brings all these capabilities together into a single unified analytics platform that goes from the data lake to the business user in a SaaS-like environment. Therefore, the vision of Fabric is to be a one-stop shop for all the analytical needs for every enterprise and one platform for everyone from a citizen developer to a data engineer. Fabric will cover the complete spectrum of services including data movement, data lake, data engineering, data integration and data science, observational analytics, and business intelligence. With Fabric, there is no need to stitch together different services from multiple vendors. Instead, the customer enjoys end-to-end, highly integrated, single offering that is easy to understand, onboard, create and operate.

This is a hugely important new product from Microsoft, and I will simplify your understanding of it via a presentation and demo.

Speaker: James Serra works at Microsoft as a big data and data warehousing solution architect where he has been for most of the last nine years.  He is a thought leader in the use and application of Big Data and advanced analytics, including data architectures, such as the modern data warehouse, data lakehouse, data fabric, and data mesh.  Previously he was an independent consultant working as a Data Warehouse/Business Intelligence architect and developer.  He is a prior SQL Server MVP with over 35 years of IT experience.  He is a popular blogger (JamesSerra.com) and speaker, having presented at dozens of major events including SQLBits, PASS Summit, Data Summit and the Enterprise Data World conference.  He is the author of the upcoming book “Deciphering Data Architectures: Choosing Between a Modern Data Warehouse, Data Fabric, Data Lakehouse, and Data Mesh”.

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Atlanta Microsoft BI Group Meeting on July 11th (Azure OpenAI – Answers to Your Natural Language Questions)

Atlanta BI fans, please join us for the next meeting on Tuesday, July 11th, at 6:30 PM ET.  Stacey Jones (Cross Solution Architect at Microsoft) will join us in person to present OpenAI and Copilot. Your humble correspondent will demo the newly released PBI Desktop project format. For more details and sign up, visit our group page.

PLEASE NOTE A CHANGE TO OUR MEETING POLICY. EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY, WE ARE DISCONTINUING ONLINE MEETINGS VIA TEAMS. THIS GROUP MEETS ONLY IN PERSON. WE WON’T RECORD MEETINGS ANYMORE. THEREFORE, AS DURING THE PRE-PANDEMIC TIMES, PLEASE RSVP AND ATTEND IN PERSON IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN THIS MEETING.

Presentation: Azure OpenAI – Answers to Your Natural Language Questions

Date: July 11th (Please note that because of the July 4th holiday, this meeting is on Tuesday)

Time: 18:30 – 20:30 ET

Level: Intermediate

Food: As of now, food won’t be available for this meeting. We are welcoming suggestions for a sponsor.

Agenda:

18:15-18:30 Registration and networking

18:30-19:00 Organizer and sponsor time (events, Power BI latest, sponsor marketing)

19:00-20:15 Main presentation

20:15-20:30 Q&A

ONSITE

Improving Office

11675 Rainwater Dr

Suite #100

Alpharetta, GA 30009

Overview: We will overview and explore Azure OpenAI, a fusion of OpenAI with the Azure cloud. Understand what OpenAI and CoPilot are as well as how they can help you with your natural language questions. We will also address questions about AI, such as will AI take over the world?

 Speaker: Stacey Jones is a Cross Solution Architect specializing in all things Data, AI and Power BI. He is Evangelist at Microsoft’s Technology Center (MTC) in Atlanta, GA. He has 30+ years of industry experience in technology management spanning data architecture, data modeling, database development, tuning, and administration in both Oracle and SQL Server. He is active on LinkedIn and has plenty of real-life experience putting out database performance fires.

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