Microsoft selected and published two Prologika Power BI-related consulting offers on Microsoft AppSource. And their price is right; they are both free! Power BI for Your Organization: 2 HR Assessment – Prologika will evaluate your data analytics objectives to determine how Power BI can empower your organization to understand better and improve its business. Power BI for Business Performance: 2-Hr Briefing – Prologika will provide you with…
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The 2018 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms is out. I read the report and followed the dots. I personally hoped to see the Microsoft dot higher than the overrated Tableau, given everything I said here, here, and here. I'm glad that Gartner finally realized what I have been saying all along that Tableau lacks "complex data model support" among many other things. Anyway, this is a…
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While we're waiting for the Gartner 2018 Magic Quadrant for Data Analytics (should be out any moment), two others related to data analytics were released. 2018 Magic Quadrant for Data Management Solutions for Analytics This one evaluates "complete software system that supports and manages data in one or more file management systems (usually databases)". So, think of traditional and cloud-based data warehousing. I'm surprised to…
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I love performance optimization. It's exciting to peek under the hood and take a deep dive in the mysterious world of how Microsoft designed things. And it always humbles me by bringing forth gaps in my knowledge. Scenario: You have SSRS reports that query Analysis Services Multidimensional cubes. When users request reports in Report Manager (aka Web Portal starting with SSRS 2016) and … the…
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MS BI fans, join us for the next Atlanta MS BI and Power BI Group meeting on February 26th at 6:30 PM. Stacey Jones will explain how Power BI can integrate with other systems, such as Dynamics and Salesforce. SentryOne will sponsor the meeting. And your humble correspondent will show you two latest Power BI features: report sharing and date tables. For more details, visit our group page and don't…
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To compete more effectively with Power BI, Tableau acquired a database technology called HyPer. Like the Microsoft xVelocity in-memory technology (formerly known as VertiPaq), which powers Analysis Services Tabular, Power BI, and SQL Server Columnstore, HyPer is an in-memory database system. Hyper was initially developed as a research project at the Technical University of Munich. Tableau explains that "with Hyper, transactions and analytical queries are…
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Scenario: You've created a dashboard-looking Power BI report that has a filter. Most visuals on a report page need to show only data for the selected filter but some must ignore the filter. Solution: There are several solutions to achieve this goal depending on requirements. Let's start with the no-brainer and move down in complexity. Move the unfiltered visuals to another report page -- Slicers…
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Planning to attend the PASS Summit this year? The PASS Summit is the go-to conference for data professionals that will take place November 6-9, in Seattle, WA. You have two options to register: Early bird registration priced at $1,699 has started and it will continue until March 23, 2018. As a bonus, use code LGSTRMZB8 at registration to get streaming access to all PASS Summit 2017…
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Scenario: You want to overwrite the formatting of some field in a Power BI Visual, such as in the case of showing the field in one visual with decimals and then in another without decimals. Or, you might want to overwrite the default format when connected live to a semantic model. You search left and right, bing the Internet, and still no clue as to…
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In my "Understanding Dates in Power BI Quick Measures" blog, I mentioned that having a Date table is a best practice but Quick Measures didn't support it. Fortunately, the February update of Power BI Desktop fixes this. Now you can mark a Data table as such, as you've been able to do in Excel Power Pivot since the beginning. Marking a date table accomplishes three…
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