2-Day Applied Power BI Workshop – Atlanta

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Are you looking for an agile self-service platform that doesn’t require reporting and query skills to get basic analytics done without reliance on IT?  Or, perhaps you’ve heard or evaluating Power BI but not sure where to start or how to take the most out of it? If so, this workshop is for you. A year ago Microsoft unveiled the new Power BI platform consisting of the PowerBI.com cloud service, Power BI Desktop, and Power BI Mobile. Since then, Prologika has helped organizations of all sizes to adopt Power BI. Packed with features, Power BI supports a dizzying variety of features and integration scenarios and it offers plenty to all types of users interested in data analytics: information workers, data analysts, BI pros, and developers.

Reserve your seat today to attend this insightful 2-day workshop for only $999 (use coupon POWERBI20160914 to get 10% discount when signing up two or more people) at the Microsoft Office in Alpharetta, when Teo Lachev (CEO of Prologika, a Power BI Red Carpet Partner) teaches you practical Power BI knowledge and data analytics skills that you can immediately apply to your job. See how Power BI can improve your usability and productivity even further.

Syllabus>>

Key Benefits

  • Understand how Power BI changed the way users (information workers, data analysts, BI pros, and developers) gain and share data insights.
  • Learn how to connect to popular cloud services to derive instant insights, create interactive reports and dashboards, and view them in the browser and on the go.
  • Discover how to integrate and transform data from virtually everywhere and then implement sophisticated self-service models and business calculations.
  • Find how to implement hybrid architectures and strict security requirements by leaving data on premise and deploying reports and dashboards to the cloud.
  • Learn how to share your BI artifacts and collaborate with other teammates.
  • Gain practical skills by creating a self-service model in the lab exercises.
  • Learn Power BI best practices, limitations (every tool has them) and workarounds.
  • Get your questions answered.
  • and much more…

You won’t want to miss this educational and engaging training event! Attend it and get a free paper copy of the book Applied Microsoft Power BI! Please register today as seating is limited.

Audience

  • Information workers
  • Business analysts
  • BI professionals
  • In general, anyone interested in self-service data analytics with Power BI

Prerequisites

Students are encouraged to bring their laptops for the exercises. Detail setup instructions and source files will be sent before the event.

Instructor

Teo Lachev is an internationally-recognized authority on Data Analytics and CEO of Prologika. Teo helps organizations make sense of their most valuable asset: their data. His strategy formulation, trusted advisory and mentoring, design and implementation services empower his clients to apply effectively data analytics in order to understand, improve, and transform their business. Teo has authored and coauthored several books and his latest one is “Applied Microsoft Power BI (Bring your data to life!)” He has been leading the Atlanta Microsoft Business Intelligence group since he founded it in 2010. Microsoft has recognized Teo’s expertise and contributions to the technical community by awarding him the prestigious Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for Data Platform award since 2004.

Formulating a Power BI Enterprise Strategy Seminar – Atlanta

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A year ago Microsoft unveiled the new Power BI platform consisting of the PowerBI.com cloud service, Power BI Desktop, and Power BI Mobile. Since then, Prologika has helped organizations of all sizes to plan and adopt Power BI. Packed with features, Power BI supports a dizzying variety of features and integration scenarios but it might be difficult to understand how Power BI fits in your data analytics ecosystem.

Join Prologika and Microsoft for a 3-hour free seminar on Wednesday, August 31th, 8:30 AM -12 PM ET, at the Microsoft Office in Alpharetta, when Teo Lachev (CEO of Prologika) and Brian Jackson (Cloud Solution Architect at Microsoft) share practical knowledge and experience to help you to formulate a Power BI enterprise strategy. If you’re considering Power BI but you’re not sure how it fits within your organizational data strategy, this event is for you.

Key Takeaways

  • Understand how Power BI changed the way users (information workers, data analysts, BI pros, and developers) gain and share data insights.
  • Learn 10 areas where Power BI excels compared to other popular BI tools, such as Tableau, Qlik Sense, Sisense, Domo, and others.
  • Plan a data access strategy for:
    • Importing data
    • Connecting live to cloud sources with content packs and solution templates
    • Connecting live to on-premises data sources
    • Implementing real-time dashboards
    • Embedded reporting
    • Taking a deep dive to learn how Prologika designed and implemented a hybrid architecture solution for a Fortune 50 organization and meet security requirements that prevented exporting data to the cloud
  • Join in a discussion about other business use cases and gaps between Power BI and other BI products, and find how to address them. Get your questions answered.

You won’t want to miss this educational and engaging event! Please register today as seating is limited: https://prologika.com/event/formulating-a-power-bi-enterprise-strategy/

Agenda

8:30-9:00 – Networking and introductions

9:00-10:30 – How Power BI empowers businesses like yours

10:30-10:40 – Break

10:40-11:45 – Plan a data access strategy and go “under the hood” of a hybrid architecture case study

11:45-12:00 – Q&A

Presenters

Teo Lachev is an internationally-recognized authority on Data Analytics and CEO of Prologika. Teo helps organizations make sense of their most valuable asset: their data. His strategy formulation, trusted advisory and mentoring, design and implementation services empower his clients to apply effectively data analytics in order to understand, improve, and transform their business. Teo has authored and coauthored several books and his latest one is “Applied Microsoft Power BI (Bring your data to life!)” Prologika is a Microsoft Gold Partner in Data Analytics, demonstrating a “best-in-class” ability and commitment to meet Microsoft customers’ evolving needs and distinguishing itself within the top one percent of Microsoft’s partner ecosystem. Learn more at www.prologika.com.

Brian Jackson is a Microsoft Certified Architect and Cloud Solution Architect at Microsoft. He has deep technical expertise in the SQL Server and Azure platform and served as a subject matter expert for Microsoft’s SQL Server Master and Business Intelligence certification programs. Brian has more than 20 years of experience in solution architecture and software development with a focus on business intelligence, data warehousing and database design. He has strong customer relationship skills with over 15 of years of IT consulting to several Fortune 500 companies and proven success in leading and delivering large scale implementations with globally distributed teams.

Going with the Flow

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Currently in preview, Microsoft Flow is a cloud service for creating automation flows without writing code, similar to Zapier’s “zaps” and IFTTT’s “recipes”. How is this useful for BI? Let’s consider an example. Power BI has recently introduced data-driven alerts in Power BI Service (previously alerts were supported on iPhone only). Currently, alerts can be created only on single-card and gauge dashboard tiles that are connected to imported datasets. You can go to the tile properties and click the Manage Alerts (bell) icon to create an alert rule, such as “SalesAmount is above 1,000,000.”

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When the alert rule condition is met, you are notified in the Power BI notification center and by e-mail. But what if you want to broadcast the alert to a large audience? Currently, this feature is not a Power BI native feature. Sure, you can forward the email manually but what if you’re on vacation or the alert is triggered outside working hours but you need to notify certain people immediately? Enters Microsoft Flow that allows you to create simple if-then-else flows. In the screenshot below, I’ve created a trigger that checks my Office 365 email account for emails sent from noreply@powerbi.com and the subject contains “Alert”. If this condition is met, the “yes” action forwards the email to additional people.

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Microsoft flows has a comprehensive list of triggers and actions for integration with many popular services, such as Dynamics CRM, Salesforce, SQL Server, MailChimp, SharePoint, Facebook, GitHub, and many more. Naturally, Microsoft Flow integrates very well with Microsoft cloud and on-prem services. It also has an extensible architecture that allows developers to plug in additional services. Together with PowerApps, Microsoft Flow has a bright future to help you automate your business processes and get actionable insights.

Trend Lines in Power BI Charts

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Recently, Power BI charts introduced trend lines. However, they require numeric or date values on X-axis, which must have a continuous type. In fact, if you use a text field for the X-axis, a warning indicator will be displayed in the top left corner of the chart to warn you that non-numeric values are used.

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This requirement presents issues if the report is connected to a Multidimensional cube because by default all attributes are text-based. As a workaround, in the Multidimensional project set the ValueColumn property of the attribute to a column in the underlying table of a numeric or date data type, and deploy the cube.

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Back to Power BI Desktop, bind the corresponding .Value field to the X-axis.

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Happy Birthday, Power BI!

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Power BI is one-year old. it’s hard to imagine that one year has passed but here we are. The momentum behind Power BI is huge both from development and customer perspectives. It’s exiting to see a product that evolves so fast based on feedback from users. So, there will be many more birthdays. And for the nay sayers out there, no, Power BI is not immature as its building blocks (Power Pivot, Power Query, Power View, Tabular, Azure) have been around for many years.

Anyway, it’s time to recognize all the effort that went behind the new Power BI. Happy Birthday from the community!

Atlanta MS BI Group Meeting on July 25th

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MS BI fans, join me for the next Atlanta MS BI and Power BI Group meeting on July 25th at 6:30 PM. Shabnam Watson will teach you MDX fundamentals. Pyramid Analytics, our sponsor, will show us why they are Microsoft Power BI preferred vendor. And I’ll demo the Power BI Publisher for Excel.

Rate this meetinghttp://aka.ms/PUGSurvey, PUG ID: 104
Presentation:A SQL Developer’s Guide to MDX Basics
Level: Intermediate
Date:Monday, July 25th, 2016
Time6:30 – 8:30 PM ET
Place:South Terraces Building (Auditorium Room)

115 Perimeter Center Place

Atlanta, GA 30346

Overview:MDX is an industry standard query language for OLAP systems and is used to query Microsoft Analysis Services (SSAS). Custom MDX queries can be authored in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), Reporting Services, Power BI and custom applications. While SQL and MDX share some common keywords, they have very different syntax and concepts. This session is for anyone familiar with SQL who wants to get started with MDX.
In this session we will first explore data organization in SSAS in multidimensional mode using AdventureWorks sample database. Then we will review a couple of MDX and SQL queries that return the same results and continue to learn MDX fundamentals by running queries in SSMS. We will see how certain queries are much easier to write in MDX, especially when it comes to querying data with hierarchies such as a date rollup. Finally, we will learn how to capture MDX queries generated by Excel and SSMS, to use as practical examples of how to write MDX queries.
Speaker:Shabnam Watson is an independent business intelligence consultant with 15 years of experience developing end-to-end data warehouse and business intelligence solutions using Microsoft technologies. She holds a master’s degree in computer science and a Certified Business Intelligence Professional (CBIP) certification by The Data Warehouse Institute (TDWI). She has worked with OLAP since SQL Server 7.0 and specializes in solving complex MDX and design challenges with Analysis Services.
Sponsor:Pyramid Analytics is a global BI&A leader offering an analytics platform that helps companies compete as world-class data-driven organizations. Pyramid Analytics’ mature BI Office Version 6 is an enterprise business analytics platform that puts the power of analytics into the hands of every user across an organization, making it possible to model, discover, communicate and distribute data for better corporate decision making. Pyramid Analytics was again recognized in Gartner’s 2016 Magic Quadrant Business Intelligence and Analytics (BI&A) Platforms Report for BI Office’s capabilities as a balanced analytics platform with strong governance, metadata management, security, and user administration.

Is Your BI Strategy Cost Effective?

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Have you looked at your BI spend recently? Sometimes, I’m puzzled by the enormous spending in “this is how we’ve always done it” initiatives that probably could be replaced and done much more efficiently with modern technology and cloud computing. I had a recent conversation with a Chief Analytical Officer of one of the US largest financial organizations. They have outsourced hosting of their 5 TB data warehouse to another company that charge them more than 100K per month. And this is just for hosting on a single SMP SQL Server with no fault tolerance and SLA in place!

Was he surprised to find that this data warehouse could be hosted in SQL Server Data Warehouse on Azure for well under 10K per month? Not to mention that besides x10 cost savings, they’ll get a Massive Parallel Processing (MPP) system on a par with Teradata and Netezza, with the ability to scale up and down with a click of a button? Further, the system will be fully fault tolerant with automatic back-ups. Add the flexibility that comes with moving to the cloud instead of being locked in a vendor that dictates what you should install and run? You’d be surprised how open to the cloud even financial companies might be after realizing these benefits. The same applies to customers who realize what they’re spending in overly expensive BI tools under the pretext that they are still “best in class”. They are not, trust me, and you’re being taking advantage of. It’s time to move on.

Presenting for Steel City SQL User Group, Birmingham

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I’m presenting in person “What’s New for BI in SQL Server 2016” for the SQL User Group in Birmingham, AL tomorrow, July 19th starting at 6 PM local time.

Steel City SQL July 2016 Meeting

Language: English
Event Type: In-Person
Online Meeting URL: None
RSVP URL: https://steelcitysqljul2016.eventbrite.com

Join us Tuesday the 19th in Room 311 of Russell Hall on the Samford University campus for the July meeting of Steel City SQL. This meeting will feature MVP Teo Lachev presenting What’s New for BI in SQL Server 2016.

Food and beverages for this month’s meeting will be provided.  If you plan on attending this month’s meeting let us know by registering at steelcitysqljul2016.eventbrite.com so we can plan accordingly. Hope to see you there.
When

iCal
UTC : Tue, Jul 19 2016 23:00 – 00:30
Event Time : Tue, Jul 19 2016 18:00 – 19:30 Central Daylight Time

Where

311 Russell Hall – Samford University
Birmingham, Alabama

What’s New for BI in SQL Server 2016

Speaker: Teo Lachev, SQL Server MVP Prologika

Summary: SQL Server 2016 delivers many data analytics and information management new features and enhancements. Join this session to discover what’s new for BI in Database Engine, SSRS, SSIS, SSAS, and MDS. I’ll also explain the SQL Server 2016+ near-future roadmap that will help you implement new solutions and cut cost.

About Teo: Teo Lachev is a consultant, author, and mentor, with a focus on Microsoft Business Intelligence. Through his Atlanta-based company “Prologika”, a Microsoft Gold Partner in Data Analytics, he designs and implements innovative solutions that unlock the power of data and bring tremendous value to his customers, ranging from small companies to Fortune 50 organizations. Teo has authored and co-authored several SQL Server BI books and he has been leading the Atlanta Microsoft Business Intelligence group since he founded it in 2010. Microsoft has recognized Teo’s expertise and contributions to the technical community by awarding him the prestigious Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award since 2004.


Aggregates over Aggregates in DAX

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Sometimes, you might run into a scenario that requires an aggregate over an aggregate. Consider the following report:

The AvgOrderAmount has a simple calculation: SUM(Sales)/SUM(Qty). This calculation is applied uniformly. The Total line would divide 300/7 and will return 42.86. However, what is the user wants the result in the DesiredAvgOrderAmt column which produces a simple average over the details (50+40)/2. This could be accomplished by creating a base measure for the detail calculation:

DesiredAvgOrderAmtBase := DIVIDE ( SUM ( [Sales] ), SUM ( [Qty] ) )

Then, the DesiredAvgOrderAmt formula would be:

DesiredAvgOrderAmt :=
IF (
    HASONEFILTER ( Customer[Customer] ),
    [DesiredAvgOrderAmtBase],
    AVERAGEX ( VALUES ( Customer[Customer] ), [DesiredAvgOrderAmtBase] )
)

HASONEVALUE would return TRUE when the calculation is performed at the detail level and FALSE in the “grand totals”. In the latter case, it performs a simple average over the detail aggregates. Think of it as performing a second pass over the details to produce an aggregate over aggregates.

Upgrading Power BI Desktop Models to Tabular

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One great feature of Microsoft BI has been the continuum from personal BI to organizational BI. For example, a business user can start small with an Excel Power Pivot model which IT can restore at some point to a scalable Tabular model. In fact, if you know Microsoft personal BI (Power Pivot or Power BI Desktop), you already know 80% (or even more) of SSAS Tabular.

Unfortunately, currently there isn’t a supported way to restore Power BI Desktop models to Tabular or create a Tabular project from a pbix file. The reason is that because Power BI Desktop is changing on a monthly basis, it’s ahead of Tabular and currently Power BI Desktop doesn’t support backward compatibility. However, the following approach worked for me to upgrade Power BI Desktop to Tabular 2016.

  1. Power BI Desktop has a Tabular child process which is the workhorse for all data crunching you do on the desktop. This process uses a dynamic port. As a first step, you need to find that port. The easiest way to do so is to run Windows Resource Monitor (in the Windows search bar, type resmon). Then, flip to the Network tab, and in the Listing Ports section, find “msmdsrv.exe”, and then note the port number. In my case, I have a few instances of msmdsrv because I run dedicated instances of Multidimensional and Tabular but I found that the PBI Tabular instance ports start above 10000 so it should be easy to identify the instance.

    071016_1926_UpgradingPo1.png

  2. Now that you have the port number, open SSMS 2016 (you can download it from here), and connect to that Tabular instance, using the syntax: localhost:<port number>. For example, to connect to the highlighted instance, in SSMS I’ll Connect ð Analysis Services, and then enter localhost:42030.

TIP: You can also use the SQL Profiler to connect to the PBI Tabular instance and do profiling using SQL Profiler, as Adam Saxton demonstrates here, or using DAX Studio, which by the way automatically enumerates the Power BI Desktop instances.

  1. Right-click the database (the database name is a guid), and click Script ð Script Database As ð CREATE TO ð Clipboard. This will export the database schema in the new JSON format.
  2. Connect to the Tabular instance that will host the database, and create a new Analysis Services XMLA Query, and paste the script. One of the changes you want to make here is to rename the database by change the name element at the beginning of the file so you don’t end up with the same guid for the database name.
  3. Execute the script to create the new database. If you get an error, you should be able to change the script and strip code for features that Tabular doesn’t support. Now that we have JSON-based schema, making such changes should be much easier.

Now you can use SSDT to create a project by importing the Tabular database and continue making changes to the project.