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Atlanta MS BI and Power BI Group Meeting on June 25

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MS BI fans, join us for the next Atlanta MS BI and Power BI Group meeting on Monday, June 25th at 6:30 PM. Your humble correspondent will share 10 ways  Power BI can help augment your existing or envisioned Power BI strategy. DevScope will sponsor the meeting and demo their PowerBI Robots offering.  For more details, visit our group page and don’t forget to RSVP (use the RSVP survey on the main page) if you’re planning to attend.

Presentation:10 Ways to Empower Your BI Strategy with Power BI
Level: Intermediate
Date:June 25, 2018
Time6:30 – 8:30 PM ET
Place:South Terraces Building (Auditorium Room)

115 Perimeter Center Place

Atlanta, GA 30346

Overview:Not sure what value Power BI can bring to your BI infrastructure? Join me to discuss 10 ways Power BI can help augment your existing or envisioned Power BI strategy. If you’re interested in the Power BI but you’re not sure how it fits within your organizational data strategy, this event is for you. Discussion points include:

•              Organizational BI

•              Self-service BI

•              Cloud vs. on-premises deployments

•              Predictive analytics

•              External reporting

•              Integrated solutions

Get your Power BI questions answered and see demos along the way.

Speaker: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 BI solutions that bring tremendous value to his clients. Teo has authored and co-authored several SQL Server BI books, and he has been leading the Atlanta Microsoft BI and Power BI 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) status since 2004.
Sponsor:DevScope is a young, dynamic and experienced company, specialized in mentoring and development services in Web environments, and a pioneer in the region, integrating Microsoft technology, products and solutions. DevScope implements business and technology solutions with established and emerging technologies every day. DevScope projects are usually based on the latest technologies available from Microsoft, and many times, those same technologies are not yet available in the market.
Prototypes with PizzaDevScope Power BI Robots by Rui Romano, DevScope

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Atlanta MS BI and Power BI Group Meeting on May 21

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MS BI fans, join us for the next Atlanta MS BI and Power BI Group meeting on Monday, May 21st at 6:30 PM. Paco González will take us into a deep dive into Microsoft Cognitive Services and how to integrate them with Power BI. SolidQ will sponsor the meeting. And your humble correspondent will introduce you to Power BI Premium incremental refresh. For more details, visit our group page and don’t forget to RSVP (use the RSVP survey on the main page) if you’re planning to attend.

Atlanta BI Group May 21st Meeting Reminder

Please RSVP to help us plan food by 2 PM on the day of the meeting by latest:

  1. Go to the Atlanta BI home page (atlantabi.pass.org).
  2. Choose Yes and submit the RSVP survey found at the right top corner of the page.

Please note that the voting system tracks votes by cookies. If you don’t see the option to submit the survey, clear your browser cookies, or right-click the Internet Explorer icon, and then click Start InPrivate Browsing. Free covered parking is available at South or North Terraces. Or, use the free open non-ticket parking next to North Terraces (coming north on Ashford Dunwoody, turn left on Perimeter Center Terrace and them immediately right). 

Presentation:Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Services, and Power BI
Level: Intermediate
Date:May 21, 2018
Time6:30 – 8:30 PM ET
Place:South Terraces Building (Auditorium Room)

115 Perimeter Center Place

Atlanta, GA 30346

Overview:Microsoft Cognitive services is a series of services based on Microsoft Research using Deep Learning techniques, ready for you to enrich your unstructured data. Microsoft Services includes: Vision (Computer Vision, Emotion, Face, Video), Speech/Language (Speaker Recognition, Spell, Sentiment, Language, Key Phrases, Topic detection, Linguistic Analysis), Knowledge, and Search. These services are consumed by using the Cognitive Services APIs. Power BI enables you to consume the APIs to enrich your unstructured data inside your Power BI solutions. During this session, we will cover how to consume the API using Power Query to then visualize the results with Power BI visuals. We will also consume the Cognitive services API by using a R script inside Power BI. This session is structured with a B2C Survey case study solution with a real time Dashboard using a streaming dataset.
Speaker:SolidQ North America’s CEO, Paco González specializes in helping organizations become “data driven” from a strategic and technical perspective. He is a speaker at small and large conferences such as PASS Summit, Ignite, DevWeek London, or PAW. Paco focuses in Business Analytics and Artificial Intelligence. Paco has published several books and whitepapers. A Microsoft Certified Trainer and Microsoft Certified Professional. Paco is based in Atlanta.
Sponsor:The tools and technologies to manage information will constantly evolve, but the need for accurate and actionable information is timeless. SolidQ delivers services for Microsoft platforms that help you architect, integrate and optimize your use of data. The result? Our clients think bigger and move faster because we help them build the capacity and skills to interact with data in creative, collaborative ways that deliver new insights to the business. At SolidQ we measure our success by your satisfaction – and we guarantee it.

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Atlanta MS BI and Power BI Group Meeting on April 30th

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MS BI fans, join us for the next Atlanta MS BI and Power BI Group meeting on Monday, April 30th at 6:30 PM. Patrick LeBlanc will do a deep dive into Power BI Report Server. TEKsystems will sponsor the meeting. And your humble correspondent will demo several latest Power BI features: buttons and Q&A. For more details, visit our group page and don’t forget to RSVP (use the RSVP survey on the group page) if you’re planning to attend.

Atlanta BI Group April 30th Meeting Reminder

Please RSVP to help us plan food by 2 PM on the day of the meeting by latest:

  1. Go to the Atlanta BI home page (atlantabi.pass.org).
  2. Choose Yes and submit the RSVP survey found at the right top corner of the page.

Please note that the voting system tracks votes by cookies. If you don’t see the option to submit the survey, clear your browser cookies, or right-click the Internet Explorer icon, and then click Start InPrivate Browsing. Free covered parking is available at South or North Terraces. Or, use the free open non-ticket parking next to North Terraces (coming north on Ashford Dunwoody, turn left on Perimeter Center Terrace and them immediately right). 

Presentation:Power BI Report Server: A Deep Dive
Level: Intermediate
Date:April 30, 2018
Time6:30 – 8:30 PM ET
Place:South Terraces Building (Auditorium Room)

115 Perimeter Center Place

Atlanta, GA 30346

Overview:So, you think you know everything you need to know about the Power BI Report Server because you use traditional SQL Server Reporting Services. Well, don’t believe it. In this session we are going to discuss topics such as Configuring Kerberos to resolve connectivity issues. We will discuss different authentication types, when you need them, why you need them and how to use them. We will then jump into configuring your report server to host Excel workbooks using Office Online Server. Finally, we will demonstrate how to configure an SSAS Power Pivot instance for the Excel data model. In addition to these topics, we will discuss other advanced topics such as connectivity and high availability during this demo-heavy session.
Speaker:Patrick LeBlanc is a currently a Data Platform Solutions Architect. 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:People are at the heart of every successful business initiative. At TEKsystems, we understand people. Every year we deploy over 80,000 IT professionals at 6,000 client sites across North America, Europe and Asia. Our deep insights into IT human capital management enable us to help our clients achieve their business goals – while optimizing their IT workforce strategies. We provide IT staffing solutions, IT talent management expertise and IT services to help our clients plan, build and run their critical business initiatives.
Prototypes with Pizza“Buttons and Q&A Explorer” by Teo Lachev


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Atlanta MS BI and Power BI Group Meeting on March 26th

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MS BI fans, join us for the next Atlanta MS BI and Power BI Group meeting on Monday, March 26th at 6:30 PM. Leo Furlong will introduce you to implementing organizational semantic models with Azure Analysis Services. BlueGranite will sponsor the meeting. And your humble correspondent will demo several latest Power BI features: persistent filters, tooltip pages, and share to anyone. For more details, visit our group page and don’t forget to RSVP (use the RSVP survey on the group page) if you’re planning to attend.

Presentation:Introduction to Azure Analysis Services
Date:March 26, 2018
Time6:30 – 8:30 PM ET
Place:South Terraces Building (Auditorium Room)

115 Perimeter Center Place

Atlanta, GA 30346

Overview:Azure Analysis Services (AAS) is an exciting tool within the Azure Data Services tool set. In this session, we’ll learn about the basics of AAS including how to create the service in the Azure portal, options for developing solutions and deploying them, processing data, scaling up and out, security, pricing, and where AAS fits in an overall modern data architecture. At the end of this session, you’ll have a basic understanding of how to get started with the tool and know how it could fit in your organization.
Speaker:Leo Furlong is an experienced Data and Analytics Principal at BlueGranite with extensive experience implementing Digital Transformation Strategy using on-premise and Azure cloud technologies.
Sponsor:At BlueGranite we help our clients utilize data as a strategic asset, delivering data architecture and data integration solutions to drive insights and analytics across your organization. Our solutions monitor trends, measure performance, and provide real-time analytics for rapid, informed decision making. We leverage industry leading technology from Microsoft to build modern data platforms that reduce operating costs, increase market share, improve workforce efficiency, and so much more.


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Atlanta MS BI and Power BI Group Meeting on February 26th

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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 forget to RSVP (use the RSVP survey on the group page) if you’re planning to attend.

Presentation:

Integrating Power BI with Dynamics and Other Solutions

Level: Intermediate

Date:

February 26, 2018

Time

6:30 – 8:30 PM ET

Place:

South Terraces Building (Auditorium Room)

115 Perimeter Center Place

Atlanta, GA 30346

Overview:

Microsoft has differentiated itself for many years as the company that not only sells software, but software that works well together. For example, many companies sold suites of office productivity software, but none sold software that worked as well together as Microsoft Office. We continue that legacy today with Power BI, the leading BI software in the industry, and the integration story is improving, working well with Dynamics as well as leading 3rd party software packages, such as Salesforce!

Speaker:

Stacey Jones is a Data Solutions Architect and Business Intelligence Evangelist at Microsoft’s Technology Center (MTC) in Atlanta, GA. He has 25+ years of industry experience spanning Database Administration in both Oracle and SQL Server, Database Development, Data Modeling, and most recently as a Data Architect focused in Business Intelligence. He is an industry recognized expert in database tuning, query tuning, and Business Intelligence. He has taught many classes on these subjects and has plenty of real life experience putting out database performance fires. His experience spans the health care and transportation industry. Stacey is active on LinkedIn, you can see his profile at https://www.linkedin.com/in/stacey-jones-05989124 for more information on his industry honors and awards.

Sponsor:

SentryOne, formerly SQL Sentry, enables data professionals to monitor, diagnose, and optimize server performance across physical, virtual, and cloud environments. Our software provides unparalleled insight, awareness, and control over the true source of performance issues. Headquartered in Huntersville, North Carolina, SentryOne products are sold and supported directly and through authorized resellers and partners.

Prototypes with Pizza“Report sharing and Date tables” by Teo Lachev

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Atlanta MS BI and Power BI Group Meeting on January 29th

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MS BI fans, join us for the next Atlanta MS BI and Power BI Group meeting on January 29th at 6:30 PM. Julie Smith will hack sweet reports in Power BI. Innovative Architects will sponsor the meeting. And your humble correspondent will show you two new cool Power BI features: integration with PowerApps and Q&A in Power BI Desktop. For more details, visit our group page.

Presentation:H*ckin Sweet Reports with Power BI
Level: Intermediate
Date:January 29, 2018
Time6:30 – 8:30 PM ET
Place:South Terraces Building (Auditorium Room)
115 Perimeter Center Place
Atlanta, GA 30346
Overview:Power BI is constantly evolving; this session is an overview of the current elements of Power BI and ways to implement them, based on experience in the field using it. Topics include the Power BI Service, Power BI Desktop, Power BI Embedded, Pricing models and some details of Power BI Premium. Sample data set used in this presentation is from @Dog_Rates on Twitter.
Speaker:Julie Smith has spent close to 20 years moving data using varied tools such as MS Access, MySQL, and SQL Server versions 2000 and on. She is a Business Intelligence Consultant at Innovative Architects, where she has been implementing Power BI v2 and Azure solutions for the last couple of years.
Sponsor:Since 2005, Innovative Architects has been serving industries to help solve business and technology challenges. We provide business consulting, development and implementation services for Microsoft platforms which include BizTalk, SharePoint, .NET, Business Intelligence, Mobile Apps and much more.
Prototypes with Pizza“Power BI Writeback and Desktop Q&A” by Teo Lachev

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Atlanta MS BI Group Meeting on January 30th

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MS BI fans, join me for the next Atlanta MS BI and Power BI Group meeting on Monday, January 30th at 6:30 PM. One of our most experienced consultants, Neal Waterstreet, will share his real-life experience in master data management with SQL Server MDS. I’ll update you on the latest with Power BI and SQL Server 2017. Prologika will sponsor the meeting.

Rate this meetinghttp://aka.ms/PUGSurvey, PUG ID: 104
Presentation:Master Data Management with SQL Server 2016 MDS
Level: Intermediate
Date:January 30th, 2017
Time6:30 – 8:30 PM ET
Place:South Terraces Building (Auditorium Room)

115 Perimeter Center Place

Atlanta, GA 30346

Overview:In this presentation we’ll first discuss the position Master Data Management plays in an organization’s overall data strategy. We’ll review the key concepts, different roles and responsibilities that members of the team typically play, potential risks, and best practices to help you get your organization moving forward with MDM. We’ll then take a look at some of the features of MDS 2016 such as the different ways of processing data, security improvements, Changesets and Entity Sync that make it an excellent tool for MDM.
Speaker:Neal Waterstreet is a BI Architect/Consultant with Prologika. He has more than 20 years of industry experience. Neal is skilled in the entire BI spectrum, including dimensional modeling, ETL design and development using Integration Services (SSIS), designing and developing multidimensional cubes and Tabular models using Analysis Services (SSAS) and Master Data Management using Microsoft Data Services (MDS). He’s also involved with the database community and is the co-founder and co-leader of the PASS Healthcare Virtual Chapter and the Atlanta Modern Excel User Group.
Sponsor:Prologika is one of the most trusted names in Data Analytics. Our clients, from small businesses to Fortune 100 enterprises, derive tremendous value from our services. Our mission is to help organizations make sense of data by applying the latest technologies for descriptive and predictive analytics and get actionable insights. Your organization will spend less time mining for information and be better equipped to make sound business decisions.
Prototypes with Pizza“Power BI subscriptions” and “Update on deploying Power BI reports to SSRS” by Teo Lachev

Atlanta MS BI Group Meeting on September 26th

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MS BI fans, join me for the next must-attend Atlanta MS BI and Power BI Group meeting on September 26th at 6:30 PM. The Microsoft Ignite conference takes place this year in Atlanta, starting on Sep 26th. Kamal Hathi (General Manager for Power BI at Microsoft) and Pratap Ladhani (Sr. Program Manager at Microsoft) will be in town for Ignite and we will present at our meeting! This is a must attend session for everyone using or planning to use Power BI. Join us and learn why Power BI enjoys such a tremendous success and where Microsoft is planning to take it. Enjoy catering by Subway, thanks for Microsoft sponsoring this event.

Presentation:Power BI at one year – a look back and a look forward 
Level: Beginner
Date:Monday, September 26th, 2016
Time6:30 – 8:30 PM ET
Place:South Terraces Building (Auditorium Room)
115 Perimeter Center Place
Atlanta, GA 30346
Overview:This is a must attend session for everyone using or planning to use Power BI. With weekly and monthly releases, there are a lot of fantastic new features to explore in Power BI. In this session we will cover an overview of what has been released in Power BI across PowerBI.com, Power BI Desktop, mobile apps and APIs. You’ll also discover what’s new and exciting in Power BI. In this session, we’ll also introduce PowerApps – a new product from the Power BI engineering team which enables non-developers to create & use custom applications & forms across all platforms (iOS, Android, Windows & Web).
Speaker:Kamal Hathi is a General Manager for Power BI at Microsoft and a co-founder of Microsoft’s multi-billion dollar Analytics and Business Intelligence products. Kamal has delivered Power BI to market, and was responsible for its end-to-end strategy, design and delivery. Kamal is currently responsible for product growth and success of the Microsoft Business Application Platform.

Pratap Ladhani is a Sr. Program Manager at Microsoft focusing on Customer & Partner success for PowerApps and Microsoft Flow. He has been working with Microsoft for more than 13 years and has spoken earlier at Build, TechEd, Convergence & WPC conferences.
We expect other speakers from Microsoft to join us too.

Sponsor:Microsoft

ATLANTA MS BI GROUP MEETING ON FEB 29TH

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Atlanta MS BI fans, join me for the next Atlanta MS BI Group meeting on Feb 29th and 6:30 PM. I’ll present “What’s New in SSRS 2016”. Don’t forget to register at atlantabi.sqlpass.org. Nevron will be our sponsor. Vishal Pawar will do us a quick Prototypes with Pizza demo about the new features in the Power BI Feb update.

Rate this meeting

http://aka.ms/PUGSurvey, PUG ID: 104

Presentation:

What’s New in Reporting Services 2016

 

Level: Intermediate

Date:

Monday, February 29th, 2016

Time

6:30 – 8:30 PM ET

Place:

South Terraces Building (Auditorium Room)

115 Perimeter Center Place

Atlanta, GA 30346

Overview:

Reporting Services plays an important role in the updated Microsoft on-premises BI roadmap as a platform for delivering paginated, mobile, and interactive reports. This is a great news for many customers who previously had to rely on SharePoint for BI. Microsoft has made significant investments in SQL Server 2016 to bring Reporting Services up to its new role. Join this session to learn about these exciting new enhancements, including HTML5 rendering, mobile reports, new report portal, Power BI integration, and many more.

Speaker:

Teo Lachev founded Prologika, now a Microsoft Gold BI Partner, in 2004 with a mission to help organizations make sense of data by effectively applying BI technologies. Teo has authored and co-authored several SQL Server BI books. He founded and has been leading the Microsoft Business Intelligence Group in Atlanta since 2010. Microsoft has recognized Teo’s experience in Business Intelligence and contributions to the technical community by awarding him the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) status since 2004.

Sponsor:

Founded in 1998, Nevron Software is specialized in the development of premium presentation layer and data visualization components for .NET based technologies.For over a decade, Nevron has been recognized as a leading vendor of advanced Charting, Diagramming and Data Visualization solutions for Microsoft Technologies.Nowadays, Nevron is also the driver of one of the biggest innovations in the .NET world – Nevron Open Vision (NOV). NOV changes the .NET ecosystems of Microsoft and Xamarin by providing them with a single presentation layer API.

 

Atlanta MS BI Group Meeting on January 25th

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Atlanta MS BI fans,

Join us for our first 2016 Atlanta MS BI and Power BI Group meeting on Monday, January 25th. Our sponsor, Panorama, will present Panorama Necto. And Patrick LeBlanc from Microsoft will present “Power BI for You” and show you how Power BI will disrupt the way you analyze data. Don’t forget to register at atlantabi.sqlpass.org.

Presentation:

Power BI for You

  

Level: Intermediate

Date:

Monday, January 25th, 2016

Time

6:30 – 8:30 PM ET

Place:

South Terraces Building (Auditorium Room)

115 Perimeter Center Place

Atlanta, GA 30346

Overview:

Most of us are overwhelmed with data from all the different applications that we use on a daily basis. Bringing all the data together is often a very time-consuming and sometimes a challenging process. Even further, attempting to analyze and visualize the data poses new challenges that is sometime difficult or impossible to overcome. Now with Power BI this can all be made very simple. Individuals, ranging from novice information workers to advanced IT professionals can quickly and easily transform, analyze and visualize data using a single solution, Power BI. In this session I will demonstrate how to Shape Data, Build a Data Model, Visualize Data and share the results of your work using the Power BI Service.

Speaker:

Patrick LeBlanc is a currently a Data Platform Solutions Architect with Microsoft. Along with his 15+ years’ experience in IT he holds a Master’s 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:

Panorama Necto is a worldwide leader in next generation self-service smart data discovery. It leverages a suggestive discovery engine that simplifies the business users’ data preparation while automating pattern exploration and analysis. Panorama Necto is powered by a unified and governed visualization and unique collaboration platform.