Jason Himmelstein, Author at BIFocal Podcast

Episode 100 – a measurable milestone

This is episode 100 recorded on May 16th, 2019 where John & Jason make a big deal about episode 100, talk about how they got here, some of the events that they have coming up, make some picks, and Jason pulls a fast one on John.

Jason’s picks

Allow workspace tagging

As an IT administrator responsible for PBI Service management and governance. I would like the ability to create free form tags (Similar to azure portal tags). to track key metadata like a GL Code or responsible business department or other business specific information. These tags should be exposed via the API so they can be used to pull back in reports. tagging assets in the workspace (Reports, dashboards datasets) would be useful as well

https://ideas.powerbi.com/forums/265200-power-bi-ideas/suggestions/37078417-allow-workspace-tagging

Notify me when credentials for scheduled refresh expire

Today, 10-15 of my scheduled refreshes for both datasets and dataflows failed because the credentials cached in the PowerBI service for SharePoint expired. It took only a few minutes to renew those credentials, but several hours to re-refresh the dataflows (they all hit the same source, and time out if fired at once. They are scheduled for staggered refresh). If I had been notified by email before the refreshes failed instead of after, I could have easily renewed the credentials in question.

Note that my user account/password did not change. The access token stored by PBI merely expired.

https://ideas.powerbi.com/forums/265200-power-bi-ideas/suggestions/37343548-notify-me-when-credentials-for-scheduled-refresh-e

John’s pick

Source Control

PowerBI.com should have some type of Source Code control integration for change control

https://ideas.powerbi.com/forums/265200-power-bi-ideas/suggestions/9677517-source-control

Upcoming events

SharePoint Conference 2019

June 19-24, 2019
Las Vegas, NV
www.sharepointconference.com
Use discount code WHITE for $50 off

SharePoint Virtual Summit 2019

May 21, 2019 12:00 pm to 1:30 pm
https://aka.ms/SPC/Keynote

European Collaboration Summit 2019

May 27-29, 2019
Wiesbaden, Germany
https://collabsummit.eu/

Microsoft Business Application Summit 2019

June 10-11, 2019
Georgia World Congress Center | Atlanta, GA
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/businessapplicationssummit

SharePointFest Seattle

August 19-23, 2019
Washington State Convention Center | Seattle, WA
https://sharepointfest.com/Seattle/

Episode 82 – 2018 Power BI Wrap Up

This is episode 82 recorded on December 18th, 2018 where John & Jason talk about the highlights of 2018 in the Power BI space & make some predictions for 2019.

Show Notes

Favorite features list:

Show/Hide pages (Jan)
Desktop in the Windows store (Feb)
Slicer sync (Feb)
Persistent filters (March)
Report page tooltips (March)
Bookmarking (March)
Action/Bookmark buttons (April)
Q&A Explorer (April)
Incremental Refresh (May)
New “From Web” Connector (May)
Composite models (July)
SharePoint Roadmap – July
New workspace experience (August)
Monitoring app for Premium (August)
Printing (August)
Aggregations (September)
New Power BI Home (September)
M Intellisense (September)
DAX Editor (October)
Dataflows (November)
New modelling view (November)
Paginated reports (November)
Copy/Paste between Desktop Files (Nov)
Smart guides (Dec)
External Dataflows (December)

Episode 81 – Interview with Andrew Connell

This is episode 81 recorded live at SharePointFest Chicago on December 6th, 2018 where Jason talks Andrew Connell, co-host of the Microsoft Cloud Show and Instructor & Entrepreneur at Voitanos.io, about Azure AppInsights & developing for proper analytics.

Show Notes

Andrew Connell is a full-stack web developer and 12-time annual recipient of the Microsoft MVP Award for Office Development, Office Servers and Services with a deep developer background in SharePoint, Office 365, and Microsoft Azure. He has spoken at various conferences around the world including Microsoft’s TechEd, Build, Ignite & SharePoint conferences, Angular’s ngConf& AngularU, SPTechCon, SP Live360 among many others. He’s taught hundreds of people via in-person & online classroom based training for over 10 years including through the training company Critical Path Training he co-founded & co-operated for four years (2009-2013). Additionally, he has a catalog of on-demand video-based training available through Pluralsight. Microsoft has hired Andrew multiple times to present at internal conferences such as TechReady, develop, deliver and publish training courses and to serve as a key strategic and technical advisor to multiple internal product teams.

Over the years Andrew has proven himself time & time again as an experienced technical trainer and course author. Building on this vast experience, he is excited to bring it direct to you to provide the ideal learning experience.

Voitanos is where you’ll find Andrew’s self-hosted video-based on-demand technical training courses and educational resources.

The Microsoft Cloud Show

The only place to stay up to date on everything going on in the Microsoft Intelligent Cloud world including Azure and Office 365.

Whether you are new to the cloud, old hat or just starting to consider what the cloud can do for you this podcast is the place to find all the latest and greatest news and information on what’s going on in the cloud universe. Join long-time Microsoft aficionados and SharePoint experts Andrew Connell and Chris Johnson as they dissect the noise and distill it down, read between the lines and offer expert opinion on what is really going on. Just the information … no marketing … no BS, just two dudes telling you how they see it.

Ep 80 – December 2018 Power BI Desktop Update

This is episode 80 recorded on December 17th, 2018 where John & Jason talk about last update to Power BI Desktop in 2018 including features like Smart guides for aligning objects on a page & the preview of Live connect support for Q&A.

Show Notes

Reporting

Analytics

Live connect support for Q&A (preview)

Modeling

Custom visuals

BIpm: Interactive directed flow graph

Data connectivity

Data preparation

Fuzzy merge – support for Top N best matches

Other

Useful links

November 2018 Power BI Desktop Update

Ep 79 – Interview with Jen Stirrup

This is episode 79 recorded on November 28th, 2018 where John interviews Jen Stirrup, Microsoft Data Platform MVP and Regional Director about the state of Business Intelligence and its relationship to Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. They spends a little time talking about the competitive landscape.

Show Notes

Jen Stirrup is an industry analyst and speaker, an author, Microsoft Data Platform MVP, a data strategist and practitioner in Business Intelligence, Big Data and Data Visualisation. With nearly 20 years’ experience, Jen works for global clients to deliver strategic advice and implementation in data technologies.

She focuses on R, Machine Learning, database technologies, and Big Data solutions. Jen speaks at conferences such as Hadoop Summit, Microsoft Ignite, SQLPass Summit and SQLBits. She also runs an annual Business Analytics conference in London. Jen blogs at jenstirrup.com and her R, ML and Business Intelligence webinars can be found at datascience.sqlpass.org and bi.sqlpass.org

Useful links

Decency Charter for Technical Communities

Mental Health in Consultancy: You do You

Ep 78 – Interview with the SPFest BI Speakers

This is episode 78 recorded on December 5th, 2018 live from SPFest Chicago where Jason talks with the other speakers on the BI track Treb Gatte, Liz Sundet, and Daniel Glenn about their perspectives on BI in the SharePoint space & their predictions for 2019.

Show notes:

Treb Gatte

Treb is Managing Partner, of TumbleRoad.com, a Power BI consultancy. Tumble Road works with many companies worldwide, like Pandora Media, Microsoft, and Kaiser Permanente, to achieve business intelligence success.

Treb is a five year Business Solutions MVP and a one year Data Platform MVP for Power BI. He has authored three books on Project and SharePoint. He is also a professional public speaker and a CIO Magazine Contributor for the Effective Enterprise blog. Treb is a former Project Engineering Team BI PM at Microsoft.

You can follow Treb on Twitter @tgatte.

Liz Sundet

Liz is a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer for SharePoint and former Office Apps and Services MVP. She loves a challenge, so everything from a business problem to troubleshooting an error in a system is just another learning opportunity. As a trainer and international speaker, she hopes to inspire others to learn something they can apply to their own work immediately. When she is not working in SharePoint or traveling, you may find her in a variety of activities as diverse as she is: playing music, riding motorcycles, training her dog and even a craft or two.

You can follow Liz on twitter @percusn.

Daniel Glenn

Daniel is a Microsoft Office Apps and Services MVP with 15 years’ experience building technology solutions, intranets and extranets. As a Practice Lead for InfoWorks Inc., He helps organizations of all sizes solve complex data challenges by implementing Office 365 and SharePoint without the need of customization and costly investments.

He is a sought-after trainer, providing customized Power BI and Microsoft Flow training for companies around the world. He’s also passionate about giving back and building the Microsoft technical community. Daniel holds leadership roles in various local user groups, serves as an organizer for SharePoint Saturday Nashville, and is a co-host for the popular REgarding 365 Message Center show on MessageCenter.Show. You can follow Daniel online at https://DanielGlenn.com and @DanielGlenn on Twitter.

Helpful Links

MessageCenter.Show

Tumble Road

Episode 77 – Interview with Arun Ulag

Thisis episode 77 recorded on November 21st, 2018 where John & Jason talk aboutsome new blogs posts from John and interview Arun Ulag, General Manager ofPower BI Engineering at Microsoft, about all things Power BI at MicrosoftIgnite on September 25th, 2018.

Show Notes

About Arun
https://www.linkedin.com/in/arun-ulag-086b576/

John’s blog posts

USE POWER BI DATAFLOWS TO WAREHOUSE SHAREPOINT LIST DATA

GET THE MOST OUT OF POWER QUERY IN POWER BI DATAFLOWS

Have a question you want answered? Drop us a note or send us a .WAV file of your question at info@bifocal.show and we will answer your question on the show in our end of year wrap up show.

Episode 76 – Power BI Desktop’s Biggest Update

This is episode 76 recorded on November 21st, 2018 where John & Jason talk about all the new stuff in the latest Power BI Desktop like the updated filtering experience & the new modeling view now in preview.

Show Notes

Reporting

Analytics

Modeling

New modeling view (preview)
Composite models now generally available
Modeling accessibility improvements
New DAX functions
- Optional DrilldownFilter argument for the RollupAddIsSubtotal function
- NonVisual function
- IsInScope function

Custom visuals

Data connectivity

Show Notes

Power BI delivers dataflows, enterprise reporting, and major updates to Power BI Desktop

https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/power-bi-delivers-dataflows-enterprise-reporting-and-major-updates-to-power-bi-desktop/

Dataflows expand self-service data prep in Power BI

SQL Server Reporting Services technology now in Power BI

Power BI Desktop November Update
- Will cover in detail on a future show once this drops

Introducing: Power BI data prep with dataflows

https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/introducing-power-bi-data-prep-wtih-dataflows/

Self-service data prep for big data in Power BI

Advanced Analytics and AI with Azure

Support for the Common Data Model
- Getting started with self-service data prep
- Ingesting large amounts of data with Incremental Refresh
- Building complex ETL projects with Linked entities

Gaining further insights with Computed entities
- Connecting datasets to your data

Public Preview of Paginated Reports in Power BI Premium Now Available

https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/public-preview-of-paginated-reports-in-power-bi-premium-now-available

Power BI Paginated Reports also available in Power BI Mobile Apps(preview)

https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/power-bi-paginated-reports-also-available-in-power-bi-mobile-apps-preview

Paginated report metrics and dataflow metrics now available in Premium Capacity Metrics app

https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/paginated-report-metrics-and-dataflow-metrics-now-available-in-premium-capacity-metrics-app/

Premium Capacity Metrics app – query metrics histogram now available

https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/premium-capacity-metrics-app-query-metrics-histogram-now-available/

Episode 74 – Interview with Amir Netz

This is episode 74 recorded on September 24th, 2018 where John & Jason interview Amir Netz, Technical Fellow and Chief Architect of Microsoft BI offerings at Microsoft, about all things Power BI.