Episode 65 – Meetup with Reza Rad

This is episode 65 recorded on September 11th, 2018 where John & Jason talk to Microsoft MVP and Regional Director Reza Rad about Reza’s Power BI background, and our joint meetup at Microsoft Ignite.

Reza Rad is an Author, Trainer, Speaker and Consultant. He has a BSc in Computer engineering; he has more than 15 years’ experience in databases, programming and development mostly on Microsoft technologies. He is a Microsoft Data Platform MVP for seven continues years (from 2011 till now) for his dedication in Microsoft BI. Reza is author of Power BI from Rookie to Rock Star and some other books. He is training and consulting on Microsoft BI and Data Analytics technologies.

Show Notes:

Meetup at Ignite with John, Jason & Reza
https://myignite.techcommunity.microsoft.com/sessions/66510

RADACAD
radacad.com

Power BI Helper
http://radacad.com/power-bi-helper

Upcoming Events

Microsoft Ignite 9/24-9/28
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/ignite

European SharePoint Conference 11/26-11/29
https://www.sharepointeurope.com/

SharePointFest Chicago
https://sharepointfest.com/Chicago/

SPTechCon Boston – February 10 – 13, 2019
https://www.sptechcon.com/west

North American Collaboration Summit – March 14 – 16, 2019
http://www.collabsummit.org/

SPFest DC – April 29 – May 3, 2019
https://sharepointfest.com/Chicago/

SharePoint Conference 2019 – May 21 – 23, 2019
http://www.sharepointna.com

Eurpoean Collaboration Summit – May 27 – 29, 2019
http://www.collabsummit.eu

Episode 62 – Guy In A Cube

This is episode 62 recorded on August 16th, 2018 where John & Jason talk about the Power BI Report Server release & interview Adam Saxton, Microsoft’s “Guy in a Cube”.

Show Notes

Power BI Report Server Update – August 2018

Guy In A Cube YouTube Channel

Episode 59 – Interview with Will Thompson

This is episode 59 recorded on July 31st, 2018 where John & Jason talk about SharePoint Saturday NYC, sessions for Microsoft Ignite, and interview Will Thompson from the Power BI Desktop Team at Microsoft.

Show Notes:

Intro to Power BI Desktop – Will’s session from Business Application Summit 2018

Power BI Desktop July 2018 Release

Power BI and the Future for Modern and Enterprise BI (Business Application Summit 2018)

Episode 58 – SharePoint BI and July 2018 Power BI Desktop Release

This is episode 58 recorded on July 25th 2018 where John & Jason talk about Business Application Summit after-the-fact, The Road Ahead for Power BI & SharePoint blog post, and do a deep dive on the Power BI Desktop update for July.

Show Notes:

Power BI and SharePoint – the road ahead

Power BI Desktop July 2018 Release

Episode 55 – The Power of the Cloud

This is episode 55 recorded on June 28th 2018 where John & Jason talk about a few recent bugs and service interruptions, the recent Power of the Cloud conference, PowerApps, Flow, and some recent improvements to the usability of the On Premises Data Gateway

Show Notes

Organizational Account Authentication has stopped working for Microsoft Graph in Power BI
https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Issues/Error-getting-OData-from-Microsoft-Graph-Access-to-the-resource/

Easier configuration of Gateway data sets in the Power BI service:
https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/easier-set-up-of-datasets-in-power-bi/

Power of the Cloud show –
http://powerofthecloud.net

IWMentor PowerApps training
https://www.iwmentor.com/courses/powerapps-introduction

Coming events

Business Applications Summit 7/22-7/24 – https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/businessapplicationssummit

SPSNYC 7/28 – http://www.spsevents.org/city/nyc

SPFest Seattle 8/20-8/24 – https://sharepointfest.com/Seattle/

SPTechCon 8/26-8/29 – http://www.sptechcon.com/

Microsoft Ignite 9/24-9/28 – https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/ignite

European SharePoint Conference 11/26-11/29 – https://www.sharepointeurope.com/

Thrive Conference Dec 4-5 2018 – http://www.thriveconf.com

Episode 44 – Power BI Desktop, Gateway, & Developer updates for April 2018

This is episode 44 recorded on April 9th 2018… where John & Jason talk about the Developer Update & the Gateway Update for March and the Power BI Desktop update for April.

Power BI Desktop – April Update

Power BI team blog article

Reporting

Q&A Explorer (preview) *
Buttons to trigger actions * – ACTIONS! (Bookmark, back, Q&A)
Combo chart line styles
Improved default sort for visuals
Numeric Slicer now generally available

Analytics

Update your linguistic schema –

YAML

New DAX function: COMBINEVALUES()

Custom visuals

Data connectivity

John & Jason’s upcoming events

SharePoint Conference North America
May 21-23, 2018
Use discount code WHITE for $50 off
European Collaboration Summit in Mainz, Germany
May 28-30, 2018

Power BI Reporting on a Multi-value SharePoint Column

Hey all – John here. One of the things that we get asked frequently is how to report on SharePoint data. The answer is of course, “well, it’s easy, but it depends”.

In the spirit of clearing up the “it depends” part, I’m in the process of writing a series of articles that walks through the nuances of the various SharePoint complex data types. The first one shows some options for reporting on multi-value SharePoint columns, and includes tricks that pertain to more sources than just SharePoint.

You can find the post here. Enjoy!

Episode 30 – New Years News

This is episode 30 recorded in January 1st 2018… where John & Jason talk about the news from the past few weeks in Power BI, Office 365, and Azure.

Show Notes:

On-premises data gateway December update

-includes a number of bug fixes and improvements to previously released features
-matches the Mashup Engine that was released as a part of the Power BI Desktop December update

Sync members from O365 Modern group to a mail-enabled security group

-This is one of the issues that we run into because Power BI is NOT a part of Office 365
-The solution that Adam shows is a viable, one time solution but does not solve the longer term issue
-This can be scripted to run daily, but it is duplicating groups at that point which will ultimately cause problems
-We love Adam Saxton & Patrick LeBlank and recommend people subscribe to the YouTube Channel GuyInACube
-We don’t actually recommend you do this…

The Reddit Solution Template

-Point solution for Reddit
-Similar solutions exist for Twitter, Facebook, & Bing News
-What are Solution Templates anyway?
-Who is this for? Social Media Managers… that use Reddit
Server aliases for Azure Analysis Services

-Aliasing is always a good idea
-migration situations
-easier to remember
-obfuscates actual server information
-allows the use of Azure Traffic Manager
-Users can connect to the server from Power BI Desktop (in addition to other client tools) using the link:// format

Azure Analysis Services integration with Azure Diagnostic Logs

-Various scenarios are supported, including the following:
-Auditing
-Monitoring of server health
-Derivation of usage metrics
-Understanding which user groups are using which datasets and when
-Detection of long-running or problematic queries
-Detection of users experiencing errors
-Consume diagnostic logs in Power BI
-give you a text file that contains an M expression, which can be pasted into a blank query in Power BI Desktop
-The expression contains the current Log Analytics query and consumes from the Log Analytics REST API

Episode 26 – OnPrem Data Gateway & Power BI Developers news

This is episode 26 recorded on December 6th, 2017 from SharePointFest Chicago… where John & Jason talk about the latest updates to the OnPrem Data Gateway, the technical reference implementation for enterprise BI and reporting, and the latest news for Power BI Developers.

News

Technical reference implementation for enterprise BI and reporting
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/technical-reference-implementation-for-enterprise-bi-and-reporting/

On-premises data gateway November update is now available
https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/on-premises-data-gateway-november-update-is-now-available/

The public preview of the long-awaited High Availability support.
The “Additional Logging” setting of the gateway will now include the Mashup engine traces.
The gateway will now automatically fall back to communicating through Azure Service Bus using HTTPS if direct TCP fails.
The gateway now includes the November version of the Mashup engine.

Power BI Developer community November update
https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/power-bi-developer-community-november-update/

Azure Resource Manager API

Scale up/ down
Pause/ start resource
Create/ Delete resource
Get capacity information
Update capacity
Get capacity list in a resource group/ subscription

….they will add support for ARM PowerShell soon

Cloud Service Provider purchase channel now available

Visual Options menu and Context menu extension

Injecting custom actions into the options & context menus

Preload API for a better loading experience

Update connection string
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt814715.aspx

RLS support on AS Azure for pre-defined roles

API 1.9 is now available, adding the ability to open the default browser and navigate to a URL
https://github.com/Microsoft/PowerBI-visuals-tools/blob/master/Changelog.md

How to clone workspaces using the API
https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/duplicate-workspaces-using-the-power-bi-rest-apis-a-step-by-step-tutorial/

Microsoft’s best practices for building custom visuals in Power BI
https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Custom-Visuals-Community-Blog/Security-Developer-Guideline/ba-p/217566

Episode 24 – November’s Power BI Desktop update & more

This is episode 24 recorded on November 17th, 2017… where John & Jason talk to about the latest Power BI Desktop update, some new custom visuals, and some community contribution picks.