Power BI Days

Intro to Power BI | Introductory and overview

David Patrick

Thursday 9:30 am

#Government #Power Query #DAX #Data Visualization

For anyone new to Power BI, we'll cover all the main features and walk through getting data into the tool (using both the desktop and online versions), creating visualizations, turning them into reports and adding them to dashboards. When we're through we'll have several BI components available to share via the Cloud!

Basics of connecting REST APIs to Power BI | Intermediate

Dominick Raimato

Thursday 9:30 am

#Power Query #Data Modeling #Best Practices

Automated refreshes are critical to the success of many reporting solutions. Most developers prefer connecting to databases or data warehouses where they have control over the resource allocation and transformation of the data all before it reaches Power BI. But what happens when you do not have direct access to the database? What happens if the data is hosted by a 3rd party cloud platform? What if you ask for a way to get the data and they send you documentation on their APIs and say good luck?If you have asked these questions, then this session is designed specifically for you. We will walk you through the basics of understanding API documentation and show you how to connect with the Web connector in Power BI. We will also cover some of the basic transformations you can perform to make your queries more efficient and highlight some of the blockers you might encounter. We will even build a function with an API and apply it to a dataset.At the end of this session, you will feel comfortable using REST APIs as a data source and building connections using best practices.

Data Model Ideation for Power BI | Intermediate

Leslie Welch

Thursday 10:30 am

#Data Modeling #Power Query #DAX #Data Governance #Best Practices #Process

Building a performant star schema model for Power BI enables simpler DAX, improved load time and responsiveness, and ensures that you are able to use the visuals that will best communicate your data. When starting with a snowflake, disparate data sources, or one big table, it can be a challenge to build something from the start that is going to fit your user requirements.Enter the semantic model ideation process. I use this process to help client create performant secure data models aligned to a star schema and Power BI best practices. Attendees will walk away with an understanding of what information they need to start this process, how to work through the steps, and how to validate the proposed model will support their visuals. We will work backwards from what data you need to support the user questions, what Power BI needs to support the visuals, and an overview of the approach to building out your medallion architecture technical requirements for Synapse or Databricks to enable Power BI semantic models.

DataOps 101 – A Better Way to Develop and Deliver Data Analytics | Introductory and overview

John Kerski

Thursday 10:30 am

#Data Governance #Process #Best Practices

Power BI has revolutionized the industry by accelerating our ability to deliver Data Analytics solutions. But how do we ensure the code we build is reliable and the data is produced in a timely and trustworthy manner? Enter DataOps, a better way to develop and deliver Data Analytics Solutions. In this session, I’ll cover the concept of DataOps, why it matters to Power BI, and the principles that can drive you to continuously improve.

Optimizing Design and Avoiding Data Misinformation | Introductory & Overview

Colin Clark

Thursday 10:30 am

#Government #Power Query #DAX #Data Visualization

When we are all inundated with information, the ability to harness design principles effectively while navigating the pitfalls of data misinformation is paramount. This speech delves into the intersection of design optimization, data integrity, and the strategic application of color psychology in data visualization. Beginning with an exploration of the pivotal role design plays in enhancing data comprehension and engagement of your reports, the discussion swiftly transitions to the critical imperative of combating data misinformation (citing examples of both accidental and purposeful data confusion). This talk also dives into the impact of color psychology on data visualization, emphasizing how color choices can influence perceptions, evoke emotions, and shape decision-making processes. Attendees will glean actionable insights into optimizing design elements to convey information accurately while strategically utilizing color psychology to craft compelling visual narratives that resonate with audiences, fostering a deeper understanding of complex data sets and upholding the integrity of information in an increasingly digital and visually-driven world.

The Power of Pipelines | Intermediate

Stevie Wilson

Thursday 1:00 pm

#Process #Government #Microsoft Fabric #Data Governance #Integration #Best Practices

A demonstration of how to use Fabric pipelines and Power Platform pipelines together to easily manage all your Power artifacts through a continuous cycle of development, test, and production.

Developing Custom Visuals for Power BI | Advanced

David Patrick

Thursday 1:00 pm

#Government #Data Visualization

Power BI visuals are packages that include code for rendering the data served to them and anyone with knowledge of TypeScript can create a custom visual. Learn how to get started with a Power BI custom visual and how to package it as a single .pbiviz file, that can be imported into a Power BI report.

Unlocking the Magic: Direct Lake Mode in Power BI | Intermediate

Shannon Lindsay & Stephanie Bruno

Thursday 2:00 pm

#Microsoft Fabric #Data Modeling #Power Query #Integration

In today's fast-paced business landscape, making quick, informed decisions is non-negotiable. That's why we're excited to introduce you to a true game-changer: Direct Lake mode in Power BI. This breakthrough comes hand in hand with the recently launched analytics platform, Microsoft Fabric.Get ready to expand your data connectivity toolkit within Power BI. It's not about loading all your data at once; it's about on-demand loading. Translation? Only the data you need for a query gets loaded, making everything crazy fast. It's like data magic that flies when you need it.Join us for an eye-opening session where we'll walk you through the ins and outs of Direct Lake mode. We're talking about the nitty-gritty architecture stuff, comparing it to other ways of data connecting, and showcasing real-world scenarios where Direct Lake mode works its charm.

Tailoring KPI cards. How I developed a custom visual to show everything at once. | Intermediate

Alex Kolokolov

Thursday 2:00 pm

#Data Visualization #Human Centered Design #Best Practices

Managers want to see as many KPIs as possible, but it makes reports overloaded. Also, eye-catchy gauges don't make sense.At this workshop, you will learn 3 ways how to set up comprehensive KPI cards:
- how to assemble them from default visuals;
- choose appropriate KPI card from AppSource gallery;
- or develop a custom visual.You will get 7 evaluation criteria for a pixel-perfect KPI card.
At the demo session you will see how to design Multi Target KPI card from the end user perspective, how to make easy to use.

Discover Powerops Desktop- Your Free Power BI Sidekick | Introductory and overview

Lakshmi Ponnurasan

Thursday 2:00 pm

#Best Practices #DAX #Power Query #Data Modeling #Data Visualization

Event Highlights:
Experience the potential of Powerops Desktop, a FREE external tool designed for comprehensive analysis, usage identification, report comparison, and best practice evaluation of Power BI reports and models.
This session will demonstrate how Powerops simplifies the process of analyzing and comparing Power BI reports, offering users an intuitive interface for identifying changes and improvements effortlessly. Explore the Best Practices feature, which enables easy self-auditing of reports, helping you optimize them further for enhanced performance.
Don't miss out on this opportunity to learn how to harness the potential of Powerops Desktop for a more efficient and productive Power BI journey.Takeaways:
1. Attendees will learn how Powerops simplifies the often complex tasks of analyzing and comparing Power BI reports
2. Attendees will learn practical strategies to optimize their reports for improved performance and usability using the best practices feature

Chart Selection in Power BI | Introductory and Overview

Ben Chartoff

Thursday 3:00 pm

#Data Visualization #Human Centered Design #Best Practices

Choosing the right chart for your data is essential to telling a clear and concise story with visualization. We'll walk through the default chart types in Power BI, and show use cases for each one, as well as how styling and labelling can have an impact on comprehension and visual processing. For each example, charts in PBI will be paired with real world charts from the New York Times publicly available "What’s Going On in This Graph?" series.

Simulating Scenarios with Power BI | Intermediate

Dominick Raimato

Thursday 3:00 pm

#Data Visualization #Integration #DAX #Data Modeling

What if we could predict the future? Forecasting helps us see what could happen, but what if you want to prepare for the worst-case scenario? What if you want to see how changes in headcount could impact your store sales? Could I turn our data into a coaching tool to help leaders and individual contributors alike understand how they can make a difference?If you have ever considered how you could simulate different scenarios within Power BI this session is for you! We will look into how to you can leverage What If parameters for simple scenarios with a couple of clicks and keystrokes. Have lots of inputs and adjustments you could make? See how easy it is to embed a Power App directly into your report to manage the simulation. Either way, you will learn how to extract valuable insights into what could happen in the future.At the end of the session, you will understand how to enable simulation with both What If parameters and Power Apps within Power BI.This session is ideal for users who have developed reports and are looking to take their reports to the next level. A basic understanding of DAX and Power Apps is helpful but not a requirement.

Challenging the Norm: An Agile Approach to Data Visualization | Intermediate

Mathias Eifert & Leslie Welch

Thursday 3:00 pm

#Power Query #Best Practices #Process

Traditionally, Power BI Reports are developed in a waterfall approach - requirements, data shaping, front end visuals. The data modeling phase often happens entirely out of view of stakeholders and report users, with few to no feedback loops. Given that most organizations have significant gaps in standardizing which metrics to use and often even have different interpretations of their meaning, developing reports without early stakeholder input to validate assumptions can lead to significant rework, including model redesign.In this talk, we'll explore the essentials of adopting an agile approach to data visualization development. Agile approaches promote iterative cycles and continuous feedback, helping teams align visualizations with organizational goals and stakeholders’ mental models. We'll walk through real-world examples to demonstrate how this iterative approach not only saves time and resources but also results in more effective and performant interactive reports and dashboards. Attendees will leave with an immediately usable, practical approach to reducing rework by implementing low-friction feedback loops on both code and visuals early and often.

Commenting Power Query with Azure OpenAI | Intermediate

John Kerski

Friday 9:30 am

#Microsoft Fabric #Power Query #Data Governance #Best Practices

Large Language Models (such as ChatGPT) can greatly enhance the way you develop and deliver Power BI solutions. In this session I will show you how to integrate Azure Open AI into Power BI using prompt engineering techniques.

Version Control in Power BI | Intermediate

Ben Chartoff

Friday 10:30 am

#Microsoft Fabric #Power Query #Integration #Best Practices #Process

With the advent of the Power BI Project file (.pbip) in 2023, Power BI reports became fully representable as code. This means that we can track PBI reports in version control systems such as git, leading to traceable change logs, concurrent development, and the ability to quickly roll back changes.In this talk, we'll go over some of the basics of setting up a version control pipeline for Power BI reports. We'll look at examples of automated deployment pipelines and tests, continuous integration, and merging changes. Additionally, we'll look at the current and future state of the PBIP file format, and how it enables version control for both PBI reports and Semantic Models.

Choosing the Right Reporting Tool for the Job (D365 Finance & Power BI | Introductory and overview

Lenore Flower

Friday 9:30 am

#Best Practices #Process

The right reporting tool can make a huge difference in development costs and user adoption but knowing which tool to use (and when) can be a challenge. During this session, users will learn when to use standard Power BI reporting, paginated reports, Excel-based reporting, customized Dynamics 365 Finance reports, OData, or a combination to meet their specific reporting needs. We will dive into the wealth of out-of-the-box reporting Dynamics 365 F&O has, where to look, and what changes users can make without having to engage in any type of code changes. Finally, we'll review common D365-to-report "data plumbing" approaches to demystify how your critical information gets from point A to point B.

Rules and Tools for Power BI Accessibility | Introductory and overview

Shannon Lindsay & Stephanie Bruno

Friday 10:30 am

#Data Visualization #Human Centered Design #Best Practices

How much of your Power BI report design is focused on accessibility? If the answer is none, you're not alone. Report accessibility is often an afterthought at best. Fortunately, there are simple rules and tools to make it easy for you and you'll find that once you integrate these into your design process, you will undoubtedly end up with beautiful and effective reports for a much broader audience. We'll go over tools such as the Report Accessibility Checklist, the new Accessibility Checker, and the color contrast checker. You won't look at accessibility as optional again!

The Data Must Flow | Intermediate

Leslie Welch

Friday 1:00 pm

#Power Query #Data Modeling #Best Practices #Process

Without centralized dataflows, organizations often face data inconsistencies, increased maintenance, and performance issues due to managing individual data connections and transformations across multiple reports. This decentralized approach also hampers governance and leads to redundant efforts, making it challenging to ensure data quality and efficiency across the organization. Sound familiar?Join the #PowerQueryEverything movement and dive into the upgraded Power Query experience through Dataflows!This talk will start with Dataflows 101 - when and why to use dataflows, some of the cool Power Query features in dataflows that are not yet in Desktop, and the number one topic folks want to hear about - how to convert queries in existing reports or semantic models to use dataflows without breaking everything. We will then move on to the approach I use with federal clients to orchestrate dataflows drawing from a medallion architecture for better performance, governance and standardization.
Attendees should be familiar with Power Query, but do not need prior Dataflow experience. This session is suitable for experienced developers and ambitious beginners alike.

Supercharge your Power BI Dashboards with Powerviz visuals | Introductory and overview

Lakshmi Ponnurasan

Friday 1:00 pm

#Data Visualization

Event Description:
Unlock the secrets to creating stunning, fully customizable Powerviz visuals that will transform the way you interact with your data. An immersive and empowering event where we unveil the secrets of how to design eye-catching visuals that tell compelling data stories with ease.Event Highlights:
1. Introducing Powerviz Visuals:
We will delve into a few Powerviz Visuals, showcasing their versatility in turning your data into captivating visual narratives.2. Hands-On Exploration:
Get ready for an interactive demonstration where you'll explore the user-friendly interface and learn how to harness the full potential of Powerviz visuals. From pre-built themes to customizable color palettes, we'll show you how to design visuals that not only look great but also convey meaningful insights. We'll guide you through the process step by step, ensuring you can create impressive dashboards without any prior coding knowledge.3. Real-world Applications:
Let's discuss about the various use cases and scenarios where Powerviz visuals can be a game-changer

Querying Power BI REST APIs within a Power BI Dataset | Intermediate

John Kerski

Friday 1:00 pm

#Government #Data Modeling #Data Governance #Integration

Would you like to build a Power BI dataset that could inventory your workspaces, reports, datasets, and refresh schedule? Would you'd like to query another dataset to import into your dataset? In this session I'll show you how to leverage an open-source custom connector that connects to Power BI's REST APIs to do just that.

Harnessing Hidden Potential in Power Query | Intermediate

Dominick Raimato

Friday 2:00 pm

#Power Query #Best Practices #Data Modeling

Many of us have heard that we should be performing as many transformations upstream when using Power Query. While this is a noble cause, it is not always practical. For many, Power Query is a tool that can help extract data from different sources that might not be within our control. The result requires you to leverage Power Query for your transformations. But with a few adjustments, you could end up getting the most out of the tool.In this session, we will explore some of the hidden secrets of Power Query that can transform how you manage data in Power BI. We will explore how to manipulate data connections, aggregate data, merge/append queries, create dimensions, invoke custom functions, and manage queries with parameters. We will even dive into how to modify some of our transformations within the advanced editor by writing a few lines of code. We will also explore some best practices to help optimize our queries.At the end of this sessions, attendees will understand some of the techniques to help expand their utilization of Power Query as they go to create their own solutions in Power BI.

Paginated Reports 101 for the Power BI Veteran | Introductory and overview

Lenore Flower

2:00 pm

#Paginated Reports

Scenario: you’ve just completed a Power BI report, and it’s downright majestic! There’s just one tiny problem: it turns out that your report users need a matrix that will print out well instead. Now what?This hands-on session will go step-by-step in converting a Power BI analytical report into a Power BI paginated report that uses the same underlying Power BI Dataset.  We’ll break down what each section of Power BI Report Builder contributes to your report and discuss how the underlying paginated report logic differs from a standard PBIX file.At the end of this deep dive, attendees will leave with practice files that they can reference, both for practice and as a starter template for developing their own paginated reports.

Copilot in Microsoft Fabric | Introductory and overview

Shannon Lindsay & Stephanie Bruno

Friday 3:00 pm

#Microsoft Fabric #Data Modeling #Power Query #DAX

Join us for an exciting session on Copilot in Microsoft Fabric, where we'll showcase how AI-enhanced features transform data and analytics. Whether you’re a Power BI analyst, data scientist, or data engineer, learn practical tips to improve your data-driven journey.What You’ll Learn:
• Enabling Copilot: How to get started with Copilot in Power BI, Dataflow Gen2, and more.
• Best Practices and Starter Prompts: How to maximize Copilot’s impact with common inputs and suggestions.
• Accelerating Solution Delivery: How to accelerate report creation and discovering insights for data consumers with Copilot.