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Apr 29

How to use Data Driven Settings to Control Power BI Reports

It is easy to look at Power BI dashboards as static, but you can use some old school techniques to provide the ability the generate dynamic content using data-driven global settings that will be available to all your report developers. These techniques will allow your published reports to remain unchanged but allow the reports to dynamically reflect default information shown to the user, such as Current Month, Report Comments and even a time stamp of the last data source update.

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Apr 19

How to Publish Power BI Reports to a Public Web Site

An often overlooked, yet powerful feature of Power BI allows you to publish a report to a website using an embed code. This puts the report and underlying data out for everyone who has access to that web page. The sample page below shows a sample book I published for a training session. The following how-to will walk you through will the steps leverage this feature on your site.

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Apr 15

Power BI Logical Architecture 5MinuteBI

How to Architect Your Power BI Solution

The best place to start when learning to develop Power BI solutions is to review the logical architecture your Data Visualization projects will have. There are many moving parts and pieces to a Power BI solution, especially when looking at the varied data sources you can use. From on-premises to web-based, from public to confidential, you must make sure you expose your data securely. Having a good clear architecture will help you achieve a not only a good solution but also a secure one. The following article will show you how you can architect your own solution.

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Apr 9

How to Use and Refresh Power BI Using OneDrive Data Sources

One of the challenges for users with Power BI is being able to use a data source that you can update and flow those changes to your Power BI dashboards and reports. Using an Excel file in OneDrive for Business allows you to have multiple users update data, connect to a data source and schedule an automated refresh without having a lot of infrastructure. The following walkthrough will show you how you can leverage this feature for your own solution.

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Mar 24

Late Night Database Audits and eBay don’t Mix Or How Steve Jobs, Apple Engineers and $60 Reignited My Passion

So, I just unpacked my “new” Apple Macintosh Classic. My line I gave my family today is that “Lates nights, balancing databases and eBay don’t mix”. But as it sits there, I am finding an amazing flood of emotion and inspiration that has been missing of late, let me explain.

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Mar 11

Learning Resources to get you Started in Microsoft Azure Data Projects

As companies move data workloads to the cloud, more and more resources are available online to help you get up to speed. The following learning map provides a path to these online resources not only to give you an overview but also to provide an experience of these technologies .

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Feb 13

When is 22 true? – PowerBI DAX Search Within IF Statements

I needed to quickly create a calculation that tested for the presence of a string in another column's text values. There are two ways to solve this, but the first one is an interesting example that you can use in several situations.  This solution plays on the true-false values of the DAX IF function in PowerBI.

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Feb 11

A Quiz to Measure Your Work-Life Balance

A few years ago a manager at work circulated the "Work-Life Balance Quiz",  from the Canadian Mental Health Association which tries to quantify your balance.  A great quote from the quiz; "Achieving work/life balance means having equilibrium among all the priorities in your life – this state of balance is different for every person."

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Feb 8

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SQL Azure Stored Procedure Automation Using Runbooks and Email

Minimize the impact on SQL Automation workflows when migrating to SQL Azure by automating stored procedures using Runbooks and E-mail.  This step by step tutorial and walkthrough will review a solution to provide scheduling via Azure Runbooks with integrated O365 email alerts.

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Jan 25

Effective Data Visualization – My 3 Key Lessons

I must say that I enjoy articles that teach me something new from people who have a great depth of knowledge about a topic.  I read an article by Avinash Kaushik,  Create High-Impact Data Visualizations: Nine Effective Strategies, which covers nine strategies while reviewing sixteen visualizations. It reminded me of three key learnings I have had over my career.

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