Category: BI Projects

BI Projects, Business Analytics, Copilot, Data Agents, Dimensional Modeling, Microsoft BI Platform, Power BI, Self-service BI, Semantic Models

Power BI Copilot, Data Agent Optimization & Performance

Paul Turley

Amid the AI frenzy, there is a lot of conversation about how business users will use agentic chat to answer business questions rather than interactive, dashboard-style reports. Is there truly a shift in the industry, and is agentic analytics going to change the way most business users consume data?

Just how viable is the whole “chat with your data” option, and is it really a replacement for conventional reporting? I recently heard a VP-level leader at a large consulting firm say something to the effect of “we need to stop investing in dashboard-building skills and focus on creating AI-driven data analysis solutions for our consulting customers.” I’m paraphrasing from memory, but that was the sentiment. Are all business leaders across the industry giving up their dashboards, interactive visual reports and scorecards in exchange for AI chat? No. Of course they aren’t — but conversational analysis is a new way to consume business data.

BI Projects, Certification Exams, Data Agents, Data Factory, Data Governance, Direct Lake, Fabric, Microsoft BI Platform, Microsoft Fabric, Ontologies

FabCon & SQLCon: What I expect to learn in Atlanta this year

Paul Turley

What do I want to learn at FabCon this year? I have high expectations for the FabCon conference during the week of March 16-20, 2026. With over 30,000 organizations actively using Fabric in production, I expect to hear much more about what we’ve learned, how to plan, optimize and monitor Fabric solutions rather than marketing rhetoric about new and upcoming features. There will be announcements and I’m interested in the long-term product vision, but I am anxious to learn more from others who are in the trenches and using Fabric day-to-day.

Visit Me in the Community Lounge

I will be in the community lounge expert’s area from 9 to 11 on Thursday answering questions about Fabric certifications. I have a new O’Reilly book on the PL-300 exam and recently delivered Fabric certification prep sessions for the DP-600 and DP-700 exams.

Azure Data Factory, Azure Databricks, BI Industry, BI Projects, Business Analytics, Microsoft BI Platform

How Lakehouse Architecture is Revolutionizing Business Intelligence

Paul Turley

The Lakehouse is the evolution of the earlier cloud data platform in many pieces that came with “some assembly required”. All of the components are modern, mature and capable but complicated and require specialized skills. Imagine that the new version is easier to assemble with instructions that are only a few pages with stick figures, and it comes with an Allen wrench.

We’re seeing consulting customers putting Lakehouse and BI solutions on-line in just a few weeks. Then they iterate to scale-up their modern data warehouse/BI platform as they train their Center of Excellence champions and Data Governance organizations as they progress.

BI Industry, BI Projects, Business Analytics, DevOps & CI/CD, Microsoft BI Platform

DevOps & CI/CD for Power BI: Real-World Example

Paul Turley

In a recent blog post, Paul discussed that DevOps, and specifically CI/CD, principles are essential for modern software development, and Power BI is no exception. Power BI CI/CD for enterprise class projects can be achieved using Azure DevOps, with steps including source control, automated testing, and build and release pipelines.  

BI Projects, Gartner, Microsoft BI Platform, MVP Community, Paginated Reports, PASS, Power BI, Power Query, Self-service BI, SSAS Design, Tabular Models

DevOps & CI/CD for Power BI

Paul Turley

DevOps isn’t difficult to implement for small and medium-scale projects, and simple things like managing version control in a code repository can save hours of lost time. Organization who are accustomed to managing large application development initiatives might expect to have a fully automated build and deployment process in concert with an Agile delivery process, managed with specialized tools like Jira, GitHub and Azure DevOps.

BI Industry, BI Projects

Power BI Data Modeling Sessions

Paul Turley

This is going to be a very busy week for presentations Iam presenting with five sessions scheduled on the topic…

BI Projects, Microsoft BI Platform, Power BI, SSRS Design

Drill-through from Power BI to Paginated Report – Report Recipe #4

Paul Turley

Navigation between reports is the hallmark of an interactive reporting solution, enabling the ability to drill-through and see relevant details…

BI Projects, Microsoft BI Platform

Doing Power BI the Right Way: 6. Validating data model results – Part 2

Paul Turley

Moving important business data into a data model for analytic reporting can often be a two-edge sword. Data retrieval is fast and can support all kinds of analytic trending and comparisons. But, data in the model may be one or two layers away from the original source data, making it more challenging to compare with familiar user reports. Often the first validation effort after transforming and loading data into the model and then visualizing the initial results is having a business user say “yeah, that looks about right.” Then, sometime later after more development and extensive user testing, the feedback might be “hmm, that looks a bit off.” …not exactly scientific.

I have been doing a lot of data validation work lately – both formally and informally. Informally: Validating calculation results from a Power BI data model is just a normal part of the development process. Formally: After developing and delivering an entire business dashboard solution, a formal validation process is used to validate the ongoing results after future data refresh cycles and to certify reports so that business leaders know they can trust them.

BI Projects, Microsoft BI Platform

Doing Power BI the Right Way: 6. Validating data model results – Part 1

Paul Turley

Moving important business data into a data model for analytic reporting can often be a two-edge sword. Data retrieval is fast and can support all kinds of analytic trending and comparisons. But, data in the model may be one or two layers away from the original source data, making it more challenging to compare with familiar user reports. Often the first validation effort after transforming and loading data into the model and then visualizing the initial results is having a business user say “yeah, that looks about right.” Then, sometime later after more development and extensive user testing, the feedback might be “hmm, that looks a bit off.” …not exactly scientific.

I have been doing a lot of data validation work lately – both formally and informally. Informally: Validating calculation results from a Power BI data model is just a normal part of the development process. Formally: After developing and delivering an entire business dashboard solution, a formal validation process is used to validate the ongoing results after future data refresh cycles and to certify reports so that business leaders know they can trust them.

BI Industry, BI Projects, Microsoft BI Platform, Power Query, Self-service BI

Doing Power BI the Right Way

Paul Turley

This is an introduction to a series of posts and pages that will provide a comprehensive set of best practices for successful Power BI solutions. In previous posts. Let’s start with a simplified flowchart and condensed decision tree. This first whiteboard drawing is the first half of the Power BI design process, ending with the data model, before measures, visualization and solution delivery. There is a lot more but I think this is a good starting point. Let’s start the conversation here and then I will enhance this post with a more complete list of topics.

BI Industry, BI Projects, Power BI, Self-service BI

How to Assign Pro Licenses to a Power BI Tenant

Paul Turley

This is a question that comes up all the time. Power BI licensing is not complicated but a common challenge is that the person who sets up a new Power BI subscription and tenant within an organization is often not the same person who manages Office 365 or Azure service licensing for the organization. I’ve consulted on projects for several organizations where folks just didn’t know who to talk to or how to proceed after testing the water with Power BI. After setting up a new subscription, IT professionals and business data analysist often don’t know how to license Power BI for company use and share reports and datasets with others in the organization.
This post will show you how licenses are assigned to users and, more importantly, what to request from your support desk or administrators who may be unfamiliar with Power BI and Office 365 user licensing. Keep reading for background information about why this is important and necessary.

BI Projects, Business Analytics, Microsoft BI Platform, Power BI, Power Query, SQL Server

How to Configure the Power BI Gateway to use Dataset Connection Parameters

Paul Turley

A service provider or vendor might want to publish multiple copies of a report that should connect to different database…

BI Projects, Power BI, SSAS Administration, SSAS Design, Tabular Models

Power BI for Grownups

Paul Turley

The message from the Microsoft Business Applications Summit this week was very clear: Power BI is growing up. We have…

BI Industry, BI Projects, Business Analytics, DAX, Microsoft BI Platform, Power BI, Power Query, SQL Server, T-SQL

SQL, M or Dax? – part 2

Paul Turley

This is a post about a post about a post. Thanks to those of you who are entering comments in the original May 12 post titled SQL, M or DAX? This is a popular topic. And thanks to Adam Saxton for mentioning this post in his Guy in A Cube Weekly Roundup.

BI Industry, BI Projects, Power BI

Power BI Global Hackathon Contest Results

Paul Turley

The results of last month’s Power BI Global Hackathon are in! The Hackathon was facilitated by our our PUG here…