Thomas (TJ) Graf

very powerful and much needed feature

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#MSBuild was yesterday, and as has become the custom, Microsoft unloaded a huge wave of announcements including the latest release to #PowerBI and new capabilities in #Fabric. I'm going to need some extra coffee today because I was up late trying to digest all this info. Here's my summary of interesting highlights: 👉 https://lnkd.in/eZ44EHHK #bi #businessintelligence

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CIO's everywhere: "All that power we gave to Chief Data Officers? Results have been iffy so let's try to take that back..." I've spoken to a few people recently around CIO / CDO dynamics. I know I'm in the minority here that thinks data teams can report just fine into tech - I've done it multiple times and had success. It's a valid concern that if data reports into tech it won't be connected enough to the business... But since you know that's a major concern, you can address it. A common danger of reporting to the business is that you end up in a bad relationship with the tech org. Just be ready - when things inevitably go wrong with data (and they always do) the tech leaders will make a play to have data back.

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One challenge I often encounter with Power BI reports is managing data updates—whether they need to be refreshed weekly, monthly, or at even longer intervals. Typically, this involves receiving updated Excel/CSV files via email or finding them saved in a SharePoint folder. This got me thinking... Wouldn't it be great if users could skip the extra steps of emailing or saving files to specific locations? What if we could add data files directly from the Power BI report itself? While this feature isn’t available out of the box, there is a possible approach. By embedding a simple Power App into the report and integrating it with a Power Automate flow, users can upload data files directly. No more manual processes, and you can even automate the report refresh! In my latest video, I walk through how this can be up. #powerbi https://lnkd.in/eVB3Diij

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Worked on the #powerquery tool a little more. I was able to pass M to powerqueryformatter.com via the api and return formatted code. Works pretty well. I also added a tab with a button to Rick de Groot's PowerQuery.How site. James Bartlett suggested being able to copy and paste like you can if you copy from one PBI to another (or even to Excel). I investigated it and it appears that when you copy the query it is really formatted xml behind the scenes (could be wrong). I found this out by copying a query and pasting in an Excel cell (might have done paste special). In any event, I could not copy from the tool and paste into the Queries pane on the left-hand side. Does anyone have any ideas? If you want to try a standalone exe, you can find it here:

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🦃 With Thanksgiving just around the corner (for my US colleagues), I know what’s really on your mind... "Sure, I’ve got my turkey, my sides, and my pie recipes sorted, but what I really need is to make my Power Automate emails from Power BI look great." Well, you are in luck. In my latest YouTube video, I show how this can be done easily. In this video, I show you how to: ✅ Use Power Automate to send automated emails directly from your Power BI report. ✅ Update the format of your emails with simple HTML coding (right in the flow). For example, add a formatted table or even an image. Even if you aren't familiar with HTML coding, it's very easy to do. #powerbi #powerbiintegration https://lnkd.in/eTAcQ_yA

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At the dawn of man, you could not lookup #powerquery code from Github and copy it to #powerbi. With Github Copilot, I figured out how to. Here is a demo video. It's really not a big deal and this is not great functionality, but putting it out there in the hopes that someone better at software development than me gets a great idea. There are a lot of tools out there to help with DAX, it would be nice to see more with Power Query. Let me know what you think. I also just pushed the exe file to the Shared Library Github. I did not add anything to register it as a tool in PBI yet, because I think this may be half-baked lol. Really, we need more tools like a formatter, create and read gists, step renamer (no more #"Renamed Column" steps), and probably like 5 other things.

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Watch Damien Bird's latest video demonstrating how to trigger a flow from a button in SharePoint for a selected item or file. The video provides a step-by-step guide on integrating Power Automate flows directly into SharePoint Lists and Document Libraries, including some code walkthroughs and tips on using Copilot to speed things up. 👌

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If you wish the business team had better data literacy just remember that they wish you had better business literacy. ------------ 💡I write a daily email about data and leadership. Yes, it's daily. Yes, people stay subscribed. Link in my profile.

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Kurt Buhler is one of the best writers on #BI. In this article, he elegantly explains a basic principle of report design that many overlook (even myself). Even if #PowerBI is not your tool of choice, this article still applies to you. I highly recommend all BI professionals read it and bookmark it for future reference. Important takeaways - your primary objective is to make a useful report, not a beautiful report - you have to understand the underlying business process in order to produce a good report (or data model) - talk to the business users https://lnkd.in/eXHxMX6V #analytics #data #dashboards

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I had a great time at the Tableau Conference 2024 (TC24) in San Diego this week. I'm excited about the continuous innovation within the product and the overall 'buzz' in the space of data, analytics, and AI. For those of you who aren't as familiar with Tableau, I thought I'd summarize a few of the areas that stood out. Building a COE - Tableau Blueprint Blueprint is a methodology that organizations can use to assess their current data strategy and identify areas for improvement. Tableau has introduced a new AI tool to facilitate the assessment process and gap identification in data strategy implementation. Accelerators Ready-to-use dashboards that you can combine with your data and customize to fit your needs, to help you get to data-driven insights faster. My teams have leveraged Accelerators with fantastic results, rapidly delivering value and reducing costs while elevating our UX designs. Tableau Pulse Powerful newer product that takes Tableau Metrics to a whole new level with narrative and AI. Designed to democratize data analytics, it provides personalized insights to business users who aren't traditional data experts. The result is more intuitive and actionable insights for business users, that even integrates with apps like Microsoft Teams. Accessing On-Premises and VPC Data with Tableau Cloud Options for securely accessing external data from Tableau Cloud now include Direct Connect, Tableau Bridge, the newly launched Data Connect, and the upcoming Private Connect feature, each tailored to different security, manageability, and scaling needs. Tableau Bridge and the new Data Connect offer secure, scalable solutions for connecting to on-premise data without public internet exposure, with Data Connect providing Tableau-managed operations. It’s good to know there are several options to securely access data and maximize the value of your Tableau investment. AI - Einstein Copilot for Tableau Enables anyone to uncover valuable insights from their data and maximize their use of Tableau. Provides an AI assistant (available now in ‘beta’) that supports users throughout their data exploration and visualization journey, helping them create visualizations, generate calculations, and format dashboards through natural language commands, with a focus on increasing accessibility for users of varying expertise levels. Prioritizes data security and privacy with zero data retention, data masking, toxicity detection, and an audit trail for InfoSec teams. In my view, this is really the future of work, as it accelerates development and training, and enables SMEs to develop powerful data insights on their own. And on and on… There was a myriad of other innovations and great presentations – including in the keynote where Sophia G. introduced a great new data management cockpit. If your data, analytics, and AI capabilities aren't driving actionable insights and data-driven decisions, it might be time to explore Tableau. #Data24 #TC24 #insurance

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What do we get wrong as data leaders? Predictability. Let me explain. When your business partners ask you how long it is going to take to build a dashboard, what do you say? Commonly, you'll hear a range (like 4-6 weeks). And, also commonly, something throws a wrench in this range and it has to be extended. What about when it comes to investment decisions? For how example, how much will this new data platform cost? We think it will cost $1 million, and then after implementation it was actually $1.75 million. Businesses (and business partners) crave predictability. Now the detractors will say "data is too complicated for this" or "it's impossible to forecast exactly how much investment we'll need." Guess what? I don't buy it. If large technology companies can forecast out their financials, and can set dates for product releases, why can't you? Predictability is a way that a data team will have greater credibility and more likely to be treated as another business team. The more that you can do this as a data leader, the greater success you will see. #data #dataculture

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Would you like to run MMM or run after MMMs? I think a lot of companies run AFTER MMMs rather than letting the MMMs run FOR them. Naavics helps companies in three ways. 1. Identify and fix the delays that creeps in your data 2. Work with your teams to set Data quality standards that apply for MMM 3. Making sure the results timeline aligns with your Media planning #MMM #attribution

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Drive better #PowerBI adoption across your organization with these 10-steps. https://lnkd.in/gcr3QAwT

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Drive better #PowerBI adoption across your organization with these 10-steps. https://lnkd.in/gcr3QAwT

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I picked up a useful tip today, from Microsoft Copilot, while trying to understand directionality of relationships in the Power BI data model. The attached document quotes what Copilot told me in response to the question I asked it. I found it very helpful; I hope you do too.

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"Does our organization have too many BI tools?" 🤔 If this question has ever crossed your mind...this blog is for you. #BusinessIntelligence #BI #AnalyticsCatalog https://lnkd.in/gPTKF9KE

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One of the things that I've complained about in the past is that there is no built-in way for #PowerQuery to be able to pull up the path for the current #Excel workbook. 😫 It this classic article, I show how I solve this problem by building a parameter table and then linking it into my queries: https://lnkd.in/gr9jTdyK

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