Power BI World Tour 2018 - Seattle

In this session Power BI introduces me. Yes, you read it right. Come along as I introduce myself through Power BI while I introduce Power BI to you. In this unique session I will take you through a story about me and you will learn different components and services of Power BI. You will leave this session with several questions for the rest of the conference and well focused to get the most of these two days.

Integrate, Extend, Embed! In this presentation, you will learn how developers can deliver real-time dashboards, create custom visuals and embed rich interactive analytics in their apps with Power BI. This presentation specifically targets experienced app developers, and also those curious to understand what developers can achieve with Power BI. Numerous demonstrations will put the theory into action.

This presentation is aimed at people who want to create beautiful thematic maps, perform impactful spatial data analysis, and explore common spatial machine learning models with Power BI. Much of the content will make use of Power BI's out-of-the-box spatial capabilities through Esri's ArcGIS Maps and the MapBox Visual for Power BI. While I use data from the United States Census Bureau's rich, fully-featured API to illustrate what can be done with these custom visualizations, what you'll learn can also be reproduced using similar non-U.S. spatial data.
You'll also be introduced to PowerCensus, a series of custom Power Query M functions that allow you to easily clean, convert, and supplement your location data into robust spatial data for powerful analysis. PowerCensus also contains a custom Power Query M connector where you can download and explore the U.S. Census API, which contains over 200 endpoints that holds hundreds of thousands of rows of U.S. poverty, international trade, demographic, and business data.
I'll also highlight some commonly used spatial machine learning models you can integrate with Power BI using the popular statistical programming language, R. From clustering algorithms to hotspot analysis, R in Power BI allows us to deliver better and more rigorous insight from our spatial data.
If you're accustomed to mapping data in Power BI and want to be able to perform advanced spatial analysis and visualize more beautiful maps, this is the session for you.

Healthcare business financial reporting requires integration from billing, payroll, ledger data and more in order to get insights into productivity, costs, and revenue drivers.  Medical practitioners are often left guessing as to how their business and their physician peers are preforming.  Aldrich Group partnered with Marquam to develop a data aggregation and analytics solution for healthcare offices.  This solution, DataDX, showcases physician performance metrics through Power BI Embedded and enables physicians to benchmark performance against peers.
 
At this presentation Trey Udy, Power BI Consultant at Marquam, will highlight what is possible with Power BI Embedded and best practices.  If you are considering using Power BI Embedded you won’t want to miss this presentation!

TimeXtender´s Discovery Hub® is an automation platform enabling easy access to data and improved compliance for PowerBI and other Analytics/Data Science tools. In this session, we will show you how you can use this automation platform to quickly build a comprehensive & agile Data Estate on top of various Microsoft On-Prem or Azure database technologies. Additionally, this session will touch on topics such as flexible data modeling, high-quality auto-generated scripts, documentation, data lineage tracing, managed deployment/execution, and many other value-adding features.

Are you gaining the right actionable insights to drive growth? Is your customer service in need of transformation?  Are you struggling to harness huge data sets about your customers?  
 
In this session you will discover how Microsoft Power BI and Business Applications can help you re-imagine your business.   We will share best practices and showcase solutions, such as Intelligent Helpdesk, to enhance customer experience.   Our real case studies will further illustrate how to leverage ALL the data to improve efficiency and engagement.

Do you want to look like a rookie or a Microsoft Power BI Pro? Come and learn the top rookie mistakes you need to avoid when starting out with Power BI. This session will not only save you from some embarrassment but also save valuable time and money that is spent going down the wrong paths.

We think we use PowerBI to deliver stunning visuals, but for viewers with visual or cognitive impairment, they might describe it differently. Learn how to optimize your visuals so that everyone can appreciate the story your data is telling and get the most out of your reports.

Data modeling is a core competency for analyzing data and a solid data model is the foundation for a robust analytic solution. When you get the data model right, everything in Power BI works like a champ.
We’ll approach the data modeling discipline from two angles: First, we’ll discuss the essential building blocks for an effective data model and what you should you know about modeling data in any Power BI solution. Secondly, you will see how to solve unique business problems and enable advanced calculations and reporting scenarios. If you’re just getting started, you won’t memorize all the techniques but you will realize what is possible and how to approach different challenges when the time is right.
This session will cover:

• Semantic model patterns
• Defining relationships
• Naming conventions & practices
• Hiding tables & fields
• Data categories & field metadata
• Filter directionality
• Disconnected tables
• Bridging tables
• Hierarchies
• Model optimization
• Mixed granularity
• Planning for evolving models

Enterprise-grade intelligence is no longer out of reach! In this session we will take a look at the new enterprise modelling capabilities in Power BI that can help you unlock new insights from your data including some of the latest features such as aggregations for big data which enables interactive analysis over petabyte scale datasets, incremental refresh for faster refreshes, composite models to combine Import and DirectQuery, XMLA Endpoints for connectivity and programmability, and tooling for complex models.

DAX is the language you use when working in Power BI or Power Query to create calculations using your data.
At first, it may seem intimidating, but the truth is that if you have been using functions in Excel, you have the basic knowledge to help you get started in DAX.
The first half of this session will introduce basic DAX terminology and concepts. In the second half, participants can use their own laptop and work on a demo data set, creating some beginner DAX statements.

The experts in DAX say that DAX is an easy language to learn, and a hard language to master. DAX may be easy to learn (although that hasn't been this speaker's experience!), but it is definitely hard to carve out a chunk of time to try out a new skill. This is your chance! At the end of the session, I will also share a list of resources, including books, videos, and blogs for you to continue your journey into DAX.

This session is definitely for beginners who have heard of DAX (and maybe even haven't heard of DAX) and want to get a sense of how it works.

Do you ever worry that your reports look they were born in the '90s, or designed by a first grader? Do you feel overwhelmed when tasked with creating attractive reports which tell the customer a story?

Thankfully, a small amount of knowledge can have a big impact on your reports. There are techniques and patterns to create a pleasing look and feel to our reports, and some well-defined principles to decide which visual is most appropriate in your situation.

Join me in this session to learn:

- Visualization Selection - How to choose the right visual to complement the data message.
- Visualization Formatting - Best practices to tell a complete and accurate story.
- Colour Theory - Designing a colour palette, and ensuring accessibility.
- Layout - Using web design techniques to ensure clean reports.
- Real estate management - How to fit everything on a report without it looking cluttered and losing effectiveness.

This is a Q & A style session , so bring your questions! Session highlights the core fundamentals of Power Query and how it can transform your efforts relating to Business Intelligence. Together we will talk about what it is, how it works, and how you can put it to good hard use in your organization. Power Query is a powerful tool that can help do the dirty work for you! It’s easy to learn and get started! Whether you want to use large complex datasets for Excel, Power BI or Power Pivot, Power Query is definitely a tool to help get you where you want to be!

Learn how Power BI is infusing AI into the product to accelerate insights, reduce manual work, and provide users with new ways of analyzing their data. Whether you are a business user expecting to get answers faster, an analyst interested in using out-of-the-box AI models, or a data scientist looking to scale up the impact of your work – join this session and find out how the new AI features help you achieve this

So you’ve written your first DAX measure. Probably SUM([SalesAmount]), right? But you see the bewildering array of functions – CALCULATE(), FILTER(), ALL(), ALLEXCEPT() and the ever-popular USERELATIONSHIP(). What on *earth* do they all do? At the end of this session you’ll have seen some practical examples that explain these, have a better idea of how to leverage the power in DAX in your reports, and know what further concepts to learn to master DAX.”

Power BI is a great tool for Business users everywhere. However, when I walk into a client and open their existing Power BI Models, I cringe! In one word, I find them "ugly". Learn-on-your-own business users, often lack the core principles and guidelines for Power BI Modeling. In this session, I want to share with you the key best practices and guidelines for building Power BI Models, which would make your Power BI models "beautiful", inside and out :-)

This session uses examples and a small case study to build foundational knowledge and skills in the M query language. Expect a highly interactive demo presentation with ample opportunity for Q&A.

I am excited, and I hope you are too. This is a good presentation as you advance deeper into data preparation with Power BI.

The expectation is that attendees have built multiple queries from scratch in Power BI and are eager to learn more.

Security is different from Sharing, Sharing is about sharing the entire content with others, security is about authorizing different views of the content to others. In this session we go through many different Row Level Security patterns; Static Row Level Security, Dynamic Row Level Security, and many variations of the dynamic RLS, such as giving manager access as well as employee access, you will learn about user profile security scenarios, and hierarchical access levels. This session shows you how DAX and Power BI security comes together to play an important part of a Power BI project lifecycle: Row Level Security.

While you are probably already familiar with Power BI, PowerApps and Microsoft Flow; you may not know that Microsoft is bringing these tools together into a unified brand called: the Microsoft Power Platform. In this session Microsoft Senior Program Manager, Charles Sterling will give an all demo introduction to these products AND how you can use these products together with other offerings such as their new database engine called Common Data Service for Apps and Microsoft Forms to create very sophisticated “no code/low code” for citizen developers.

• 3-5 Bullets, explaining what the attendee will learn from presentation (learning objectives)

1. An introduction to Microsoft Flow
2. An introduction to App Development with PowerApps
3. A high level introduction to Power BI
4. An introduction to Common Data Service for Apps
5. A grounding in how to integrate these tools + Office Forms

Embedding Data science in Business Intelligence services is a new trend. There is always a question about who is a data scientist and what qualifications people should have to become a data science. In this session, an overview of the main roles and qualification of a data science will be presented, what is the difference between data science, data engineer, statistician and a BI person will be explained. Moreover, an explanation on how to start to learn Machine learning, R or Python will be provided. In addition, an explanation of what is the difference between R and Python as the main language for data science will be presented. Finally, an overview of what possibility we have in Microsoft products with the aim of machine learning and data science will be briefly explained and demonstrated.

When your development team is up to a certain size, and often no matter what size it is, you want to start following best development practices. These include things like source control, multiple environments, deployment processes, and governance.

As Power BI content is developed using Power BI Desktop and not Visual Studio as most Microsoft BI solutions are, these things can get tricky.

In this session we will look at what Power BI has to offer when it comes to development lifecycle. We will look at the different options available to the developer when it comes to source control, dev, test and production environments, and deployment of Power BI content. We will then look at the different options when it comes to distribution of content to the end user. Lastly, we will look at governance and see how it is possible to secure the content and audit the usage of Power BI.

For all these topics we will look at the capabilities Power BI offers and how we, in the company where I work, decided to implement it.

Power BI dashboards should simplify the data analysis process for busy business managers and workers who do not necessarily have the time or inclination to dig deeply into data. The purpose of charts, graphs, gauges and alerts are to make BI data easy to grasp. However, building dashboards can be a daunting assignment for BI teams, in no small part because the intended user base often consists of corporate executives and the heads of business units. In addition, they can be a demanding audience.

A dashboard is a visual display of the most important information needed to achieve one or more objectives consolidated on a single computer screen so user can monitor the information at a glance, but how do you make all of this information easy to understand? In addition, more importantly how to do you make it compelling to use?

In this session, we will look at some key best practices that will make it easier to deliver your message to our audience and make your dashboard compelling to use.

Power BI is a great platform that enables self-service BI and data exploration.

In this session I will show you how to use What If parameters in your Power BI report to take your data exploration to the next level. By leveraging What If parameters you can play with different scenarios and visually see how things change on a Power BI report in real-time.

In addition, I will also explain how you can integrate What If parameter values into an R visual so that you can take your analysis capabilities to the next level by blending what if capabilities with machine learning predictions to explore how different business scenarios look in your report today and into the future.

Data preparation is often the most labour-intensive component of an analytics project and getting this right is vital if the results are to be accurate. While the growth of self-service BI has empowered users to answer important questions, ensuring well managed data is available to all employees remains one of businesses biggest challenges.
Dataflows is an extension of the Power BI ecosystem, providing a low code approach using Power Query to create curated datasets that can be easily consumed by business analysts, thereby improving the speed at which business value can be delivered. Dataflows provides a single-version-of-the-truth which was traditionally attained by building a data warehouse.
You will learn
- How Dataflows can be used to create rich, vetted datasets
- How Dataflows can be created with the click of a button, ingesting data from many well knows SAAS solution such as Dynamics and Salesforce
- How to manage Dataflows using advanced data preparation tools such as Databricks.



# This talk will be 40% slides and 60% demo

Dataviz guru Stephen Few once stated that we should “save the pies for dessert”. What he meant is that pie charts are good in some specific use cases, but they should not be used in others. The same is true for other chart types. Using the wrong type of chart will make it harder for report users to understand the story behind the data. To enable insights, information must be presented in the most intuitive way possible. You will leave this session with five easy-to-implement rules, which will guide you through the process of creating clear and attractive visualizations. Every rule will be applied through live demos in Power BI Desktop, where you will learn how to avoid pitfalls from the defaults and turn the right knobs to build clear and helpful visualizations.

In the world of data, we spend much of our time talking about software, and for good reason: the modern wave of tools is dramatically superior to the tools of even five years ago. But there’s a related question that bears revisiting: WHAT should we be doing with those tools? While that may seem like an obvious question, the very existence of the revolutionary new tools makes now a great time to revisit the fundamentals of how we view our relationship with data.

Spoiler alert: many of the obvious valuable things were prohibitively difficult to execute using previous tools – so much so that we’ve forgotten what we should be doing! The speaker (Rob Collie) has seen it all in the process of helping literally hundreds of organizations revolutionize their relationships with data, and in this thought-provoking and non-technical talk, he will share 10 recurring and valuable patterns observed within the past 2-3 years.

Power BI has evolved from it's early years as an Excel 2010 add-in to the Enterprise Analytics platform it is today. Analysts develop solution with Power BI Desktop, share their solutions in the Power BI Service (a cloud based analytics Platform As A Service [PasS]).
For some organizations, the cloud may be a difficult chasm to cross… For those customers, Power BI Report Server (PBIRS) offers another possibility - Power BI hosting in YOUR data center.
In this session we will look at the requirements to license and run PBIRS, what it will do and what it will not do. We will demonstrate the report consumption and navigation capabilities, and look at how it augments the offering of SQL Server Reporting Services and the Power BI Premium offerings.
Power BI Report Server isn't the solution for all organization, but for some it makes for a great first step towards a possible hybrid-cloud solution in the future. The future IS the cloud, so perhaps, PBIRS may be you bridge across the cloud chasm.

Got lots of data, but not sure of what to do with it?
This session will walk you through the best steps to get the most insightful story from your dataset.

Demo will be using free data from a variety of data sources; we will transform the data into a story that will either raise aditional questions or solve an existing issue. 

Bonus** 
Get best practices on report development and query editing. 

In this advanced yet fun and demo heavy interactive session we will go through the tools for publishing and managing your BI assets. Topics being covered are using capacities in Power BI, safely sharing Power BI assets and finally using the Power BI audit log to optimize your Power BI Usage.

For large in-memory Analysis Services Tabular models, the design of table partitions and the scheduled refresh/processing operations has significant implications for query performance, resource utilization, processing duration, and database availability. This session will review the tabular model's processing operation types, design decisions such as parallelism and transactions, and provide examples of Tabular Model Scripting Language (TMSL) scripts and PowerShell scripts used to support the processing of Tabular models. Additionally, common Azure and on-premises job automation and orchestration tools used in the processing of Tabular models will be demonstrated including Azure Automation, SQL Server Agent, and SSIS.

Register to attend this class or follow the instructions below to include registration for the Power BI World Tour.

Please Note:  Academy workshops are half-day, full-day, or two-day training sessions that will build your skills through hands-on, deep dive education. Our Academy Courses do require a separate registration. If you are registering for the Power BI World Tour, you will have the option to add on Academy classes during the registration process.

If you have already registered, it's not to late to add on a class!!

• To edit your registration,  please click here and follow these steps:
  •  This will bring you to the Registration page – you will see a message stating "You are currently Registered." Click on Edit Registration (right side of screen).
  • When you see your registration, click Edit.
  • On the next screen, click Add Activities.
  • Check the box next to the class title you're interested in.
  • Follow the prompts to complete the process of adding this class to your registration.

Academy Course: Power BI: Enhance Your Data Model with DAX

Why do you need the course?
To take your data model beyond simple aggregations and create more complex calculations that span multiple tables and millions of rows of data.

Course Objectives:
By the end of this course, you will be able to use DAX to create calculations in a Power BI Desktop data model. Specifically, you will be able to:

• Understand the concepts of Data Modeling
• Understand the consequences of data model design decisions
• Understand concepts of calculated columns and measures
• Gain familiarity with standard DAX patterns & CALCULATE
• Understand evaluation contexts and their impact on calculations
• Gain ability to parse data modeling formulas

This class is a combination of Lecture, Demo and Lab

The class is designed for someone with intermediate-level Power BI experience.

Please bring a laptop to the course, with the following connectivity and software installed:

Internet connectivity: You must be connected to the internet

• At minimum, a computer with 2-cores and 4GB RAM running one of the following version of Windows: Windows 7, indows 8, (64-bit preferred), Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 or Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows Server 2012/R2 
• Microsoft Power BI Desktop requires Internet Explorer 9 or greater
• Verify if you have 32bit or 64bit operating system to decide if you need to install the 32bit or 64bit applications. 
• Search for computer on your PC, right click properties for your computer
• You will be able to identify if your operating system is 64 or 32 bit based on “system type” as shown below
• Download and install Power BI Desktop: Download and install Microsoft Power BI Desktop from http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=45331. Please choose appropriate 64-bit or 32-bit version depending on your platform. Microsoft Power BI Desktop is available for 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (x64) platforms

Download Class Files:
Copy Files from your USB to C:\Power BI_Adv_Model\ (Please return the USBs)

Register to attend this class or follow the instructions below to include registration for the Power BI World Tour.

Please Note:  Academy workshops are half-day, full-day, or two-day training sessions that will build your skills through hands-on, deep dive education.  Our Academy Courses do require a separate registration. If you are registering for the Power BI World Tour, you will have the option to add on Academy classes during the registration process.

If you have already registered, it's not to late to add on a class!!

• To edit your registration,  please click here and follow these steps:
  •  This will bring you to the Registration page – you will see a message stating "You are currently Registered." Click on Edit Registration (right side of screen).
  • When you see your registration, click Edit.
  • On the next screen, click Add Activities.
  • Check the box next to the class title you're interested in.
  • Follow the prompts to complete the process of adding this class to your registration.

Mastering Power Query in a Day
 
The foundations of a Business Intelligence solution are data transformations, data wrangling, data cleansing and ETL.  A well-crafted Power BI project rests on Power Query and the queries that define the data model, calculations and report visuals. This full-day session will teach you how to lay the foundation for a Power BI solution with simple and advanced Power Query techniques.  
 
Learn from Paul Turley, ten-year Microsoft Data Platform MVP and veteran BI Solution Architect.  You will learn best practice design patterns, tricks, shortcuts and proven techniques to improve your skills and add immediate value to your projects.  Power Query is everywhere - and growing.  The skills and techniques taught in this workshop apply to Power BI Desktop, the "Get Data" feature in Excel 2016+, SQL Server Analysis Services 2017+ (SSAS), Azure Analysis Services (AAS) and Data Flows in the Power BI Common Data Service (CDS).  

You will learn through exercises and instructor-led hands-on demos.  Bring your laptop with the latest version of Power BI Desktop installed.  The rest will be provided.  We will cover material from basics through advanced.  Each exercise is separate so you can absorb only what you need to learn, based on your prior experience, needs and skill level.
 
Power Query Basics
Quick tour of the Power Query interface & essentials
Creating and managing queries
Adding and editing steps
Recovery and project management
Essential best practices
Managing data sources
Working with folder paths, web URIs & database connections
Referencing & Duplicating queries
Consolidating queries, building base queries  & dependency chains
Loading queries into data model tables
Basic error handling & debugging
 
Data Sources & Structures
Flat CSV files
Irregular text files (headings & totals)
JSON (simple)
JSON (complex, with nested & ragged hierarchies)
SQL server
Excel (single sheet/table, multiple sheets/tables)
Folders & file collections
Web pages a page tables
Web APIs & web service endpoints
 
Essential Query Techniques
Managing data types
Applying correct naming conventions
Working with Date & Time values
Splitting & formatting columns
De-duplicating & grouping
Pivot, Unpivot & Transpose
Custom columns & expression basics
Extracting tables from a data sources to supporting essential modeling for Power BI report design:
o Fact tables
o Dimension tables
o Bridge tables
o Slicer & calculation-driver tables
o Role-playing dimensions
 
Advanced Power Query Techniques
Working with M: The Data Mashup language
M function essentials
Prioritized learning (what's most important)
Using & managing parameters
Using the #shared object for internal documentation, examples & code syntax
Understanding M objects (values, tables, lists & records)
Number, Date, Time & Text manipulation M functions
Create a Date lookup/dimension table using M & Power Query
Create a Time series lookup/dimension table using M & Power Query
o Why do I need a Date dimension in Power BI?
o Standard date parts & hierarchies
o Columns to support time-intelligence calculations
o Working with fiscal & special-purpose calendars (e.g. 4-4-5, ISO)
Working with query functions
Parameterized queries, API endpoints & user-defined functions
 
Putting it Together
Examples:
o Queries to support data model construction
o Queries used to support report visuals
o Deploy a report, configure the on-premises gateway
o Use query parameters to schedule refresh in a deployed Power BI solution