Gain advantage of a phased approach for your next BI project
Implementing a business intelligence (BI) solution is a daunting task which involves considerable investments in terms of time, energy, and capital for right implementation. Despite all its capabilities, if not implemented properly, it will result in unnecessary delays, cost overruns, data quality and consistency issues, and disconnected end users. Hence, it is crucial to have the right strategy and approach in place. An organization-level BI implementation works best when it’s done in a staged or phased manner. When you implement BI with a phase-based, collaborative approach, each phase will have a significant milestone and a building block with well-defined objective and purpose. Well defined milestones can be tracked for success at each stage generating the opportunities for the next. Here are the key phases that must be followed when implementing a business intelligence solution: Phase 0 – Information needs discovery and planning This stage is a must! Before the project kick starts, it is crucial to invest time to understand the business context and priorities to avoid rework as we progress. An in-depth assessment of existing infrastructure helps to identify gaps, discover current challenges and areas of improvements. The key activities to be taken up in this phase are information needs discovery and discussions with all the stakeholders. This step will help us figure out the business problems that can be addressed in the subsequent phases and formulate a strategic roadmap in line with the business priorities. Phase 1 – Data discovery and aggregation This phase mainly focuses on understanding the organizational data sets thoroughly and identifying how to pull data from all the critical source together for analysis by keeping in mind the real constraints to implement these into the business processes. Assuming that the data can be easily gathered and analyzed could result in delays during BI implementation. Data discovery and aggregation is the most challenging stage because it requires a thorough understanding of the business, its requirements, and how to collect the relevant information; because raw data imported from scattered systems can be barely analyzed as-it-is. So, the data needs to be cleansed, structured, and normalized using some state-of-the-art tools and techniques to create a centralized data warehouse. While designing the centralized data mart, it is essential to look carefully at every field, learn about the relationships between variables, create the most suitable models, and make the data reliable and ready for analysis. Phase 2 – BI implementation and data visualization It is always recommended to utilize the industry standards and proven agile methodologies for BI implementation. This will help in easy implementation of business intelligence platform and integration with other line-of-business (LOB) applications, in a streamlined way. Once implemented successfully, creating dashboards is no easy task. It is an art that requires much more than just knowing how to use the tool. Data visualization strategies like which visual will communicate the results better, who will use the dashboards, how will the end-users be interacting with them, and what queries do the users expect the dashboards to answer, helps design the dashboards and reports in-line with what is expected. Once designed and developed, it is essential to validate the data with a cross-functional team for accuracy and quality before going-live. Phase 3 – Training and support – Rollout and going live This phase emphasizes on determining the organization’s readiness to adopt the new BI system. The rollout phase includes activities like training in the context of the organization and documentation for different roles like end-users, administrators, etc. BI user adoption is a key indicator of a successful BI initiative. Most of the users in the company would be more interested in knowing how to use the solution rather than how it has been built. Also, instead of implementing the solution to the whole company at once, it is recommended to roll out BI to individual departments and/or business areas to ensure smooth and successful adoption. Positive reviews about the solution from the new users can lead to excitement in adoption among other departments. Support phase consists of post-production implementation and adoption activities like continuous monitoring and support on data volumes, report updates, dashboard usage, etc. to ensure the system works as per the business expectations. This phase also discovers the opportunities to update and scale the system Phase 4 – Advanced analytics and actions Every business in today’s data-driven world is looking to reap the benefits of predictive analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and other cognitive computing to gain competitive advantage, drive faster decision-making, boost efficiency, and increase customer satisfaction. Advanced analytics is the foundation to unlock the insights you’ve been searching for. With a holistic approach to the advanced analytics, you can get the right data, act on it, and make sense out of it. To transform your organization into an intelligent workplace, ready for today and the future and realize the potential your data offers, you must ensure that appropriate data management and data governance policies are in place. Breaking down the requirements into phases makes the process of BI implementation more manageable. Instead of having one large deliverable, the phased approach makes the team more productive as the milestones are well defined, and the development process is more iterative with frequent interaction with the project stakeholders that allows smooth implementation. When all is said and done, one has to be aware of the fact that BI adoption and implementation is not a one-time activity. As your business grows, you will have to refine your BI systems and strategies to accommodate the new changes. We assist our clients in every step of their BI journey in becoming data-driven, by providing everything from specific expertise on discrete issues to holistic transformations spanning strategy building, implementation, integration, reporting and visualization, training and adoption, and much more! Need help in planning or upgrading your BI implementation? Talk to our experts and get your business analytics maturity report.
Business Intelligence trends to watch for in 2019
Business Intelligence is set to become even more thrilling as Artificial Intelligence will continue to be the toast for tech professionals all over the globe. Companies will no longer look at the benefits of adopting analytics but look out for the best BI solution for their industry. Here are the top BI trends to look out for in 2019 that will add value to your company: 1: Customer Experience Customer analytics will be one of the primary focus areas for business intelligence in 2019. Customer journey analytics, speech analytics, emotion detection, customer engagement center (CEC) interaction analytics – awaits service leaders to visualize and connect the customer journey across multiple devices and channels. Consumer expectations are rising and supporting their requirements with a colossal amount of data will be a challenging task. Analyzing and predicting the user’s behavior will go hand in hand with data management and Artificial Intelligence. Becoming data-driven, using business analytics tools to adopt the most effective way of decision-making will become essential for the sustainable growth of a company. 2: Growing Importance of The CDO & CAO Today, Big data and analytics are becoming vital for every business. Every company has had a Chief Information Officer who administers all the information management assets and security issues. But today, analytics roles are becoming so important that a new position has emerged with time: Chief Data Officer (CDO), and Chief Analytics Officer (CAO). The role of a Chief Data Officer is to provide users with data that is clean and ready-to-use. Also, CDO manages data assets of a company and improve the efficiency of data analytics. Another role that is of importance is that of a Chief Analytics Officer. While it complements the role of the CDO and CIO, it is becoming a sought-after role – “If the CDO takes care of data enablement, then the CAO is about how you drive insights off that data and make data actionable.” 3: Increased Investment and Adoption of Artificial Intelligence Artificial intelligence has taken center stage, and analysts believe that if companies have not started adopting it, then they might not catch up with the competition in 2019. Research shows that 38% of the businesses have already implemented AI in some form, and an even more significant percentage of the companies are assessing the technology’s worthiness. Artificial intelligence platforms can analyze data inputs faster than humans and uncover hidden insights which people might miss without relying on technology. Some AI tools can provide information directly from the customers in a streamlined way. As per a poll conducted in 2016, 80% of companies were already using chatbots or wanted to do so by 2020. This is because businesses can derive valuable things from chatbots, mainly by paying attention to the words people use and the sentiments expressed. Companies that will wait for too long to deploy it will risk falling further behind their peers. 4. Self-Service BI Interfaces With the boom of self-service BI interfaces, the role of data scientists will end, who used to take deep dives into their analytics. One of the researches also revealed that companies consider business intelligence as something that differentiates them in the marketplace and helps them to promote a data-driven culture in the organization. If companies have not started using BI, self-service software can be a smart way to begin. However, before planning to invest in such tools, businesses must evaluate what they aim to learn from BI and how such insights fit into their overall business operations. 5. Human Learning Styles Humans use a mixture of sensory inputs to learn – often defined as three learning styles – auditory/reading, visual or kinesthetic. By the end of 2019, business intelligence will be making use of information delivery mediums to use all these learning methods. For example, for auditory learners, auto-generated narratives in a written or spoken format which describes the pattern of the data selected will come into existence. Similarly, 3D printing can play a significant role in creating maps for the kinesthetic learners because they work best when they can physically feel something. In the case of visually-led learners, the options will grow, where they can take advantage of high-resolution displays to enable the rendering of enormous data sets, and perhaps virtual reality experiences. Let’s tighten our seat belts and get thrilled by what this new year will bring.
How to embed a Power BI report into an application for your customers
Power BI Embedded in Azure provides us with the ability to embed reports, dashboards or tiles into an application by using app owns data. App owns data typically means having an application that uses Power BI as its embedded analytics platform. As an ISV developer, you can create Power BI reports in an application that is fully interactive, and the end users of the application will not require a Power BI license to view the report content. Why do you need analytic solution embedded into your app? Embedding Power BI helps ISVs or developers to embed visuals into customer applications and assist them in making better decisions without building an analytical solution. Embedding analytics helps business users to access their business data and perform required actions to generate valuable insights using this data within the application. Minimize development efforts and achieve faster time to market with your application. Spend more time focusing on your product rather than developing visual analytics features from scratch. Deliver value for your customers by easily exploring data and gaining insights from anywhere. In this blog, I will explain how you can integrate a Power BI report into an application using Power BI .NET SDK. Here you are using Power BI Embedded in Azure for your customer using app owns data. Prerequisites A Power BI Pro account, sign up for a free trial A Microsoft Azure subscription, create a free account Set up your own Azure Active Directory tenant setup. Visual Studio (version 2013 or later). Part 1 – Registering your application in Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) To establish an identity for your application and to specify permissions to Power BI REST resources you need to register your application in Azure AD. To register your application, your Azure AD should also have the rights to give permissions. Go to Azure Portal and then go to Azure AD. Go to App Registrations and click on New application registrations. Follow the prompts and create a new application. After filling this up, it should look like this. You need to enable additional permissions for your application. Click on Settings of the application you just created and click on Required Permissions Click on Windows Azure Active Directory and click on all the Delegated Permissions and click on Save. Now click on Add and add Power BI Service API Select all permissions under Delegated Permissions and Select Save when done. Remember you can only grant the permissions if your account has Global Admin rights. Part 2 – Setting up Power BI Service Environment To embed reports for your customers, you need to place your reports into an app workspace. The master account must have admin rights for the workspace. Create an app workspace by selecting workspaces > Create app workspace. This is where you are going to publish your Power BI report. Open your Power BI file in Power BI desktop and publish the report to the workspace you have created. Now, you can view the report in Power BI service. Part 3 – Embedding the report into your application For demo purpose, download the App Owns Data sample application code provided by Microsoft. To embed the Power BI report into your application, you need to fill five fields in order to run the application successfully. These are application ID, group ID, report ID, power BI username and password. Open the Web.config file in the sample application; this is where you must fill all these IDs. Fill in the application ID field with the application we created from Azure. The application ID is used by the application to identify itself to the users from whom you’re requesting permissions. In the Azure portal, select All Services and select App Registrations and click on the application you have created in Part 1. We need to take Application ID from here. Now, open your Power BI report in Power BI service. From this URL you will get workspace ID and report ID. From this URL, workspace ID will be 1a8d021d-9bfd-47a0-966f-c2d181449b26. From this URL the report ID will be 8ecc94fa-fe19-41f5-968e-725989ede165. The first ID written after groups is the Workspace ID while the second ID written after reports is the Report ID. So, now we have all the three IDs required. Put them in the Web.config file along with the username and password of the Power BI master account. Then, Run the application and you can view the report in the sample application. Part 4 – Move to production After you’ve completed developing your application, you have to back up your app workspace with a dedicated capacity. This dedicated capacity is required to move to production. A dedicated capacity will give you an advantage of having a dedicated resource for your customer. You can purchase a dedicated capacity at Azure portal. Use the table to determine which Power BI Embedded capacity is suitable for your need. Sign into the Azure portal and select Create a resource> Data + analytics. Search for Power BI Embedded and within Power BI Embedded, select Create. Fill in the required information and then select Create. Assign your app workspace to dedicated capacity. Finally, after you have created a dedicated capacity, assign your app workspace to that dedicated capacity. In the Power BI service, expand workspaces and click on the ellipsis for the workspace you’re using for embedding your content and then click on Edit workspaces. Click on Advanced and enable Dedicated capacity, then select the dedicated capacity you have created and click on Save. These are the steps to embed a Power BI report into your customer’s application. We have started by registering our application in Azure AD, then we have setup our Power BI environment. Then we have embedded our report into the application by updating our application’s code. Finally, to move to production, we have created a dedicated capacity to backup our app workspace and our Power BI report is embedded into our application. Get in touch with us to meet your specific information needs and make better decisions with Power BI solutions.
Business intelligence vs analytics: Align your data strategy
Traditionally, enterprises have targeted their information around business intelligence, but the rise of predictive analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, is changing the equation. In the last few decades, organizations have turned to innovative solutions to handle workloads, preserve profitability and ensure competitiveness in their respective businesses. BI solutions accumulate and examine actionable information with the objective of providing insights into enhancing company operations. Are you on the lookout for strategies to understand your business operations? What about find pain points in your workflows? How about examining large data sets to draw insights that are valuable? Analysts and consultants agree that understanding the distinctions between business intelligence and other analytics programs, in addition to the value each brings to the venture. We break down where business intelligence matches in the range of information offerings available today — and the way business analytics is growing, thanks to changes in tools, tactics, and personal needs. Business intelligence vs. business analytics Business Analytics includes approaches and technologies you can use to get and explore your company’s data, with a view to pulling new, data-driven insights to improve business planning and boost decision-making process. Analytics in the broadest sense applies to all technology-enabled difficulty activities. Generally, this involves using predictive analysis and modeling to establish trends, figuring out why things are happening, and making an educated guess about how things will pan out in the future. Business Intelligence is about accessing and exploring your company’s data. And, again, the ultimate aims are to understand how the company is doing, make better-informed decisions which enhance performance, and create new strategic opportunities for expansion. BI is more concerned with the what’s and the how’s than the whys. Business Intelligence lets you employ selected metrics to potentially enormous, unstructured data sets, and covers data mining, querying, online analytical processing (OLAP), and reporting as well as business performance monitoring, predictive and prescriptive analytics. Business intelligence includes services and tools to transform data into actionable intelligence that educates an organization’s strategic and tactical business decisions. It is what enables a company to collect, examine and current analysis of information. If you’re working with masses of raw information, you need extensive control over how you use that data, and you also would like to draw out your requirements and conclusions from the figures, the tools and methods you use will likely fall under BI, instead of BA. Selecting Between Business Intelligence and Business Analytics Organizations have begun to find that content and data shouldn’t be regarded as different features of data management but rather managed in an integrated enterprise strategy. BI utilizes past and present data to maximize the current for present achievement. BA uses the past and assesses the data to prepare businesses for the long run. Size Up Your Requirements Traditionally, business intelligence vendors targeted ventures mostly, but currently, there’s a paradigm change of BI moving to small companies and midsize organizations. Self-service BI is a significant focus of those smaller businesses. Self-service business intelligence (SSBI) is a method of data analysis that permits users to gain access and operate with corporate information although they don’t have a desktop in analytical or information science. It typically offers a user-friendly UI and does not involve communicating, which means that your average joe can run it. Pick with Intention Deciding on the solution for the company is dependent upon your intentions. If you’re happy with your business model as a complete and mostly want to enhance operations, boost efficiency and meet organizational objectives, business intelligence could be an optimum solution. Specifically, businesses that rely on real-time reporting tend to lean toward BI since they’re worried about what they could improve from the here and now. Businesses which need extensive data (e.g., the demand for data warehousing) and instinctive reporting needs to consider company intelligence seriously. BI has the additional benefits of targeting a company’ weak places and providing actionable insights into those issues. Business intelligence tools are excellent options for supervisors who wish to enhance decision making and comprehend their business’s productivity, work procedures, and workers. Then, with this knowledge, enhance their company from the bottom up. If you want help in gaining more insight from your data for better decision, then Advaiya’s experts can help you. Contact us here
4 things about BI reporting your boss wants to know
BI reporting is referred to the process of providing information or reports to end -users through a BI solution. Business Intelligence Reporting can give any organization complete control over all its data, helping to drive more valuable insights and empower employees to meet and even exceed their goals. Here is what BI reporting can do for you: It makes data analysis fast, accessible, and hassle-free. BI reporting platforms are extremely easy to use. You can build dynamic charts, graphs, custom dashboards and generate reports in a matter of minutes. Within the copious amounts of data, you can find the answers you need immediately. For example, Microsoft’s Power BI provides natural language query. Just type in a natural question and watch Power BI produce the exact data you asked for. Some of the best BI reporting tools enable you to take your data on the road. The Power BI mobile app gives you access to all your analytics wherever you go. It increases collaboration across the board. BI reporting platform helps you bring all your data under one roof. This ensures everyone can finally work together on the same data and changes are reflected in real-time. Allows you to share your data insights intelligently. Unlike manual reporting, BI reporting enables flexible controls that let you send the exact data you want to the exact people you want in the exact way you want. The most up-to-date analytics anywhere. Only BI reporting can give you real-time data analysis, ensuring your employees are never left behind. It lets you manage all your data with ease. BI reporting allows you to curate your content with accuracy. You can easily control access permissions per user, data source, or even individual lines on a report. It also enables you to build a holistic data governance strategy. You can create a data management plan in line with your organization with auditing controls. Stop worrying about your data’s security. With more data controls, as well as secure infrastructure provided by BI platforms these days, you can rest easy. It saves you both money and time. Look for platforms that offer value for every buck you spend. One of which we can confidently talk about is Microsoft’s Power BI. The competition can’t touch its value. No other product offers as much power for as little price as Power BI. Don’t get distracted by data spikes. BI reporting platforms will also automatically manage unexpectedly high data loads for you. Microsoft Power BI can give your organization insights that will drive its future growth and has all the above-mentioned features. If you want to learn more about it, try taking a guided learning experience through all its features or sign up for a free demo. Now get out there and go convince your boss! Want information about our BI reports and dashboards solutions? Click here
5 ways to turn business intelligence into business growth
We’re in a digital transformation era where data is more valuable than ever. Organizations would have the capacity to have an aggressive edge if they genuinely comprehend the intensity of information and advance the utilization of information in central leadership. It’s the key to smooth functionality and success of everything from BFSI to manufacturing to healthcare industries. Data has become the lifeline of organizations. Big data, as we define it, is structured or unstructured data, so massive in volume that it becomes difficult for traditional software tools to analyze them. But thanks to the improvement in big data technologies, companies can now take strategic decisions in minutes rather than hours or hours if not in days. Acting on big data catalyzes strategizing an organization’s action plan. And this is where Business Intelligence comes into the picture. Let’s have a look at how to turn BI into business growth using big data. Teamwork and Collaboration: One of the main benefits of using modern day BI tools is their ability to provide a platform that allows analyst, data scientists, decision makers to work collaboratively and act sensibly on approaches for solving the main challenges of a company. Collaboration offers a lot of benefits, and it adapts to broader workplace trends. With the help of visual analytics and the power of self-service BI, all the members working on a data project are now able to collaboratively work on one problem with real-time access to all the features of the BI tool. Hence, improving the overall operational efficiency of your business. Creating your business plan and Big Data roadmap implementation: Advanced analytics has become an integral part of the big data ecosystem today. Just accumulating data doesn’t work. We expect every business user and IT person to have basic knowledge of BI if they want to be competitive in the job market. Understanding how to interpret data isn’t just for IT professionals; every person interacting with data will require some degree of data literacy. Analyzing the information enables you to strategize your moves. You need to take appropriate action based on your data analysis to remain competitive and productive. Optimize Marketing Campaigns: Comprehend the market situations. By breaking down the enormous information, you can show signs of improvement in current market conditions. For instance, by investigating clients’ buying practices, an organization can discover the items that are sold the most and deliver items as per this pattern. By this, it can get ahead of its competitors. With the help of Big data, organizations thus can improve decision making in marketing campaigns. Identifying KPIs and Implementing BI Strategy: Companies which lay emphasis on KPIs grow faster than the companies which do not. Gone are the days when business users were dependent on IT for dashboards and reports. KPIs are quantifiable values and are utilized to demonstrate how feasibly and precisely an organization can accomplish its business goals. KPIs are at the center of a suitable BI technique of any organization. KPIs indicate which areas need improvement and which ones are performing well. Along these lines, it is basic to distinguish the key performing KPIs. Identify trends to stay competitive: The analytics industry is changing at a rapid pace. Latest updates are coming now and then. For example, if we consider Power BI, then there are monthly updates of their products. Recognizing what’s happening around and advancing your organization nearby those progressions can keep you aggressive. You need to keep yourself informed to identify and then take advantage of new opportunities. So, the critical question here is, why suddenly there is a lot of emphasis on BI? And the answer is straightforward. It is because of the rate at which data is generated these days. It is estimated that the amount of data accumulated in the past 2-3 years have surpassed the total data generated in the history of humanity. So, making proper use of data to drive intelligent business decisions is the need of the hour. In today’s data-centric world, it has become even more important to apply business intelligence strategies to Big data. By leveraging the power of Big data and business intelligence, businesses can improve decision making. Traditionally, data management and analytics have resided in various parts of the organization. Separating authoritative limits and making better incorporation between IT and business offices is a fundamental advance making a course for effective change.
10 Keys to a Successful Business Intelligence Strategy
Business intelligence (BI) is vital for business growth but receiving benefits from BI requires more than just implementing the technology that is used to enable it. We have been hearing the buzzword ‘Business Intelligence’ from the past couple of years, how it helps in creating new business opportunities and making informed business decisions. Business intelligence (BI) is the key for organizations to stay pertinent in today’s ever-changing business landscape. Following are the ten essential components of any successful BI strategy: BI is more than a technological initiative First things first – it’s important to know that to succeed in deploying BI, one must have the support of key business departments. First, IT needs to be involved to ensure proper data integrity, governance and actual implementation. Also, stakeholders with different business areas should be involved throughout the BI deployment process. Understanding who will use what type of data and for what purposes can help in showing the right information needed thus guiding you in effective decision making. Have a strong validation process Remember, quality outweighs quantity. Focus on making selected things better rather than trusting a lot of things that you suspect of producing faulty insights. The validation process of your organization needs to be agile and should also respond quickly to the latest BI functions. For instance, a BI tool generates reports on a company’s net sales figures. If that tool uses sales data but is not able to figure out the number of sold items that were returned, the final information provided is not useful. You don’t want people to comment “I don’t trust the data” thereby making the report worthless. So, focus on having a robust validation process. Prioritize business problems over data Your marketing team spots a customer churn problem and needs to know why customers are leaving. The focus should be on delivering the capabilities to answer the marketing question by first deciding what metrics need to be measured then accessing the data required to calculate those metrics, and lastly enabling marketing to slice and dice the data. So, the primary focus should be the business problem. Create a data storage plan Some organizations keep their data in an isolated data mart. Although it is quick and cheap, it will create additional silos whenever additional data storage is needed. Another thing needs to be considered whether you need to build a physical data warehouse or go with the semantic layers to link operational systems. Training & Reskilling Your company’s employees should have the basic knowledge of reporting skills. Along with the latest development in analytics, users of business analytics must be reskilled and trained. This will ensure that your organization is well equipped to support value-driven decision making. Your organization should always welcome a data-driven approach. This will help you make smart and intelligent decisions that are informed and impactful. Keep your data clean Now, that you have created a plan for data storage, it is vital that your organization’s data is clean. Cleaning data equals cleaning your analytics. Although cleaning the data could be a little difficult, clean data will help ensure the success of BI. Identify right key performance indicators (KPIs) KPIs are the values measure how effectively a company is achieving their business objectives. KPIs inform if your business is on track and the areas it is lagging. When a BI strategy is implemented, ensure that your KPIs align with your company objectives. Choose the right BI software/partner for your business Choosing the right BI tool/partner. While preparing for all the above steps, you will also need to find the right BI tool and implement it successfully. When implementing this process, choose between an on-premise or an online cloud-based BI solution. Try to start small but keep on scaling as your needs grow. This is a very important step, so do not rush through it. Also, go for free trials first. BI value assessment Assess and measure the ROI at every milestone defined in the strategy. This will help keep the BI initiative more focused on cost efficiency and in identifying improvements in migration and technology upgrades. Continuous assessment also provides an opportunity to make modifications to the strategy to re-align to the changing business needs thus maximizing ROI. Follow a phased approach Be persistent. An outcome based BI strategy always takes an iterative approach. Take small steps and be consistent. Start by building some dashboards and measuring a few KPIs. Gather feedback and repeat this process again with a new and better release. However, a good BI roadmap doesn’t have an end date. Your organization must keep on investing in it for long-term thereby refining data, processes and, reports. Conclusion For continuous business growth and an added advantage over your competitors; strategy, analysis and planning is required. A roadmap and constant evolution of strategies is very important to utilize the true benefits of a BI strategy. Without any direction and concrete plan, it is more likely you may get stuck in meaningless analytics. Thus, the above steps can be very useful for an organization to meet their business goals and to achieve a successful BI strategy.
Why Microsoft Power BI is the leader in business analytics?
Gartner recently positioned Microsoft’s Power BI as a leader in their annual magic quadrant for business intelligence and analytics Platforms. Also, for the second year in the row, Microsoft is placed farthest in vision within the leader’s quadrant. The reason behind this achievement is mainly because of the new exciting features Power BI team releases every month. Let’s have a look at few of the key features released in february and march 2018. 1. Formatting changes: We can now control the labeling of data in scattering and another kind of cartesian charts. This improves the readability of the report and helps in a situation when data labels overflow the bar in charts. You can also change the size and background color. Similarly, the size of the axis labels can also be controlled now to increase the percentage of the chart used by the axis labels. Another formatting feature added is the bar/column padding control. PBI desktop users can now search the analytics/formatting pane. This is helpful because there are many options available under these panes and it has now become easy to browse through them. A live report can be found at Financial Performance Analysis Report to see the formatting changes. 2. Sync slicer: In March, the PBI team delivered the most requested feature on the ideas forum. With the help of sync slicer feature, we can now synchronize all the pages where the sync slicer is applied. This means that if I select any slicer/filter on a page, the same filter selection would be applied to other pages where the sync mode is on. In the following image we can see that four locations are selected on Page 1 When we move to the next page, according to sync slicer information, of these four selected locations should be displayed. Please check the live report at Restaurant Real Time Report 3. Bookmarking: Though bookmarking was released in october 2017 , but now it is generally available. Bookmarking helps users create storytelling like experience. There are many use cases of bookmarks. Collection of bookmarks can help in presenting a series of insights thus enabling storytelling aspect of BI which is important these days. An interesting analysis of Profit Margin is available in this report which illustrates a company’s profit and total sales by changing margin and discount percentage. The Profit-Margin Analysis shows how much of profit would be generated on the specified values of discount, margin and target profit. Click on the image icons on top left corner to see the magic of bookmarks. 4. Custom visuals: One of the main reasons behind the success of PBI is custom visuals. Think of a scenario where you must show your data in the tree visualization format or in box and whisker plot. In other BI tools, you need to create the visualization from scratch thus taking a lot of time. But in Power BI you can make such as visual in few clicks. That is the beauty of custom visuals. There are many custom visuals available in the app source. Let me discuss few of the important custom visuals. TreeViz: TreeViz represents your data in a tree–like structure. It is good when one wants to organize the data hierarchically. Expand the nodes to see the next level in hierarchy. We can add as many levels we want. Funnel by MAQ software: The Funnel with Source custom visual is perfect to track any metric of interest over various stages along with the source of entry of the data point to the funnel. Network visualization and filter: This chart visualizes data as a network which lets you see flow between various categories. Categories are displayed as nodes and are connected via line. The size of the nodes represents the magnitude of a category. The network structure makes it possible to see the connections among many categories. 5. Tool tip: This feature is the latest one which was released in this month. Now we can create visually compelling tooltips which will pop up when you hover over visuals, based on report pages you create in PBI Desktop. These tooltips include all the visuals which are created in the report page of tooltip. This automatically filters the data point of the visual on which mouse is hovered. 5) Tool tip: This feature is the latest one which was released in this month. Now we can create visually compelling tooltips which will pop up when you hover over visuals, based on report pages you create in PBI Desktop. These tooltips include all the visuals which are created in the report page of tooltip. This automatically filters the data point of the visual on which mouse is hovered. These were few of the updates which Power BI releases every month. The Power BI team works continuously on improving and enhancing the capabilities of the entire Power BI ecosystem. This is making Power BI number one choice in the business intelligence and data visualization software industry.
10 most popular technology blog posts
In 2017, big topics reigned in the world of cloud and analytics. Whether the subject was integrating Power BI reports with Project Server, or determining how to make the most of new technologies like – Cloud and BI, or embracing Office 365 for a digital workplace, readers of the Advaiya Blogsite were seen hungry for acquiring new knowledge and have enjoyed our posts throughout the year. Here are the top 10 blog posts of the year based on the most read by our readers: Cloud is good – Cloud allows businesses access to the benefits of technology without worrying about (most of) the underpinnings—building, deploying, operating, maintaining, and investing. Thus, the businesses can focus on what technology can deliver, rather than delivering technology. Read More. Powerful decision making with BI – Being in business is being in the business of decision making. Right decisions, made at the right time, and implemented in the right manner—make all the difference. See how the right BI tools help make informed, insightful and impactful decisions. Read More. Major concerns for cloud computing in respect of Office 365 – For businesses, be it small, medium or large, whether for profits, non-profit or educational institute, all have concerns relating to should they start using cloud services, and if yes, how? Read More. Microsoft Teams and Project Online integration using Microsoft Flow – As Teams become a single hub for team work, it is quite essential to have all project related updates available as posts in there in Teams. You can quickly integrate Teams with Project Online using Microsoft Flow. Read More. 4 step-guide to a successful Project Online/ Project Server adoption strategy – Achieving a successful Project Online/Server deployment would require focusing on driving adoption and making sure everyone understands the benefits of working with the new solution. Read More. Is your organization truly data-driven? – In today’s digital age, we are engulfed with an enormous amount of data. Organizations who have the knowledge to extract insights and decisions based on data would be at a competitive edge rather than the organizations who still have not understood its value. Read More. Save yourself from the hustle of gathering project status at the last minute – Quickly share project information that needs your executives’ attention in one view with quick insight executive dashboard that AdValue offers. Read More. Fast track your productivity with AdValue – AdValue is a package you can install on top of your Project Online tenant that instantly helps you to get the most out of your deployment. Read More. [New Release] Project management on the go with QuickProject – The newer version of QuickProject App with improved user interface and updated details for assignments and projects released in August. Read More. Facing unplanned downtime and reduced productivity? – Despite developments in infrastructure robustness, organizations still face software, hardware, network, and database downtime, ranging from short periods to closing the business for days. How can you prevent unplanned downtime and hampered productivity? Read More. Interested in getting these new technology updates right in your inbox? Subscribe today!