Get insights faster with Power BI
My Masters’ of Science thesis in Transportation Engineering was on a dynamic traffic assignment problem – figuring out the best routes for drivers with given origins, destinations, start time at origins, while optimizing their time during interactions with other travelers on the road throughout their trip. It was a far-fetched goal that did not seem very practical at that time and I am amazed we have achieved that goal since my graduation – rerouting ourselves as we follow along the directions on our phones. My latest obsession is with Power BI. Using a Power BI dashboard is like a traffic assignment problem. You have an overview of the situation to begin with, and many paths you can follow and explore to get to where you need. You can travel down onto a new road you have never been on and discover a new way to get around. You can even ask questions from a friendly dashboard if you are not clear. Begin a new journey and learn to get the most out of your time by knowing your way around the dashboard and reports, slicing and filtering the data using a variety of techniques and asking the right questions, both of your dashboard and of your report creators to make it work for what you need. Interested in learning more: attend our upcoming Live Demo: Power BI Showcase – Dashboard Essentials for Users on December 13, 2016 @10 AM PT
How to use columns from two different tables in Power BI
Power BI is a business analytics solution that lets you visualize your data and share insights across your organization, or embed them in your app or website. Connect to hundreds of data sources, simplify data prep, and drive insightful decisions. Produce beautiful reports, then publish them for your organization to consume on the multiple devices. A free version of Power BI is meant for small to midsize company owners; an expert variant named Power BI Plus is available for a monthly subscription fee. Users may download a program for Windows 10, known as Power BI Desktop, and native cellular programs for Windows, Android and iOS apparatus. There’s additionally Power BI Report Server for businesses that have to keep their reports and data on assumptions. That edition of Power BI calls for a unique variant of the desktop app known as Power BI Desktop for Power BI Report Server. How to use columns from two different tables in Power BI Ever came across a scenario where you need to perform some action or calculation on columns from two different tables? Were you able to do it without using join (merge or append) queries? Suppose you have two tables Resources and Assignments, and you need one calculated field wherein you can find Resource Burn – that is – ([Resource Standard Rate] * [Assignment Work]). Let’s see how it can be done by creating a new calculated column in Power BI. One important thing to be taken care of while using column from multiple tables is to make sure that there is a relationship between two tables, also that the type of relationship is not many to many. To achieve this functionality, a new column is to be created in the table where values are not unique. Here are the steps to use columns from different tables: Create a column and make sure you are adding the column in the relevant table. Or alternatively, you can right click Table and select New column. 2.After creating a new column, you will see the formula bar; rename Resource Burn with default name that is Column. 3.Give a suitable name to the column and write down the formula. After the equal to sign, start typing Related, and select it. 4.From the above table, you have taken one column from the Resource table and now you can multiply it with the column from the Assignments table. 5.From the above table, you have taken one column from the Resource table and now you can multiply it with the column from Assignments table. So this is it! This column is now ready to use. Important Features of Power BI Microsoft has added a number of data analytics features to Power BI Since its beginning, and continues to do so. Some of the Main features include: Recognition and text analytics at Power BI, create machine learning models with automated machine learning capabilities and incorporate with Azure Machine Learning. Hybrid setup support — This feature provides Built-in connectors that allow Power BI tools to join with numerous distinct data sources from Microsoft, Salesforce and other sellers. Quick Insights — This feature permits users to make subsets of data and apply analytics to this information. Shared data model assistance — Power BI’s service for The common data model allows the usage of a standardized and extensible collection of information schemas (entities, attributes and relationships). Cortana integration — This feature, which is especially popular on mobile devices, allows users to query data with natural language and access outcome, using Cortana, Microsoft’s digital assistant. Customization — This feature allows developers to Change the overall look of default visualization and reporting tools and import new tools into the platform. Self-service data recovery — Utilizing Power Query, Business analysts may ingest, transform, integrate and enrich big data into the Electricity BI web service. Ingested data could be shared across multiple Electricity BI versions, reports and dashboards. Modeling view — This allows users to divide Complex data models by topic area into different diagrams, multiselect Items and establish common properties, see and change properties in the Properties pane, and place display folders for simpler consumption of Complex information models. https://advaiya.com/live-power-bi-reports/”> Author Recommended 10 Keys to a Successful Business Intelligence Strategy Why Microsoft Power BI is the leader in Business Analytics? Need Help in Business Analytics? 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Artificial Intelligence tops strategic tech trends in 2017
Gartner, every year, identifies a list of top strategic technology trends for the coming year, and the list released this year for 2017 tech trends focuses on intelligent systems and Artificial Intelligence. The research and advisory firm also predicts that building systems that learn, adapt and act accordingly is seen as a potential area of focus across technology vendors. Here’s a rundown of top three AI tech trends for 2017 AI & Advanced Machine Learning – Deep learning, neural networks and natural-language processing are at the core of Artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced machine learning (ML). These systems are more advanced in terms of their learning, predicting, adapting and have self- operating capabilities. What made these systems more powerful is the amalgamation of widespread parallel processing power, advanced algorithms and gigantic data sets, enabling them to even change future behavior! Intelligent Apps – Intelligent apps are created out of virtual personal assistants (VPAs), that can carry out operations like a human assistant, making day-to-day tasks easier (by prioritizing emails), and enabling users more effective (by highlighting the significant content of importance and interactions). These apps are focused to enhance customer experience and sales, and have the ability to change the nature of work and the structure of the workplace. Intelligent Things – Intelligent things belongs to mainly three categories – robots, drones and autonomous vehicles. These go beyond the implementation of rigid programming models to leverage the science of applied AI and ML to deliver advanced behaviors and interact more naturally with humans and surroundings. People who said that intelligent systems can’t defeat human human chess champion, or cannot recognize images accurately, etc, have been proven wrong by AI. Though, it can go wrong at some instances as there is no magic bullet for its regulatory development, but it is the time to take AI seriously and harness its immense benefits and minimize its drawbacks.
Artificial Intelligence: A growing businesses investment priority!
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is maturing rapidly, as businesses increasingly agree to the immense potential of intelligent systems for improving productivity and effectiveness. Gartner’s latest CIO survey tells a compelling story – “Spending on intelligence, normally referred to as business intelligence as well as analytics, is the top business investment priority in all types of organizations.” Also, it predicts that half of all the analytical interactions will be delivered through AI, and many of the insights will be gleaned through verbal interactions. Advaiya has been helping businesses enhance their productivity by creating intelligent solutions, allowing them to make more efficient use of their time. We believe that opportunities, today, go beyond traditional Business Intelligence (BI) and enable a smarter, more digital data driven business. Business leaders are looking to develop a data-driven culture, and AI has definitely risen to the top of their priorities. But before investing in this new technology, businesses need to deeply evaluate and find out the data that are most relevant, and garner the most powerful strategic insights out of it. Once they ascertain on the right data sources, the next big step would be to identify the right analysis framework based on their business needs. Thoughtfully made investments can significantly help solve crucial business problems, improve operational effectiveness, and drive overall growth. Advaiya, being a Microsoft Gold partner for Data Analytics, has been helping clients make right investment decisions, and make the most out of their investments in BI and analytics. We see great opportunities ahead in Artificial Intelligence as it promises a better degree of data driven businesses.
Visualizing project data with the right BI Tool
While exploring the wilds of North America, Daniel Boone is said to have quipped, “I’ve never been lost, but I did spend two weeks one time not knowing where I was.” That might be acceptable from an early explorer – with a loose contract, on his own with no deadlines – but if you or I spent even a day not knowing where we are, we’d likely be exploring the unemployment line. Fortunately we now have tools beyond the flint and compass that allow a whole new level of understanding of where we’re at to emerge. In business, it’s important to know the status of every project at every turn, and if a project goes wildly off schedule, over budget, or out of scope, you need to know the moment it happens, and be able to communicate full status to your team and your clients. Organizations demand project reporting that supports deep data insights to identify trends or prepare for risk mitigation, and creative visuals to get up to speed on a project with just a glance. Achieving this becomes more crucial when organizations use diverse line-of-business applications and project management tools. Typically, data scientists are needed to architect multi-source reports that require data analytics skills, deep understanding of the systems involved, and the ability to present data in a visually creative way. With Power BI, however, the data scientist is no longer so burdened. Reporting and data exploration can be done at all skill levels and roles. All users can be empowered to create interactive reports and dashboards utilizing Project data, ensuring consistency in the baseline numbers and the most up-to-date sharing possible. Additionally, connecting to multiple data sources is easy with five categories of data connectors. Power BI also enables hybrid dashboards from multiple sources, including CRM for opportunity tracking and invoicing, MS Project Server for project management, SharePoint for team collaboration and SQL Server database for daily operations. All of your organization’s data can be pulled together in one place. Power BI: Now the whole team can explore with confidence to keep projects moving forward. Interested in knowing more about Power BI reporting and data visualizations? Watch the recording of the webinar – ‘Visualizing Project Data with Power BI ‘.
Data Discovery Hub: Beyond basic Business Intelligence
The BI market is undergoing a revolution and witnessing a significant change over the past few years. The major shift being noticed is the transformation from IT-led system to business-led system, because business users want easy and quick access to quality data at their fingertips, whenever and wherever they want without relying on IT. Most of the companies these days are dealing with common challenges like struggling to gain access to high volume corporate data coming from disparate data sources, integrating data from legacy systems, and delivering secure and reliable information to business users. The solution to all these issues faced by modern businesses is “Data Discovery Hub” – an automated centralized repository, which manages all enterprise data efficiently and offers democratized access to all relevant information from any place in a secure and governed manner using advanced data structures and processing methods. Gone are the days, when companies had to manually copy data from multiple systems and store in a data mart for business use. The Discovery Hub consolidates and refines the data coming from diverse data sources including legacy systems and other operational systems; and stores in a structured way to provide quick and secure access to business information. Many companies with a good data management approach have started delivering information to business users via Discovery Hub, and rest is also progressing towards its adoption. Using such tools, companies can save a lot of time and money by having access to the right data anytime, anywhere self-reliantly. This also liberates IT users from tedious and labour-intensive tasks and allows them to focus on other priority work. By this way, companies can easily meet the dynamic business needs and bridge the gap between data-hungry business users and fatigued IT users. TimeXtender is one among the leading vendors providing Data Discovery Hub. It allows companies to build and maintain a modern data warehouse, known as a data discovery hub, which maintains data quality and consistency at the same time so the right person can access the right data at the right time. It covers all of the aspects an organization looks for business use in an agile way and breaks the barrier between IT and Business.
The evolving scope of Business Intelligence
In the current market, every organization is facing stiff competition, demand for operational efficiency and business productivity. Organizations are becoming innovative in their approach to making business truly performance-driven at strategic, tactical as well as operational levels. In this prospect, Business Intelligence (BI) can help businesses promote their competitive edge with better tools to discover, distribute and analyze metrics, and turn data into actionable insights while accessing new data about the competition. BI is evolving in every industry. The scope has expanded to more than just a set of standard, SQL-based reports. Here I talk about four changes that have advanced BI into a self-service, graphical, collaborating world. 1. Today, BI is no longer exclusively owned and managed by IT. This is an optimistic change as it lets the business take an active role in BI procedures and practices. With various desktop BI tools such as Power BI, Tableau, Tibco Spotfire, and SAP Crystal Reports, it is now possible for users to have all the capabilities on their desktops, which were previously limited to the enterprise-level toolsets. These tools have given users more flexibility to discover and realize how new reports should be generated and organized at the enterprise level. Author Recommended 10 Keys to a Successful Business Intelligence Strategy Why Microsoft Power BI is the leader in Business Analytics? 2. New, powerful BI tools washes out the paradigm of confining users to the reports they have been given. In many organizations, users now have the facility to explore raw data and create valuable reports. Of course, there are still limits on how many system resources a user can consume and security settings still ensure users can only access data for which they have permission. However, it is definitely going to help users experiment with raw data, metrics, and create a new view of data leading to new innovations. 3. The outbreak of advanced visualizations and dashboards have also transformed the landscape. The variety of graphics available has gone well beyond the standard tables, bar graphs, and pie charts. In addition, traditionally where graphics used to be mostly static or drill-down enabled, now graphics/charts can be linked together so the users can interact with the data in real time. For example, clicking on one country in a map might automatically filter the data on all other components of a report to reflect only the information of that country. This flexibility enables faster insights. 4. BI tools are no longer limited to only customary SQL logic. Many BI tools like Tableau include more advanced analytics such as predictive modeling algorithms. The growing use of NoSQL processes via platforms such as Hadoop and Teradata has changed the scenario. These NoSQL platforms have increased the types of processing that can be applied to raw data before it is passed to users via a BI tool. BI process can now include complex and iterative programming. This widening of the scope of analytic processing increases the possibilities that can be explored. Conclusion Considering all these changes, modern business intelligence landscape seems much more advanced than it used to be, blurring the line between the roles of IT and business users. As deep analytic tools are enhancing their capabilities in reporting, visualizations and dashboards, reporting tools continue to add deeper analytics. Need Help in Business Analytics? Contact Us At first, this evolution can be bewildering, but the businesses who go ahead making themselves comfortable with the new realm instead of resisting it will find it well worth their while. To realize the impact of new methods of doing things, organizations need to experience them by adopting.
Create calculated measures in Power BI desktop
Power BI Desktop gives you the right way to deal with your data in just a few clicks. However, the data does not contain everything you need to create reports. This is where measures come into play and will certainly help you to get most out of Power BI. You can use measures in the most common data analysis, such as sums, averages, counts or in advanced calculations. With the help of Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) formula, you can create a measure having calculated in response to your data and interaction with your reports. This article is for Power BI users already familiar with using Power BI Desktop to create more advanced models. Insight on measures The Power BI desktop allows you to create and use measures in Report View or Data View. The created measures appear in the fields list with a calculator icon. Measures can be named with any required name based on your choice, and further you can use visualization for a better look and feel. Measures calculate a result using DAX formula, which includes various set of functions, operator, and constructs giving elasticity in creating measures to calculate results for data need. DAX formulas are bit similar to Excel formulas and have many of the same functions like DATE, SUM, and LEFT. However, DAX’s functions are calculated with relational data like in Power BI Desktop. Example: Create your own measure to calculate variance Let’s try out an example of creating a measure to calculate variance of two columns from a table “Total Sales”. One column represents the sum of total amount for this year and other the sum of total amount for last year, so now we will create two measures having sum of both columns and the third measure will represent the variance of last year vs this year. Let’s start with creating measures and their respective visualization. 1. Start with creating a new measure by clicking on the New Measure button in the ribbon on Power BI Desktop’s Home tab. Once you click, a formula bar will appear on the top, this is where you can rename and enter a DAX formula for our measure. 2. As in this case, you are calculating the Total Sales Revenue for This Year and Last Year. So, first create a measure to calculate the Total Sales for This Year by dividing the Sum of Sales Amount TY by Sum of Sales Units TY. This DAX equation will give the total sales for TY. 3. After calculating the result, represent the values using Bar Chart visualization. You can simply drag the Total Sales TY field from Total Sales table to chart values. You can easily visualize the calculated data of a created measure. 4. Now create a second measure calculating the values for Total Sales Last Year. Similarly, divide the sum of Sales Amount LY with a sum of Sales Units LY to get the values for Total Sales LY. 5. Now to show the slight comparison in the bar chart, you can simply drag the Total Sales LY filled from Total Sales table to the same chart under values section. You can visualize the comparison between total sales last year and this year in chosen bar chart. 6. Finally, to calculate the variance of above calculated fields, create a new measure named as VAR Total % or you can rename the measure accordingly. This measure will calculate the variance percentage from the created measure fields Total Sales TY and Total Sales LY. 7. You can highlight the calculated values using Card item from Visualization. Simply drag the VAR Total % under visual level filters. The card will represent the Variance of Total Sales This Year Vs Last Year. You can play with visualization of a card using format pencil icon and change the color combination, length, height, background, etc. Few important tips on measures: 1. To create a new measure under the same table, you can either select New Measure from the ribbon or right-click on table in the field list, and then click New Measure. This will create your new measure under the same table, where it will be easier to find. 2. In Power BI desktop, if you are dividing two columns and one of the columns is having a zero value, then you can rectify the issue using IFERROR statement having following DAX function. This expression will give you an error in case of having zero value in either of the columns. Note: You cannot divide the columns containing zero values. 3. You should use appropriate parenthesis while creating a measure. In most cases, users will face Syntax error due to missing or misplaced closing parenthesis. This blog emphasizes the power of measures giving the results desired from the data. As illustrated, you can name measures as it makes sense to you, and you can easily use the table suggestion list to find and select the right element to add in our formulas. Further, you can use them in your report canvas with better visualization and results.
Shaping the future with Virtual and Augmented Reality
There are some new trends in the technology world that are becoming very prominent. These trends include technologies that are trying to change the way we look at the content. Content presentation is not only getting enhanced by using rich media and social but also by the way that can be consumed. Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are some of the new ways of consuming and interacting with the digital content. The prominent “promise” of virtual reality is broad. The technology is not only poised to transform our lifestyle and the way we consume entertainment content, but also how we work. Incorporating virtual reality into business could mean direct or indirect increase in digital productivity. If we look from a product development perspective, concepts and options can be accurately reviewed, adjusted and modified easily and quickly. Digital models can be virtually tested, examined and simulated with tools like computational fluid dynamics (CFD), finite elements analysis (FEA). The outcome is quick iterative design cycles, and eventually great products. While VR is about creating a virtual multidimensional space, the AR technology brings extra dimensions in the real world space. The concept of AR is also broad (in fact broader than VR). Essentially, it includes any way of adding digital content in the context of real-time/live world. The concept is not new but there are a lot of innovative ways of implementation and delivery. A simple and old example of AR is live scores and statistics in a live sports transmission on TV. We are able to see the extra dimension of stats and digital data of a live happening event. Now imagine that happening not only for the televised event but also for the rest of the world, which your eyes are seeing including people, buildings, objects, sky, and many more objects around (the possibilities are endless). While looking at a street you are presented with the details about the buildings you see; while looking at the people you are reading/consuming their profile details, while looking in the sky you can see the names of stars or see the structure and details of constellations. All of these are examples of the ways to present and consume digital content/information in a live context. VR is coming up as an exciting trend impacting many high-tech industries, and is driving big vendors to launch a myriad of related devices and rich, immersive experiences. CCS Insight predicts that sales of virtual and augmented reality devices are expected to reach 24 million by 2018 from 2.5 million in 2015. A Digi-Capital report forecasts that the AR market is estimated to generate a revenue of $120 billion, compared to only $30 billion for the VR market. The early adopters of VR are video game players, with oculus rift and Sony PlayStation VR attempting to forge a new frontier in video games; while AR is hot on its heel with wearable interfaces as Microsoft HoloLens and Google Glass. And, recently Samsung has been granted a patent for smart lenses with a display that projects images directly into wearer’s eyes, according to the Samsung-focused blog. As these new technologies advance, more and more applications are surfacing. One of the substantial growth areas of AR and VR can be seen in health technology with wearable devices. Another example is the automotive industry; Ford is currently using virtual reality in its Immersion Lab to get a sense of how customers experience its cars. In the travel industry, Marriott Hotels is offering a teleporter which enables users to take off on virtual journeys with an Oculus Rift headset. Fashion industry is no exception; Dior has used VR at its boutiques to allow people to look at ‘behind the scenes’ at fashion shows. Likewise, VR applications bring immense possibilities in other sectors including education, advertising, and entertainment, among others. Similarly, AR is making its way into big industries like space travel. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is implementing HoloLens along with the Curiosity rover to walk the surface of Mars. And Google Glass is catching the eye of the automotive industry — companies like General Motors are using the device to train employees on the factory floor in real-time during difficult projects, facilitating them to see the right technique in the glass as they execute the task, and communicate with other employees in back office to address things like parts shortage issues. The technology has fulfilled its promise to take people into bizarre experiences, which they couldn’t have thought of before. But these two technologies also introduce practical concerns that could outcome in consumers’ pause. The AR and VR devices share many common privacy, regulatory and compliance concerns, and thus need to be tracked, managed, and hardened to control access to underlying data and applications. High-definition 3D renderings, detailed tracking of objects and controls, and connected sensors and devices, all need right protection through encryption and access controls to rights and asset management. One of the other probable adversaries of these disruptive technologies is latency. And so the challenge for headset makers is how to represent a virtual world without causing motion sickness for the user. Augmented reality needs to get to a level, that when a user moves his eyes, head, and body in the real world, motion in the virtual world becomes alike. The cost of devices could be another aspect of how fast the market takes off. It is predicted that by the end of 2016, there will probably be “a whole slew of content” for 360 videos in a variety of different businesses, but time will tell how fast consumers will embrace AR/VR as a part of their daily lives. Conclusion With giant tech companies including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and HTC, investing in this technology, and releasing their virtual reality devices, it is definitely not dismissible as a come-and-go fad. Companies are seeing augmented reality and virtual reality as indispensable parts of their business, and are outlaying billions of dollars to claim their stake in the game. This