Create reports using a Power BI Gateway

27th of July, 2017 / / No Comments

Background

Once you have a Power BI gateway setup to ensure data flow from your on-premises data sources to Power BI service in the cloud, next step is to create reports using Power BI desktop and build reports using data from multiple on-premises data sources.
Note: If you didn’t have a gateway setup already, please follow my earlier post to set it up before you continue reading this post.

Scenario

All on-premises data is stored in SQL server instances and spread across few data warehouses and multiple databases built and managed by your internal IT teams.… [Keep reading] “Create reports using a Power BI Gateway”

Setup a Power BI Gateway

21st of July, 2017 / / 2 Comments

Scenario

So, you have explored Power BI (free) and wanted to start some action in the cloud. Suddenly you realise that your data is stored in an on-premise SQL data source and you still wanted to get insights up in the cloud and share it with your senior business management.

Solution

Microsoft’s on-premises data gateway is a bridge that can securely transfer your data to Power BI service from your on-premises data source.

Assumptions

  • Power BI pro licenses have been procured already for the required no of users (this is a MUST)
  • Users are already part of Azure AD and can sign in to Power BI service as part of Office 365 offering

Pre-requisites

You can build and setup a machine to act as a gateway between your Azure cloud service and on-premises data sources.… [Keep reading] “Setup a Power BI Gateway”

Monitor SharePoint Online Activity with OMS and Power BI

11th of May, 2017 / / 6 Comments

As more organisations move their data into the cloud there is now a big focus on getting more insight and visibility in what data is being moved up into the cloud, where it is being stored, how it is being used and by whom.
This post looks at how we can provide greater insight into SharePoint Online, but can also be applicable across other document management systems.
While Office 365 provides an audit capability out of the box to view user activity, this is not highly accessible to those who do not administer Office 365 directly.… [Keep reading] “Monitor SharePoint Online Activity with OMS and Power BI”

How to use a Powershell Azure Function App to get RestAPI IoT data into Power BI for Visualization

29th of November, 2016 / / No Comments

Overview

This blog post details using a Powershell Azure Function App to get IoT data from a RestAPI and update a table in Power BI with that data for visualization.
The data can come from anywhere, however in the case of this post I’m getting the data from WioLink IoT Sensors. This builds upon my previous post here that details using Powershell to get environmental information and put it in Power BI.  Essentially the major change is to use a TimerTrigger Azure Function to perform the work and leverage the “serverless” Azure Functions model.… [Keep reading] “How to use a Powershell Azure Function App to get RestAPI IoT data into Power BI for Visualization”

Leveraging the PowerBI Beta API for creating PowerBI Tables with Relationships via PowerShell

31st of August, 2016 / / No Comments

If anyone actually reads my posts you will have noticed that I’ve been on a bit of a deep dive into PowerBI and how I can use it to provide visualisation of data from Microsoft Identity Manager (here via CSV, and here via API). One point I noticed going direct to PowerBI via the API (v1.0) though was how it is not possible to provide relationships (joins) between tables within datasets (you can via PowerBI Desktop).… [Keep reading] “Leveraging the PowerBI Beta API for creating PowerBI Tables with Relationships via PowerShell”

Office365 License Reporting in PowerBI from Microsoft Identity Manager

29th of August, 2016 / / 8 Comments

 

Overview

A common request I’m hearing from my customers is visibility of Office365 licensing. Typically this is more from the management staff over the technical team as they don’t have the know-how to get the info themselves. From a management perspective it is also about making sure they get full use of their licensing entitlements. Also to know when they are running close to their licensing limit and the conversations about procuring additional licenses need to be had.… [Keep reading] “Office365 License Reporting in PowerBI from Microsoft Identity Manager”

Simple reporting from the FIM/MIM Metaverse to PowerBI using the Lithnet FIM/MIM Sync Service PowerShell Module

28th of July, 2016 / / 9 Comments

I have a customer that is looking to report on FIM/MIM identity information. The reports they are looking for aren’t overly complex and don’t necessarily justify the need the full FIM/MIM reporting infrastructure. So I spent a few hours over a couple of days looking at alternatives. In this blog post I give an overview of using the awesome Lithnet FIM/MIM Sync Service PowerShell Module recently released from Ryan Newington to do basic reporting on the Microsoft (Forefront) Identity Manager Metaverse into PowerBI.… [Keep reading] “Simple reporting from the FIM/MIM Metaverse to PowerBI using the Lithnet FIM/MIM Sync Service PowerShell Module”

Designing for emotion

9th of April, 2016 / / No Comments

What is it that makes us advocates of the products we love? Why are we loyal to a few bunch of apps and websites? When I connected the dots, I realised that all the things I love in my life has one thing in common – emotional attachment.

What is emotional design?

Emotional design is a technique of infusing the elements of emotion into product design. It aims to evoke positive emotions and engagement with consumers.… [Keep reading] “Designing for emotion”

Big Dater – Finding the biggest cheaters with Power BI

25th of October, 2015 / / 4 Comments

Hacking of commercial enterprises is never a good thing and in no way would I condone the dubious logic that was the basis behind the hack and release of the Ashley Madison database. There was no doubt a lot of personal and commercial damage caused.

But with every one of these hacks, there is opportunity. The hack has arguably done more for marriage fidelity than Fatal Attraction and has also given us a chance to relook at data security practices, personal data storage and password management practices.… [Keep reading] “Big Dater – Finding the biggest cheaters with Power BI”

Using Azure Machine Learning to predict Titanic survivors

12th of July, 2015 / / No Comments

So in the last blog I looked at one of the Business Intelligence tools available in the Microsoft stack by using the Power Query M language to query data from an Internet source and present in Excel. Microsoft are making a big push into the BI space at the moment, and for good reason. BI is a great cloud workload. So now let’s take a look at one of the heavy hitters at the other end of the BI scale spectrum, Azure Machine Learning.… [Keep reading] “Using Azure Machine Learning to predict Titanic survivors”