A common challenge that businesses face today is creating something that improves on the value of traditional analytics while utilizing new technologies at our disposal. Turning data into insights and action is the hallmark of a good business intelligence solution. With the increasingly rich and populated Microsoft Cloud Technology landscape, new opportunities are presented in ways that organizations can leverage them. Attend the webinar, “Accelerate your Retail Business with Analytics” by Hitachi Solutions on February 2 to learn more!
» Read more Are you ready to put your organization on a path of continuous improvement using the most valuable decision support techniques? Check out Microsoft Senior Program Manager Christian Berg’s timely series of essays on how to become your organization’s strategic advisor using Machine Learning and Power BI, available on the Community Blog. Each post takes on a different aspect of business intelligence, and includes a how-to section to get you started creating customized solutions for your team. Most analysis in the posts is done using the R language, but Christian tries to keep any scripts generic enough that anyone can apply them to their own data even without prior hands-on R experience.
» Read more Have you visited the Power BI Community blog lately? Blog posts can be anything from opinion pieces on the latest industry trends, to helpful tips and how-tos for your fellow Power BI users, to even “trip reports” from your local User Group meeting or Microsoft event. Check out these great posts from October and learn how you can contribute your own posts!
» Read more Every day the members of Microsoft’s Treasury group have to make smart decisions about how to manage the company’s $158 billion in assets. Their guide to these decisions can be found in data and information analysis, and one of their tools of choice to manage this process is Microsoft Power BI. One amazing example of this data in action is the US Consumer Personal Spending dashboard, created by Investment Analyst, Carlton Gossett. This dashboard displays publicly available information in a dynamic, interactive way, allowing Treasury to quickly get a feel for consumer spending in the US and where our economy may be heading in the business cycle. Read more about how Microsoft Treasury uses this dashboard, and try it out for yourself!
» Read more Last month we put out the call for submissions using retail data — along with other topics that interest you — for the Data Stories Gallery, and we got some fantastic entries! Congratulations to the grand winner and runners-up. Want to see your work become a Featured story? Post it to the Data Stories Gallery, and then tweet a link with the hashtags #powerbi #datastory. At the end of each month we’ll review all tweeted stories, and choose several to become featured. Featured stories will be selected for telling a compelling story, being original and creative, and effectively using Power BI.
» Read more Microsoft’s Guy in a Cube has been providing tips and tricks for Power BI and Business Intelligence on his YouTube channel since 2014. On Thursdays we highlight a different helpful video from his collection. This week, he revisits how to perform an IT Admin takeover for your Power BI tenant, including tenants created through individual signup. Discover the 3 main steps to performing the takeover, cost-free, using Office 365.
» Read more While most of us spent the last two weeks drinking eggnog and spending time with family and friends, Microsoft’s Sam Lester found an additional way to celebrate: creating a new blog series called “The 12 Days of Power BI Dashboards”. Each dashboard is based on a unique, yet common, data source that almost everyone can access. Sam’s goal for the project was to identify new methods for using Power BI creatively with data sources that don’t naturally align to reporting and BI projects. If you’re looking for inspiring dashboards to jumpstart your data analysis in 2017, check out Sam’s work!
» Read more A couple of weeks ago, the Power BI Team held its first Ask Microsoft Anything event, and it was a fantastic success! We received several pages of questions on the AMA community forum, and for over an hour a mixed group of Power BI Program Managers, Marketing Managers, and Developers answered them all. If you missed this event, we’ve collected the five most popular questions and answers below. Don’t see your question? Keep an eye out for the next AMA event and get your answer live!
» Read more Microsoft’s Guy in a Cube has been providing tips and tricks for Power BI and Business Intelligence on his YouTube channel since 2014. On Thursdays we highlight a different helpful video from his collection. This week, he takes a look at the new Power BI Embedded Sample that’s designed to show you what the API code should look like from a JavaScript perspective. The new sample includes code examples and comments to give you a feel for embedding Power BI reports into your own application.
» Read more Today is your opportunity to ask questions and share feedback directly with the Power BI product team at the Ask Microsoft Anything on the Power BI Community AMA board. Join us live from 10 – 11 a.m. PT today at https://aka.ms/powerbi/ama!
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