Explicit Measures Podcast

The guys are back discussing a little more heartfelt topic: How do you manage or balance work and life in the Power BI World? We all love what we do - so do you, listening to a Power BI podcast! But it can be tough to try to manage work, community, and your own personal needs, and needs of others.  Follow along as the guys go through what work / life means to them, their struggles, and what t...

From Microsoft's Research Lab, a newly released custom visual in Power BI is the amazing visual named Charticulator. It gives you nearly infinite design possibilities using a completely new way to visualize and show your data. However, some contend the learning curve is too high. Mike has been the resource online for how to use Charticulator with YouTube series, but with the amount of time to lear...

In case you missed it, Microsoft released an amazing new resource named the Power BI Adoption Roadmap - an in-depth and all-encompassing resource to blueprint how to drive usage and adoption in your organization. Today's episode investigates one of the sections, driving a Center of Excellence.  What is a Center of Excellence (CoE) in the Power BI world? It's the team, users, and nucleus that...

The journey of learning DAX for a Power BI Pro is quite a unique one. On one hand, the formulas seem straightforward enough, like Excel. On the other, it is a rite of passage to fail miserably not understanding how or why your DAX is showing what it shows.  The guys share their own stories on what pillars, hurdles, and methods they have experienced along the way learning, understanding, and m...

Any Power BI Pro knows they need more than just skills - they need some tools up their sleeve. The guys are talking about what makes up what they call their Power BI Dev Studio: Essential tools, items, and components that are essential for how they build, manage, and grow Power BI as a professional and in their daily workflows.  If you ever wanted to know what the essentials of the people are...

The podcast has covered tools, process, and workflows in previous episodes, but not like this episode. Taking the idea of "Virtuous Waste", which is either personally or from an organizational standpoint the idea that certain tasks and processes are essential or good to continue yet could easily be eliminated and automated in a better fashion. Think of scrubbing and cleaning an CSV file every week...

It's getting hot in July and the guys are back, expanding on a topic they discussed in May about the best ways to share content in Power BI. They have dived into Power BI Apps, but what are other situations, services, and deployment methods that make sense? Get in touch: Send in your questions or topics you want us to discuss by tweeting to @PowerBITips with the hashtag #empMailbag or submit on th...

The guys are a little late getting out (live stream occurred on Thursday, Tommy is on vacation and could not get it published) but we are finishing up the look into "future week" by attempting to uncover what is the job, career, and skillset of someone working in Power BI in the next couple of years? What type of work will change, what should they know, and what should they be good at?  This...

The guys are back before the summer kicks off, and it is time to think about the future. James Phillips, who runs Microsoft's Power Platform, has an amazing job. He is responsible for the direction of Power BI, Power Apps, and the Dynamics platforms. But what if the guys had the reigns? Take $100 dollar "budget" and what would we do for the next year if we had the control? Get in touch: Visit Powe...

Let's face it: Self-Service in Power B is a hot topic. The Explicit Measures Podcast dives into what makes up a solid Self-Service process, and why are there so many pitfalls around it once implemented. How do we balance sources of truth and at the same time allowing businesses and users build and create insights they need for themselves and their teams? How do maintain and deploy self-service, an...

The Explicit Measures Podcast dives into what it means to be a Microsoft MVP and their own journeys becoming one. If you have ever considered wanting to take the steps to be a Microsoft MVP, and what it takes from 3 current ones, this is a great episode to listen closely to. Besides the contributions, the guys go into what traits and what is going to keep you away from burnout, and why you mu...

Mike, Seth, and Tommy go head-on with the state of Custom Visuals in Power BI. Power BI Custom Visuals have been available since October 2015, with Microsoft providing developer tools, a visual gallery, and the ability to import them into desktop and the service. The community was buzzing, and the potential seemed limitless.   Fast forward to today: with over 330 Custom Visuals available in t...

The guys share some of their favorite ways and tools that help them updated on anything happening in the Power BI world. Understanding how quickly the BI industry changes and evolves, along with always striving to learn new methods and skills from the amazing Power BI Community, it is integral to any Power BI Pro to be able to find, consume, and refer to amazing and latest content that continually...

The Explicit Measures gang is back with a fun one! We all deal with report building, managing content, and managing users. If you don't have a process around what you are building, and how to get others to follow it, you are asking for complications and misaligned expectations. Mike, Seth, and Tommy run through how important a process is, what makes a process, and how to implement on for your team...

The Explicit Measures Podcast is back for their 11th show, and it heats up talking about the role of Dataflows at organizations. If you have never used Power BI Dataflows before, or trying to understand where do they fit into your Power BI Ecosystem, you do not want to miss this one. From Seth's enterprise experience to Tommy's Business User side, how much potential should or do Dataflows have? Do...

The Explicit Measures Podcast is back and made it to ten episodes! Mike, Seth, and Tommy finish the up the week discussing common situations Power BI Pros run into when dealing with reporting requests: The "Business Changing" request, a report that was needed to be built yesterday, and the pressure and stress we deal with delivering these types of Reports to stakeholders. The Report is finally pub...

Mike, Seth, and Tommy are back after the Memorial Day Weekend diving into Advanced Analytics features that are available in Power BI, yet none of the guys have seen them really used in the "wild". All of the AI visuals, from Q&A, Anomalies, Analyze By, and Smart Narratives are incredibly powerful, but why are not they not widely used in our reports? Why is this? And how important should these...

Mike, Seth, and Tommy share pivotal milestones in their Power BI Journey that shaped their careers and the way they approach Power BI as a skillset. Common struggles along the way, and what were their "Ah-Ha!" moments? Anyone who has been working in the Power Platform understands how significant those times finally understanding how DAX filter contexts works or getting report development right. If...

Mike, Seth, and Tommy are back at it talking about how important the layout in a Power BI Report page is. From the alignment and the location of a Title and KPI's, all the way to what difference does the background and color theme make. Like all the episodes, this is a large topic! It comes back to the user experience, and learn about tools, advice, and experience the hosts have in the following:&...

Welcome to the Explicit Measures Podcast where we talk about all things Power BI related. Mike, Seth, and Tommy reminiscence about where we were and what we were doing when Power BI was released in 2015. What led us to Power BI, and looking back, what did learn along the way? Join the team as they highlight what were the most important advice, tips, and moments that they learned along the way to b...

Welcome to the Explicit Measures Podcast where we talk about all things Power BI related. Mike, Seth, and Tommy go deep into what should a Power BI user or team use as their own KPI's to measure success. Tommy talks about his experience taking the new DA-100 exam.  What KPIs should a BI team use for their own reporting? What should report authors measure and monitor to understand the overall...

Welcome to the Explicit Measures Podcast where we talk about all things Power BI related. Mike, Seth, and Tommy focus on Tommy's conversion to becoming a Power BI App guy. What made the change to deploying Power BI Apps?  Join the team as they talk about ways to share in Power BI, and is Power BI Apps the only option?  Get in touch: Visit PowerBI.tips: https://powerbi.tips/ Watch the epi...

Welcome to the Explicit Measures Podcast where we talk about all things Power BI related. Mike, Seth, and Tommy ask when Bookmarks and Buttons are required compared to when are they annoying for any Power BI Reports. Should all reports require Bookmarks and Buttons?  What is the difference between a Report and a Data Application? Should all reports have that feature?  Get in touch: Visit...

Welcome to the Explicit Measures Podcast where we talk about all things Power BI related. Mike, Seth, and Tommy review some of the major updates from MBAS 2021, including reliving the original Data Insight Summit.  Main topic focuses on the new Goals in Power BI feature announced and released out to all organizations, understanding what impact goals can have, what our wish list is, and how to...

Welcome to the Explicit Measures Podcast where we talk about all things Power BI related. Episode 001 - the beginning Meet the hosts and the origin of why we created the Explicit Measures Podcast. We want to be your Power BI water cooler, asking and discussing the why compared to the how. We all know the how, but lets focus on why we do what we do. This episode focuses on the blog post from Micros...