Tag Archives: Power BI

Creating custom Power BI visuals? (… and adding interactivity to Power BI dashboard)

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Power BI VisualIf you are wondering how to create custom visuals for Power BI? Then, handily, there is an increasing number of open source samples and visuals becoming available.

Once such visualisation is the Drilldown Player, release by Microsoft as Open Source, and built in conjunction with their partner Gramener (http://gramener.com).

You can get the code from GitHub @ https://github.com/Microsoft/powerbi-visuals-drilldown-player.

You can get the compiled visual @ https://store.office.com/en-us/app.aspx?assetid=WA104381035&sourcecorrid=bde0be33-be77-400c-a17c-19849a52e1f5&ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US&appredirect=false

Chris Webb recently shared a blog post about using this visual to add interactivity… Creating Animated Reports In Power BI With The Drilldown Player Custom Visual

Chris Webb's BI Blog

Last week I had the chance to do something I have not done before: build a Power BI report to be displayed on a big screen hanging on a wall. To make up for the loss of user interactivity, I used the new Drilldown Player custom visual to cycle through different selections and display a new slice of data every few seconds; Devin Knight’s blog post here has a great summary of how to use it. However I wasn’t happy about the look of the Drilldown Player visual in this particular report: the play/stop/pause buttons aren’t much use if you can’t click on them and the visual doesn’t show all of the values that it is cycling through. As a result I hid the visual behind another one and came up with a different way of displaying the currently-displayed selection.

Here’s a simple example of what I did. Imagine you…

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Power BI custom visual from Visio

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Visualize business process workflows, real-world layouts like factory floor plans, network diagrams, organization structures or any illustration created in Microsoft Visio and easily connect it to Power BI data. Contextually represent Power BI data as colours or text on Visio diagrams. Now drive Operational Intelligence effectively using Visio custom visual.

Self Service BI within Manufacturing #SQLSaturdayEdinburgh #SQLPASS Presentation (#SQLSat)

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SQL Saturday

Edinburgh First Conference CentreDuring mid April I was approached by Microsoft (UK) and asked if I would do a presentation at the Microsoft “Accelerate Your Insights” one day conference on the 1st of May 2014. Though hesitant and somewhat nervous about the prospect, as I had never spoken in public… I agreed and prepared a presentation.

The presentation was related to the recent Case Study I had the pleasure of being involved in through my employer, Jabil (@JabilCircuitInc). It would focus on how, at Jabil, we have progressed though the various backend SQL Server infrastructures offered by Microsoft over recent years and how we are using new technologies and features to enable BI delivery to our employees via production systems.

As a direct result of the presentation at Microsoft’s UK headquarters (Reading, UK) I was also invited to speak at a SQL Saturday (SQL PASS community event) being held in Edinburgh on 14th June 2014 at Edinburgh University Conference Centre.

Though hitting a bit of a technical snag with my work laptop, with less than 2 minutes to my presentation: –

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I quickly switched to my personal Surface Pro, which by pure chance I had decided to grab as I was leaving in the morning… had only took it so I had something light to play with between session. Just as well I did – quick switch, download of presentation from cloud storage and was good to go minus my demos.

Overall was able to buffer out the presentation, taking about several other aspects and areas we are working with SQL 2014 and BI… had several questions so am taking from that that audience engagement was good. Hopefully all that attended my presentation took away something that they did not know or at least found it useful.

Presentation can be downloaded both the SQL Saturday website and from here: –

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Thanks to Jen Stirrup (@JenStirrup) for the invitation to speak and arranging the great free training event; hope to be invited back in the future.

#SQLPASS #SQLSat #SQLSatEdinburgh #SQLSat281

Full case study @ http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?CaseStudyID=710000004223

Global Firm Takes an Evolutionary Leap in Data Management with Self-Service BI (Case Study)

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A case study I was involved in just got published on Microsoft.com.

Over the past few years a lot of the work I have been involved in has been subject to NDAs, including this work with Microsoft (via my employer). Hence been unable to blog about my work or any of the great features of SQL Server 2014 or the Power BI suite of products.

Over the past year as part of the case study we were given advance access to SQL Server 2014 builds, Power BI and enhanced features of SharePoint. We also had assistance and regular contact with the SQL development team and Power BI guys.

As direct result of my participation I was lucky enough to enjoy a few trips to the USA, including to Seattle, Charlotte (for SQL PASS 2013 conference) and Tampa; making 2013 a very enjoyable and educational year for me 🙂 

Business intelligence (BI) information is only valuable when the right users can discover, analyze, use and share it with others—and all in a timely manner. Current technologies produce data at overwhelming rates, often faster than business users can analyze it, and the bottleneck is frequently the time that it takes to generate useful and impactful reports. At US-based supply chain management giant Jabil, as in many enterprises, data analysis has long been a time-consuming and intensive collaboration between the business groups and IT, creating customized reports whose information, by the time it’s used, is already growing stale. With its new solution built on Microsoft SQL Server 2014 and SQL Server 2014 Power View, Jabil users can create their own reports in minutes from business critical data sources using Microsoft Excel, with IT providing training and guidance—freeing up time to work on strategic projects.

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Full case study @ http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?CaseStudyID=710000004223

Download PDF of Case Study