Microsoft Fabric5 min read
Power BI Premium to Fabric: what changed and what to do
Power BI Premium per-capacity moved to Microsoft Fabric capacities. What changed, the time-boxed transition, cost implications, and the steps to take now.
ReadInsights
Notes on building software worth owning.
Practical writing on custom software, choosing a software house, trade and supply chain systems, cost, and the questions a serious buyer should ask. 30 articles and counting.
30 articles
Microsoft Fabric5 min read
What is Microsoft Fabric? A plain guide to the platform
What Microsoft Fabric is, how OneLake, Direct Lake, and workspaces fit together, and how the unified SaaS platform relates to Power BI and Synapse.
ReadPower BI5 min read
DAX patterns for business reporting that just work
Reusable DAX patterns for real reporting: time intelligence, running totals, year-over-year, and safe ratios with DIVIDE, with copy-ready code you can adapt.
ReadPower BI6 min read
Power BI incremental refresh, explained
How Power BI incremental refresh works: RangeStart and RangeEnd parameters, partitioning, detect data changes, query folding, and the first full refresh.
ReadPower BI5 min read
Power BI for retail: the KPIs that run the business
The Power BI KPIs retailers actually manage by: net sales, margin, stockout rate, basket size, inventory turns, and channel mix, sourced from POS, ERP, and e-commerce.
ReadPower BI5 min read
Power BI for manufacturing: OEE and the KPIs that matter
The Power BI KPIs that run a plant: OEE broken into availability, performance, and quality, downtime Pareto, cost per line, and scrap, sourced from MES and ERP.
ReadCost & Pricing5 min read
How much does a Power BI project cost? A cost guide
What drives Power BI project cost: data sources, model complexity, report count, governance, plus Pro, Premium Per User, and Fabric licensing explained.
ReadAnalytics & AI6 min read
Anomaly detection in Power BI and Azure ML
How anomaly detection works in Power BI natively, when to move to custom Azure ML models, and how Microsoft Fabric supplies the data foundation underneath.
ReadPower BI6 min read
A star schema for Power BI that scales
How to build a star schema in Power BI that stays fast: facts vs dimensions, grain, surrogate keys, a date dimension, and why to avoid bidirectional filters.
ReadAnalytics & AI8 min read
RAG on your data with Azure AI Search and Copilot
How to build RAG on your own data with Azure AI Search, Azure OpenAI, and Copilot Studio: hybrid retrieval, grounding on Microsoft Fabric, and citations.
ReadMicrosoft Fabric6 min read
Import vs DirectQuery vs Direct Lake in Power BI
How Import, DirectQuery, and Direct Lake storage modes work in Power BI, their speed and freshness trade-offs, and how to pick the right one for each model.
ReadAnalytics & AI6 min read
Demand forecasting with Power BI and Azure Machine Learning
How to forecast demand on Microsoft tooling: Fabric for the data foundation, native Power BI forecasting for simple cases, and Azure ML for real models.
ReadData engineering7 min read
Building a data warehouse on Microsoft Fabric and Azure
How to build a data warehouse on Microsoft Fabric and Azure: Warehouse vs Lakehouse, OneLake, Direct Lake, ELT, semantic modeling, governance, and cost control.
ReadPower BI5 min read
Power BI ALM: deployment pipelines and version control
How Power BI ALM works: dev/test/prod workspaces, Fabric deployment pipelines, parameter rules, Git integration, and PBIP source control, done safely.
ReadPower Platform7 min read
Document processing with AI Builder and Azure AI
How AI Builder in Power Platform and Azure AI Document Intelligence extract invoices, forms, and POs, orchestrated by Power Automate into Dataverse and Fabric.
ReadAnalytics & AI7 min read
Predictive analytics for supply chain on Microsoft Fabric
How to build predictive analytics for supply chain on Microsoft Fabric: demand, OTIF, inventory, and lead-time risk models delivered to operations in Power BI.
ReadComparisons6 min read
Tableau vs Power BI: cost, features, and when to switch
A practical Tableau vs Power BI comparison: licensing cost, features, the Microsoft ecosystem, governance, and how to tell when it is time to switch.
ReadPower BI5 min read
Row level security in Power BI that scales cleanly
A practical guide to row level security in Power BI: static vs dynamic RLS, USERPRINCIPALNAME, patterns that scale to thousands of users, and how to test roles.
ReadMicrosoft Fabric5 min read
Direct Lake explained: faster Power BI on Fabric
What Direct Lake in Power BI is, how it differs from Import and DirectQuery, when to use it, and the limitations that make it fall back to DirectQuery.
ReadData engineering8 min read
Data pipeline architecture on Azure Data Factory and Fabric
How to design data pipelines on Azure Data Factory and Microsoft Fabric: medallion layers in OneLake, orchestration, idempotency, and governance.
ReadData engineering6 min read
Medallion architecture in Microsoft Fabric: bronze, silver, gold
How to build a medallion architecture in Microsoft Fabric: what bronze, silver, and gold layers do, how they map to OneLake, and where Direct Lake fits.
ReadPower BI5 min read
Power BI semantic model best practices that hold up
How to design a Power BI semantic model that stays trustworthy: one definition per KPI, star schema, measures vs columns, naming, and star vs snowflake.
ReadAnalytics & AI7 min read
Copilot and Azure OpenAI on your business data
A practical guide to putting Azure OpenAI and Copilot into production on your own data: grounding on Microsoft Fabric, Copilot Studio, and governance.
ReadMicrosoft Fabric5 min read
Azure Synapse vs Microsoft Fabric: an honest comparison
Azure Synapse vs Microsoft Fabric compared honestly: what changed, when to stay on Synapse, when to move to Fabric, and how to run both during a migration.
ReadMicrosoft Fabric6 min read
Microsoft Fabric capacity planning: sizing F-SKUs without overpaying
How Microsoft Fabric capacities and F-SKUs work: capacity units, smoothing, bursting, pause and resume, and how to right-size compute without paying for idle.
ReadPower BI5 min read
Power BI governance: a practical guide for real tenants
A practical Power BI governance guide covering workspaces, deployment pipelines, RLS, Microsoft Purview, certified datasets, and DLP policies that scale.
ReadData & AI6 min read
Business intelligence dashboards people actually use
How to build business intelligence dashboards that drive decisions: design principles, off-the-shelf vs custom BI, data modeling, performance, and adoption.
ReadPower BI5 min read
Power BI for healthcare: the KPIs that run operations
The Power BI KPIs healthcare operators manage by: claim denials by payer, length of stay, occupancy, and throughput, built with HIPAA controls from the start.
ReadPower Platform5 min read
Power Platform Center of Excellence: a starter guide
What a Power Platform Center of Excellence is, how the CoE Starter Kit works, and how to govern environments, DLP, ALM, and adoption at scale.
ReadMigration6 min read
Tenant to tenant migration: a phased Microsoft playbook
How to run a tenant to tenant migration during M&A or reorg: inventory workspaces, models, flows, gateways, and permissions, then move in phases without breaking reports.
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