My Power Platform Summit Europe Recap

Last week the Power Platform Summit Europe was held in Amsterdam. I was there together with my colleagues Sander and Pim and next to the learning experience the conference gave me, it was really nice to join them!

Before starting my recap I’d like to point you to the following tool: Microsoft Office Lens, it’s available both on iOS and Android! In every session I was in there were always people taking pictures of the slides. I sometimes do it also, just because I want to make a note next to the slide or because it’s something in a demo I’d like to capture. But the point I’m trying to make here: do it with the Office Lens app, because then your pictures will look like this:

Pro tip for making pictures of the screen: please use the Microsoft Office Lens app, available on both iOS and Android! :-) #PowerPlatformSummit pic.twitter.com/zRvWwL3rNp

— Nicky van Vroenhoven (@NickyvV) 27 maart 2019

The information/sessions that stood out the most for me:

Line Krogh talked about Brons, Silver and Gold Power BI report templates:

• Gold: created by BI team on a managed Tabular model
• Silver: not created by BI team on a managed Tabular model
• Brons: not created by BI team on non-certified data sources

The Art of Gathering Effective BI requirements by Mico Yuk

• An interactive session where she also shared her spreadsheet to be used in discussion with end-users

Nikhil Gakwaed showed us some nice improvements in the Power BI Service:

• Comments on dashboards
• Organizational branding for Power BI Home

Callum Green did a session where one part about data profiling was interesting in particular:

• Data profiling in M (Table.profile)
• He also did some tweaking afterwards to get the profiling on the column and value level

The Value of Self-serve BI in a Large Organisation by Rishi Sapra:

• What-if scenario builder, which he will explain in-depth at the virtual Power BI Days

Demo of splitting the report and the data model by Just Blindbaek:

• This will be even better when Shared and Certified datasets are available, hopefully later this month!

Power BI Performance by Kasper de Jonge, David Magar and Bhavik Merchant:

• Avoid Bi-Di crossfiltering: you will go to hell! (according to Alberto Ferrari)
• Instead turn crossfiltering on in DAX: CROSSFILTER(Dim, Fact, OneWay/Both)

• Use variables, especially with IF
• Don't use IFERROR
• Use DIVIDE
• Model Star-schema/Snowflake
• Filter on Dimensions

A great session on Aggregation Tables by Reza Rad:

• Import mode, Direct Query and Dual
• Use DaxStudio to analyse the queries send by DQ

At the end of day 2 we had a nice view of the entrance to the conference:

Nice ending of a great 2nd day at the #PowerPlatformSummit! So many good sessions today! Good meeting so many friends again and also making new ones who share the same love for #PowerBI pic.twitter.com/pzvLZPypcc

— Nicky van Vroenhoven (@NickyvV) 28 maart 2019

In the morning I found some time to go running with Sander in the Amstel Parc just across the road from our hotel. Although it was very chilly, it was worth the early wake up!

Just came back from a 6K run with @SLKerstens, getting ready for the last day of #PowerPlatformSummit! pic.twitter.com/wWkkKr5zZz

— Nicky van Vroenhoven (@NickyvV) 29 maart 2019

Let me know if you agree with me or if you think you liked other sessions more at the Summit.

My next post will be a recap of the Power BI User Day 2019 in Utrecht where I also gave a presentation together with Jeroen Schalken.

@NickyvV