Month: October 2022

I previously explained in a blog post what thin reports are and why we should care about them. I also explained Report Level Measures in another blog post. In this post, I try to raise some real-world challenges we face when developing thin reports. I also provide a solution to those challenges.

Report Level Measure Related Challenges

Creating and using Report Level Measures is relatively easy, but there are some challenges that we face from time to time, such as:

• Distinguishing Report Level Measures from Dataset Level Measures
• Report Level Measure dependencies

Determining Report Level Measures from Dataset Level Measures

One of the challenges that Power BI Developers face is creating many report level measures. Unfortunately, Power BI Desktop currently uses the same iconography for both types of measures, making it hard to distinguish the actual measures created within the dataset from the report level measures. It gets even more

Dispatches from Ukraine. Day 248.

As Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues and the war rages on, reliable sources of information are critical. Forbes gathers information and provides updates on the situation.

By Polina Rasskazova

During the day, the Russian Federation lost more than 500 military personnel, 19 tanks and 23 armored vehicles, 1 plane and 1 helicopter, and 5 drones in the war against Ukraine, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported. According to the general staff, since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian army has lost more than 70,000 personnel, 2,659 tanks, 273 aircraft, 252 helicopters and 351 cruise missiles. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Ukraine is preparing for the notion that the current Russian leadership will look for any new opportunities to continue the war. “Although Russia is trying to increase the pressure on our positions by using mobilized people,

Marketing Podcast with Carmine Gallo

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Carmine Gallo. Carmine is the bestselling author of Talk Like TED and The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs. He is a Harvard instructor, CEO communication coach, and keynote speaker known for transforming leaders. He’s the author of a new book we’re talking about called – The Bezos Blueprint: Communication Secrets of the World’s Greatest Salesman.

Key Takeaway:

What fueled Amazon’s astonishing growth? Effective, clear communication. Jeff Bezos turned a bold idea into the world’s most influential company, a brand that likely touches your life every day. As a student of leadership and communication, he learned to elevate the way Amazonians write, collaborate, innovate, pitch, and present. He created a scalable model that grew from a small team in a Seattle garage to one of the world’s largest employers. Carmine Gallo joins me in

Make Time for Gratitude 

by ActionCoach PJ Weiland 

“Gratitude is the healthiest of all human emotions. The more you express gratitude 

for what you have, the more likely you will have even more to express gratitude for.” — Zig Ziglar 

Why Is Gratitude Important? 

Studies show there are many benefits to acknowledging our blessings and expressing gratitude to others. Here are just a few: 

• Shields you from negativity 
• Giving thanks can make you at least 25% happier 
• Rewires our brain to see gratitude 
• Eliminates stress 

• Heals our sense of being injured 
• Improves sleep quality 
• Boosts your self-esteem 
• Enhances the law of attraction: we are naturally attracted to those who show kindness. 
• Improves your relationships with others at work and in your personal life 

• Saying thank you motivates others to perform better 

Ways to Cultivate Gratitude 

You can practice gratitude in your daily life in so many ways. Test one

Slowly changing dimension (SCD) is a data warehousing concept coined by the amazing Ralph Kimball. The SCD concept deals with moving a specific set of data from one state to another. Imagine a human resources (HR) system having an Employee table. As the following image shows, Stephen Jiang is a Sales Manager having ten sales representatives in his team:

Today, Stephen Jiang got his promotion to the Vice President of Sales role, so his team has grown in size from 10 to 17. Stephen is the same person, but his role is now changed, as shown in the following image:

Another example is when a customer’s address changes in a sales system. Again, the customer is

The Pittsburgh Steelers had some of us fooled for a period of time.

Following the Steelers’ 20-18 victory over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Week 6, there were some that actually believed Pittsburgh could threaten for a playoff spot. After all, at a 2-4 record, they were just one game out of the lead for the AFC North division. They had even defeated the defending AFC champion Cincinnati Bengals in Week 1.

That’s not even mentioning T.J. Watt’s impending return from injury, which is likely to happen in the coming weeks.

However, following their 16-10 loss to the Miami Dolphins, it’s very clear that this is a rebuilding squad led by a rookie quarterback going through some extreme growing pains.

The Steelers had

My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.

I don’t go into depth about the finds, but I encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one that I took out there on the road.

• Regiey ai– is an AI Content Platform for sales and marketing teams. You can create impactful AI-powered social posts, blogs, sales sequences, email nurturing campaigns, and other content in a few minutes.
• Omnisearch– uses AI search technology to extract content from anything: audio/video, pdfs, presentations, images, and more. Omnisearch also allows transcribing video recordings into subtitles in seconds.
• Mini-course generator is a course-building platform that allows people to promote courses and workshops better with interactive mini-courses. You can build lessons smoothly,

I explained what SCD means in a Business Intelligence solution in my previous post. We also discussed that while we do not expect to handle SCD2 in a Power BI implementation, we can handle scenarios similar to SCD1. In this post, I explain how to do so.

Scenario

We have a retail company selling products. The company releases the list of products in Excel format, including list price and dealer price, every year. The product list is released on the first day of July when the financial year starts. We have to implement a Power BI solution that keeps the latest product data to analyse the sales transactions. The following image shows the Product list for 2013:

So each year, we receive a similar Excel file to the above image. The files are stored on a SharePoint Online site.

Scenario Explained

As the previous post explains, an

The Biden administration is likely to reinstitute the Gainful Employment (GE) rule, a federal regulation which aims to kick low-value higher education programs off federal student aid. Critics of GE point out, quite correctly, that the rule is unfair because it exempts degree programs at public and private nonprofit colleges. Some argue that Congress should apply GE to all of higher education. While this would be a step in the right direction, “GE for all” would still fall short of protecting students from low-quality higher education, particularly at the graduate level.

How Gainful Employment tries to hold programs accountable

As currently proposed, GE would subject higher education programs to a two-part test; programs must pass both “prongs” to continue receiving federal funding. One part compares program completers’ earnings to those of the median early-career high school diploma holder in the same state. This provision is more applicable to

My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.

I don’t go into depth about the finds, but I encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one that I took out there on the road.

• Journey io– helps storytellers and business owners create memorable presentations. You just upload your videos, slides, PDFs, and other formats of content to the tool, and it will transform it into an interactive document that tells a story.
• Talkbase– is a Community Operations platform designed to help keep remote teams aligned, collaborate with contributors, plan and execute events, and manage community members – all in one place.
• Beams Pro is a virtual event platform that allows marketers and HR Managers to