The Clearly Podcast

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Documentation is often neglected in many IT projects.  This week, we talk about why it is so important, and the risks involved if you don't do it.

Some of the most fundamental things you need to document are:

• Passwords - and do it securely in a password vault
• Data dictionary so everyone knows how measures and KPIs are defined
• Configuration - so there is a clear understanding of where everything lives
• Reasons behind decisions - because there might be a good reason for not doing something in the obvious way

How you do it is up to you and your use case - it's important that it shouldn't become too onerous, and Agile is no excuse for not doing it - if all your developers leave with all your service account passwords in their heads, you're sunk.

And documentation can be as simple as a OneNote notebook and comments in code, or something more complex such as a set of Confluence pages.

But however you do it, make sure you ACTUALLY DO IT!!

You can download Power BI Desktop from here.

If you already use Power BI, or are considering it, we strongly recommend you join your local Power BI user group here.

To find out more about our services and the help we can offer, contact us at one of the websites below:
UK and Europe: https://www.clearlycloudy.co.uk/
North America: https://www.clearlysolutions.net/

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Possibly a sensitive subject this week - low code development.

To start with some context, we love low code development and are working on low code development projects, mainly through Power Apps. 

We also see the marketing of low code applications and want to put forward our experience that low code is still a software development project with all of the challenges and intricacies that come along with that.

In this episode we discuss approaches to low code development and ask any involved in a low code project not to forget the disciplines of working on a software development project.

You can download Power BI Desktop from here.

If you already use Power BI, or are considering it, we strongly recommend you join your local Power BI user group here.

To find out more about our services and the help we can offer, contact us at one of the websites below:
UK and Europe: https://www.clearlycloudy.co.uk/
North America: https://www.clearlysolutions.net/

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Due to some technical issues, episode 4 is currently delayed.  Please watch this space and we will be uploading as soon as we can

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This week we talk about the benefits of training your users in the early stages of an implementation project. We address why you may choose to do this and the benefits. 

The traditional approach is based on a overloading users at the end of a project and generally leaving them to it. This approach has merit as memories fade over time - for some of us sooner rather than later!

When you train early and often, users become more engaged with the project and through many interactions over time, are better able to use the developments when delivered.

We discuss some of the techniques to help make this work and our experiences of getting it both right and wrong.

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This week we talk about Power BI in the context of the wider Power Platform, by which we mean Power Apps, Power Automate, and Dataverse -  the oft forgotten data store underlying so many elements of the Power Platform ecosystem.

You can download Power BI Desktop from here.

If you already use Power BI, or are considering it, we strongly recommend you join your local Power BI user group here.

To find out more about our services and the help we can offer, contact us at one of the websites below:
UK and Europe: https://www.clearlycloudy.co.uk/
North America: https://www.clearlysolutions.net/

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This week we discuss the current state of management reporting and how it has moved on over the past decade or so.

The world has moved on from flat, static reports in SQL Reporting Services and self-service reporting is becoming easier, but what about the perception of self service?  We often see that senior executives see self service as difficult and time-consuming, which with modern tools such as Power BI or Tableau, it needn't be.

The breadth of what is required has grown too - from financials to sales and inventory and broader information from social media and other external data sources.

Finally the questions being asked of the data have become more mature - moving from simply what happened to why it happened and what will happen.

As a result, management reporting is turning into more of an application that a traditional report - from a read only report, we are writing back narratives and context.  This comes with its own data management challenges and businesses need to start asking how long that keeps having business value.

For more information on snapshots in Power BI, take a look at this.

You can download Power BI Desktop from here.

If you already use Power BI, or are considering it, we strongly recommend you join your local Power BI user group here.

To find out more about our services and the help we can offer, contact us at one of the websites below:
UK and Europe: https://www.clearlycloudy.co.uk/
North America: https://www.clearlysolutions.net/

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Welcome back to the Clearly Podcast, Season 2.

In this episode we discuss what we have learnt from starting the podcast and talk about the topics we want to cover.

In season 2, we will be spreading our wings into some of the broader areas of the Azure data platform, the impact of low-code and no-code platforms on software development, and what machine learning to mean to your business.

We will be welcoming some new guests, and hopefully hearing from some old friends too.

From Monday, September 6, we will be back to publishing every Monday for the next few months.

You can download Power BI Desktop from here.

If you already use Power BI, or are considering it, we strongly recommend you join your local Power BI user group here.

To find out more about our services and the help we can offer, contact us at one of the websites below:
UK and Europe: https://www.clearlycloudy.co.uk/
North America: https://www.clearlysolutions.net/

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In this episode, we discuss our experiences of helping customers to migrate from Excel to Power BI.

We talk frequently about how much Excel we see being used for data storage, manipulation and visualization when we start working with new clients. Furthermore, we talk extensively about the risks of proliferation of those spreadsheets, especially when they're replicated and changed by multiple users within the organization.

So how do you move your users from Excel to Power BI? It's not as simple as merely moving the spreadsheets into Power BI models, the trick is stopping users dependency on Excel as a business tool, moving them to use structured business systems linked to Power BI where they can get a universally understood source of the truth.

When doing this it's essential to understand your users motivations and dependancies on Excel so you can provide better solutions to their reporting and data needs. We work with the contention that most users don't want to be Excel formula experts so they're more satisfied when you give them better alternatives.

You can download Power BI Desktop from here.

If you already use Power BI, or are considering it, we strongly recommend you join your local Power BI user group here.

To find out more about our services and the help we can offer, contact us at one of the websites below:
UK and Europe: https://www.clearlycloudy.co.uk/
North America: https://www.clearlysolutions.net/

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This week we take a look at Power BI Report Server - the on-premise way to deploy Power BI reports.

We consider when to use it and when not to, the limitations, and the costs.

In general though, the default position should probably be to use the cloud service as Report Server will always lag behind in terms of features, and comes with bigger cost overheads since it needs to be deployed on an infrastructure that has to be purchased and maintained.

The main (only?) compelling reason to use it it likely to be regulatory: that you are processing data that cannot for regulatory (or contractual) reasons be hosted in the cloud.  That is not to imply that the cloud is any less secure - indeed it is probably more secure than on-premise infrastructure - but regulation frequently lags behind technology.

For more information, read this detailed comparison of features and an introduction to the pre-requisites (including licensing).

You can download Power BI Desktop from here.

If you already use Power BI, or are considering it, we strongly recommend you join your local Power BI user group here.

To find out more about our services and the help we can offer, contact us at one of the websites below:
UK and Europe: https://www.clearlycloudy.co.uk/
North America: https://www.clearlysolutions.net/

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OK, it isn't quite yet - we still have to wait until April 2 for the GA release, but we do have a release date and price.

Premium per user offers many of the premium features, licensed on a user by user basis.

The main features it opens up are:

• Paginated reports (so we can now more easily centralise all business reporting)
• Increased refresh rate (so we can have nearer real time data)
• Pipelines (to centralise the data structures)
• AI/ML features.

The key features excluded are

• Embedding
• PBI Report Server

The detailed announcement can be found here and the details of what it can and can't do can be found in the FAQ.

You can download Power BI Desktop from here.

If you already use Power BI, or are considering it, we strongly recommend you join your local Power BI user group here.

To find out more about our services and the help we can offer, contact us at one of the websites below:
UK and Europe: https://www.clearlycloudy.co.uk/
North America: https://www.clearlysolutions.net/