Using Styles in Microsoft Power View

[tweetmeme source=”denglishbi” only_single=”false”]

The other night I was working on some final chapter reviews of our upcoming book Visualizing Data with Microsoft Power View and I stumbled across something new in the RTM release of Microsoft Power View.  A new feature called Styles that provides theming capabilities with the views in the report files. Let’s take a quick look at where this new feature is located and what this can do to your views.

Now when you launch Power View in your browser you will see a new tab in the ribbon called Styles next to the Home tab.  When you click on this you will see that you are provided 8 different accent color themes to choose from as shown above.

So what do these look like?

Accent 1

Accent 2

Accent 3

(same as Accent 2 with exception of 1st color)

Accent 4

Accent 5

Accent 6

(same as Accent 5 with exception of 1st color)

Accent 7

(same as Accent 1 with slightly different blue color)

Accent 8

Now the one thing to note is that the Styles will change the colors for the entire view, so this includes all of the items (tables, slicers, etc.), not just one particular visualization.

The other thing to note here is that if you have multiple views in your report file that each view can have its own accent color setup.

So when designing your reports you have some options for colors to select from.  Nothing custom like you have available in Reporting Services reports, but at least you have something unlike say PerformancePoint.

So that is a quick intro and overview of the new Styles option in Power View, hope you enjoyed the quick tour.

If you are looking for more information and guidance don’t forget to check out our book that will be coming out very soon – Visualizing Data with Microsoft Power View.

New book: Visualizing Data with Microsoft Power View

[tweetmeme source=”denglishbi” only_single=”false”]

There is a brand new book coming to a bookstore near you – Visualizing Data with Microsoft Power View. 

I am very proud to announce that I am one of the co-authors along with Brian Larson, Mark Davis, and Paul Purington.  We are all from Superior Consulting Services🙂

This book is dedicated to the new self-service report authoring tool Power View that is provided in SharePoint 2010 as part of the new SQL Server Reporting Services 2012 integration. 

The book is split into two parts, the first focusing on Power View and the second on Tabular BI Semantic Model development, DAX, deployment, and management.

Included with the book is a DVD that will provide our sample data, supporting files, Power View report samples, Tabular model project files, and over 50 video demonstrations!

The book will be available in June in time for North America TechEd.  We are currently on the home stretch of the book doing our final reviews and we are very excited to see all of our hard work come together.

I want to thank Brian Larson and McGraw-Hill Publishing for getting this put together, including me, and making this possible.

Free SQL Server Community April 2012 Training

[tweetmeme source=”denglishbi” only_single=”false”]

Head over to Pragmatic Works site and take a look at all of the training that is available for April – free training on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 11 a.m. EST.

• April 3, Chris Price – Data Quality Services 2012
• April 5, Andrew Thornton-Smith – SQL for SharePoint 2010 Farms
• April 10, Aaron Nelson – SQL Server PowerShell Extensions
• April 12, Mike Davis – Intro to IRS and SSRS
• April 17, Max Trinidad – Basic Intro to PowerShell for the DBA
• April 19, Adam Jorgensen – How to manage Big Data, Tips and Tricks
• April 24, Brian Knight – Upgrading DTS Packages to SSIS
• April 26, Thomas Kejser – CAT Tales on Large BI Installs

If you miss a session they record them and you can check them out later on-demand in the webinar resource area.

So what are you waiting for? Go ahead and get registered for one of these spectacular webinars today – Webinar Registration.

Don’t forget, you can stay up-to-date on the training events through the PWFreeTraining twitter account as well.

PASSMN April 2012 Meeting

[tweetmeme source=”denglishbi” only_single=”false”]

The next Minnesota SQL Server User Group meeting is coming up next week. This month we have a fantastic lineup that you will not want to miss. This month Ted Kummert and Mark Souza will be here in-person directly from Microsoft and Microsoft SQL Server MVP Itzik Ben-Gan from SolidQ will also be in attendance.  Don’t forget the new meeting location which is at the Minneapolis Microsoft Technology Center in Edina.

The sponsor for this month’s meeting is TechFuse (where I will be speaking at along with Brian Larson and Jason Strate).

Location: 3601 West 76th Street, Suite 600 Edina, MN 55437

Date/Time: Tuesday, April 17 from 4 to 7 p.m.
 
Live Meeting:
• URL: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/usergroups/join?id=F863BG&role=attend&pw=44%2Cj5N%40t7
• Meeting ID: F863BG
• Entry Code: 44,j5N@t7
 
Agenda:
• 4:00-4:30 : Registration / hospitality / networking
• 4:30-4:45 : Intro / Greetings
• 4:45-5:45 : Ted Kummert and Mark Souza – SQL 2012 Discussion and Q&A
• 5:45-6:00 : Break
• 6:00-7:00 : Itzik Ben-Gan – Apply T-SQL Magic
• 7:00-7:15 : Closing comments/prize giveaways

Please click here for meeting details and to RSVP for the event

SQL 2012 Discussion and Q&A: SQL2012 discussion covering the following topics:

• Running your Business and Mission Critical environments
• BIG Data and scaling breakthrough insights throughout your organization
• Unlock New Insights With Pervasive Data Discovery Across the Organization
• Adopting the Cloud on your own terms

Apply T-SQL Magic: When a new version of SQL Server is released, with most of the new T-SQL features that are introduced you can usually quickly tell what their benefits are and what you can use them for. But with some features, it can take some time before people start discovering their true value and what you can do with them. Such is the APPLY operator that was added in SQL Server 2005. Initially it seemed just like an ordinary language element with a couple of uses, but with time people found very creative and interesting uses for it. This session describes the APPLY operator, and focuses on advanced, creative uses.