PASS BA & BI Virtual Chapter June 2014 Sessions

Just wanted to do a quick post to let everyone know about the upcoming presentations this month for both the PASS Business Analytics and Business Intelligence Virtual Chapters.

June 10 – Administering and Managing the Power BI Environment (presented by Melissa Coates, BlueGranite)

Power BI for Office 365 is Microsoft’s new self-service BI offering. Just because it emphasizes self-service doesn’t mean a system administrator isn’t an important role! In this session we will discuss the overall system components and how a Power BI site in SharePoint Online differs from an on-premises SharePoint BI site. We will walk through how to best handle setting up connectivity to data sources, when a gateway is needed, and what data refresh capabilities exist. We will also consider how and when to create OData feeds from your corporate on-premises data sources and how those OData feeds affect Enterprise Data Search functionality.

June 19 – The Accidental Report Designer: Data Visualization Best Practices in SSRS (presented by Meagan Longoria, Valorem Consulting)

Whether you are a DBA, a developer, or an analyst, there is a good chance that you will have to create reports for coworkers, company executives, or clients. As with any UI design, careful consideration should be given to your data visualization design to ensure you are effectively communicating the intended message and providing a good user experience. While the principles are applicable across reporting platforms and tools, this session will contain demos and examples implemented in Reporting Services using SQL Server Data Tools. Learn how to make information (not just data) the focus of your report and provide your audience with something better than just shiny!

June 23 – Common Analysis Services Multidimensional cube design mistakes and how to avoid them (presented by Chris Webb, Crossjoin Consulting)

When you’re starting out on your first Analysis Services cube project it’s very easy to make design mistakes that can cause problems for you later on. In this session you’ll learn about the mostly frequently make Analysis Services design mistakes, what the consequences of making them are, and how to fix them.

Lots of great content to check out this month.  Make sure you visit the Virtual Chapter sites and you can also login to your myPASS account on the PASS site and join these chapters so you can be notified about upcoming sessions.