Power BI–Visualizing SQLSaturday Data

Inside SQLSaturday

This morning I was having a discussion with my husband about our SQLSaturday location. He is extremely concerned that moving the event further away from downtown Nashville would hurt attendance. I tried discussing it with him but he finally said “I’d like to see the data so we could know where everyone is coming from.” I said well I have all the data give me a minute. 10 minutes later I am Skyping him asking how to share with him the 2 Power BI maps I have made.

How did we get here? I ran the last 2 Nashville SQLSaturday events. Because I took a big leap in . . . → Read More: Power BI–Visualizing SQLSaturday Data

Starting over with Power BI

I had decided it was time to write a new presentation and happily chose Power BI, being that it’s the new hotness and looks to be the future of Business Intelligence. My timing couldn’t have been better with the general release going live recently it seems like now is the time to get going. I have titled this starting over because I had been using Power BI to create maps and other fun things inside Excel; it seems fitting since the changes to Power BI are coming in fast and furious. So I am here to tell you what it took to get back on track with this new release.

. . . → Read More: Starting over with Power BI

5 Simple things I forget about SSRS – Multi Select Parameters

For some reason whenever I get to working on a report I am really irritated at how I “forget” that SSRS doesn’t handle multi-select parameters at all. I am irritated at myself for pushing this horrid fact from my brain, my reluctance to remember or maybe that the painful truth is a coping mechanism or I am just in denial–maybe it’s been fixed.. Then I am reminded how Microsoft failed us by not making this an actual feature. I feel the writing has been on the wall for a while now SSRS is a fading technology. I do however know that there will be SSRS servers running for years to . . . → Read More: 5 Simple things I forget about SSRS – Multi Select Parameters

5 Simple things I always forget about SSRS – Custom Color Palette

There are spells where I am inside SSRS daily and then there are some stretches of time where I wrapped up doing other things and don’t see SSRS for months on end. I always seem “surprised” when I forget some of SSRS’s behaviors. I am sure sometimes I am just pushing the bad out of my head and other times it might be that I just don’t use it often enough to keep that info close to the top of my stack. So I decided that I should start a small blog series as a gentle reminder to myself and maybe along the way it will help someone else.

Custom . . . → Read More: 5 Simple things I always forget about SSRS – Custom Color Palette

Inside SQLSaturday – PayPal

PayPal

This year PASS changed the way money is handled for a SQLSaturday. In the past, they had a PayPal account and all the money was collected there. You would then request disbursement from them, with a limit of like 3 or something and 30 days after the event they’d allow you to pull out any remaining amount. Now, you must provide your own PayPal Account. But what does that mean to you? These details are things that happened to me and may not be a concern for you, if you’ve mastered PayPal.

Verify your account This was a newly-created PayPal account and we were unaware that you must verify . . . → Read More: Inside SQLSaturday – PayPal

SQLSaturday Schedule printing, now made easier.

I have been playing with Power BI items lately and have found some really good uses and some really big shortcomings. But today while I was playing with something an idea popped into my head. As a SQLSaturday organizer I found creating the schedule for print was a PITA. I have seen people just print the screen, which makes blowing it up to poster size a bit of a mess. I had to cut and paste, fix, format and it ends up a hot mess like below so I think I ended up just typing it.

So let me give you a better option. This is so easy I . . . → Read More: SQLSaturday Schedule printing, now made easier.