Happy Flag Day! Love our flag - Love our Power BI

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Love our flag - Love our Business Intelligence: Power BI

By Kelly Cronin
The U.S. flag celebrates America's strength, honor, and liberty.  From hanging on the walls of our bedroom to flying high outside the white house, flags are everywhere.  On June 14th, we celebrate Flag Day, in honor of the adoption of the U.S. flag in 1777.  As our flag has changed from a circle of stars to adding rows and columns of stars, so has our country, our lifestyles, and our technology.

What else been changing lately? Power BI.

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Power BI now has an all new notification center, where you can be notified of significant things that happen in your Power BI.  For example, you can get a notification if a new dashboard was added to your group space, or if a coworker shared a dashboard with you.

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Regardless of whether you use Power BI on the web or on your mobile device, Power BI will push notifications to all of your platforms.  If you're always on the go, you no longer have to worry about constantly rechecking your Power BI app.  Instead, if something important is happening, the app will let you know for you.  No matter where you are or what you are using, your notifications will keep you in the know.

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When you log in to Power BI, any new notifications that were sent to you while you were offline are added to your feed.  If you have new notifications, Power BI displays a yellow bubble with the number of new items. Open your Notification Center to see notifications displayed with the most-recent on top and unread messages highlighted.  Notifications are retained for 90 days, unless you delete them sooner or reach the maximum limit of 100.
Power BI makes it easy to keep all of your notifications in one place. Missed something? Not anymore.  New notifications that were sent to you while you were offline are added to your feed.  If you have new notifications, Power BI displays a yellow bubble with the number of new items. Open your Notification Center to see notifications displayed with the most-recent on top and unread messages highlighted.  Notifications are retained for 90 days, unless you delete them sooner or reach the maximum limit of 100.

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Stay tuned for more exciting Power BI updates to come!

Happy Flag Day!

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Sources: powerbi.microsoft.com and managedsolution.com

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Gartner Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms

Why Microsoft for your business intelligence and analytics platforms?

Industry analysts have taken note of our efforts and we are excited to share Gartner has positioned Microsoft as a Leader, for the ninth consecutive year, in the Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms.* For the first time, Microsoft is placed furthest in vision within the Leaders quadrant.

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In a market that is rapidly evolving with new innovation being introduced constantly, leaders in the BI market must demonstrate that they are focused not only on current execution but have a robust roadmap that will solidify its position as a future market leader, protecting the investment of today’s buyers. For this reason, we are proud to be ranked as a Leader in Gartner’s evaluation of the BI and analytics market.
Learn more about Gartner’s assessment of Microsoft Power BI and how the company’s offerings stack up against the rest.

*Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

View some of the highlights from the recent Power BI mobile apps update

The December 2015 updates for Power BI mobile apps includes a number of features and quality fixes requested by the end user. All of these improvements are now available in the app marketplace!

Below are some of the highlights.

SQL Server Reporting Services 2016 - Mobile reports in Power BI app (iOS)

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We are excited to take the first steps toward a single Power BI mobile app with access to all of your data from both SQL Server Reporting Services 2016 on-premises and Power BI in the cloud. The Power BI mobile app for iOS mobile is the first to include a preview of SSRS mobile reporting. Connect to various on-premises datasets (including SSAS server) to easily view your KPIs and mobile reports while on the go. Read the announcement.

Stay up to date – Share notifications (iOS)

As data grows within your organization, staying informed is more critical than ever. The new notification in the Power BI mobile app for iOS will help by letting you know when a colleague shares a dashboard with you.

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Mobile support for pinned report pages (iOS and Android)

We recently introduced the ability to pin entire report pages to your dashboard in the Power BI service. Now you can view those pinned reports in your Power BI mobile app for Android phone and iPhone.

When you open a dashboard with a pinned report page, you will see a default image. To view the actual pinned report, tap the tile. The pinned report page will open in landscape mode. This is only the beginning of the mobile reports journey. Stay tuned!

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QR codes in Power BI (Android)

The Power BI app for Android has been updated with QR code capability! Now you can use QR codes to consume contextual information and insights from your physical environment. Read the announcement.

Quality improvements

We’re always improving our Power BI mobile apps to provide you with a better experience. Some of our latest updates include better image quality when sharing tiles from the app, stability improvements for HTC One M8 devices, and new support for nexus 5X devices.

Source: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/powerbi

Other related resources:
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Case Study: Business intelligence drives up revenue and informs future growth strategy for Othaim Markets Company

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Othaim Markets Company, a leading food retailer in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, chose Microsoft Power BI to gain immediate insight into the business and to improve everything across operations from stock distribution to category management. The result is a tangible revenue growth with the help of BI and accurate data informing its business strategy.

Business needs

Othaim Markets Company is a leading food retailer within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Founded in 1956 as a wholesaler in Riyadh, the company has grown into a large retailer with more than 130 outlets including hypermarkets, supermarkets, wholesalers, and convenience stores.
To obtain information on its operations, the company was using SharePoint Server 2007 and analytical services from SQL Servers, both of which had been in use for a long time. Mohammed Al-Fraih, VP - Information Technology, Othaim Markets Company, says, “It was an old and limited platform in terms of mobility and access control.
“People within the business couldn’t really depend 100% on the reports generated by the system due to the limitation in the BI data sources, and at the same time, many data elements were fragmented on other systems. They were relying on judgment and Excel sheets.”
The company clearly needed to upgrade the platform and began exploring the market for business intelligence options.

Solution

Because Othaim Markets Company has an infrastructure built around Microsoft technologies and plans to invest in Azure and Office 365 in the near future, it opted for Microsoft Power BI and upgrade to SQL Server 2014.
Abdullah Edris, Head of BI, Othaim Markets Company, explains, “Microsoft BI has a number of strong tools with compelling features. And given that we have a large Microsoft estate, we can consolidate and integrate data much easier. For these reasons, the company built a new data warehouse running on SQL Server 2014 with Power BI providing business insight.”

The key advantages of Power BI include:

• accessibility of business data from smart dashboards and availability on mobile devices via mobile app;
• ability to build robust, reusable models to provide consistency in reporting and analysis; and
• embedded visuals designed to generate visual format reports for quick and easy comprehension.

Benefits

Othaim Company has gained a reputation for innovation given that the Power BI implementation is the first in Saudi Arabia and only the second in the Middle East.
Also, the company can now monitor business performance from any location, at any time. There are continuous, near real-time updates ensuring the latest business performance information is always available.
The benefits to decision-makers, staff members, and customers are numerous. Some of these are listed below.
• Automated KPI notifications alert staff immediately when stock sells quickly, thus enabling timely stock transfers.
• The platform also allows suppliers to monitor their products’ performance and stock availability through a web app directly connected to the BI.
• Staff members are able to quickly work with the data and identify trends. This empowers them to shape strategies within stores and radically improve category management.
• Information provides insight into customer buying habits, depending on demographics. This shapes much more accurate and targeted marketing campaigns. Moreover, the information allows for tailored SMS messaging to different customer groups rather than blanket messaging to all customers.
• The data also informs strategic planning by revealing individual store performance and has the ability to take into account the location of rival stores.
• The platform has become an essential strategic tool guiding executive level planning and strategy. The CEO is able to monitor business performance in smart ways, and this results in more accurate and strategic decisions.
Overall, Othaim has tangible revenue growth and efficient operations with the help of BI platform.
Read customer success stories to learn how Managed Solution helps businesses implement technology productivity solutions.

Bridge the gap between your physical world and your BI using QR codes

Bridge the gap between your physical world and your BI using QR codes managed solution

The Power BI Team recently introduced– QR codes in Power BI.
Microsoft Power BI mobile applications aim to bridge the gap between the physical and virtual worlds by leveraging the unique properties of the mobile device, a device that is physically with you everywhere, all the time, always on, has a variety of sensors and is connected to the Internet.
The new QR codes in Power BI provide the ability to consume information & insights in the physical environment and context.
Possibilities are endless! Attach QR codes to:
You can easily generate QR codes in the Power BI service for any tile that you have access to. Once generated, you and your colleagues can scan them from your mobile device using the QR code scanner in the Power BI app, or any external scanner, for instant access to the relevant tile.
See step-by-step instructions on how to start using QR codes in Power BI.

Visual Awesomeness Unlocked - The Globe Map in Power BI

Visual Awesomeness Unlocked - The Globe Map

As written by Amir Netz, Technical Fellow and Manoj Patel, Software Engineer on http://blogs.msdn.com/powerbi
All Map enthusiasts, we have a special treat for you this week. You are going to love it! Some of you might have seen this already in our demos but this week you can touch it and feel it with your own hands (I mean your own data 🙂
Today digital map has become integral part of everyday life. Most organizations have data with geo attributes in some form or other and the need to understand geographical significance of data has been on the rise.
The combination of aggregating information with location and presenting them in a small space allows Map visualizations to present the big picture out of sea of data. They help you find the theme and outliers at a quick glance. While a 2D map can help achieve this goal to some extent, when it comes to multiple attributes and widespread data, they fell short.
A 3D Map makes this experience more immersive and magical. They provide the sense of connection to the data with the physical world. This, combined with our spatial ability, brings a new perspective to the data when we present them as 3D objects.
GlobeMap brings this magical map exploration experience to Power BI. To use, simply import the Globe Map from the Visuals gallery to your Power BI report and use it with a location data type. The location could be an address, city, county , state/province or country/region. On this 3D map, you can project a measure as the height of the bar. The 3D bars reduce the clutter of overlapping bubbles and allow you to get instant insight. GlobeMap also allows you to rotate the Globe and see it from different angles. But we didn’t just stop here. We added one more goody to this visual. The icing on the cake is the added benefit of heat map in this visual. You can use a second measure for heat intensity and draw immediate attention to the right areas.

For many mapping solutions, some location names may be ambiguous, when considered in the context of multiple countries or regions. You can increase the accuracy of geo-coding of such location names by concatenating the city, state and country. For example, instead of using just ‘Bellevue,’ as the location you can provide it as ‘Bellevue, WA, USA'.

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NOTE: This Globe Map custom visual is not the same as Power Map for Excel (called 3D Maps in Excel 2016). Power Map is a 3D data visualization tool for Excel that lets you plot geographic and temporal data visually, analyze that data in 3D, and create cinematic tours to share with others in Excel. Globe Map is a custom visual for use within Power BI reports.

Visualize your VMob data in Power BI

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Visualize your VMob data in Power BI

As written by Theresa Palmer on blogs.msdn.com/powerbi
VMob uses real-time contextual analytics to give retailers the ability to create highly personalized marketing campaigns which reach customers at the right time and place. Tracking and exploring your VMob data is easy with Power BI and the VMob content pack. Power BI retrieves your data, including User Statistics, Retail KPI and Campaign Performance, and then builds an out-of-box dashboard and reports based on that data.
This post will provide an overview on how the Power BI content pack helps users explore and monitor VMob data. For additional details on how to get started, please see the VMob content pack for Power BI help page.
Start loading the content pack by connecting to your VMob account in Power BI. Once the content pack is loaded, you’ll see a new dashboard, report and dataset in your workspace marked with an asterisk. Clicking on the tiles will drill into the 4 pages of reports built on top of the data set. For example, selecting the Redemptions by Campaign tile will load the Campaign Performance report which shows details about your campaigns for the last 30 days.
You can hover over any of the visualizations to see additional details about that specific data point. You can also leverage the filters in the report by opening the filter pane on the right.
Navigate between the report pages using the named tabs at the bottom. On each page, you can also switch to Edit Mode, to view all of the tables and fields that are included in the dataset. This mode allows you to add filters, create or modify visualizations and add new report pages. The highlighted tables in the Fields list show where the fields come from for a specific visual.
Any of the visualizations be pinned back to the dashboard to further customize it. When you pin a visual you’re prompted to choose which dashboard to pin to, allowing you to build up a dashboard with tiles from multiple different reports. Each tile can be resized or moved on your dashboards allowing for further customization.
After you initially import the data, the dashboard, reports and data set will continue to update daily. You can control the refresh schedule on the data set as well. The VMob content pack for Power BI helps you visualize and explore an initial set of metrics and reports that can be customized for your scenario.

Power BI Best Visual Contest Ends Tonight at 11:59pm - Grand Prize $5000

Check out the amazing Power BI visuals and enter the contest.