The Community Summit and Extreme365 Europe took place last week.
The summit brought together the Microsoft Business Applications community. Experts from the Microsoft community shared their knowledge and best practice with participants.
Due to the COVID-19 global pandemic, the event was held virtually. The attendees missed out on networking opportunities and delicious Catalan food under the Mediterranean sun. However, when it came to learning, the online format was probably more effective. One could attend many sessions scheduled one after another without having to leave a room.
Power BI in summit
We were tuning into Power BI-themed sessions and they were value-packed.
With things getting tough in the economy, in many industries the use of BI tools is the difference between success and failure. And Microsoft Power BI is definitely one of these tools.
Some said that Power BI is simply a visualization tool, something that “draws beautiful graphs better than Excel”. The truth is Power BI is so much more than that.
It is a “whole business intelligence tool”, said Ana-Maria Bisbe, a BI consultant from Madrid, during her presentation.
Anna-Maria went through the different stages of a BI project development. She showed how to extract data from different sources, explore, and transform data using the powerful M language. After that, she showcased the best practices in data modeling and building the business logic using DAX.
The speaker showed how to apply embedded AI capabilities in Power BI. Machine Learning integrated functions in Power BI can help solve a variety of complex business problems. This saves users’ time by providing automatic report summaries, showing accurate forecast, and even customer sentiments from reviews.
The sessions at the Community Summit are showing that modern self-service BI is made for everyone. This is no longer the realm of IT specialists. Various business users, including finance staff, operations managers, and executives are using modern BI tools to solve their business questions.
Modern BI has made it possible for business users to control their data and build interactive visualizations. Users can also uncover insights and improve storytelling to cater to the needs of their customers better than ever.