When you’re preparing your data there are times when you can’t really avoid shortcuts, unfortunately, Locations are one of those times. From experience however, What3Words is the best place to go to get your Coordinates. Other options are available, but it is so straight forward to just validation locations and export the coordinates that you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better option. The importance of locations cannot be underestimated so taking the time early on in a project to validate locations and get the right coordinates is well worth it, once you’ve done it once as well it isn’t too arduous to maintain.
The hardest thing for any Power BI Developer is accepting that Power BI is not a read-only tool, this just isn’t the case. Power BI is about active engagement with data, your audience should be seeking answers from the data not just passively being taken through them. How many meetings are still run using PowerPoint decks to present charts and data? Imagine a world where that is replaced by a Power BI report, then imagine that report is ready before anyone is even awake.
In a previous role, it would take me three full working days to prepare all the PowerPoint decks on the previous month, that was if nothing went wrong. Management got a very brief “This is what happened” summary by midday on the first (business) day; I would sit up through the night to make sure all the SQL scripts ran and all tables populated after the main backup jobs completed, going to bed at 0300 or 0400 on the 1st of the month (regardless of if it was a weekend, holiday anything), then when I got up to start work at 08:00 I would refresh everything, validate spreadsheets etc… then I would write down in a notebook all the core figures (I would need to be able to quote them if questioned and all reports had to have the same numbers). Next, I would send the monthly summary email and then spend the rest of the next three days preparing 4 different PowerPoint decks consisting of screengrabs from various spreadsheets. When I transitioned the company to Power BI, the monthly summary email went out automatically by 4 am after the daily report was rebuilt (no special monthly, daily and weekly queries). Meetings switched to using Power BI for numbers, and the PowerPoint role becomes about raising issues.
Ross Waterston – Changed guy
