How to Automate Processing of Azure Analysis Services Models

I’ve been working on a proof of concept for a customer that involved using Azure Analysis Services as a cache for some data in an Azure Data Warehouse instance. One of the things I’ve been working on is scheduling the automatic processing of the Azure AS database. I did find the following documentation on the process, but the screenshots of the Azure portal are out of date and I did find some errors in the instructions. I also found this very extensive project for partition management in Azure AS, but this was a little overkill for my purposes and I was just interested in the very basics.

Read my recap for MS Data Summit here

These previously mentioned resources led me to write this blog post. In this post I’m going to leverage the previously mentioned article and walk through creating an Azure Function App to automatically refresh my Azure Analysis Services model, while correcting a few errors and updating the screenshots.

If you’re new to Azure Analysis Services, take a look at this documentation. For the purposes of this post, I’m going to assume you have a basic understanding of Analysis Services.

Microsoft Data Insights Summit Day 2 Recap: Timeline Storyteller, Future of Power BI Desktop, and Freakonomics

The theme of day 2 of the Microsoft Data Insights Summit was sessions, sessions, sessions! There were a ton of different sessions for attendees and for us to watch! In total, there are 75 different videos between the keynotes and the individual sessions posted on the Microsoft Power BI YouTube channel that you can go back and watch anytime, which is pretty amazing!

Read my Microsoft Data Insights Summit Day 1 Recap here!

Obviously I haven’t watched all 75 different videos, but I did watch a few so I’ve included some of the things I learned, announcements on new features, links to some of the especially interesting sessions, and my notes from a couple of those sessions below.

Deploying to Power BI Premium

Obviously the big news of the day is the announcement for general availability of Power BI Premium! And if you were at or you watched the Microsoft Data Insights Summit you saw that announcement. But early last month on May 3rd, Microsoft announced Power BI Premium, which allows you purchase dedicated capacity for your Power BI assets, thus allowing you to share content with Free users within your organization.

What is Power BI Premium?

Microsoft stated that Power BI Premium would be GA late Q2 of 2017, which could mean nothing else aside from June. Well, today is the day that Power BI Premium, along with Power BI Report Server, are generally available.

Setting up Cross Database Queries in Azure SQL Database

A question that I answer what seems like all the time is how to run cross-database queries against Azure SQL Database. So rather than answering those questions repeatedly I figured I should blog my response up so from here on out I can just forward the link to this blog on to my customers and others interested.

Most people I talk to still think that cross-database queries in Azure SQL DB aren’t possible. But thanks to a new feature called “Elastic Query”, we can issue cross database queries. There’s actually a few different types of cross database queries that

Setting up the Power BI Report Server Preview

Last week on May 17th the Power BI team announced the release of the Power BI Report Server preview. Power BI Report Server includes the ability to host Power BI reports, along with traditional SQL Server Reporting Services content, within the boundaries of your organization’s firewall.

I put together the following video that

Microsoft Business Intelligence Materials from Discussion at Jacksonville University

Today I had the wonderful pleasure for leading a discussion regarding the products, services, and tools Microsoft provides in the business intelligence stack. I met with Jacksonville University students and faculty and also had the pleasure of speaking with members of local businesses that are interested in leveraging Microsoft technologies. It was a wonderful experience and I had a great time!

If you’d like to download my slide deck from the discussion and presentation today, you can find that here.

Why Can’t I View My Power BI Content Pack?

I had a call with a customer this morning discussing different ways to publish Power BI content and how to share Power BI datasets, reports, and dashboards. A colleague, Patrick Leblanc (b|t), and I had a discussion about this, as well, and Patrick confirmed that this was a common challenge that his customers have faced. I thought I’d share what Patrick and I learned.

New to Power BI? Check out these Power BI tips.

Power BI NFL Fantasy Football 2016 Reports

If you have followed my blog for the past year or so you may remember when I posted a Power BI workbook I created to analyze the previous season’s NFL player stats to help me with my fantasy football draft. I know, its nerdy, but I like Power BI and I like fantasy football so I thought why not?

Download the latest version of the NFL Fantasy Football reports here!

With the new NFL season upon us, I thought I’d update my fantasy football report with the stats from the

Introduction to Power BI Desktop – Session Materials Available

For my second time, I was afforded the great opportunity to present virtually to the great people of the Madison Power BI User Group. I’m always really excited when someone invites me back a second time to speak because that means that the first time wasn’t completely awful! We had a great time last evening discussing

SQL Server 2016 Rundown – Session Materials Available

Yesterday evening I had the distinct pleasure of presenting at the Jacksonville SQL Server Users Group on some of the new features of SQL Server 2016. We had delicious pizza, lots of great networking, and a lot of fun talking about SQL Server. The group had a ton of great questions, too! Thank you to everyone