Microsoft Flow – Copy files from SharePoint to a local PC
Sam Lester – SQL Server & BI Premier Field Engineer
by Samuel Lester - MSFT
4y ago
Microsoft Flow – Copy files from SharePoint Online to a local PC I recently assisted a customer with an automated workflow through Microsoft Flow that copies files from a SharePoint Online site library to a file system share on a local machine being used as an archive server. I found several forum discussions and blog posts with a similar workflow, but nothing that helped solve the issues I was hitting. As a result, the goal of this post is to walk through this scenario including screenshots and descriptions of where I was getting stuck. Log in to Flow (https://us.flow.microsoft.com). I ..read more
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Power BI Troubleshooting Checklist
Sam Lester – SQL Server & BI Premier Field Engineer
by Samuel Lester - MSFT
4y ago
If you have ever started a sentence with “I’m seeing a strange issue in my Power BI Desktop report” and wondered how to investigate, this article is for you. Over the past few years of troubleshooting Power BI Desktop customer issues, I’ve created a checklist that often helps to identify a root cause within a couple minutes. If there are other handy tricks that you use, please share them in the comments below. Since I work with several customers, most of the requests come via email or social media. Here are the investigation steps/questions that I use: What version of Power BI Desk ..read more
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Importing a .dbf (dBase) file into Power BI
Sam Lester – SQL Server & BI Premier Field Engineer
by Samuel Lester - MSFT
4y ago
How can I import data from a .dbf (dBase) file into Power BI? Today’s Power BI Mailbag Question comes from a friend who often works with geospatial data and, as a result, ends up with several different shapefile formats, including .dbf (dBase) database table files. There are several blog articles around shapefile mapping options in Power BI, but this question of accessing the .dbf file directly from Power BI was something I hadn’t been asked before. Note: Power BI does not have native .dbf file support at the time of publishing this article, but the idea has been proposed at ideas.powerbi ..read more
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Understanding the differences between “Power BI Desktop” and “Power BI Desktop Optimized for Power BI Report Server”
Sam Lester – SQL Server & BI Premier Field Engineer
by Samuel Lester - MSFT
4y ago
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been spending a lot of time discussing Power BI Report Server with my customers and colleagues. One of the most common questions I’m asked is: What are the differences between “Power BI Desktop” and “Power BI Desktop optimized for Power BI Report Server”?   In this blog post, I’ll cover the similarities and differences between Power BI Desktop and Power BI Desktop Optimized for Power BI Report Server (shortened to “Desktop Optimized” for the sake of this article), including the following topics: Why are there two versions? Where do you find the installation ..read more
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Help! I can’t close the Power BI Desktop Splash Screen!
Sam Lester – SQL Server & BI Premier Field Engineer
by Samuel Lester - MSFT
4y ago
Today’s blog entry is a quick tip to get around what appears to be a Power BI Desktop splash screen that won’t go away. This is the first time I've experienced the issue and since the window is modal and I couldn't find a keyboard sequence to close it, I was stuck until I realized the solution. (Note: I discovered it in Power BI Desktop optimized for Power BI Report Server). Here’s the view that I encountered: In the image, the splash screen seems to be shifted up, which makes the X (close button) almost invisible. When this window is open, clicking anywhere else in the application h ..read more
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Troubleshooting a Power BI Dataset Refresh Error
Sam Lester – SQL Server & BI Premier Field Engineer
by Samuel Lester - MSFT
4y ago
Troubleshooting a Power BI Dataset Refresh Error I investigated a Power BI Dataset Refresh issue tonight that had been successfully refreshing until earlier in the day, when it began to fail consistently. The report solution is an extension of the Power BI Bing News Solution Template (which is really impressive!). In the Power BI tenant, I navigated to the dataset properties to view the refresh history where I saw the following error message stating that "There was an error when processing the data in the dataset", followed by the additional details of "The command has been canceled ..read more
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2017 Year in Review - Blog Stats
Sam Lester – SQL Server & BI Premier Field Engineer
by Samuel Lester - MSFT
4y ago
Sam Lester’s 2017 Blog Year in Review 2017 was an exciting year for me as I continued to work extensively with Power BI and share my solutions, work with the Microsoft product development team to get several customer bugs fixed in our products and completed the MPP in Big Data. Along the way, I shared a lot of this information through my blog and recently looked back through my blog metrics for the previous year. Here are some fun stats: ·         30 new blog posts published ·         201,933 page views ·         108,897 visitors from 192 countries ·         105 comments posted ..read more
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Exploring Big Data: Course 10 – Microsoft Professional Capstone: Big Data
Sam Lester – SQL Server & BI Premier Field Engineer
by Samuel Lester - MSFT
4y ago
(This is course #10 of my review of the Microsoft Professional Program in Big Data) Course #10 of 10 – Microsoft Professional Capstone: Big Data Overview: Course #10 brings the Microsoft Professional Program in Big Data to a close. The capstone project is comprised of three different sections, each making up 33% of the overall grade even though the complexity and number of questions varies by section. The project is based on one years’ worth of weekly sales data for roughly 300 stores making the dataset a collection of over 15,000 files. As a result, we need to rely on the techniques l ..read more
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SQL Server DBA Morning Health Checks
Sam Lester – SQL Server & BI Premier Field Engineer
by Samuel Lester - MSFT
4y ago
Introduction: As a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer, I get to work with amazing colleagues who create incredible customer solutions. Patrick Keisler ( blog | | ) is a long time SQL Server professional, who also works as a PFE supporting customers throughout Europe. He recently created a very handy "SQL Server Morning Health Check" solution on short notice for one of his customers. The solution is very helpful and can be added easily to your morning routine as a DBA to monitor your SQL Server environment. Patrick, thanks for sharing! SQL Server Morning Health Checks (Created by Patrick Keisle ..read more
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Exploring Big Data: Course 9 – Developing Big Data Solutions with Azure Machine Learning
Sam Lester – SQL Server & BI Premier Field Engineer
by Samuel Lester - MSFT
4y ago
(This is course #9 of my review of the Microsoft Professional Program in Big Data) Course #9 of 10 – Developing Big Data Solutions with Azure Machine Learning Overview: The “Developing Big Data Solutions with Azure Machine Learning” course is comprised of four sections of videos and labs, each with a set of 3 quiz questions, followed by a 15-question final exam. The labs in each section build upon the work done in the previous labs. The first section introduces Azure Machine Learning Studio, followed by the next three sections where you begin to use Azure ML Studio to create your first pre ..read more
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