1. Power BI after more than 1 year in production
Jiří Neoral
03/12/2016 |
SQL Saturday #569 - Prague 2016

2. Thanks to our sponsors!
03/12/2016 |
SQL Saturday #569 - Prague 2016

3. Introduction Jiří Neoral BI Data Architect Dixons Carphone plc
@JiriNeoral
3 |
03/12/2016 |
SQL Saturday #569 - Prague 2016

4. This session is going to cover
Why this session?
What we did last year
Limitations reached, lessons learned
Product evolution in meantime
Enterprise capabilities introduced
What we did this year
Problems we faced
Lessons learned
03/12/2016 |
SQL Saturday #569 - Prague 2016

5. Customer story by technical guy
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SQL Saturday #569 - Prague 2016

6. Background Dixons Carphone Retailer with electronics
Stores & ecommerce
Around 40k employees in 9 countries 3k stores
Most important day of year
Black Friday (25/11/2016)
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SQL Saturday #569 - Prague 2016

7. Goals of solution
Provide insights to high level executives throughout the day what is happening
Spot problems and search for resolutions
Be as near real time as possible with reliable data
Reports accessible anywhere (computers and mobile devices outside of company network)
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SQL Saturday #569 - Prague 2016

8. Last year solution show dashboard from last year 03/12/2016 |
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SQL Saturday #569 - Prague 2016

9. Technical implementation
Connectors at the time
Personal Gateway
Analysis Services Connector (Tabular)
Data import through Personal Gateway
to MA level
Shared from My Workspace as a Dashboard
Duplicate charts (no drill down capability)
Used custom visuals
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SQL Saturday #569 - Prague 2016

10. Limitations we hit 8 refreshes per day can be scheduled (00,30)
can’t depend on scheduler, no alignment with ETL
ended up refreshing data manually...
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SQL Saturday #569 - Prague 2016

11. Lessons learned Users liked the dashboard & technology
Refreshing data manually sucks
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SQL Saturday #569 - Prague 2016

12. Product Evolution
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13. Connectors Analysis Services Connector Personal Gateway
Enterprise Gateway (bringing live connection)
On-Premises Data Gateway (latest release this Thursday)
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SQL Saturday #569 - Prague 2016

14. Improved delivery experience
Drill Down
More control on visuals
Conditional formatting
Mobile optimized view
Analyze in Excel
I can’t even name everything
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SQL Saturday #569 - Prague 2016

15. Enterprise Capabilities
Live connection
Shared workspaces (if they not there already before, not sure)
Row Level Security – using data import
Power BI Admin Center
Logging (not in our region yet)
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SQL Saturday #569 - Prague 2016

16. This year We knew our enemy (read limitations) up front 03/12/2016 |
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SQL Saturday #569 - Prague 2016

17. The plan was Use live connection to SSAS MD
as close to real time as our ETL can go
all logic can be reused in multiple reports/reporting tools
security model can be applied
can go as low as to product level
Use shared workspace with multiple admins
Avoid custom visuals
Use new features for even better delivery
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SQL Saturday #569 - Prague 2016

18. What was created
Intraday MD Cube – TY, LY, L2Y with everything pre-calculated and security model in place
Main dashboard and 2 derived versions
(1 month of dev and test)
This is how the main one looked like
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SQL Saturday #569 - Prague 2016

19. How did it work out?
On Tuesday 22nd live connection through gateway started failing intermittently
Upgraded gateway to latest version – no resolution
Raised severity A ticket with Microsoft and started troubleshooting
Tried Gateway on another machine – still the same problem
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SQL Saturday #569 - Prague 2016

20. Wednesday Problem not resolved yet Under time pressure
Plan B – recreate the dashboard using data import
no simple switch between live and import
different behavior of how calculations work
relationships, etc.
Dashboard in a day excercise
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SQL Saturday #569 - Prague 2016

21. Thursday Testers testing Plan B Plan A – works intermittently
Big decision to make
Subtitle for this session was created
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SQL Saturday #569 - Prague 2016

22. Final plan for Black Friday
Plan A not resolved yet
Go Live with plan B
data import
refresh manually from browser (personal gateway)
Plan C
if refresh through gateway fails, refresh in Power BI Desktop and rewrite the file
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SQL Saturday #569 - Prague 2016

23. Day D All operational reporting through BO turned off
Eyes on our dashboard and reports delivered via hourly
Supporting end users in office by
Excel cube connection
Local .pbix file
Outside office
dashboard using data import, refreshed manually
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SQL Saturday #569 - Prague 2016

24. Evaluation From BI Team work and delivery, end user acceptance Success
A lot of hard work in background
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SQL Saturday #569 - Prague 2016

25. Lessons learned Have plan B if plan B fails have plan C
if plan C fails have flight ticket somewhere nice or at least place to hide
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26. Evaluation of Power BI Product improved a lot
It is more enterprise ready then was year ago
Product team working hard not just to improve features but fix your problems if you have them
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SQL Saturday #569 - Prague 2016

27. We care about your opinion! Please don't forget to rate this session
We look forward to see you at the next event!
#CZBISQLPASS
03/12/2016 |
SQL Saturday #569 - Prague 2016