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While I have no idea if anyone is silly enough to call them the ‘good old days,’ I remember the beginning of using technology for widespread analytics in business back in the late 1990s. Armed with Excel, I put together big, complex spreadsheets. I used what felt like a magical programming language (VBA for all the Office nerds like me) to help create and automate analytics and reports. I was able to do reporting in a way that by today’s standards might be kludgy but seemed ground-breaking at the time.

Today, we are light-years ahead of those times. I can use Power BI and other tools to do analytics for an organization that automates the connection of data sources and enables advanced analytics with relative ease. I can bring together data from across the enterprise and serve it up where and when needed. I can do real-time analytics on a volume of data that would make the old Excel cry.

Yet to this day, most organizations are still dependent primarily on older, outdated reporting tools for their analytics. Again and again, when I talk to organizations about their reporting needs, they plop an Excel workbook in front of me and tell me to rebuild it exactly.

 

 

Modern BI tools do not just improve on the older options for business analytics. Power BI is not Excel 2.0. Businesses need to think differently.

Modern BI tools redefine what business analytics can do to the extent that businesses need to approach things in a whole new way.

 

The Top 5 ways that Power BI and Modern BI Tools are Different

1. Modern BI tools use a data model. The old way used a data set: This changes everything. Over the decades, I have seen thousands of Excel spreadsheets. For a super-majority of them, the data used either lived in a single sheet as a dataset or in multiple data sets across multiple sheets. Modern BI tools do things differently. The data model defines how the data comes together. Building a suitable data model is critical for success.
2. The old way risked everyone telling a different truth. I can’t recall the number of times I’ve heard organizations say that the number one problem they have is everyone having different numbers. People often show up with different Excel sheets, telling a different story. A well designed, modern BI solution gets rid of this problem.
3. Modern BI tools keep the data always fresh. What does it mean to go from manually updated files to a fully automated process where the data does not ever have to go stale? It means that updating data is no longer painful and cumbersome, unlike with Excel. And gone are the ‘one and done’ days of creating a report only to have it never be updated again.
4. Data model control resides with experts, but SMEs control the analytics. Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) in the business know what they want to analyze. But the art and science of preparing data are not for everyone. But in the old model, either the SMEs were left to fend for themselves, or they had to wait for their data to pull from the keepers of the data warehouse. Modern BI lets the professionals prep the data model, allowing the SMEs to focus on what they do best – solving business problems.

   This is incredibly exciting stuff! With proper use of Power BI, data-driven decision-making becomes a reality. This is true digital transformation. But it comes at a cost. In this case, the need to think strategically is critically important. The 5th way that modern BI tools are different is the following.

5. With modern BI tools, ignoring strategy can ruin everything. There is no way to overstate this. In the old, ad-hoc environment, BI or analytics strategy was pretty much ignored. With no ability to enforce controls, what is the use of strategy? But with Power BI, organizations need to take a strategy-first approach. And luckily, Cambay is here to help.

    

 

What is Business Intelligence, and Why Is it NOT Reporting?

It occurs to me that maybe part of the challenge for organizations is that many are unsure in their understanding of BI. Here is my current working definition of Business Intelligence:

Business Intelligence uses KPIs, visualizations, metrics, and analytics to address impactful business problems in a way that lets people in organizations take meaningful action. Using clean (enough) and trusted data, BI enables organizations to address their most important problems to engage in continuous, intelligent transformation.

Is it a perfect definition? I don’t think such a thing exists.

But it is pretty good and feels as accurate as I can get. Bonus points to anyone that noticed the missing keyword – reports! My working definition of BI is not focused on reporting. The report is just the vehicle for continuous, intelligent transformation.

Why is this important? Built into the very definition is an emphasis on taking action to address critical problems. In other words, any discussion of BI strategy needs to focus on how it can dramatically benefit real issues. Anything less is just reporting.

 

The BI Strategic Lens

So, what does BI strategy look like? I have spent many years helping organizations with this question. The result of all this work is the Cambay BI Strategic Lens. Think of it as a strategic planning process for intelligence and analytics.

Picture this. An organization has never done any real road mapping or strategic work to approach BI. They have many big, tabular reports (think Crystal Reports or SSRS) and Excel files, and they have tested some modern BI solutions such as Power BI. They have data they want to report on in various systems such as Azure, SalesForce.com, SAP, and others. And they have people doing report writing across the entire organization. This kind of setup can feel out of control. But with the BI Strategic Lens, we can bring it all into focus. Here’s how.

1. We work with organizations to help clarify how they can get the most value out of their intelligence investments.
2. We help them plan how to use modern tools such as Power BI in the most effective way possible.
3. We work with them to understand who will be using BI and how.
4. We help drive understanding of their most crucial business problems. And then, we tackle those problems head-on using intelligence and analytics.
5. We design an approach to their data scaled to their needs. We focus on a future-ready design that can grow over time.
6. We plan for the actions, changes, and solutions that will let the organization make a difference.
7. And finally, we tie this all together with their data infrastructure and organizational security.

When done, organizations have a way to focus their energy and efforts. That is why we call this process the Strategic Lens. It is about ensuring focus and clarity, driving impacts, and maximizing return for every dollar spent on BI.

Hopefully you see the value of BI strategy and why it so important to accelerate digital transformation. Want to learn more? If so, please talk to our BI experts at Cambay to see if it’s right for your organization.

Access management helps control user access, including tracking and authorization as needed. Access management systems are vital as they help bolster organization data security. As organizations grow, it becomes increasingly difficult to manage employee roles and user activity manually.

Automating these workflows helps ensure employees have the correct permission levels and only access the resources they need.

This blog will discuss how we leveraged Microsoft Power Platform – a low-code platform to build a seamless Access Management System by automating repeatable tasks and enhancing employees’ productivity.

 

Introducing Microsoft Power Platform

Power Platform brings together the robust power of Power BI, Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power Virtual Agents into one business application platform to enable quick and easy app development and provide data insights. Each product of Power Platform is built on the Dataverse, i.e., Common Data Service (Dataverse). Power Platform offers deep integration with GitHub and Microsoft Teams. All four components/products offer a comprehensive platform where you don’t need a code to build the applications.

Dataverse is the core of the Microsoft Power Platform. Dataverse is a secure database hosted in the Azure Cloud platform, prebuilt with a standard set of entities and record types.

 

Power Platform has following four products/components:

• Power BI – A business analytics service is used to analyze data from different sources and provide interactive visualizations for decision-making. Power BI enables the creation of reports and dashboards from 100+ connectors. Power BI has offerings from Desktop Version to Power BI Service. Power BI also has several REST APIs, which allow users to automate administrative tasks.
  
• Power Apps – PowerApps is a low code application development platform that enables anyone to build web and mobile applications without writing code. PowerApps connects with several hundred systems and databases, making it easy to connect workers with the existing processes. PowerApps also comes with a built-in, fully managed, enterprise-grade datastore, Common Data Service (CDS) for those applications that generate data not destined for a legacy system.
  
• Power Automate – Power Automate, formerly known as Microsoft Flow, is used for automating business workflows and processes across your organization. It helps you create simple automation to advanced scenarios with branches, loops, and more. Power Automate can be used to design end-to-end workflows based on specific trigger actions. Power Automate also comes with several pre-defined workflow templates.
  
• Power Virtual Agents – Virtual agents help users create powerful virtual agents using a no-code graphical interface. It easily integrates your virtual agent with hundreds of services and systems out of the box or creates custom workflows.
  

Microsoft’s Power Platform leverages Artificial Intelligence (AI), Hyper Automation, and Mixed Reality to connect systems, automate processes, improve data insights, and empower employees to do more.

 

Do you have a governance process that is performed manually and without any reporting?

In today’s modern digital world, organizations have multiple systems where data governance consumes most of the resources and plays a critical role in request management process execution. Most of the time, each process/system is designed independently and works in silos. Such process makes it challenging to raise, track requests, monitor, approve/reject requests, and/or follow-up with the concerned department/person to speed up request fulfilment.

Data governance is a collection of roles, policies, standards, processes, and metrics to enable effective and efficient use of information. It defines who takes what action, on what data, in what situations, and using what methods.

 

How Power Platform can help your organization automate access management

Access Management System (AMS) helps you to fully automate all manual tasks involved in any access management process using components of Power Platform. AMS is a centralized self-service system where any user can browse different categories of reports available in the organization, raise requests, and take necessary approvals. Right from the interface for raising requests to all intermediate approvals, notifications in each stage and followed by IT support and Power BI Report support interaction if necessary.

AMS also supports monitoring and analysis of access requests by admins through rich visualizations to take necessary actions for fulfilment.

 

Architecture of AMS

Access Management System Process Flow

1. User raises Power BI report access for self or others from report dashboard
2. User performs below tasks from the dashboard
   1. Browse and view reports if they already have access to them
   2. Fill and submit details for an access request in the embedded Power App form
3. SharePoint Online list works as backend and keeps track of all information related to request process under Access Management system
4. Power App interface allows below activities
   1. Request for specific report access
   2. Check the status of the submitted access request
   3. Cancel/Revoke access request
5. Power Automate triggers process for each request created in the Power App. It automates all process inflow and sends notifications on every stage of flow to relevant actors’ inactivity.
6. Power Virtual Agent interface – A Bot interface to guide the user through the AMS process and/or raise a request on behalf of the user.
7. Rich, insightful reports are available for Admin and Operational/Management purposes.

 

Why you should plug-in Access Management System

1. Pre-Package solution: Quick and easy to plugin into your organizational ecosystem using online SharePoint + Power Platform + Office 365 setup.
2. Enterprise Central Solution: The solution integrates with multiple access management processes, and the data can be used across various platforms.
3. Customizable solution: Existing solutions caters to fulfill any additional requirement inflow or reporting.
4. Ad hoc -Reports: – Additional to existing reports, users can create ad hoc Power BI reports.
5. Enterprise Central Audit Logs Solution: All requests and details across multiple systems are logged and tracked in the AMS system.
6. Web/Mobile user Interface: Power Platform enables users to access this solution from a web or mobile interface.
7. High-level visibility: Management can have high-level visibility on end-to-end governance processes.

 

License and Cost

Per app plan (per user/app/month)
Best for businesses that want to license each user to run one app at a time, with the flexibility to stack licenses for each additional app.

Per user plan (Run unlimited apps per user/month)
Best for businesses that want one license for each user, regardless of the number of apps they need to run.

 

Office 365 or Dynamics 365 plan

Power Apps is included in O365 or D365 license. The user will have access to some Power Apps functionality. However, the user will lose access to the complete Power Apps capabilities, including premium connections and features such as Common Data Service.

For more details visit Microsoft site https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-ca/pricing

 

How Can We Help?

Cambay Consulting is a leading Microsoft Gold Partner helping organizations like yours to get the most out of their Power Apps and Dynamics 365 system. Contact us today to get started. We aim to provide you with the most current news, tips, and best practices in Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform.

Microsoft Viva – Future of Employee Experience and Engagement

A lot has changed in the recent times. Even as employees start going back to work, how we work is permanently transformed by the pandemic. Many enterprises have adapted to remote and hybrid work. The need to connect and engage with employees has become more critical than ever. The organization focus on improving the employee experience, can directly impact employee engagement, retention, customer satisfaction and a company’s financial success.

 

Six key elements for a great employee experience

 

Microsoft Viva

Microsoft recently announced the new Employee Experience Platform, Microsoft Viva – the next-gen evolution of technologies in Microsoft 365. Microsoft Viva helps enterprises engage employees, prioritize their wellbeing, enhance their skillsets, and enable leaders to drive better decision-making across their businesses.

Microsoft Viva is aimed at enhancing the employee experience for remote work and provides an integrated solution from within Microsoft Teams allowing organizations to deliver the key capabilities needed to engage employees from a singular application.

 

Microsoft Viva has following four components:

 

Viva Connections: Viva Connections was released in late March 2021 and is continuously evolving. It started with the desktop experience within Microsoft Teams, and the mobile release is coming somewhere in September 2021. The best part about Viva Connections is that it comes with your SharePoint Online license. If you have Microsoft 365 subscriptions, including SharePoint Online, you will be licensed for Viva connections. Viva Connections creates a personalized experience based on the employee’s persona.

Viva Connections

 

Now, all this will not be done entirely automatically because Viva connections consider things like your SharePoint sites, Yammer communities, and Microsoft Stream content, so it requires you to have these set up beforehand to maximize its potential. Viva Connections integrates your SharePoint online portal within Microsoft Teams, thus completely changing the experience you have with Teams itself. Viva Connections is a branded employee app in Microsoft Teams. It is a gateway to your employee experience, with personalized news, communications, tasks, people, and resources. It also comes with dashboard for actions and reminders.

In addition, users can participate in Yammer communities, making Yammer something that is probably finally going to be embraced by more organizations. When it comes to Live Events and Videos shared on Connections, the exciting part will be the automatic AI transcriptions generated so those who prefer to have subtitled content in their native language can consume it that way.

More capabilities will be added over time. In our opinion, Connections is fantastic, but the mobile release is going to make the experience much more accessible and probably will make employees more likely to consume the content due to the way that it’s designed – almost as if it were a social networking application, just for your intranet instead.

Viva Insights: Viva Insights is an AI-powered tool, which can be installed through Teams apps and leverages the Workplace Analytics subscription. Insights can be split into two modules: personal insights and manager/leader insights. Personal insights contain two features: “stay connected” and “protect time.” The stay connected portion uses AI to help you not fail to meet your commitments, and lets users prioritize specific tasks associated with critical deliverables – let us say your managers or key clients.

Insights delivers personalized and actionable insight and helps address complex business challenges with data.

Viva helps you set a meeting frequency option with your colleagues or clients. Viva Insights will remind you of the meeting, and even if you were to miss it or let’s say you have a conflicting event at the time of the meeting – it reminds you to reschedule with a prompt action.

The AI also finds commitments requests and follow-ups mentioned in your email, either by you or the people you are speaking with, and then it suggests tasks accordingly. If your important contacts have mentioned you specifically on Teams using “@Mentions,” it collects and gives you easier access to it. If you have any upcoming meetings that you’ve forgotten to RSVP, it gives you a task suggestion to get that done as well.

The second portion of personal insights is aimed at improving your productivity. It is called “protect time,” which lets you use focus time to block out unnecessary notifications that could distract you from getting your work done. Another nice thing about insights is the dashboard, which lets you do simple things like praising your colleagues, or it just reminds you to take a break, giving you some breathing exercises integrating with “Headspace” – the meditation and sleep application.

Manager and leader insights are aimed at managers and leaders, giving you two sections called “my team” and “my organization.” They both provide a statistical overview of your team. It gives you recommended actions or best practices that you can implement to improve certain aspects of your team or your organization. It’s mainly aimed at giving you a good look at your employee’s habits and how they may affect their effectiveness. More than anything, bringing this up with your employees can make them feel as if you were invested in their routines and their well-being. This all results in bridging that gap in communication between employers and employees.

 

Viva Topics:

Employees spend lots of time finding for content and information. They need a solution which helps them provide the required info without constant interruptions. Viva addresses this issue and helps organizations around knowledge management. Topics builds on Microsoft 365 and applies AI to identify knowledge and experts from across your organization and categorize them into shared topics.

Topics help in significantly reducing the amount of time people spend looking for information. Users will create use topic cards, topic pages inside topic centers – which are areas containing consolidated information on specific topics that your employees may want to access at any given time. It does this by using Microsoft’s AI technology so that you do not have to manually create any of these content pages, which many organizations do use communication sites or content management applications.

The AI not only organizes knowledge into topics but also automatically creates topic pages for each topic. Let’s look at an example – say that your organization has developed a solution for “Return to work,” and whenever the term “Return to work” is mentioned in Teams conversations, SharePoint sites, and in your entire Microsoft 365 environment, the word gets underlined, and you can hover over it to be shown a topic card which gives you information – like the people who are involved, who may have some knowledge on that particular topic, resources related to the issues. If you click on the card, it will take you to a topic page that will show you a description of the topic – alternative names and acronyms for it and more resources. You can use it to better understand that subject in detail. Instead of worrying about spending excessive time training them, you can let Viva Topics do kind of the hard work for you.

Of course, you will have to set the descriptions and acronyms manually, but the AI does the rest of the job automatically. Viva Topics is a user-based license, so you will have to purchase individual Viva Topic licenses for anyone thinking of taking advantage of the feature set. Microsoft is also working on having this work with applications other than Office 365, so in the future, you will be able to integrate it with external applications and even external content management applications using content connectors and APIs.

Viva Learning: Viva Learning provides a consolidated view for organizations into different LMS tools that they might have deployed. Viva Learning brings the training content together into Microsoft Teams, so your employees can easily access the material. Microsoft has partnered with Cornerstone Coursera, Pluralsight, Edx, Skillsoft, SAP SuccessFactors, and LinkedIn learning courses available online to make Viva Learning the perfect consolidated learning center. Viva Learning helps make learning a natural part of both every employee’s daily work and company culture.

With Viva Learning, you will be able to assign courses for your employees from within Microsoft Teams and track the completion status of the course. You will also be able to create a custom selection of courses within your Microsoft Teams channels and tabs, and as an employee – under the “my learning” tab. Viva Learning creates a central location for learning in Teams, with AI that recommends the right content at the right time. You will be able to see content that has been explicitly assigned to you. You can also view the details about the course and like or bookmark them for later consumption, and you will also be able to search for learning content from anywhere within Microsoft Teams.

Microsoft’s Viva, an employee experience platform will help solve the problem on business productivity and create a thriving culture with engaged employees and inspiring leaders. Let us discuss and show how Microsoft Viva empowers your people and teams to be their best.

The amount of data created have skyrocketed. More data was generated in the last two years than in the entire human history. In fact, according to IDC, the world’s data generated will grow from 29 Zettabytes in 2018 to 175 Zettabytes by 2022. Data is the new oil. Do data back your organization’s business decisions? Enterprises that leverage data stay ahead of the competition by making better business decisions, increase the quality of products & services, and enhance customer experience. How does an enterprise derive insights from such a massive volume of data?

Business Intelligence and Analytics tools help enterprises understand trends and derive actionable insights from data to make strategic and tactical business decisions. These tools ingest a large volume of structured and unstructured data from multiple sources, transform it, identify patterns, and help gain business insights. But the question is, how do you know which business intelligence and analytics tool are suitable for your enterprise?

Selecting the right BI tool for your enterprise makes all the difference in deriving insights and make better business decisions. So how do you start and choose?

 

Power BI vs. Tableau vs. QlikView

Whether your organization is starting or in the middle of selecting the data visualization tools, I am sure you might have already heard about Power BI, Tableau and QlikView – top 3 popular BI tools. Data visualization capabilities no longer differentiate these BI tools. Differentiation has shifted to how well these platforms support augmented analytics. Augmentation leverages machine learning and artificial intelligence for data preparation, insight generation and explanation to explore and analyze data more effectively.

Let us start to look the features and advantages of the afore-mentioned BI tools.

1. Power BI

Power BI is Microsoft’s analytics and data visualization tool that helps enterprises analyze and visualize massive volumes of data. The product was launched by Microsoft in 2011.

• It brings together apps, connectors, and software services to turn structured, semi structured, and unstructured data into visually immersive and interactive insights.
• Power BI helps you easily connect your data from different sources – Text files, streaming data, Microsoft Excel, on-premises data warehouses, or cloud-based data warehouses, etc.
• It is a robust enterprise-grade tool enabling extensive modeling and real-time analytics.
• Native integration with Microsoft technologies enables powerful data preparation and data querying capabilities.

Power BI is positioned as a Leader in the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms. For the last 13 consecutive years, Microsoft is holding the spot as a Leaders in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant Leader in analytics and business intelligence platforms.

Power BI is increasingly adopted by global organizations, including Fortune 500, enabling everyone to make data-driven decisions and drive data culture.

 

2. Tableau

Tableau is a data visualization tool that excels in helping organizations turn data into actionable insights through interactive dashboards and stories. The product was launched in 2003.

• Tableau’s intuitive interface allows non-technical users to quickly and easily create dashboards that provide insight into a broad spectrum of enterprise information
• It helps convert raw data into meaningful business insights and provides interactive dashboards.
• It includes native connectors for important enterprise platforms such as Microsoft Excel, MySQL, Google Analytics, Amazon Redshift, etc.

 

3. QlikView

QlikView, a data discovery and analytics platform, provides data insights from a large volume of data sets. It was launched in 1993.

• Broadly connects to both on-premises and cloud data sources.
• Native connectors to enterprise applications, including Microsoft Office, Azure, Snowflake, SAP, and others. Connectors need to install separately by downloading from the Qlik website.
• Being an older application/tool, dashboards are limited in interactivity and customization. However, it certainly brings advanced dashboarding features such as drag-and-drop data through QlikSense – Qlik’s SaaS-based platform.

 

Features Comparison

Which BI Tool has an edge?

Overall, Microsoft’s Power BI stands out ahead of Tableau and QlikView compared to the features mentioned above and requirements. Each tool has a few strengths, similarities, and differentiation that might suit your organization’s needs. The budget also plays a crucial factor when choosing the tool.

Why our customers prefer Power BI?

We have been helping several enterprises deploy Power BI as their key analytics and data visualization tool, and they prefer Power BI over the other two for the following reasons:

1. Ease of operating – Microsoft Excel Workbook background and seamless integration with Microsoft Technologies – Office 365 and Microsoft Teams.
2. Power Query – Connect data from multiple sources due to hundreds of built-in connectors.
3. Cost-effectiveness – Power BI has less expensive membership fees compared to the other two.
4. Azure Synapse Analytics – Helps build systems of intelligence.
5. Microsoft Power Platform – Go from insight to action with few clicks.
6. Security – Only BI tool with built-in data loss prevention capabilities leveraging Cloud App security and Microsoft information protection.
7. Mobile Experience – Best in class mobile experiences with Power BI Mobile

What is your opinion of the Power BI vs. Tableau vs. QlikView comparison? Which features matter to you the most? Who is the winner? Please share your feedback by leaving a comment below.

In today’s digital age, data is the lifeblood of modern enterprises. Each day users are creating an incredible amount of data. But amassing mountains data is not use unless enterprises can generate insights and business value of it. Different target audiences can utilize the organizational data like Power Users, Data scientists, and existing reports on workspace and apps. That’s where Business Intelligence tools help.

Microsoft’s Power BI enables you to easily connect to your data sources, visualize, and share that with anyone.

Microsoft Power Platform comprises four Microsoft products – Power BI, PowerApps, Power Automate, and Power Virtual Agents to analyze data, build solutions and automate the processes.

 

• Power BI – Microsoft launched Power BI in July 2015, and there onwards, Power BI is exponentially growing its user base. Over the last few years, Power BI has seen several advancements to help users generate insights into vast amounts of data.
• Power Apps – PowerApps helps customers create apps that can be embedded into Power BI, and customized process functions can be achieved.
• Power Automate – It brings workflow automation into your apps with no or low code approach. Power Automate is used to build workflows for the repetitive manual process run automatically.
• Power Virtual Agents – This helps customers create and manage chatbots without code or AI knowledge.

 

This blog will deep-dive on Power BI and see how organizations can unlock value from their hidden enterprise data.

 

Defining Power BI

Power BI is a collection of apps, tools, and connectors that work together to turn your unstructured data into interactive insights. No matter where your data resides – be in a Microsoft Excel workbook, cloud-based and on-premises hybrid data warehouses, Power BI connects to your data sources and generates actionable insights.

Power BI is robust and enterprise-grade, ready to create reports and not only for extensive modeling and real-time analytics but also for custom development and sharing with anyone or everyone.

 

Power BI Architecture:

Power BI can be used as self-service analytics at an enterprise scale. Based on data volume, data processing, and visual sharing needs, users can opt for one of the below services:

 

Power BI Ecosystem

• Power BI Desktop:- Use the desktop-based tool to create Power BI reports (.pbix) with the version of Power BI Desktop optimized for the report server. Publish and view them in the web portal in your environment.
• Power BI Service:- The entry point for Power BI is a secure web portal, which you can access from any modern browser. Here, you can access all your reports and KPIs.
• Paginated reports:- Paginated reports (.rdl) are document-style reports with visualizations, in which tables expand horizontally and vertically to display all their data, continuing from page to page as needed. They’re great for generating fixed-layout, pixel-perfect documents optimized for printing, such as PDF and Word files. You can create paginated reports using Report Builder or Report Designer in SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT).
• Mobile Layout:- Power BI Reports are optimized for mobile devices. Users can use native mobile apps to connect to the Power BI service and consume reports on the go.
• Report Server:- Power BI Report Server allows organizations to deploy reporting solutions on-premise and move to Power BI Premium workspace later with no change to reports.

 

Power BI Licenses

There are three types of Power BI licenses. You can choose the relevant license type based on where the data is stored, and it will interact with the content.

• Power BI-Pro: License individual users with modern, self-service analytics to visualize data with live dashboards and reports and share insights across your organization.
• Power BI-Premium: Per User:- License individual users to accelerate access to insights with advanced AI, unlock self-service prep for big data, and simplify data management and access at enterprise scale.
• Power BI-Premium: Per capacity:- License your organization with the capacity to accelerate access to insights with advanced AI, unlock self-service prep for big data, and simplify data management and access at enterprise scale—without per-user licenses for content consumers.

Note:- For the latest update and Licences cost please visit the Microsoft site

 

Power BI – Features

• • Data Management: Power BI helps in data governance, making organizational data accessible, usable, and protected. Effective data governance further enables proper assessment of possible gaps in processes, identifying areas where the organization needs to impose strict controls and where it needs to relax the rules. Governance leads to better data analytics, which empowers teams to make better decisions and improves operations support.
    Strong Data Management can be implemented using the App, Workspace, and Report level access management feature.

 

• • Data Analytics:- Power BI’s advanced analytics features allow business users to analyze data and share insights. Power BI gives an end-to-end view of critical metrics and KPIs through intuitive and interactive dashboards. With Power BI tools, users can answer all their queries and address all the challenges by analyzing deep into the business data while being constructive and creative. Power BI’s advanced features include Quick Insights, Ask a Question, Integration with R, Segmentation & Cohort analysis, and Azure Machine Learning.

 

• • Reporting
    1. Descriptive- Visualizations or reporting help to answer questions about what has happened based on historical data.
    2. Diagnostic- Visualizations or reporting help to answer questions about why events happened
    3. Predictive- Visualizations or reporting help to answer questions about what will happen in the future
    4. Prescriptive- Visualizations or reporting help answer questions about which actions should be taken to achieve a goal or target.
    5. Cognitive- Visualizations or reporting help answer questions about Sentiment Analysis, Key Phrase Extraction, Language Detection, and Image Tagging.

 

• • Security: Power BI is built on Azure and is based on the following two clusters – Web Front End (WFE) and the Back-End cluster to manage authentification. Power BI leverages Azure Active Directory (AAD) to store and manage user identities to protect them from unauthorized access.
    • Encryption – Microsoft uses encryption technology to protect data while at rest and when it travels between user devices and our Azure datacenters.
    • Data Security – Row-level security (RLS) within Power BI is used to restrict data access for given users. Filters restrict data access at the row level, and you can define filters within roles. In the Power BI service, members of a workspace have access to datasets in the workspace. RLS doesn’t restrict this data access. In such a scenario, we use RLS at the semantic layer (Azure Analysis Services).
    • Compliance – Power BI handles compliance required by leading data protection and privacy laws applicable to cloud services.
    • Sensitivity Labels – Microsoft Information Protection sensitivity labels help users classify critical content in Power BI without compromising productivity or the ability to collaborate. Sensitivity labels can be applied to datasets, dataflows, reports, and dashboards.

 

• Integrations:- One of the important strengths of Power BI is the ability to integrate data from multiple sources. Power BI enables users to create a common data model and aggregate data from different sources – online services, on-prem data, databases, and files. Power BI connects to multiple data sources simultaneously and helps design data models for analysis. You can also use Power Query editor, built into Power BI, to add new sources.

 

Power BI – What it can do for you

• Connect to a variety of data sources with over 100+ built-in connectors
• Import and Prepare Data, Model, Visualize and Collaborate
• Use a variety of native Power BI visuals and the option to import custom visuals
• View and interact with shared reports & dashboards in Power BI Mobile apps or via a Web browser.
• Get notifications about alerts in the notification center
• Reduce the added cost, complexity, and security risks of multiple solutions

 

Power BI – Advantages and how it fairs with other BI tools

• Active Microsoft Forums, Community blogs where your query can be resolved quickly
• Provide monthly updates and fixes to the product
• Growing types of source connection across different product and environment
• Large options of using customized visuals present in the marketplace as desired for respective data
• Free training and guided materials available for new users on the website
• Microsoft provides cross-training learning material for other reporting skills persons

 

How Cambay Consulting can help you on your Digital modernization path?

Cambay, a Microsoft Managed Partner, is helping customers leverage the potential of Power BI to uncover business value and insights from their data.

• • BI Strategic Lens – BI Assessment and Roadmap
    Cambay will work with your organization to do a deep dive analysis into the best ways to maximize your BI investment. We help to get actionable intelligence at the right time to the right people
    Learn more here on BI Strategy

 

• Power BI – Dashboard In a Day
  Recently, Cambay’s hosted an interactive, hands-on workshop on Power BI. The workshop is designed to help business analysts to learn how to build reports and dashboards through a series of 5 labs. We cover end-to-end scenarios for building a Power BI Solution with all essential building blocks in Power BI.
  View recording of the Power BI – Dashboard In-a-Day

 

Conclusion:

Cambay team will help you identify the Power BI potential by translating your sample data into insights with interactive reports and dashboards. Please write to us at sales@cambaycs.com to learn more.

IoT enables enterprises to evolve their operations, launch new products, and improve customer experiences through connected devices to fuel innovation, create new revenue streams, minimize costs, and drive digital transformation.

Microsoft Azure IoT Services helps you simplify and accelerate your business journey through connected devices so that you can accelerate your digital transformation. Azure IoT enables you to build intelligence across your business by bringing AI and Machine Learning to the edge to gain actionable insights, leading to faster predictions, smarter actions, and a secure platform.

Azure IoT provides a portfolio of services and capabilities that meets your industry requirements where you are, from the edge to the cloud.

Internet of Things Common Scenarios

1. Remote Monitoring
Remote Monitoring solution helps monitor your systems, applications, and products to collect the performance data and diagnose the issues remotely. You can use solution your own implementation and customize to meet your specifications.

2. Predictive Maintenance
Predictive maintenance helps monitor your equipment, devices to determine if the components are functioning properly or due for service, condition of in-service equipment to predict when maintenance is performed vs. time-based systems.

3. Connected Manufacturing
Connected manufacturing allows you to manage commercial applications or production lines using embedded sensors and devices to improve efficiency through preventative maintenance and failure prediction for controlled shutdowns.

Azure IoT Services

Azure IoT Services, a leading IoT Cloud platform, helps you develop robust and scalable IoT solutions. As per the recent Business Insider report, Azure Cloud is the second biggest platform and is one of the fastest-growing ones. Microsoft’s Azure IoT suite showed a 150% growth and added over 100+ features in 2018. Microsoft also invested over $5 billion into enhancing its IoT and big data services.

Key Azure IoT Services

Below are some of key IoT products and services of Microsoft Azure IoT platform.

1. Azure IoT Central
Azure IoT Central is an IoT SaaS solution to connect, monitor, and manage your IoT devices. IoT Central is a highly secure, enterprise-grade platform which integrates with your existing business applications to enable better products and experiences for your customers.

You can leverage Azure IoT Central to create applications from the industry (like Retail, Healthcare, Energy, Government) focused application templates. View this video on Azure IoT Central to learn more.

2. Azure IoT Hub
Azure IoT Hub is a managed service enabling secure and reliable two-way communication between IoT applications and the devices it manages. Azure IoT Hub has built-in device management to operate at scale, fully integrated with event grid and serverless computing to simplify application development and helps monitor the health of your solutions.

IoT Hub provides automate device provisioning to accelerate your IoT deployment. Azure IoT Hub is also compatible with Azure IoT Edge enabling you to build hybrid IoT applications. View this video on Azure IoT Hub to learn more.

3. Azure IoT Edge
Azure IoT Edge extends cloud intelligence locally on IoT devices at the edge managed by Azure IoT. Azure IoT Edge integrates with Azure Security Center to provide end-to-end threat protection and security management.

Azure IoT Edge deploys cloud workloads like Azure, artificial intelligence, and third-party services to run on IoT edge devices via standard containers. Certified IoT Edge hardware works with Windows or Linux devices that support container engines. View video on Azure IoT Edge to learn more.

4. Azure Sphere
Azure Sphere is a secured solution for your IoT devices that combines operating system, application platform, hardware and cloud components to protect your data, privacy and devices. Azure Sphere OS provides an additional layer of protection and security updates.

Azure Sphere – Certified chips from hardware partners comes with built-in Microsoft security to provide dependable hardware. Azure Sphere Cloud Security provides device-to-cloud communication and device security. View video on Azure Sphere to learn more.

5. Azure Digital Twins
Azure Digital Twins is an IoT Service that helps you build advanced IoT spatially intelligence solutions. Azure Digital Twins helps you build next-gen IoT solutions to improve consumer experiences, create new efficiencies and improve the spaces in which people live, work and play.

Digital Twins comes with built-in support for nested and multitenancy to help secure customers data. Additional security features include role-based access control, and Azure Active Directory. View video on Azure Digital Twins to learn more.

6. Azure Machine Learning
Azure Machine Learning (Azure ML) is a cloud-based service used to train, create, deploy, manage, and automate ML models. It empowers data scientists and ML developers to use their existing data processing and model development skills and frameworks to predict future behavior, trends, and outcomes.

Now Azure ML models can be deployed over the edge to have faster edge analytics. This helps in deploying certain loads of the cloud to the edge devices. Having Machine learning capability on edge helps in doing real-time analysis on image processing, facial identification, video analytics, etc.

Accelerate the development of IoT Solutions using Cambay’s IoT expertise.

Cambay leverages Azure IoT to build scalable & robust IoT solutions. Our team of IoT experts leverages Azure IoT services to provide you with appropriate strategies and assistance in developing IoT solutions applications using the Microsoft Azure platform. Our comprehensive IoT Services include – IoT Consulting, Application Development, IoT Solution Development, IoT Testing, and Managed Services. Learn how we can help you transform with our Azure IoT services.

Want to know more about Microsoft Azure IoT services and build custom IoT solutions for your business? Please write to us at sales@cambaycs.com

As businesses begin bringing their employees back to work and continue to navigate the new normal, enterprises need to take the necessary steps to implement suitable safety protocols to assure employees feel safe and can remain healthy in their worksites.

Cambay, a Microsoft Managed Partner, has developed a Return to Work solution for businesses of all sizes looking to operate their operations during the pandemic safely. Our Return to Work solution allows organizations to monitor their workforce, provides daily health assessment and COVID19 screening for all employees. The solution built using Microsoft Power Automate and AI helps identify employees’ probability of being exposed to COVID-19.

The easily customizable solution has the following modules to help you safely return to full operations and ready your business for post-pandemic realities and future challenges.

1. Employee Health Assessment
2. Employee Contract Tracing / Daily Self Check
3. Return to Work Confidently
4. Employee Pulse Survey

Employee Health Assessment:
Employee Health Assessment or COVID-19 employee self-screen app enables organizations to keep their employees and workplace safety during the COVID-19 pandemic. A survey-based solution evaluates employee readiness to return to the workplace and validates if they are ready to get into the office. COVID-19 screening app is a paperless, easy, and safe way for employees to report their health status regularly. The screening app helps employers monitor the status of their employees with real-time reporting.

Employee Contact Tracing / Daily Self Check:
Employee contact tracking module empowers businesses to minimize risks of workforce returning to work through daily self-check assessments. The assessments ask the workforce to provide information about their health and qualification to be onsite. The solution helps trace points of infection transmission across employees, meetings, etc., and offers real-time visibility for HR leaders or task forces into hot spots or at-risk locations.

Return to Work Confidently
The Return to Work module is designed to engage with the workforce with a single source for health and workplace re-entry information. The solution helps you understand employee’s nature of work and remote work environment and collects self-reported symptoms and other data to routinely assess and notify the employee of their Return to Work status.

Employee Pulse Survey
The employee pulse questioner helps you get insights into how your employees are feeling about the pandemic, measure their morale and sentiments. This will also enable employers to learn what they can do to create positive employee experiences during these challenging times.

 

In summary:

Cambay and a leading children’s research hospital combine COVID-19 Return to Work solution to ensure the health and safety of patients, families, and employees.

A leading children research hospital in the USA needed a COVID-19 self-screening solution for its frontline workers and families visiting children during the COVID-19 pandemic. With visitation restrictions, the hospital found it difficult to efficiently manage its facilities and ensure uncompromised services for its patients. The hospital could not bring families together, which affected the hospital as, along with clinical trials, and free medical care, the hospital served as a foundation for traumatized families who sought comfort from each other within the hospital.

Also, the hospital’s workforce worked remotely, and the hospital did not have a solution to enable employees to work efficiently from home.

Cambay spear-headed and developed a Return to Work (self-screening) solution that enables families and frontline workers to evaluate symptoms easily and safely with a screening tool and understand the next steps they need to take to look after themselves. The self-screening solution leverages Microsoft Power Apps’ capabilities, Microsoft Dynamics 365, to provide a robust end-to-end solution for self-assessment, scheduling, and screening efforts. The solution asks several screening questions for COVID-19. Depending on the questionnaire’s outcome, the employee was given a Red, Yellow, or Green status.

Conclusion:
Cambay’s return to work solution is helping employers prepare workplaces to reopen safely. Our solution enables organizations to jump-start return to work safely within few weeks. Reach out to us to learn how our return to work modules can deliver a safe and smooth transition back to the office.

Reach out to us at sales@cambaycs.com to learn how our return to work modules can deliver a safe and smooth transition back to the office.