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Secrets of Power BI Performance: Power BI Features and Updates
Microsoft’s Power BI software for business intelligence and analytics is used by thousands of organizations around the world to uncover hidden insights and make smarter, data-driven decisions. 2020 marked the 13th straight year that IT research and advisory firm Gartner has ranked Power BI as a “leader” in the field of analytics and BI platforms.
The commitment to innovation and technological advancement is a major reason why Power BI has been on top for so long: Microsoft continues to release new functionality for Power BI on a regular basis. In this article, we’ll discuss the Power BI features and updates that help the software’s users get the most from their Power BI performance.
Power BI Features and Updates
Microsoft adds features and updates to Power BI in what it calls “release waves”: roughly six-month periods when new functionality reaches general availability (often after it is first made available in a public preview). In May 2020, for example, Microsoft announced a new Power BI update that would gradually add features such as:
- “Smart narratives,” a natural language generation tool for automatically summarizing reports and visualizations
- Mobile report authoring to convert existing reports for mobile devices
- PowerPoint for Data, offering pre-built templates for report pages
Keeping informed about the latest Power BI features and updates is essential to get the most from your Power BI performance. Some of the recent Power BI updates have included valuable functionality like:
- Visual personalization so that users can adjust the appearance of a Power BI report on their own devices, even without having edit access to the document.
- Incremental refresh that improves the experience of working with very large datasets in Power BI. This feature makes refreshes faster, more reliable, and less memory-intensive by only refreshing data that has changed.
- Conditional formatting for totals and subtotals in matrices in order to highlight the most important parts of a matrix visualization (e.g. through different colors).
- Decomposition trees, an AI-enhanced visualization type that helps users find the root causes of high or low KPIs.
- The ability to directly connect to Power BI datasets in Excel, as well as new collaboration features in Microsoft Teams.
The list above is only scratching the surface of the most recent Power BI features and updates. You can stay up-to-date by following Microsoft’s feature lists for the various release waves, e.g. 2020 release wave 1 and 2020 release wave 2. Microsoft’s Power BI blog also offers monthly feature summaries that outline everything new with the software, e.g. the December 2020 Power BI feature summary.
What’s Next for Power BI?
With a continual stream of new functionality, what’s on the horizon for Power BI features and updates? Microsoft has defined four priorities for future software development in its Power BI roadmap:
- Self-service analytics that enables all members of the organization to collaborate and get their hands dirty with enterprise data.
- A unified BI platform that acts as the organization’s one-stop shop for both self-service and centralized analytics.
- Big data analytics that can keep up with the ever-growing volume and complexity of big data, including by using Azure Data Services in the cloud.
- Artificial intelligence (AI) for BI to help users explore data and find new patterns and connections, without writing a single line of code.
In service of these goals, Microsoft’s 2020 release wave 2 plan includes many exciting new features such as:
- Automation and Azure DevOps integration via a set of REST APIs, letting users connect to a Power BI deployment pipeline and automatically deploy content updates.
- Support for DirectQuery capabilities in Power BI dataflows, using the new enhanced compute engine for self-service analytics.
- A performance accelerator for Azure Synapse Analytics that automatically creates and manages materialized views when using larger Power BI Premium datasets in DirectQuery mode.
Want to know how to use these new features to get the most from your Power BI software? You can’t go wrong joining forces with a knowledgeable, experienced Power BI partner like Datavail. As a Microsoft Gold Partner, Datavail’s Power BI services include:
- Custom dashboard design and development
- Report generation
- Ongoing maintenance and 24/7 support
- Road-mapping
- Assessments and recommendations
- Performance optimization
- Data integration and ETL-related tasks
- Deployment planning and corporate training
Get in touch with Datavail today for a chat about your business needs and objectives, or check out our white paper “Power BI for Mid-Market Companies” for more secrets of Power BI performance.
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AppDev 101: What You Need to Know About Sprint Teams
Sprint teams operate as part of an Agile software development approach. Managed well, sprint teams are extremely effective.
What is a Sprint?
It doesn’t matter whether you’re developing a software application from scratch, or reprogramming current technology, using the Agile software development method is a highly effective approach.
A sprint embodies the Agile concepts of iterative development and working in modules. It’s a period of time, usually two to four weeks, when a development team works on a piece of a larger project or a specific problem with an existing application. At the end of the sprint, the work produced should be in a condition to show to stakeholders.
That development team is called a sprint team or in some cases, a scrum team. Some people use the terms sprint and scrum interchangeably. Some people define a sprint as something that happens within an Agile scrum framework.
Using sprint teams avoids the long to-do lists that are always hanging over the heads of a development team using traditional software development approaches. Using the Agile approach, the team identifies a list, or backlog, of tasks. The sprint team selects the most critical task from the backlog and plans a sprint to implement it. If anything prevents the team from completing the chosen tasks, the task can be placed back in the backlog, or it becomes the topic of a new sprint. In general, the Agile process includes:
- Sprint Planning: A meeting of the minds between the customer and the sprint team
- Grooming: A process of the sprint team and the customer negotiating any required compromises that typically must be made during software development
- Demo: An end of sprint demo lets the sprint team show the result of the sprint to customers and stakeholders
- Sprint Retrospective: The sprint team completes a discussion of what went well during the sprint, and identifies opportunities for improvement if those things aren’t obvious based on the previous steps
Benefits of Using Sprint Teams
Using sprint teams works extremely well for projects that have short deadlines, a high degree of complexity, resource constraints and/or projects that are new to the development team. Here are some key benefits of using sprint teams.
- Teams learn as they go
Even if a sprint isn’t successful, the sprint team can learn from that experience. They may plan for a new sprint that addresses the issues they couldn’t address the first time. For example, they may need to add team members that bring different expertise, or they may need clarification of the goal from the stakeholders.
- Teams have more focus
It’s easy to think of software development in the abstract based on requirement statements. Using a sprint team to address a specific question brings the task into clear focus.
- Teams focus on the right things
After a sprint planning meeting, each member of the team understands the goal and their role in meeting it. They don’t need to worry about anything else but the work at hand.
- Teams gain insight into the decision-making process
A sprint team works closely with their customer, which builds stronger partnerships between business units and IT. As teams get feedback from customers, they get a better understanding of how decisions are made in terms of objectives and goals. And, since a sprint is completed in a short amount of time, the feedback is more immediate.
- Teams learn to work well together
The sprint team is structured to depend on close collaboration among team members. The teams typically start to work in a rhythm that moves them ever closer to the goal. The only way to accomplish that is for the team to come together as a well-oiled machine.
Beyond benefits to the team, using Agile and sprint teams has global benefits. Agile software development offers a wide range of benefits such as better design, customer-focused development, and faster time to market.
Sprint Dos and Don’ts
Here are some tips for making your sprints as effective as possible.
- Set a concrete sprint goal
Sometimes teams have a problem identifying a concrete sprint goal. This can happen because the product backlog hasn’t been prioritized. In that case, the team needs to go back to the customer to get direction. In other situations, the team may be working on components for multiple products, and they should broaden the definition of the product or shorten the sprint timeframe.
Overall, the team needs a very specific goal. For example, rather than a goal of “complete all backlog items selected for the sprint, the goal should be something like “prepare feature X for release.” Goals can include completing a feature, addressing a risk, or testing an assumption.
- Use at least one refinement identified for sprints
When the team completes a retrospective, they may identify things they want to change in the next sprint. However, it’s easy to neglect to incorporate those changes in the next sprint unless the team makes a conscious decision to include them.
- Confirm team availability
The team should confirm that they have the members they need to complete the sprint, but it’s also important to look at the calendar if there are holidays or vacation days on the horizon.
- Develop a plan for the first few days
The sprint plan gives the team a way to approach the sprint, but it’s often helpful to put only the first few days in concrete. That will get the team going and since the team members meet regularly, they’ll be open to changing direction if that is indicated as they get farther into the process.
- Don’t identify tasks based on skills
It’s important not to create a waterfall-type process during a sprint. If tasks are defined based on skills, that’s exactly what will happen. For example, don’t define tasks like design, coding, test cases, or testing. Instead, define tasks based on features or components to keep the team working together.
- Don’t skip the demo
Sometimes the results of a sprint aren’t momentous, but don’t be tempted to skip the sprint demo. It offers several benefits.
- It gives everyone a chance to see progress
- It reinforces accountability because the team has committed to a specific outcome
- It motivates team members to do their best, regardless of the task, because it illustrates that even small features are critical to the overall product
Using Agile software development methods and sprint teams can go a long way toward making your next software development project a success. However, it’s also true that a large percent of projects fail. Read our recent whitepaper, “4 Reasons Why Application Development Projects Fail” for information on those four things, and seven solutions for overcoming them.
You can also learn more about Datavail’s Application Development Sprint Teams that consist of fully-staffed sprint teams that you can call as needed. Our teams are staffed by skilled developers across platforms. They can act in an advisory capacity to help develop your own sprint teams or work with your teams on specific sprints. And, if you’re working under tight deadlines, Datavail can offer 24x7 development and testing to expedite your work.
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The Benefits of Oracle Close Manager for Closing the Books from Home
The pandemic has disrupted normal close processes for many organizations, but it presents an opportunity to create a closing procedure that works for employees in home offices. The best part is that you might already have the tool for the job: Oracle Close Manager. If you’re in the cloud, you can find it in FCC EPM Cloud application. For on-premises deployments, you’ll find it in Close Management. Here are the ways Oracle Close Manager transforms the closing process.
Better Communication with Your Team
Email notifications alert employees so they know when to work on their monthly close tasks. This is a productivity boost that avoids your employees having to wait for instruction, or for a specific time. You also have access to a real-time dashboard that provides full visibility into the tasks in progress.
All Tasks in One Place
Everyone accesses the same repository to get the information they need to close the books each month. The templates, attachments, data, and instructions for each task are easy to access, standardizing the workflow and keeping employees on the same page. Establishing your close process in this manner also makes it easy to onboard new hires or those wanting to cross-train in other tasks.
Speed Up the Review and Approval Process
The entire process can slow down if you need to wait for a remote employee to review or approve closing tasks. Luckily, Close Manager allows users to see when items need review, making it easy for them to send approvals. With less dead time between tasks, you can close the books faster.
Create More Efficient Workflows
Setting up your close process in this application requires you to go step by step through every task. You can pick up on bottlenecks and eliminate unnecessary work. Another way you benefit is by seeing each employee’s overall load. By distributing tasks more efficiently, you can ensure that members of your team have appropriate but not overloaded schedules. You can refer to this data each month to continually improve the workflow.
Increase Your Control
The overview dashboard in Close Manager allows you to keep a close eye on closing. You can see when employees submit data, easily follow up with the appropriate department if this information is not available, and discover compliance issues in a single panel. You don’t have to track down an employee or play phone tag to get what you need to close the books.
Oracle Close Manager Is Not Just for the Pandemic
Your organization may have work-from-home employees who intend on staying remote after the pandemic. Even if you plan to bring people back into the office when it’s safe, having a remotely accessible way to close the books just makes sense. You never know what might happen down the line. The flexibility and efficiency this approach offers will set you up for the future.
Consider the everyday situations your team encounters that would be disruptive if you couldn’t close remotely:
- Severe weather makes it difficult or impossible to get to the office.
- Parents needing to pick up a sick child from school and stay with them at home.
- A star employee needing to take care of an aging parent at home.
- Someone’s car breaking down unexpectedly.
When your team can work from home, these scenarios don’t have to delay closing the books every month. Work-life balance improvements from remote work are another important consideration. As more organizations choose to offer permanent remote positions, talented workers are ditching long commutes and working from the comfort of their own home office. You could have long-term issues with hiring or keeping workers if you don’t have this perk available.
Getting the most out of Oracle Close Manager requires specialized skills. Datavail is an Oracle Platinum Partner and Cloud Excellence Implementer. We’re recognized by Oracle for our in-depth expertise across the full Oracle Hyperion EPM solutions suite. Get in touch with our EPM professionals to start closing your books remotely, or download our white paper “Closing the Books from Home or Anywhere Else Around the Globe” to learn more about setting up and using Close Manager.
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Why Upgrading to Oracle EBS 12.2 Is Important for Your IT Security
Cyberattacks come in many forms, and criminals are continually developing new ways to break into systems, breach data, and perform other disruptive operations. IT security teams do their best to stay one step ahead of bad actors, but their job becomes significantly more challenging when outdated software is present on the network.
Older versions of Oracle EBS can leave your organization open to newly discovered exploits, attacks powered by new technology, and other security concerns. Upgrading to Oracle EBS 12.2 is one of the most important things you can do to limit your organization’s security risk. The specific improvements that EBS 12.2 offers include extended support, up-to-date security patches, a streamlined online patching method, better regulatory compliance, and ongoing feature updates.
Get Covered by Support until 2030
Oracle offers EBS 12.2 Premier Support until 2023, so your organization has a few years before you would need to go through another upgrade. You also get prepared for an upgrade to the next version of EBS, 12.X, which will have a support lifespan that lasts until 2030, at a minimum. Not having to worry about upgrading more than twice in the next 10 years takes a lot of administrative overhead off your plate.
Up-to-Date Security Patches
When Oracle releases new security patches, you’ll be able to apply them quickly to fix known exploits and vulnerabilities. Being able to deploy these patches quickly makes you a less tempting target for hackers, since they don’t have an easy way to gain access to your network and systems. When you have an older EBS deployment that doesn’t receive security patches, it becomes increasingly risky to use.
Streamlined Patching Through Online Patching Feature
Another security advantage of EBS 12.2 is the online patching feature. If your organization has a hard time applying patches because of limited maintenance windows or difficulties with downtime, this capability solves many problems. EBS stays up during the patching process, so you don’t have to push back this essential IT security operation. The only downtime usually takes the same amount of time as restarting the system. You have full control over when the system goes down, and your users won’t be waiting hours post-patch.
Online patching accomplishes this through a five-step process. EBS prepares for the patch, applies it to the system, finalizes the patching process, cuts over to the newly patched system, and then goes through cleanup.
Remain Compliant with Changing Regulations
Many of today’s regulations touch upon data security, data privacy, and other IT security concerns. When you upgrade to the latest version of EBS, you have a system that is compliant with the latest requirements and can quickly adjust to any changes in the laws. You don’t need to use other software to achieve compliance or to put workarounds in place for your FDA, accounting, IFR216, and ASC842 measures.
Offers a Less Vulnerable Attack Surface
If cybercriminals have a hard time finding a viable attack surface in your infrastructure, then they may move on to softer targets. Companies of every size and industry are vulnerable to cyberattacks, so it’s important to use every measure available to thwart hackers.
Gain Access to Updated Security Features Through Continuous Innovation
The Continuous Innovation model for EBS allows you to enjoy an ever-increasing number of features for this technology. As new IT security practices get put in place, your system can adapt so that you have strong protection on an ongoing basis.
Cybersecurity is only going to get harder as new attack methods and hacking technology develop. A strong foundation for IT security requires that your software is kept up to date, so you need an upgrade to Oracle EBS 12.2 to make this possible.
If you need help making this upgrade a reality, contact Datavail to partner with certified Oracle specialists offering end-to-end planning, implementation, and support.
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AppDev 101: 9 Reasons Why You Should Use Agile Software Development
In 2001, a group of expert software developers created the Manifesto for Agile Software Development. That document started a movement in the software development world and many teams now use the Agile software development approach. But, some developers question the value of the approach and look to answer the question of whether they should adopt the methodology. If you’re asking the question, these reasons can help you make an informed choice.
What is Agile Software Development?
The dictionary defines the term agile as “having a quick, resourceful, and adaptable character.” If you’re a software developer, or responsible for a software development team, you know that software development can be a complex undertaking. Therefore, the idea of using a method that is quick, resourceful, and adaptable is extremely attractive.
It’s difficult to create a concise definition of Agile software development, but here’s one of the best attempts, “Agile project management is an iterative development methodology that values human communication and feedback, adapting to change, and producing working results.”
The Agile Manifesto provides the basis for that definition. In the Manifesto, the developers stated four values they used to develop the methodology:
1. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
2. Working software over comprehensive documentation
3. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
4. Responding to change over following a plan
That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.
Benefits of Agile Software Development
Standish Group published the most recent Chaos Report in 2018. In that report they stated, “The results for all projects show that agile projects enjoy a 60% greater chance of success than non-agile projects. Looking deeper, we find that “waterfall” projects are three times more likely to fail than agile projects.” This indicates that it is worth taking another hard look into the benefits of Agile software development offers.
- Iterative development
One of the principles behind Agile development is that development teams work in short “sprints” to produce a working application that stakeholders can review.
Experts like those at Deloitte find that if producing the first release of a new application takes a long time, the outcome isn’t well received. This is often a result of the business needs changing during the development process. When a development team can quickly produce a working application, they get immediate feedback from their customers to help them adapt the software as needed.
- Better design
Traditional software development methods focus on preparing the type of documentation needed later for support during the development cycle. Agile development doesn’t ignore the need for documentation, but it values good design more.
Laboring over documentation doesn’t improve design. The Agile processes that focus on using an iterative process to perfect design and adapting to change will result in a much better outcome.
- Increased quality based on midcourse corrections
In traditional application development projects, changes in requirements are discouraged to ensure that a project stays on time and within budget. But, that limitation often results in a final product that doesn’t meet requirements. Going back once everything is complete to adjust the design is difficult and can lead an organization to abandon the project.
Using Agile software development approaches, a team can respond easily to midcourse corrections, recognizing that those corrections are necessary to achieve the required quality of the final product.
- Early testing and deployment that eliminates errors
In traditional software development, software testing is often one of the last steps in the process. That’s a bad time to find the problems and get them fixed. With Agile development, testing is done throughout the process. Agile projects often use test cases to help them tweak the design before writing code. And, teams often test related modules simultaneously to save time.
- Customer-focused development
Agile teams work closely with other business teams to ensure that the software design is going to meet their customers’ requirements. In the past, it’s been difficult if not impossible to get developers and their customers together frequently. Today, a wide range of tools that promote collaboration is available.
Used well, those collaboration tools can let disperse teams talk, and even see one another, without going any farther than their monitor.
- Increased visibility
The customer collaboration principle in Agile software development means that developers are no longer hidden away taking their direction from often ill-conceived written system requirements. Using an Agile approach, the development team works directly with its customers. The team understands exactly what the customer requires and obtains regular feedback.
Also, the tools used in Agile such as Kanban provide a visual reference for anyone in the organization to use. Increasing visibility is a common goal of CEOs and Agile helps them meet that goal in application development projects.
- Faster time to market
The collaborative environment found in Agile development teams leads to rapid development. Some tasks can be completed simultaneously, and the focus is on producing working code. This rapid development can be a significant competitive advantage for a company that needs to beat its competitors to market.
- Improved outcomes
Agile teams use working software as their most important measure of success or progress. That’s one of the 12 principles of Agile Software Development. Whey an Agile team embraces that mindset, delivering software in modules becomes a natural way of life.
This approach has also resulted in operating systems using a more modular design. Annual releases and interim feature updates are now the norms. Agile development also brought subscription-based software into the collective mindset. These evolutions mean that keeping software of all types updated and consistently addressing customer needs is a reality.
- Increased Customer Satisfaction
Whether your customers are internal, external, or both, you need to keep a focus on customer satisfaction. However, it’s difficult to retain that focus during a long software development project. Agile philosophies put customer satisfaction at the forefront.
It’s easy for traditional teams to get mired down in the mechanics of their development process during a long development cycle. It’s easy to lose sight of customer satisfaction and track things such as the number of lines written, and pages of documentation produced. Traditional teams often measure progress based on the milestones in the process rather than the effectiveness of the final product in terms of meeting customer needs.
Focusing on the process isn’t the fault of the team members. They don’t typically have regular contact with the customer. They often have no idea how business needs are changing. It’s logical for a traditional team to measure success based on the process since they don’t have insight into other measures of success.
The Agile methodology gives teams the visibility and contact with their customers they need to make it easy to keep customer needs top of mind. Using an Agile software development approach is one way to make sure your next project focuses on customer satisfaction. Based on a TrustRadius.com poll, 81% of software development professionals report that they use Agile vs the waterfall methodology.
But, there are at least four key reasons why application development projects fail. For more information, read our whitepaper, “4 Reasons Why Application Development Projects Fail & 7 Solutions.”
You can also learn more about Datavail’s Application Development Sprint Teams to help ensure your software development projects’ success.
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