BIFocal - Clarifying Business Intelligence

This is episode 294 recorded on May 7th, 2025 where John & Jason talk the Power BI & Microsoft Fabric April 2025 Feature Summaries in a single episode.

This is episode 293 recorded on May 6th, 2025 where John & Jason talk the Microsoft Fabric March 2025 Feature Summary including Data Science, Data Warehouse, Real-time Intelligence, and Data Factory.

This is episode 292 recorded on April 22nd, 2025 where John & Jason talk the Microsoft Fabric February 2025 Feature Summary including Fabric Platform, OneLake, and Data Engineering.

This is episode 291 recorded on April 11th, 2025 where John & Jason talk the Microsoft Power BI March 2025 Feature Summary including Desktop start-up performance improvements, Copilot improvements, cool stuff with PBIP & TMDL, and lots of modeling improvements.

This is episode 290 recorded on April 8th, 2025 where John & Jason talk the news coming out of the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference in Las Vegas.

This is episode 289 recorded on March 21th, 2025 where John & Jason talk the Microsoft Fabric February 2025 Feature Summary including API updates, Monitoring changes, Security updates, and AI Skill enhancements.

This is episode 288 recorded on March 19th, 2025 where John & Jason talk the Microsoft Fabric February 2025 Feature Summary, specifically the Power BI section, including a new baseline version of Power BI Desktop, Copilot changes for Power BI, a trick to get conditional formatting for Visual Calcs working, and performance improvements for Direct Lake mode. For show notes please visit www.bifocal.show

This is episode 287 recorded on March 13th, 2025 where John & Jason talk the Microsoft Fabric January 2025 Feature Summary including Python Notebooks in preview, Lineage enhancements to spark notebooks, lots of DBA enhancements to Data Warehouse, Tenant Level Private Link for Databases, and CI/CD preview for most of Fabric.

This is episode 286 recorded on March 12th, 2025 where John & Jason talk the Microsoft Fabric January 2025 Feature Summary, specifically the Power BI section, including Storytelling updates for the PowerPoint Add-in, Semantic Model version history,  TMDL view in Power BI Desktop, and more.

This is episode 285 recorded live in Stockholm on December 3rd, 2024 where John & Jason talk about the expansion of the Microsoft Fabric ecosystem announced at Microsoft Ignite and interesting conversations that have been had at ESPC about Fabric.

This is episode 284 recorded on October 9th, 2024 where John & Jason talk the FabCon Europe 2024 and all of the announcements made there.

This is episode 283 recorded on September 4th, 2024 where John & Jason talk the Microsoft Fabric August 2024 Feature Summary.

This is episode 282 recorded on August 23rd, 2024 where John & Jason talk the Power BI August 2024 Feature Summary including Ask Copilot questions against your semantic model in Desktop, Visual level format strings, DAX query view in the web, and the narrative visual with Copilot in embedded.

This is episode 281 recorded on August 9th, 2024 where John & Jason talk to Charles Webb, Principal PM Manager for Data Warehouse in Microsoft Fabric, about Fabric, Data Warehouse, his history with Power BI & Dataflows, AI, college sports & business, his work in philanthropy and much more.

This is episode 280 recorded on July 24th, 2024 where John & Jason talk to Josh Caplan, Principle Group Product Manager for OneLake in Microsoft Fabric, about Fabric, OneLake, Shortcuts and much more.

This is episode 279 recorded on July 11th, 2024 where John & Jason talk about the Microsoft Fabric, including Power BI, June 2024 Feature Summary including a Visual Calcs update, updates to downloading large semantic models, the new PBIR file format, and external sharing API for OneLake, a Spark Connector for Fabric Datawarehouse, and much more.

This is episode 278 recorded on May 24th, 2024 where John & Jason talk the news from Microsoft Build 2024 including lots of great new stuff for developers in Microsoft Fabric, Snowflake Apache Iceberg shortcuts, and the announcement of Real-Time Intelligence in Fabric.

This is episode 277 recorded on May 10th, 2024 where John & Jason talk the news in the Power BI space including Power Query support in paginated reports, Copilot Pane in Power BI Desktop & Copilot being available by default soon, and the announcement of support for reports in SharePoint & OneDrive with live connected semantic models.

This is episode 276 recorded on April 22nd, 2024 where John & Jason talk the Power BI April 2024 Feature Summary including the announcements made at FabCon in Vegas, Enhanced Q&A, Storytelling in PowerPoint, and Copilot in Power BI Desktop.

This is episode 275 recorded on April 22nd, 2024 where John & Jason talk the Power BI March 2024 Feature Summary including on-object interactions update, Power Query in Paginated Reports, DAX Query View updates with Copilot, enhancements to model editing in the service, and more.

This is episode 274 recorded on March 19th, 2024 where John & Jason talk the Power BI February 2024 Feature Summary including updates to Visual Cals, Power BI Home, Measure descriptions with Copilot, Data overview in Explore, and TMDL in Power BI Desktop Developer Mode.

This is episode 273 recorded on January 26, 2024 where John & Jason talk to Alex Powers, Senior Program Manager on the Power BI CAT Team at Microsoft, about Copilot in Data Factory and much, much more.

This is episode 272 recorded on January 12, 2024 where John & Jason do the annual year end wrap-up. Jason comes out ahead on his predictions from 2023 - but only by a little, and everybody has a few interesting predictions for 2024.

This is episode 271 recorded on December 15rd, 2023 where John & Jason talk about the Power BI December 2023 Feature Summary including a Community update, On-object Interaction updates, Extended customization for data labels, and the OneLake datahub in Power BI Desktop.

This is episode 270 recorded on December 3rd, 2023 live from the Autobahn where John & Jason talk about what they have been up to lately including presenting at ESPC23, their visit to CERN, and the upcoming Microsoft Fabric Community Conference.

This is episode 269 recorded on November 22st, 2023 where John & Jason talk the Power BI November 2023 Feature Summary, part 2, including the new Explore feature, OneLake integration for Import-mode semantic models, and stored credentials for Direct Lake semantic models.

This is episode 268 recorded on November 21st, 2023 where John & Jason talk the Power BI November 2023 Feature Summary, for way too long and have to split the episode in 2 parts, including the new button slicer, DAX Query view, the Dataset rename to Semantic Models, and much more.

This is episode 267 recorded on November 17th, 2023 where John & Jason talk about the release to GA of Microsoft Fabric and everything around it Mirroring in Microsoft Fabric, Microsoft 365 Data in Microsoft Fabric, and the Public Preview of Copilot for Power BI in Microsoft Fabric.

This is episode 266 recorded on October 19th, 2023 where John & Jason talk about the Power BI updates for October 2023 including the Power BI Desktop OneDrive and SharePoint integration, Power BI Home in Desktop, and the ability to edit your data model in the Power BI Service.

This is episode 265 recorded on October 19th, 2023 where John & Jason talk about the Power BI updates for August 2023 including the interactive mobile canvas, changes to the online model editing experience, and GIT support for paginated reports.

This is episode 264 recorded some time in August where John & Jason talk to Heather Cook, Principal PM Manager at Microsoft for Power Platform, where we discuss the upcoming Power Platform Conference, the Microsoft community ecosystem, and learning & upskilling.

This is episode 263 recorded sometime in August where John & Jason talk about the Power BI updates for August 2023 including improvements to on-object interactions, XMLA write support for Direct Lake datasets, and improvements to the PBIP format.

This is episode 262 recorded on July 14th, 2023 where John & Jason talk about the Power BI updates for July 2023 including Smoothed and Leader lines, updates to On-object Interactions & editing your data model in the Power BI Service, and Datasets are coming to Power BI Mobile apps. We also cover some changes to the podcast that we are going to be making in the coming weeks. For show notes please visit http://www.bifocal.show/

This is episode 261 recorded on June 21st, 2023 where Jason talks with Microsoft MVPs & Community rockstars Laura Graham-Brown & Marc Lelijveld about Microsoft Fabric, being back to in person conferences, and the community in general. For show notes please visit http://www.bifocal.show/

This is episode 260 recorded on June 15th, 2023 where John & Jason talk about the Power BI updates for June 2023 including the new card visual, On-Object Interaction updates, admin monitoring, and Power BI Desktop Developer Mode. For show notes please visit http://www.bifocal.show/

This is episode 259 recorded on June 7th, 2023 where John & Jason talk about Microsoft Fabric licensing from a Power BI perspective. We'll talk about Pro licenses, capacity-based licenses, the difference between P and F SKUs, and a whole lot more. For show notes please visit http://www.bifocal.show/

This is episode 258 recorded on June 5th, 2023 where John & Jason review the May 2023 updates to Power BI, and boy, it's a doozey. We cover Microsoft Fabric updates, a whole bunch of GA announcements, data model editing in the service, paginated report drill through, and much more. For show notes please visit http://www.bifocal.show/

This is episode 257 recorded on May 3rd, 2023 where John & Jason talk to Rui Romano, Principal Program Manager for Power BI at Microsoft, about the upcoming advancements for developers using Power BI Developer mode. For show notes please visit http://www.bifocal.show/

This is episode 256 recorded on May 24th, 2023 where John & Jason talk to Gabi Münster, Senior Program Manager on the Fabric CAT Team at Microsoft, about the announcements made at Microsoft Build 2023. For show notes please visit http://www.bifocal.show/

This is episode 255 recorded on April 28th, 2023 where John & Jason talk to Rosie Levasseur, Senior Product Manager for Power BI, all about the on-object feature set and the changes that have and will be made for Power BI Creators. For show notes please visit http://www.bifocal.show/

This is episode 254 recorded on April 14th, 2023 where John & Jason talk to Emily Lisa, Senior Product Manager for Power BI, about the newly announced Public Preview of the "Edit your data model in the Power BI service" feature.

This is episode 253 recorded on April 12th, 2023 where John & Jason talk to Zoe Douglas, Senior Program Manager for Power BI, about Dynamic format strings for measures, the new Apply all slicers and Clear all slicers buttons, and the Optimize Ribbon.

This is episode 252 recorded on April 12, 2023 where John & Jason talk about the Power BI updates for April 2023 including Dynamic format strings for measures, Filters for web created paginated reports, tooltip auto-scale and much more.

This is episode 251 recorded March 24th, 2023 where John & Jason talk about and the recap the news from the past few weeks in the Power BI space including the retirement of Streaming Dataflows, Query parallelism, Scanner API updates, and much more.

This is episode 250 recorded March 14th, 2023 where John & Jason talk about the March 2023 Power BI updates which include the Apply all slicers button, Clear all slicers button, and Optimization presets update, Storytelling in PowerPoint and Power BI org app multiple audiences have gone GA, and the new on-object interaction.

This is episode 249 recorded February 17th, 2023 where Jason talks to Patrick LeBlanc, Principal Program Manager on the Power BI CAT Team at Microsoft & a Guy in a Cube, about the February 2023 Power BI updates which include the Enhanced row-level security editor, Conditional Formatting based on string fields, new DAX functions, and Paginated Reports updates.

This is episode 248 recorded on January 24th, 2023 where John & Jason review the Microsoft Power BI 2023 release wave 1 plan that covers the roadmap from April to September of 2023. For show notes please visit www.bifocal.show

This is episode 247 recorded January 20th, 2023 where John & Jason interview Scott Sewell, Principal Program Manager on the CAT Team at Microsoft, about Dataverse, Dynamics 365, and Power BI. For show notes please visit www.bifocal.show

This is episode 246 recorded January 9th, 2023 where John & Jason review their wins & losses with their 2022 predictions and prognosticate about what they see happening in 2023. For show notes please visit www.bifocal.show

This is episode 245 recorded on January 6th, 2023 where John & Jason do a year in review for all things Power BI in 2022. For show notes please visit www.bifocal.show

This is episode 244 recorded December 21st, 2022 where John & Jason talk about the news from November & December in the Power BI space including new cache refresh settings available in Power BI Premium, subscribe to a report with filters applied, Dataset refresh cancellation is now available in Power BI Premium, and more. For show notes please visit www.bifocal.show