Data Talk Episodes

PBIP turns monolithic PBIX files into text you can version—opening the door to Git. But visibility isn’t discipline. Real collaboration comes from PRs as gates, automated checks that catch mistakes before humans review, and deployment pipelines that promote changes DEV → TEST → PROD without finger-…

This episode lays out the star schema “pro move” for Power BI: center your model on lean fact tables and surround them with flattened dimensions so VertiPaq can filter fast and calculate cleanly. Ditch the one-giant-table “digital spaghetti”—it’s why slicers crawl, totals go weird, and DAX feels ho…

This rant-to-roadmap episode calls out classic Power BI alerts as clunky, dashboard-bound “sticky notes” and shows why Fabric Data Activator is the grown-up alternative: event-driven rules that trigger real workflows (via Power Automate, tickets, Teams posts, etc.) without littering your tenant wit…

Running BI without ALM is file-roulette. This episode shows how to escape “Final_v9.pbix” chaos by treating Power BI models as code, using Git for real history + branching, and deploying via pipelines so changes move Dev → Test → Prod without late-night rollbacks. Tie it all together with tickets s…

This episode turns SQL from “scary” to useful. You’ll learn why SELECT is a safe, read-only way to ask questions, how the four core clauses (SELECT, FROM, WHERE, ORDER BY) snap together, where T-SQL adds Microsoft-style extras (e.g., TOP, TRY…CATCH), and how to avoid rookie traps (SELECT *, missing…

This episode shows how to turn messy SharePoint lists → clear Power BI dashboards your team actually uses. You’ll connect with the SharePoint Online List connector (the right way), tame ugly fields in Power Query (choice/person/lookups, UTC → local), and publish + embed the report back into SharePo…

Dataverse migrations aren’t “move some rows on Friday.” They’re an org redesign: data model, security, automations, integrations, licenses, and cutover. This episode shows how to pick Dataverse for the right reasons, audit what you have, map legacy lists/custom tables to a relational schema, keep f…

Copilot doesn’t fix messy data—it amplifies it. This episode shows how “data goblins” (duplicates, stale archives, bad labels, abandoned folders) turn Copilot into a confident liar, why trust collapses on the first wrong answer, and how to flip the script: micro-scoped pilots, visible wins, and cle…

Gateways don’t fail mysteriously—they fail predictably across network, credentials, and architecture. This episode turns a “worked in test, died in prod” horror story into a repeatable deployment playbook: lock down outbound/FQDN rules, fix service-account/credential mapping across every source, an…

Fabric didn’t simplify your life—it multiplied the moving parts. Treat it like a new platform, not a Power BI rename. Lock down domains, design function-first workspaces, budget capacity like shared compute, and audit tenant toggles before they undo your guardrails.

EF Core doesn’t run LINQ directly — it runs a multi-stage pipeline. Your query becomes an expression tree, the query provider checks which parts can map to SQL, EF caches recognized shapes so it doesn’t repeat translation, EF applies null-semantics corrections so SQL and C# agree, and finally th…

Power BI isn’t “the whole stack” anymore. Microsoft Fabric turns BI into a unified analytics platform where storage (OneLake), engineering (pipelines/dataflows), warehousing, real-time analytics (KQL/event streams), and AI live together. If you’ve only been building reports and scheduling refreshes…

Fabric Dataflows Gen2 turns scattered Power Query/ADF jobs into a single, reusable ETL asset that feeds Lakehouse, Warehouse, and Power BI—backed by separate, elastic compute and managed staging. Translation: faster refreshes, zero zombie temp tables, consistent logic everywhere, and Git-native col…

Stop exporting Dynamics 365 data to Excel. Connect Dataverse to Microsoft Fabric, build an analytics model once, and embed Power BI directly inside Dynamics 365 (CRM/ERP) screens. With live, role-aware metrics (RLS), sales and ops teams act on fresh data without tab-switching, stale snapshots, or v…

Stop guessing where your data went. In Microsoft Fabric, automatic lineage, workspace-based permissions, and Purview’s enterprise catalog turn opaque pipelines into auditable, end-to-end flows—from ingestion to transformation to the report. Fabric captures every hop (Data Factory, Lakehouse, notebo…

Stop waiting on dashboards. Fabric Data Activator turns live signals into instant actions—pausing bad pipelines, placing purchase orders, opening D365 work orders, or triggering API calls the moment thresholds hit. Because it’s native to Microsoft Fabric, it listens to streams and models from Power…

Stop torturing your laptop. Train models where the data lives. With Microsoft Fabric notebooks running on Spark next to your Lakehouse, you skip CSV exports, move terabytes at query speed, and iterate in Python or R without memory crashes. Push transforms to the data, engineer features at scale, mo…

Dataverse “slowness” is often schema, not size. Fix table bloat, simplify relationships, and add the right indexes to turn crawling forms and timing-out flows into crisp responses. Design for performance from day one—balance normalization, limit cascades, and index what you filter on.

Stop context-switching. Embed Dynamics 365 Sales directly into Microsoft Teams so reps update opportunities, trigger approvals, and log notes where they already work. Layer Power Automate and Adaptive Cards to turn chats into actions (create/update/approve) and keep CRM as the single source of trut…

Most Power BI environments start fast and stall under copy-paste sprawl: duplicated PBIX files, conflicting measures, and “spreadmart” dashboards that nobody fully trusts. The fix isn’t another naming convention—it’s a model-first architecture. Microsoft Fabric elevates the semantic model to an ent…

When Fabric queries crawl and cloud costs spike, the fix usually isn’t more compute—it’s better Lakehouse design. This episode shows how three practical levers deliver immediate wins. First, partitioning: stop defaulting to “date” and align keys to real filter patterns to avoid wide scans or metada…

Microsoft Fabric pipelines often feel “secure by default,” but silent data exposure usually comes from misconfigured permissions, hardcoded secrets, and overbroad workspace roles. This episode shows how to harden end-to-end pipelines with managed identities (kill passwords), Azure Key Vault (centra…

Low-code does not mean low risk. Power Apps and Dataverse sit at the center of many business-critical processes, so skipped testing leads to silent data loss, broken approvals, and security leaks. This episode shows how to build a real testing strategy for the Power Platform: automate end-to-end sc…

Microsoft Fabric’s Git integration isn’t a backup—it’s the backbone of safe, scalable collaboration on notebooks, pipelines, and models. This guide explains why merge chaos happens, what actually syncs to Git (code/metadata) vs. what doesn’t (Lakehouse data), and the one switch that saves teams: ad…