Many of you are either familiar or have heard of either Tableau or Microsoft Power BI.
At one point Tableau had advantages over Power BI, but with recent changes to the licensing structure for the Microsoft line and updates, (almost weekly), Power BI can do just about everything Tableau does. This all at the same time when Tableau drastically raised their pricing after being purchased by Salesforce.
Over the past 8 or so years, I have had the opportunity to work with dozens of State and County Departments to help implement custom dashboards and create customized classes.
During some discovery calls, I have customers say, “we’re going to utilize the Microsoft training first since it’s free. If we need something additional, we’ll contact you” or “we just want a 1-day class on how to build dashboards.”
I’m never disappointed, and always respond with something like, “No problem. We appreciate the opportunity to have talked with you and please keep us in mind for future classes”.
Fast forward a month or two later, I get a call they have exhausted the free Training from Microsoft as well as learn at your own pace options, which in no way satisfied their learning needs. Most equate it to the lack of labs or just the amount of information covered and connecting the pieces.
Ultimately, they still need training. We then work together to create a class, often times modifying the PL-300 class and it’s always a hit.
Well, it’s no surprise. What the heck is Power BI? Often, people think it is just an extension of Excel. They already know Excel so it should be an easy transition.
Not so fast. Power BI is actually a full suite of products/tools in Microsoft’s Business Intelligence line.
I thought I would give a very brief explanation below of what Power BI is.
Microsoft Power BI is a tool that helps you turn your data into easy-to-understand visuals and reports. It has three main parts: Power BI Desktop for creating reports, the Power BI service for sharing them, and Power BI Mobile apps for viewing them on the go. You can also make detailed reports with Power BI Report Builder and publish them on your own servers with Power BI Report Server.
Additionally, Power BI integrates with various external tools like DAX Studio for optimizing queries, ALM Toolkit for application lifecycle management, and Tabular Editor for advanced data modeling. It works with tons of different types of data and helps you see trends and insights clearly. With Power BI, you can make smart decisions based on your data.
Power BI is currently being implemented in many departments. If yours is one of them and you’d like to learn how we can help, or if you simply want to have a conversation to learn more about it, feel free to give me a call!
Have a great week. Let me know if this was helpful.
-Kris Crawford
While working remotely I noticed my bandwidth would drop when I connected to our VPN. It appeared that all internet packets were being routed through our VPN connection. While this normally wouldn’t be a problem, I often found myself downloading large files and my connection performance was limited to the available bandwidth to the VPN connection. That’s when I learned about what a “split tunnel” vpn connection is. I wrote this article to walk you through the process of setting up your VPN to take advantage of this option in Windows Networking.
With a “split tunnel vpn” connection, the internet traffic is routed through the local gateway connection. All other network traffic works through the vpn connection as you would expect. This is a feature that is available with Windows Vista and XP PPTP VPN connections, but it isn’t the default setting.
Here is how you configure your VPN connection to use the local gateway:
Step 1
Right click on your VPN connection and choose “properties”
Step 2
Click on the “Networking” tab. This is where we will need to make changes to the TCP/IP settings for your VPN connection. If you are using V6 IP addresses or V4, you’ll need to make the change in both locations just to be sure.
Step 3
Click on the “Advanced” button to get to the Advanced TCP/IP options
Step 4
The VPN connection by default configures all packets to route to the remote server’s gateway. We want to turn this option off by clicking on the “Use default gateway on remote network” option.
That’s it! Once you have made those changes you will notice your internet packets are no longer automatically routing through the VPN server.
Do you have staff in remote locations, and find it difficult to get them the training they need? There comes a time when your resource is too valuable to send off site for a class. This is where ISInc’s e-Learning can come into play. Now your students can access the same classes via their desktop computer.
ISInc’s e-Learning training is live, interactive online training for those who would like to attend one of our face-to-face instructor-led training courses without leaving their offices, homes or classrooms. Learners can listen to the presentation, ask questions, hear others’ questions and get live answers, all from wherever they choose. They can engage in discussions with others in the physical classroom and throughout the country who are involved in the same class session.
ISInc’s e-Learning training blends the best from traditional face-to-face instructor-led training with the latest in conferencing technology, allowing us to deliver live training to multiple locations at one time. This model is based on our over 27 years experience as trainers and the general premise that the classroom is the foundation of a great training experience.
All courses offered at ISInc can be taken online via our live e-Learning training using Microsoft Lync. So, if you have employees in remote offices that you are trying to schedule for IT training, consider ISInc e-Learning Training. Please contact us for more information.
For more information on our e-learning and to view a video on how it all works, visit our e-learning page here.
