Tag Archives: Power
Dynamics 365 Sales and Power Apps Grants Available Now
On December 1, 2020, Microsoft began offering new Business Applications grants to eligible nonprofit organizations. For these businesses, even additional SKUs purchased outside of the grants are discounted, as well. The following grants are now available: 5 free seats of Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise 10 free seats of Power Apps (per App Plan) 10 free seats of Microsoft 365 Business Premium $ 3…
Sisense and Signals Analytics Bring the Power of External Data to the Enterprise
We’re stronger when we work together. In our Partner Showcase, we highlight the amazing integrations, joint projects, and new functionalities created and sustained by working with our technology partners at companies like AWS, Google, and others.
Business teams constantly want to know how their companies are performing — against their internal goals and those of the market they compete in. They benchmark their performance against their previous results, what their customers are asking for, what their customers are buying, and ideally what their customers will buy. To get their answers, businesses typically rely on data sources that are all internal, showing decision-makers only part of the picture.
That’s now in the past. Today, through a strategic partnership, Signals Analytics and Sisense are making it easy to incorporate external data analytics into a company’s main BI environment. The result is a broader, more holistic view of the market coupled with more actionable and granular insights. Infusing these analytics everywhere, democratizes data usage and access to critical insights across the enterprise.
Organizations who are truly data-driven know how to leverage a wide range of internal and external data sources in their decision-making. The integration of Signals Analytics in the Sisense business intelligence environment gets them there faster and seamlessly, without the need for specialized resources to build complex systems.
Kobi Gershoni, Signals Analytics co-founder and chief research officer

Why external data analytics?
The integration of Signals Analytics with the Sisense platform delivers on the promise of advanced analytics — infusing intelligence at the right place and the right time, upleveling standard decisions to strategic decisions, and speeding the time to deployment. Combining internal and external data unlocks powerful insights that can drive innovation, product development, marketing, partnerships, acquisitions, and more.

Primary use cases for external data analytics
External data is uniquely well-suited to inform decision points across the product life cycle, from identifying unmet needs to predicting sales for specific attributes, positioning against the competition, measuring outcomes, and more. By incorporating a wide range of external data sources that are connected and contextualized, users benefit from a more holistic picture of the market.
For example, when combining product reviews, product listings, social media, blogs, forums, news sites, and more with sales data, the accuracy rate for predictive analytics jumps from 36% to over 70%. Similar results are seen when going from social listening alone to using a fully connected and contextualized external data set to generate predictions.

The Sisense and Signals Analytics partnership: What you need to know
- Signals Analytics provides the connected and contextualized datasets for specific fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) categories
- Sisense users can tap into one of the broadest external datasets available and unleash the power of this connected data in their Sisense dashboards
- The ROI of the analytics investment dramatically increases when combining historical data, sales, inventory, and customer data with Signals Analytics data
Integrate external data analytics in your Sisense environment in three easy steps
Step 1: Connect
From your Sisense UI, use the Snowflake data connector to connect to the Signals Analytics Data Mart. The data can be queried live in the Sisense ElastiCube.
Step 2: Select
Once the data connection has been established, select the data types needed by filtering the relevant “Catalog.”
Step 3: Visualize
Select the dimensions, measures, and filters to apply, then visualize.

More data sources, better decisions
Your company is sitting on a large supply of data, but unless and until you find the right datasets to complement it, the questions you can answer and the insights you can harness from it will be limited. Whatever your company does and whatever questions you are trying to answer, mashing up data from a variety of sources, inside the right platform, is vital to surfacing game-changing insights.
To get started on the next leg of your analytics journey start a free trial or become a partner.

#PowerBI – Change the data source in your composite model with direct query to AS/ Power BI Dataset
I have been playing around with the new awesome (preview) feature in the December Power BI Desktop release where we can use DirectQuery for Power BI datasets and Azure Analysis services (link to blogpost)
In my case I combined data from a Power BI dataset, Azure Analysis Services, and a local Excel sheet. The DirectQuery sources was in a test environment.
I then wanted to try this on the actual production datasets and wanted to change the datasources – and was a bit lost on how to do that but luckily found a way that I want to share with you.
Change the source
First you click on Data source settings under Transform data
This will open the dialog for Data source settings and show you the list of Data sources in the current file.
Now you can either right click the data source you want to change
Or click the button “Change Source…”
Depending on your data source different dialogs will appear
This one for my Azure Analysis Services Connection
And this one for Power BI Dataset
And this one for the Local Excel workbook
Hope this can help you to.
Happy new year to you all.
Inogic Preferred apps – 15 smart solutions to get the best of Dynamics 365 CRM / Power Apps
It’s finally here, the end of the year 2020. The onset of an unforeseen lockdown made us all stop, question, think and reflect on our goals, priorities, and the pressing question of what’s next? Despite the barriers and challenges this new reality bought, businesses all around the globe showed the spirit of adaptation and emerged stronger, savvier, and even profitable in many ways.
Just like the champion spirit our Dynamics 365 CRM / Power Apps community exhibited, we strapped down and committed to keep moving forward to solidify and enhance our Inogic productivity suite. So before 2020 fades away and we see the dawn of 2021, we would like to share a roadmap of everything that you can do supercharge with Inogic’s suite of preferred productivity apps.
Integrate Seamlessly
Maplytics is a geo-mapping and geo-analysis app that seamlessly integrates with Bing Maps within Dynamics 365 CRM/ Power Apps that enables you to make the most of your CRM data. Maplytics comes packed with features like Territory Management, Radius Search, Appointment Planner, Optimized Routing, PCF Controls, Census Data, Heat Maps, Truck Routing, and much more! All in all, there is no going back, once you’ve got the Maplytics pack.
Enhance productivity with a single click
There are some basic operations users need to perform frequently. But the absence of a way to optimize the monotony is painfully inefficient for us. Therefore, we created our line of 1 click apps that minimize inefficiency and maximize results.
Get Hassle Free Attachments
Visualize to Optimize
Use Independent Stand-Alone Apps
Accurate and Easy Billing Management
Quite the list, isn’t it?
Did you find something that caught your interest? If you did, you’re in luck, you can try any of the above apps for free with our 15 days free trial! Just go to our
If you need a walkthrough of any of the apps, we are just a mail away, shoot us a quick inquiry at crm@inogic.com and one of our productivity apps experts will get in touch with you.
So until next time – we wish you a safe and innovative and productive new year
Let Your Data Tell a Story: CRM Using Microsoft Power BI
CRM is the key to a successful business. Data visualization takes your customer relationships to another level. Extend your CRM solutions to create a bigger, more sustainable customer pool with Microsoft Power BI. This software application visualizes your corporate information and allows your data to tell a very important story.
The information age has digitized most businesses today, which means your corporate data speaks about a company more than any top executive. The Microsoft Dynamics 365 suite of applications allow you to maximize your customer relations using your data!
If you’re interested in maintaining excellent customer relationships, read more. JourneyTEAM has given you tips and tricks on how your data can tell a story with
The Principles of Storytelling
Storytelling has been the way humans have communicated since the stone age. Now, it’s time for your data to tell a story. Below are the principles for a good story:
- Quick and Simple: Present long, complex data in a short and easy-to-understand fashion so the audience can make the most out of what you show.
- Inspire Change: The data you present should connect with the audience so that they’re inspired to change their work/life in a way that benefits your business (CRM 101)!
- Make an impact: Ensure that the storytelling leaves a mark on the audience. An unforgettable experience is what manufactures recurring customers.
Elements of a Good Story
For your data to tell a story effectively, it has to abide by four key elements: stage setting, target audience, planning, and allowing deeper explorations.
Stage Setting
Good CRM starts with context. Stage setting gives your audience a context on the data they’re viewing. Without your audience knowing what they’re seeing, your story loses all meaning.
The best way to set the stage for your data visualization is the dashboard. Here are some tips to an excellent Power BI dashboard:
- Organize the dashboard effectively and maintain good spacing
- Use clear headings and titles for all graphics and data
- Maintain concise and impactful labels
- Use few colors to reduce distractions, and highlight only key metrics
Target Audience
A different audience means a different story. It is important to tailor your visualizations based on who your audience is, where they come from, what data they care about, etc.
A good practice is to create different pages for different audiences. You can also provide page links on the dashboard. Know your audience well, and show only the data they care about. This will maximize the story’s impact.
Plan
To ensure you give enough attention to all aspects of your story, plan what you’re going to present beforehand.
A great way to do this is through storyboards. With storyboards you can create boards for each page. You decide what colors and information the slide will have. You can also manage links and any other aspect of the page.
Ensure that you focus on the important stories and data only. Create separate pages to organize your data well. Don’t clutter a page! Presenting too much information at once ironically leads to a lack of information in the audience.
Explorations
Allow your audience to explore your visualizations. Create pages, links, and drill-throughs that engage the audience and demand their attention.
- Use filters to allow users to find the data and reports they need. Drill-throughs are useful so that customers can learn more about specific pieces of information!
- Make the dashboard the home for the most important stories. It should be an executive summary that says a little bit about everything. Then use drill-throughs to allow users to dig into the specifics.
The Perfect Dashboard
- Personalize the dashboard based on your audience. Make it informative yet simple, and elaborative yet quick!
- A dashboard needs to say a little about everything. Ensure you display all the critical stories on the dashboard and use drill-throughs to allow users to dig deeper.
- Put the important information on the top, and the most critical information on the top left. It’s where the eyes go first!
- Use the right charts to represent your data, maintain color consistency, and highlight only key metrics!
Note: Power BI offers several variations of
Making the Most of Visualization
70% of your mental faculty is used in visualization. Most of that is iconic memory, things that you see and instantly forget.
When your audience views your visualizations, you must make the most out of cognitive science to ensure the information goes from iconic memory to long-term memory.
What to avoid:
- Too many bright colors
- Thick, colorful borders
- Lack of highlighting
- Excessive Grids
- Needlessly precise numbers
How to capture your story in the long-term memory:
- Create call-to-actions
- Use data patterns that are easy to view and process (see Gestalt’s principles)
- Use textual or audio cues alongside the visualization to engage multiple sensory inputs
- Maintain color consistency
- Maintain good spacing
- It’s okay to round off numbers that are full of digits
JourneyTEAM was recently awarded
Article by: Dave Bollard – Chief Marketing Officer | 801-436-6636
JourneyTEAM is an award-winning consulting firm with proven technology and measurable results. They take Microsoft products; Dynamics 365, SharePoint intranet, Office 365, Azure, CRM, GP, NAV, SL, AX, and modify them to work for you. The team has expert level, Microsoft Gold certified consultants that dive deep into the dynamics of your organization and solve complex issues. They have solutions for sales, marketing, productivity, collaboration, analytics, accounting, security and more.
Better Microsoft CRM with Azure Synapse Analytics & Power BI Premium Gen 2
Let’s be honest. The world we live in is driven by data. Presentation and efficiency matter. Using the right CRM with the best visuals and security will not only increase your revenue, but guarantee the satisfaction of your valued customers.
JourneyTEAM, a Microsoft Gold Partner, will help you get your organization ahead of this data-driven game. Microsoft announced updates with safer data storage, and smarter, faster analysis platforms. Introducing Azure Synapse Analytics and the Next Generation Power BI Premium! Below you’ll discover why you need not just one, but both in supporting your CRM.
Teamwork Makes the Dream Work
Azure analytics and Power BI are an unparalleled combination. This duo is the optimum performance accelerator. You can reap the benefits of increased capabilities, and incredible cost-management. Using Azure and Power BI together allows you to extract maximum data and technology value for your organization. Just like it is important that your customers trust you, you need to use your data productively with Microsoft technology you trust. Read more to learn about each product. Then, see how they make the best team.
The Basics of Azure
Microsoft’s most popular cloud computing service is known as Azure.
- Databases
- Backups
- Virtual machines
- File storage
- Services for web and mobile apps
The Update: Azure Synapse
Azure Synapse Analytics is a modern, cloud based data warehouse. Now, you can build, deploy and run edge and hybrid computing apps. This developmental environment allows you to run these apps consistently across your IT ecosystem. It is also flexible regardless of the workload. Synapse Analytics offers benefits in performance, protection and price.
- Pristine Performance – Synapse is limitless. The service unites enterprise data warehousing and big data analytics seamlessly. You can easily learn, prep, manage, and serve data. Azure Synapse has an incredible capacity so that you can, on your own terms, query data. You have the option to use either provisioned or serverless resources.
- Protection – Azure’s analytics are services you can trust. Expect nothing less than sound protection when it comes to data governance, compliance, and security. You can find comfort in knowing your most valuable business data is protected by the most advanced security and privacy features in the market.
- Cost Management – If transformative insights are what youre looking for, Azure Synapse is what you need. With analytics that produce a significant 271-percent RO, it’s the price performance undisputed leader. This means it is 94 percent cheaper and up to 14 times faster.
The Basics of Power BI
Microsoft’s Power BI is an easy-to-use scalable platform. This business analytics service helps you gain more profound data insight. Data analyzing is an experience to enjoy. Get impressive visual data charts, dashboards, and reports. Personalize your reports with your brand and KPIs. Connect to, and create unforgettable presentations. Everyone in your organization will love
The Update: Power BI Premium Gen 2
With new
- You get free distribution and even licensing for on-premise usage. Get Premium capabilities for Non-Premium owners.
- Analytics operations run up to 16X faster with enhanced performance – any capacity size and any time. The top speed operations will not slow down.
- Fewer memory restrictions means you don’t have to track refresh schedule spacing. Schedule refreshes and report interaction have complete separation.
- Autoscale automatically adds 1 v-core at a time for 24-hr time periods. When idle time is detected, the v-core is removed.
- New utilization analysis, budget planning, and metrics are reimagined. With built-in reporting you have clearly visible chargebacks and need to upgrade.
How They Work Together
Azure Synapse and Premium Gen 2 work in perfect harmony. The collaborative process is as follows: Synapse determines materialized views from collected query patterns. Then, Power BI creates the materialized views, and directs the queries. You are able to find solutions for reporting, advanced analytics, and real-time analytics with little effort exerted on your part. Let Azure Synapse and Premium Gen 2 help you business run even smoother.
Get Azure Synapse Analytics and Power BI Premium Gen 2 with JourneyTEAM
JourneyTEAM will show you how to get the most out of these services along with your CRM. We’re a Microsoft Gold Partner with knowledge and experience with Microsoft products. Allow us to help you make this transition. Contact us today!
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JourneyTEAM was recently awarded
Article by: Dave Bollard – Head of Marketing | 801-436-6636
JourneyTEAM is an award-winning consulting firm with proven technology and measurable results. They take Microsoft products; Dynamics 365, SharePoint intranet, Office 365, Azure, CRM, GP, NAV, SL, AX, and modify them to work for you. The team has expert level, Microsoft Gold certified consultants that dive deep into the dynamics of your organization and solve complex issues. They have solutions for sales, marketing, productivity, collaboration, analytics, accounting, security and more.
Planning at the speed of COVID: P3 and Power On
It’s not adversity which defines you, but how you respond to it.
GPS and Steering Wheel
Power BI = GPS. Power On = Steering Wheel.
In 2020 we’ve been talking a lot about how important it is to be both intelligent AND agile in the face of unpredictable business conditions. During “normal” times, you can often get away with guessing that tomorrow will resemble yesterday, and simply following your well-worn business map. But 2020 has thrown all of that out the door, and even though 2021 is hopefully kinder, we all know that it will be far from a return to normal.
To survive and thrive in chaos, you have to SEE changing conditions clearly and quickly, but then also ACT – decisively. And taking action is a team sport – everyone needs to know their new targets. They need to believe in them. And they need to know how their actions play into the new overall plan.
Agile Planning, Integrated with Power BI
Register now for our webinar on agile planning
The velocity at which you need to change plans is unheard of now and as such, planning needs to be nimble and continuous. To facilitate this we need tools that enable faster and more collaborative planning. We’ve been using PowerOn for several years now with our clients and it has performed very effectively in this role, resulting in a more effective and efficient planning process as well as organizational gains.
Organizational planning is a holistic exercise. Changes to forecasts and assumptions can have sweeping impacts across the organization. With our solution utilizing Power BI and PowerOn visual planner we can instantly see how changes to our input assumptions and forecast, impacts everything from financials including the P&L, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow, to operational functions including inventory, production, headcount, resource load, and training needs.

Planning also cannot exist in a vacuum. We know that as we seek to make planning more agile and continuous we need to make it more collaborative. Of course, in the past, the more collaborative the process, the slower it would be as there would be more versions of the forecast and plans to keep track of and update over time as the actuals changed.
PowerOn’s Visual Planner solution includes a workflow process to review and approve forecasts and add commentary/notes on any data point. This. facilitates a collaborative process that includes input across the organization while not bringing forward movement to a crawl.
The ability to continuously plan and make decisions in an agile, collaborative way is not just a competitive advantage anymore, it is essential to future success.
Want to learn more about how PowerBI and PowerOn can help transform your planning? Please join us on Thursday, December 10th from 12 pm – 1 pm CST for a webinar.
Spot the difference between Power BI Desktop and Power BI Desktop (Store Version) #PowerBI
On my computer I have 2 versions of Power BI Desktop installed – one from the Microsoft Store which is updated automatically and the downloaded version from downloads – and typically I have last month edition as my downloaded version.
But in my taskbar its impossible to tell the difference between the two.
Well we can solve that by changing the icon for the downloaded version – its not possible for the store version.
If you right click the icon in the taskbar and then right click the Power BI Desktop
You can select the properties for this App.
Now click the Change Icon
This will show you the current icon and now you can change this by clicking Browse – in my case I will select the icon for the PBIDocument
And click open – then icon will now be set to this
And when clicking OK
We will see the icon has changed for the Shortcut.
Notice that it will change immediately
But after a restart it will appear
Hope this can make your choice of Power BI Desktop versions easier for you as well.
3 Best Practices for Analytics Professionals to Bring Wind Power to Fruition

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The world is racing towards global electrification, poised to provide electricity to the 20 percent of the global population currently without this utility. Leading the race is wind energy—specifically offshore. The transformation of the energy industry from “black gold,” oil, to “green gold,” renewable energy sources, will have varied far-reaching impacts. Fortunately, TIBCO has developed a comprehensive solution that will take current and future wind energy investors and operators from the land to the sea—moving operations offshore.
In fact, over $ 35 billion was invested in offshore wind projects during the second quarter of 2020. The longevity and significance of these projects make this a hot market with plenty of room for expansion. To tackle the complex variables that impact the outcomes of wind projects, TIBCO Data Scientist Catalina Herrera and her team have worked tirelessly to produce the most comprehensive solution available to date.
Investors and developers can utilize this solution to not only forecast potential for wind farms, but to predict the production power of wind projects and determine the feasibility and potential limitations of a location. Users can also site and plan for the great new frontier—offshore wind farms. Established wind farms will also benefit from operations optimization such as the ability to incorporate real-time data from sensors to prevent downtime and eliminate overproduction concerns.
From planning to operations, siting for wind farms to placing steel in the ground, TIBCO’s Wind Forecasting Analysis is opening doors for energy players. In this blog, you’ll learn the role of analytics and data science in bringing the promise of one form of renewable energy, wind, to fruition.
3 Best Practices for Analytics Professionals to Bring Wind Power to Fruition
Source Meaningful Data
The variables needed to be considered for accurate wind forecasting are vast. In this solution, wind characteristics such as wind speed, wind temperature, and wind pressure comprise just one component of analysis. Wind characteristics are proven variables that are required when predicting power outcomes. Additional variables such as weather seasonality, product power of various wind turbines, and geographical relation to power stations (and more!) also play a role in developing this comprehensive analysis.
Due in part to the multiple players involved with collecting these data sets, many data silos exist. Pulling in this data from weather stations, equipment manufacturers, and current wind farms, produces large quantities of data but not necessarily quality data. Therefore, data cleansing is imperative to take this raw data and produce quality models for prediction. TIBCO solutions make the data wrangling process quick and seamless.
Create Location-Specific Time Series Models
Using the cleansed data, this Wind Forecasting Analysis Solution creates time series models for stakeholders in the wind industry.
- Wind farm developers can use the models for siting optimal locations.
- Energy suppliers can avoid overproduction by coordinating the collaborative production of traditional power plants with weather-dependent energy sources.
To obtain more accurate predictions, extrapolation techniques are required. Obtaining weather data or wind farm data isn’t enough, as this analysis requires weather data from exact longitudes and latitudes. This extrapolation can be done using Voronoi Polygons, a function of TIBCO Spotfire. To create accurate models, weather conditions data are indexed in time order to demonstrate simple models such as wind speed variations during a single day. These smaller models are captured in an ARIMA (Auto-Regressive Integrated Moving Average) model to predict wind power generation. ARIMA is a class of predictive model that captures a suite of different standard temporal structures in time series data.
The user of this Wind Forecasting Analysis benefits from the clean visualizations that TIBCO Spotfire provides, but behind the dashboard, is a complex data pipeline that uses large quantities of data from many services, processed by advanced statistical methods. TIBCO Data Science is responsible for processing all of the data transformation from the multiple data sources, imputing missing values, and aggregating and joining data tables—all in preparation for the ARIMA model to run.
Looking ahead, the solution can incorporate streaming data, effectively offering the analysis in real time. This hyperconverged analytics approach enables users to not only visualize and perform expansive analysis into wind data but also to generate actionable insights, rapidly.
Make Informed Decisions: Onshore and Offshore
As wind energy plays an increasingly important role in the supply of energy globally, implementing a solution for predicting the output of wind farms becomes more crucial. Not just for planning new wind projects, but also for optimizing existing operations, and creating energy ecosystems that are collaborative and efficient.
Here’s what we know about offshore wind:
- 80 percent of offshore wind resources are in waters greater than 60 meters (197 feet).
- Floating wind turbines enable sites further from shore, where they are out of sight, but there’s also better wind!
- Floating wind technology is expected to be deployed at utility-scale by 2024.
From planning to operations, siting for wind farms to placing steel in the ground, TIBCO’s Wind Forecasting Analysis is opening doors for energy players. Click To Tweet
The analytics needed behind the scenes will continue to increase in complexity as the number of variables to consider increases with the transition to offshore wind projects. With the push for offshore wind projects to provide a greater amount of energy to the grid within this decade, the capabilities that this analysis provides are all the more relevant. We are proud to be spearheading a data science solution that will empower the renewable energy industry. We are actively working to employ this same science in other types of renewable energy, such as solar. You can learn more about our Wind Forecasting Analytics solution in this webinar.
How to Add B2B SSO to a Power Apps Portal
With Power Apps Portals there are several methods of authentication that can be used that are outlined in the Portals documentation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/maker/portals/configure/configure-portal-authentication. In today’s blog, we will show step by step how to use your Azure Active Directory to implement a B2B experience on your portal. The main benefit of implementing such…