It’s only been a couple of months since I took over the reins from co-partner Erik Svensen (t|l) for the Danish Power BI User Group. But even just a few months in, I see and appreciate all the hard work and effort Erik has put into this user group. It’s because of Erik’s relentless efforts over the past four-five years that I can now announce that the user group has 2.000 members!
Bravo Erik – Well done!
This summer my family and I spent almost three weeks driving to Germany and into Italy by car. Not just any car I might add. The old Volvo clicked in 4.000 km and handled it like a charm 🥰 even when it was super packed for the final stage of the journey from the duty free shop just across the border.
Main cities visited Nürnberg, Venice, Bologna, Brisighella, Comacchio… and obviously I had to make a stop at the Mutti field of tomatoes, as Mutti is a client of ours 🙂
Just before the vacation began, I got notice, that I had passed the two beta exams I attended in the middle of May. With beta exams you do not get the passing score immediately, you have to wait ’till the program has collected enough data on the individual questions/answers to release the final version of the test.
First of I passed the Microsoft Power Automate RPA Developer (PL-500) exam, which was quite a stretch for me, and I had even raised some concerns about the scope of the test before, in the below announcement on LinkedIn:
Candidates for this exam automate time-consuming and repetitive tasks by using Microsoft Power Automate (formerly known as Flow). They review solution requirements, create process documentation, and design, develop, troubleshoot, and evaluate solutions.
Candidates work with business stakeholders to improve and automate business workflows. They collaborate with administrators to deploy solutions to production environments, and they support solutions.
Additionally, candidates should have experience with JSON, cloud flows and desktop flows, integrating solutions with REST and SOAP services, analyzing data by using Microsoft Excel, VBScript, Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), HTML, JavaScript, one or more programming languages, and the Microsoft Power Platform suite of tools (AI Builder, Power Apps, Dataverse, and Power Virtual Agents).
Important
Passing score: 700. Learn more about exam scores. (which is exactly what I scored 😁)
Part of the requirements for: Microsoft Certified: Power Automate RPA Developer Associate
The detailed skills are outlined here: Exam PL-500: Microsoft Power Automate RPA Developer – Skills Measured
Candidates for this exam should have advanced Power BI skills, including managing data repositories and data processing in the cloud and on-premises, along with using Power Query and Data Analysis Expressions (DAX). They should also be proficient in consuming data from Azure Synapse Analytics and should have experience querying relational databases, analyzing data by using Transact-SQL (T-SQL), and visualizing data.
Important
Passing score: 700. Learn more about exam scores.
Tip
Part of the requirements for: Microsoft Certified: Azure Enterprise Data Analyst Associate
New/Renewed 2022
Other Active Certifications
🚨 Data Insight Summit – In person Conference in Chicago: 12-14th September 2022 🚨
Find the workshops here: Pre-Conference Full-day Workshops – Data Insight Summit
I will be hosting a pre con in collaboration with RADACAD in Chicago.
In this session we will be diving into most of the major moving parts of an automated enterprise BI solution, as per Microsoft reference architecture (Enterprise business intelligence – Azure Reference Architectures | Microsoft Docs). Azure Active Directory, Blob storage, Azure Monitor, Azure Synapse, Azure Data Factory, Azure Analysis Services and Power BI serving as key pillars in building a solid custom framework for automated data ingestion and analysis. Learn how to setup each of these services, how they interact and how to benefit from built in automation in Azure.
Leading by example, we will be tracing data from various sources on its journey through the Azure services, configuring them configure as we go along.
The conference is taking place April 4-8 and only requires a 2-hour commitment each day (apart from the labs). It is a virtual skilling event designed to teach attendees the practical applications of Dynamics 365 and Power Platform and prepare them for certification.
The agenda focuses on role-based certification tracks that are very relevant to my responsibilities as a what ever position they pursuit. This conference will have instructor-led courses, labs, exam prep sessions, and both live and offline Q&A.
Attending this conference would enable you to build your skills and implement them into customer projects in a meaningful way that would benefit my team and your company.
Please check out the conference registration page: Business Applications Cloud Week for Partners. The conference is free to attend with the only commitment being my time, as long as your are a Microsoft Partner.
My role in this event is supervising the labs. Specifically the labs around the PL-300 course. If you are unfamiliar with the PL-300 exam, it might be that DA-100 rings a bell!? The PL-300 certification replaces the DA-100 exam and introduces a set of changes. You can compare the skills tested here for PL-300 and here for DA-100. In a quick glance, the differences are as follows:
| PL-300 | DA-100 |
| Prepare the data (15-20%) | Prepare the data (20-25%) |
| Model the data (30-35%) | Model the data (25-30%) |
| Visualize and analyze the data (25-30%) | Visualize the data (20-25%) |
| Deploy and maintain assets (20-25%) | Analyze the data (10-15%) |
| Deploy and maintain deliverables (10-15%) |
Obviously Microsoft has updated the content, but also moved the certification from one branch (DA) to another (PL). The DA branch only contained the DA-100 certification, as all other data related certifications either reside in the DP branch. Now it’s moved in with the other Power Platform certifications in the PL branch.
Back to the labs!
In this week of Business Applications, I am supervising the labs that run as homework for the classes in Power BI. These labs are similar, but not the same, as the ones that are available on some of the Microsoft Learn Learning Paths. If you are not familiar with these new and powerful capabilities of the online learning experience with Microsoft Learn, you should definitely check them out.
The labs are highly specialized towards a specific learning goal and of great use, when you want to fiddle about with a well refined use case.
September 29th I will be hosting two (2) sessions at the SqlSaturday event in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US.
My first session will be on the basics of Power Query with some tips and tricks added to spice things up a bit. See details here.
My other session will be on Windows/Azure IoT and Raspberry PI. For that session, I used to carry a breadboard with my own poor soldering applied, but for this event I’ve bought a Grove PI starter kit which I am really excited to demonstrate as well. See more detail here.
The coincidence of a SqlSaturday and Pittsburgh Steelers playing in the same vicinity is something I experienced first time almost 5 years ago, as I went to my first SqlSaturday in Cambridge (which is a smashing event btw) where I got to see my first Steelers game as they played Minnesota Vikings at Wembley stadium
This time it will be on Heinz Field, taking on Baltimore Ravens – Classic arch rivalry in the AFC North. Wouldn’t be surprised if the final score was 2-0. But still very excited to go!