Power Query: Creating a parameterized function in M

By Satalyst Brilliance on 19 May 2015

This will be part two in my on-going series about Power BI, Power Query, and the general joys of data. In my last post I outlined how to iterate over a list in Power Query. But what if I want to iterate over a list and need to parameterize it with today’s date? What if I want to issue multiple web requests based on a list? This is exactly the scenario I had when trying to fetch crime data from the WA Police web site. First, I have to thank my colleague and web wizard John Chillemi who authored the azure website that I’m using. The WA Police site has all the data, but not in a nice HTML table, which is what Power Query needs. So, thanks to John, I can execute a single web request and get a webpage that looks like this:   The web request takes five parameters – Suburb, Start Month, Start Year, End Month, and End Year, as seen below: I’d like to execute that web request for every suburb in Western Australia (there are over 1300 by my count) so obviously this is a case for automation, which means I need an M parameterized…

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Office 365 locally hosted in Australian Datacentres

By Todd on 13 May 2015

Office 365 – Microsoft’s cloud productivity suite – is now locally hosted in Australian datacentres.  With Office 365, Dynamics CRM Online and Azure all delivered out of Australian datacentres, Microsoft Azure is Australia’s most complete cloud. This means Satalyst can deliver to customers geo-redundant backup and faster performance for Azure, Office 365 and Dynamics CRM Online in a completely secure cloud environment.  Customers can see that their data is not only held, but also backed up in Australia.  This helps customers address data residency considerations, particularly in sectors such as healthcare, education, government and financial services. Microsoft has completed the formal security assessment for the Australian Government’s Independent Registered Assessors Program (IRAP).  This assessment approves Office 365 for processing, storing and transmitting unclassified sensitive government data and covers Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Skype for Business, as well as Microsoft’s cloud and infrastructure operations and Australian data centre facilities.  This news builds on Microsoft’s recent ISO 27018 announcement for Azure, Office 365, CRM Online and Intune. Microsoft’s comprehensive approach to global and local certifications ensures Azure is a cloud customers can trust – verified by third parties.

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Power BI integrated with Azure Stream Analytics

By Todd on 11 May 2015

One of the common use cases for Azure Stream Analytics is to analyse high volume streaming data in real-time and get the insight in a live dashboard (a dashboard that updates in real time without user having to refresh the browser). Microsoft Power BI is perfect for building a live dashboard in no time.  Check out this Power BI and Azure Stream Analytics demo video to see how easy it is. Power BI output makes it very easy to uncover real-time insights (IoT) from devices, sensors and applications data in a live real-time updating dashboard!

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