Technical articles and guides on AI & Data Engineering, Azure infrastructure, and automation by Arthur Steijn and Erik Hamoen.https://sidequests.blog/https://sidequests.blog/blog/use-activator-for-a-real-event-driven-process/https://sidequests.blog/blog/use-activator-for-a-real-event-driven-process/It’s been 2 years and a little since I wrote about Data Activator. Back then, it just got to public preview, and quite a few things have changed since...Wed, 12 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTErik Hamoenhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/parameters-for-your-direct-lake-semantic-model/https://sidequests.blog/blog/parameters-for-your-direct-lake-semantic-model/Recently I started working with a semantic model that runs Direct Lake on OneLake. There is a separation of platform and semantic models in the worksp...Sun, 26 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMTErik Hamoenhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/using-semantic-link-labs-for-repairing-broken-power-bi-reports/https://sidequests.blog/blog/using-semantic-link-labs-for-repairing-broken-power-bi-reports/Intro Semantic Link And Labs have existed for quite some time now in Fabric, but I never made time to start using it. But I’m trying to change that th...Wed, 05 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMTErik Hamoenhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/using-nfc-tags-for-power-bi-reports/https://sidequests.blog/blog/using-nfc-tags-for-power-bi-reports/Experimenting with Power BI has always been a lot of fun to do. Recently I tried the barcode scanner for Power BI Mobile, and a bit longer ago I tried...Mon, 16 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMTErik Hamoenhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/use-row-level-security-for-a-single-power-bi-report/https://sidequests.blog/blog/use-row-level-security-for-a-single-power-bi-report/One of my clients recently asked me: “I want to use Row level security RLS for this report”. The problem however is: It’s a very big model, used for o...Sun, 29 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMTErik Hamoenhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/using-the-barcode-scanner-in-power-bi-mobile/https://sidequests.blog/blog/using-the-barcode-scanner-in-power-bi-mobile/You only know the things you heard about or read about. For me, that means I’ve been working with Power BI for 5,5 years now but never knew there was...Thu, 02 May 2024 00:00:00 GMTErik Hamoenhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/the-purview-hub-and-admin-monitoring-inside-fabric/https://sidequests.blog/blog/the-purview-hub-and-admin-monitoring-inside-fabric/In my two previous posts, I wrote about the monitoring hub and the Onelake Data hub in Fabric. Today I’ll show you the Admin monitoring hub and the Pu...Tue, 16 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMTErik Hamoenhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/why-fabric-spark-is-the-way-to-go/https://sidequests.blog/blog/why-fabric-spark-is-the-way-to-go/After attending the Fabric Community Conference last March 2024 in Vegas, I got even more excited about Fabric Spark 💚 Let’s explore why Fabric Spark...Thu, 04 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMTArthur Steijnhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/how-to-use-the-monitoring-hub-in-microsoft-fabric/https://sidequests.blog/blog/how-to-use-the-monitoring-hub-in-microsoft-fabric/In my last blog, I wrote about the One Lake data hub, a great place to find all the data you have access to or are allowed to request access to. In th...Wed, 03 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMTErik Hamoenhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/experience-the-onelake-data-hub/https://sidequests.blog/blog/experience-the-onelake-data-hub/In my previous blog I wrote about the impact analysis you can do when you use one dataset to serve multiple reports in multiple workspaces. But how do...Wed, 21 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMTErik Hamoenhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/merge-delta-lake-tables-with-azure-functions-delta-rs-polars/https://sidequests.blog/blog/merge-delta-lake-tables-with-azure-functions-delta-rs-polars/Imagine a scenario where you want to create a delta table, but you don't have access to a spark cluster. Or maybe there are a lot of small frequent up...Mon, 29 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMTArthur Steijnhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/one-model-impact-analysis/https://sidequests.blog/blog/one-model-impact-analysis/It’s common usage to create one or a few datasets semantic model for Power BI that can be used by many other report creators. But if you want to updat...Wed, 24 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMTErik Hamoenhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/using-the-new-info-functions-to-provide-extra-information-for-the-consumers-and-creators/https://sidequests.blog/blog/using-the-new-info-functions-to-provide-extra-information-for-the-consumers-and-creators/When the DAX Query View went to public preview in November, I think my second query was trying to get the DMV for the measures in my model. But at tha...Tue, 26 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMTErik Hamoenhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/using-power-bis-new-slicer-and-reference-labels/https://sidequests.blog/blog/using-power-bis-new-slicer-and-reference-labels/The new card visual Including reference label and the new slicer are some amazing additions to upgrade your Power BI reports. In this short blog, I’ll...Tue, 21 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMTErik Hamoenhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/fabrics-data-activator/https://sidequests.blog/blog/fabrics-data-activator/With the public preview of Data Activator, we can now finally blog about this incredible new addition to Microsoft Fabric. In this blog post, I’ll tel...Thu, 05 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMTErik Hamoenhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/using-power-bi-metrics-and-the-automatic-forecast-function/https://sidequests.blog/blog/using-power-bi-metrics-and-the-automatic-forecast-function/In 2021, Microsoft announced Power BI Goals, a new way of tracking your KPIs inside the Power BI service. We’re now two and a half years further and t...Mon, 18 Sep 2023 00:00:00 GMTErik Hamoenhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/give-your-power-bi-end-users-the-help-they-need/https://sidequests.blog/blog/give-your-power-bi-end-users-the-help-they-need/When you’re building a Power BI report, you know all the possibilities that you’ve built in there, and during the demo for the end user, you’re happy...Tue, 29 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMTErik Hamoenhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/creating-a-correlation-matrix-in-power-bi/https://sidequests.blog/blog/creating-a-correlation-matrix-in-power-bi/Recently I came across this question asked at the Power BI Fabric community, because I was looking for something like this myself. I had no idea what...Tue, 01 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMTErik Hamoenhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/gain-interaction-within-your-center-of-excellence/https://sidequests.blog/blog/gain-interaction-within-your-center-of-excellence/Intro It’s almost five years since I started working with Power BI, but since that day, there aren’t many without it. And I love to share my knowledge...Fri, 14 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMTErik Hamoenhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/controlling-and-visualizing-the-fabric-admin-portal-settings/https://sidequests.blog/blog/controlling-and-visualizing-the-fabric-admin-portal-settings/As described in the Adoption Roadmap, in the section on system oversight, it’s important to keep track of what’s happening inside your Power BI enviro...Thu, 22 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMTErik Hamoenhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/using-git-integration-with-power-bi-desktop/https://sidequests.blog/blog/using-git-integration-with-power-bi-desktop/With the June update of Power BI Desktop, a new preview feature arrived: the .pbip save option. This will create a Power BI project, just like how it...Tue, 13 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMTErik Hamoenhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/power-bi-and-git-integration/https://sidequests.blog/blog/power-bi-and-git-integration/With Build 2023, Microsoft presented Git integration for Power BI workspaces and later desktop, using pbip files and VS Code, but with workspaces in p...Fri, 02 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMTErik Hamoenhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/automatically-change-your-power-bi-theme-by-the-time-of-the-day/https://sidequests.blog/blog/automatically-change-your-power-bi-theme-by-the-time-of-the-day/Last year I wrote a blog about using a dark and light theme in one Power BI report. In this follow-up post, I’ll show you how can automatically change...Mon, 29 May 2023 00:00:00 GMTErik Hamoenhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/monitor-synapse-notebooks-from-a-microsoft-teams-channel/https://sidequests.blog/blog/monitor-synapse-notebooks-from-a-microsoft-teams-channel/Working with Spark Notebooks in Azure Synapse Spark can be challenging, especially when it comes to detecting errors in various types of for loops. Wh...Sun, 23 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMTArthur Steijnhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/using-power-bi-visuals-inside-your-powerpoint-presentation/https://sidequests.blog/blog/using-power-bi-visuals-inside-your-powerpoint-presentation/We like to make jokes about PowerPoint being the first product of the Power Platform, and the fact that it’s a great tool for beginners to create Powe...Fri, 31 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMTErik Hamoenhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/show-lineage-between-the-tables-on-an-azure-sql-db-and-a-power-bi-dataset/https://sidequests.blog/blog/show-lineage-between-the-tables-on-an-azure-sql-db-and-a-power-bi-dataset/In my latest blog, I wrote about using the Apache Atlas API to get full lineage from source to Power BI dataset and report. A few days after that Micr...Sun, 05 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMTErik Hamoenhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/loading-your-cosmos-db-data-into-a-synapse-spark-notebook/https://sidequests.blog/blog/loading-your-cosmos-db-data-into-a-synapse-spark-notebook/What is, in my experience, the best way to get data from Azure Cosmos DB. In this blog, I will provide examples of how to set up a connection to Azure...Mon, 20 Feb 2023 00:00:00 GMTArthur Steijnhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/power-bi-microsoft-purview-showing-full-lineage-from-source-to-report/https://sidequests.blog/blog/power-bi-microsoft-purview-showing-full-lineage-from-source-to-report/Intro Microsoft Purview started as Azure Purview is a Microsoft solution for data management, including a data catalog, data map including the assets,...Mon, 13 Feb 2023 00:00:00 GMTErik Hamoenhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/analyzing-teams-data-over-a-full-year/https://sidequests.blog/blog/analyzing-teams-data-over-a-full-year/Since 2021 you can analyze your Teams data in a generated Power BI report from Microsoft. It shows you the data from the last 90 days by default, but...Wed, 04 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMTErik Hamoenhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/using-paginated-reports-in-power-bi/https://sidequests.blog/blog/using-paginated-reports-in-power-bi/On November 14th, Microsoft announced that paginated reports will no longer be limited to premium workspaces, but that any modern workspace can store...Wed, 30 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMTErik Hamoenhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/how-to-ci-cd-synapse-serverless-sql/https://sidequests.blog/blog/how-to-ci-cd-synapse-serverless-sql/A custom solution with Python and Pandas for an incremental deployment This year 2022/10/05 at @DataRelay in Birmingham, I presented my first session...Mon, 17 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMTArthur Steijnhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/adding-external-users-to-your-power-bi-workspace-update/https://sidequests.blog/blog/adding-external-users-to-your-power-bi-workspace-update/In one of my first blogs, I describe a method of how to add external people to your Power BI workspace. You can read that one here. Now there is a pro...Wed, 07 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMTErik Hamoenhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/creating-a-dark-and-light-theme-for-your-power-bi-report/https://sidequests.blog/blog/creating-a-dark-and-light-theme-for-your-power-bi-report/Intro Since I started working in BI, I saw a lot of colleagues using dark mode options, whenever they could. And when Microsoft revamped the desktop a...Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 GMTErik Hamoenhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/using-the-new-power-bi-data-in-space-preview/https://sidequests.blog/blog/using-the-new-power-bi-data-in-space-preview/With Data in space, Microsoft gives you the option to get an idea of what the future may look like. In an augmented reality experience, you can pin Po...Wed, 27 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMTErik Hamoenhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/use-power-apps-to-write-into-azure-sql-database/https://sidequests.blog/blog/use-power-apps-to-write-into-azure-sql-database/For a while, I wanted to create this demo, for which I’ll be using Power Apps to insert data into an Azure SQL database and show the results in our re...Thu, 14 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMTErik Hamoenhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/using-the-new-power-bi-field-parameter-to-give-your-end-users-more-flexibility/https://sidequests.blog/blog/using-the-new-power-bi-field-parameter-to-give-your-end-users-more-flexibility/Intro When I was working for a customer two years ago, they requested to use the data hierarchy Year, Month, Day in a graph in Power BI. No problem, I...Mon, 30 May 2022 00:00:00 GMTErik Hamoenhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/using-a-geofence-in-power-bi/https://sidequests.blog/blog/using-a-geofence-in-power-bi/One of the clients I work for, got a request which includes geofencing. A geofence is a virtual perimeter for a real-world geographic area. It needs a...Fri, 11 Mar 2022 00:00:00 GMTErik Hamoenhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/getting-data-from-the-previous-row-in-your-table-visual-in-power-bi/https://sidequests.blog/blog/getting-data-from-the-previous-row-in-your-table-visual-in-power-bi/The problem Sometimes you want to have information from “the previous row” in your table. The problem is, your measures don’t have row context, so it...Tue, 01 Mar 2022 00:00:00 GMTErik Hamoenhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/azure-sql-access-token-authentication-with-python-and-azure-powershell-from-azure-devops-pipelines/https://sidequests.blog/blog/azure-sql-access-token-authentication-with-python-and-azure-powershell-from-azure-devops-pipelines/In case you need to access an Azure SQL Database from your DevOps deployment pipeline to execute some custom script on a database. If you need to use...Wed, 09 Feb 2022 00:00:00 GMTArthur Steijnhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/azure-yaml-pipelines-secure-your-environments/https://sidequests.blog/blog/azure-yaml-pipelines-secure-your-environments/Some tips on how to effectively secure your production environment In this post I just want to talk about approaches on setting 'Approvals and Checks'...Mon, 26 Jul 2021 00:00:00 GMTArthur Steijnhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/power-bi-goals-a-new-way-in-tracking-your-kpis/https://sidequests.blog/blog/power-bi-goals-a-new-way-in-tracking-your-kpis/Power BI has always been about making your data visible. By creating pie charts, line graphs, tables, and all other kinds of visuals, you can show org...Tue, 04 May 2021 00:00:00 GMTErik Hamoenhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/power-bi-buttons-bookmarks/https://sidequests.blog/blog/power-bi-buttons-bookmarks/When I started as a BI consultant, the only way to create page navigation in Power BI was by using bookmarks and my other main use for bookmarks was c...Fri, 12 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMTErik Hamoenhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/power-bi-datasets-and-object-level-security-ols/https://sidequests.blog/blog/power-bi-datasets-and-object-level-security-ols/I once had a customer who had a large collection of data from different subsidiaries. These companies were only allowed to see their own, anonymized d...Sun, 28 Feb 2021 00:00:00 GMTErik Hamoenhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/showing-microsoft-forms-results-in-power-bi/https://sidequests.blog/blog/showing-microsoft-forms-results-in-power-bi/A few days ago, someone asked me to think of a solution to show the responses of a Microsoft Form in Power BI. During this project, I used Forms, Powe...Wed, 10 Feb 2021 00:00:00 GMTErik Hamoenhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/automated-testing-of-azure-data-factory-pipelines/https://sidequests.blog/blog/automated-testing-of-azure-data-factory-pipelines/Improve the quality of your solution from a DevOps perspective Put your feet up - Photo by Kewal on Unsplash Developing ETL or ELT solutions in smalle...Mon, 08 Feb 2021 00:00:00 GMTArthur Steijnhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/exporting-all-your-power-bi-reports-at-once/https://sidequests.blog/blog/exporting-all-your-power-bi-reports-at-once/A few weeks ago one of my colleagues showed me a PowerShell script to export all Power BI reports from a Power BI Workspace. This could come in handy...Mon, 01 Feb 2021 00:00:00 GMTErik Hamoenhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/copy-outlook-calendar-events-with-logic-apps-or-power-automate/https://sidequests.blog/blog/copy-outlook-calendar-events-with-logic-apps-or-power-automate/Automatically sync multiple Outlook Calendars to one 'main' Calendar Photo by Estée Janssens on Unsplash Working as a consultant sometimes means havin...Sun, 10 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMTArthur Steijnhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/adding-external-users-to-your-power-bi-workspace/https://sidequests.blog/blog/adding-external-users-to-your-power-bi-workspace/A question I often get is how companies can share Power BI reports with external users, and how they can participate in a workspace. In this story, I’...Tue, 29 Dec 2020 00:00:00 GMTErik Hamoenhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/sending-alerts-to-notify-your-whole-team/https://sidequests.blog/blog/sending-alerts-to-notify-your-whole-team/In my previous post, I explained how you could create variable thresholds in Power BI for your alerts. In this post, I will explain how you could noti...Wed, 23 Dec 2020 00:00:00 GMTErik Hamoenhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/exploratory-data-analysis-with-azure-synapse-analytics/https://sidequests.blog/blog/exploratory-data-analysis-with-azure-synapse-analytics/Build a Power BI Report on Parquet files with the Serverless SQL Pool Azure Synapse Last week, 3th of December, Azure Synapse Analytics was announced...Thu, 10 Dec 2020 00:00:00 GMTArthur Steijnhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/variable-thresholds-for-your-power-bi-alerts-with-a-streaming-dataset/https://sidequests.blog/blog/variable-thresholds-for-your-power-bi-alerts-with-a-streaming-dataset/Power BI Alerts are an interesting way to notify you when something is wrong. In this article, I will show you how to set up alerts with a variable th...Wed, 09 Dec 2020 00:00:00 GMTErik Hamoenhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/track-your-azure-analysis-services-processing-times-per-table/https://sidequests.blog/blog/track-your-azure-analysis-services-processing-times-per-table/With Kusto Queries and Diagnostic Logs Recently I have been working with Azure Analysis Services AAS quite a lot. The number of tables in our model wa...Thu, 20 Aug 2020 00:00:00 GMTArthur Steijnhttps://sidequests.blog/blog/how-to-automatically-add-your-devops-ip-to-azure-analysis-services-firewall/https://sidequests.blog/blog/how-to-automatically-add-your-devops-ip-to-azure-analysis-services-firewall/Without adding the complete range of the datacentre Since October 2017 it is possible to configure a firewall on your Azure Analysis Services. It is r...Fri, 17 Jul 2020 00:00:00 GMTArthur Steijn