Show Notes
Mike & Tommy dive into why data literacy might be missing its most important lesson — not how to read a chart, but how to question the story it's telling. Drawing from a Nightingale article on graph literacy and self-skepticism, they explore whether polished dashboards are quietly building cultures of data compliance over data curiosity. They break down how motivated skepticism, biased interpretation, and over-trusted KPIs show up in real Power BI environments — and what BI teams can do to become critical-thinking coaches, not just report builders. News this week: https://www.meetup.com/chicagolandpowerbi/events/315485409/?eventOrigin=attendee_list https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Fabric-Updates-Blog/Use-User-Data-Functions-to-securely-call-Fabric-REST-APIs/ba-p/5294590 https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Fabric-Updates-Blog/Streamlining-orchestration-with-smarter-pipelines-and-deeper/ba-p/5280154 Get in touch: Send in your questions or topics you want us to discuss by tweeting to @PowerBITips with the hashtag #empMailbag or submit on the PowerBI.tips Podcast Page. Visit PowerBI.tips: https://powerbi.tips/ Watch the episodes live every Tuesday and Thursday morning at 730am CST on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/powerbitips Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/230fp78XmHHRXTiYICRLVv Subscribe on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/explicit-measures-podcast/id1568944083 Check Out Community Jam: https://jam.powerbi.tips Follow Mike: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelcarlo/ Follow Tommy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tommypuglia/
More from Explicit Measures Podcast
Mike & Tommy tackle the emerging role of the semantic model as an AI contract layer in Microsoft Fabric, weighing in on whether Data Agents should reason over governed semantic models or hit OneLake directly. They explore the tension between years of invested business logic in semantic models and the flexibility of Lakehouse-first agent access, breaking down how OneLake Security, RLS, and semantic model permissions can coexist for both traditional BI and AI-powered data workloads. This is a Mailbag episode. Get in touch: Send in your questions or topics you want us to discuss by tweeting to @PowerBITips with the hashtag #empMailbag or submit on the PowerBI.tips Podcast Page. Visit PowerBI.tips: https://powerbi.tips/ Watch the episodes live every Tuesday and Thursday morning at 730am CST on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/powerbitips Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/230fp78XmHHRXTiYICRLVv Subscribe on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/explicit-measures-podcast/id1568944083 Check Out Community Jam: https://jam.powerbi.tips Follow Mike: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelcarlo/ Follow Tommy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tommypuglia/
Mike & Tommy dive into Fabric Deployment Plans, exploring how this new Fabric item fills a real gap in CI/CD by giving teams explicit control over deployment order, pre- and post-deploy actions, and environment binding — things lineage alone never reliably handled. They weigh whether a visual canvas makes deployments more approachable or just hides what's really happening under the hood, and what teams should nail down before trusting a preview feature with a production release. Learn more: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric/cicd/deployment-plan/how-to-create-deployment-plan | https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric/cicd/deployment-plan/deployment-plan-sample-plans Get in touch: Send in your questions or topics you want us to discuss by tweeting to @PowerBITips with the hashtag #empMailbag or submit on the PowerBI.tips Podcast Page. Visit PowerBI.tips: https://powerbi.tips/ Watch the episodes live every Tuesday and Thursday morning at 730am CST on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/powerbitips Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/230fp78XmHHRXTiYICRLVv Subscribe on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/explicit-measures-podcast/id1568944083 Check Out Community Jam: https://jam.powerbi.tips Follow Mike: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelcarlo/ Follow Tommy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tommypuglia/
Mike & Tommy weigh in on the Fabric IQ Ontology Agent, exploring whether a conversational interface built on structured business definitions finally makes ontology worth the investment—or just adds another layer for BI teams to govern. They break down the real cost of building and maintaining an ontology, who owns it when answers go wrong, and whether this changes how business users get to the truth. News: Fabric App Functions – Secure Server-Side Custom Logic (Preview) | File Data Ingestion with Materialized Lake Views in Fabric (Preview) Learn more: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric/iq/ontology/tutorial-4-use-agent Get in touch: Send in your questions or topics you want us to discuss by tweeting to @PowerBITips with the hashtag #empMailbag or submit on the PowerBI.tips Podcast Page. Visit PowerBI.tips: https://powerbi.tips/ Watch the episodes live every Tuesday and Thursday morning at 730am CST on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/powerbitips Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/230fp78XmHHRXTiYICRLVv Subscribe on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/explicit-measures-podcast/id1568944083 Check Out Community Jam: https://jam.powerbi.tips Follow Mike: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelcarlo/ Follow Tommy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tommypuglia/
Mike & Tommy dive into the Fabric Notebook Toolkit (FNTK), a Python library that makes end-to-end agentic development of Microsoft Fabric Notebooks possible from GitHub Copilot CLI, OpenAI Codex, and Claude Code. They break down whether putting AI agents in the driver's seat of notebook creation raises the bar for governance or just accelerates the chaos. Tune in to find out what guardrails, skills, and mindset shifts BI pros need before letting an agent loose in their workspace. https://pypi.org/project/fabric-notebook-toolkit/ News: https://www.meetup.com/chicagolandpowerbi/events/316158533/?eventOrigin=group_upcoming_events https://promptingbi.com/2026/10/08/why-i-built-skill-vault/ https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/blog/fbc_fabricupdatesblogs/a-new-look-and-new-capabilities-in-the-capacity-metrics-app-preview/5374114 Get in touch: Send in your questions or topics you want us to discuss by tweeting to @PowerBITips with the hashtag #empMailbag or submit on the PowerBI.tips Podcast Page. Visit PowerBI.tips: https://powerbi.tips/ Watch the episodes live every Tuesday and Thursday morning at 730am CST on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/powerbitips Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/230fp78XmHHRXTiYICRLVv Subscribe on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/explicit-measures-podcast/id1568944083 Check Out Community Jam: https://jam.powerbi.tips Follow Mike: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelcarlo/ Follow Tommy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tommypuglia/
Mike & Tommy tackle PADU — Preferred, Accepted, Discouraged, and Unacceptable — and map the four-bucket framework onto Microsoft Fabric, exploring how teams can bring real governance and process architecture to a platform that gives you five ways to do everything. They weigh in on where Lakehouse, Git, Dataflows, Copilot, and self-service Power BI land on the scale, and why defining what your org will no longer tolerate might matter more than any architecture decision you make this year. News links: Chicagoland Power BI Meetup | Trusted AI with Microsoft Fabric Real-Time Intelligence | Understanding DAX Contracts When Using AI – SQLBI Get in touch: Send in your questions or topics you want us to discuss by tweeting to @PowerBITips with the hashtag #empMailbag or submit on the PowerBI.tips Podcast Page. Visit PowerBI.tips: https://powerbi.tips/ Watch the episodes live every Tuesday and Thursday morning at 730am CST on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/powerbitips Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/230fp78XmHHRXTiYICRLVv Subscribe on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/explicit-measures-podcast/id1568944083 Check Out Community Jam: https://jam.powerbi.tips Follow Mike: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelcarlo/ Follow Tommy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tommypuglia/