Explicit Measures Podcast

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-agentGet 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/powerbitipsSubscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/230fp78XmHHRXTiYICRLVvSubscribe on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/explicit-measures-podcast/id1568944083‎Check Out Community Jam: https://jam.powerbi.tipsFollow 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_eventshttps://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/5374114Get 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/powerbitipsSubscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/230fp78XmHHRXTiYICRLVvSubscribe on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/explicit-measures-podcast/id1568944083‎Check Out Community Jam: https://jam.powerbi.tipsFollow 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 – SQLBIGet 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/powerbitipsSubscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/230fp78XmHHRXTiYICRLVvSubscribe on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/explicit-measures-podcast/id1568944083‎Check Out Community Jam: https://jam.powerbi.tipsFollow Mike: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelcarlo/Follow Tommy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tommypuglia/

Mike & Tommy tackle the question of whether Power BI should stay an analytics layer or evolve into an operational one, joined by Mike Zack — former CEO of Acterys, now part of Vena — who has built his career around closing the gap between insight and action. They weigh in on when write-back genuinely belongs in a report, who owns the data once users can change it, and what governance has to exist before you flip that switch.With AI surfacing signals faster than ever, the real bottleneck may not be the dashboard — it's the disconnected workflow that follows it.More on Mike Zack and the tools discussed: What's New in Microsoft OneLake | Microsoft & Snowflake's Commitment to Apache | What's New in Fabric Data FactoryGet 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/powerbitipsSubscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/230fp78XmHHRXTiYICRLVvSubscribe on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/explicit-measures-podcast/id1568944083‎Check Out Community Jam: https://jam.powerbi.tipsFollow Mike: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelcarlo/Follow Tommy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tommypuglia/

Mike & Tommy dive into the biggest announcements from FabCon Barcelona, breaking down how Fabric IQ, agentic app creation, ontology authoring, and a wave of platform updates are reshaping what Power BI and Fabric mean for everyday BI teams. They tackle whether the semantic model has officially become the center of the Microsoft AI universe, and what orgs need to do right now to be ready.From write-back apps built with natural language to zero-provisioned Fabric and on-demand billing, they weigh in on which features deserve a spot on your 90-day roadmap and which ones need more governance guardrails before anyone touches them.Read more: FabCon & SQLCon 2026 in Barcelona | Power BI's Next Chapter | Power BI September 2026 Feature Summary | Fabric September 2026 Feature SummaryGet 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/powerbitipsSubscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/230fp78XmHHRXTiYICRLVvSubscribe on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/explicit-measures-podcast/id1568944083‎Check Out Community Jam: https://jam.powerbi.tipsFollow Mike: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelcarlo/Follow Tommy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tommypuglia/