Ken Puls

When it comes to creating metadata in SharePoint, the choices you make directly impact user experience and information architecture. Two of the most common options are: ✅ Choice Columns – simple drop-down lists like categories or departments ✅ Managed Metadata Columns – centralized terms that support hierarchies and consistency In this article, I compare these two methods and break down their pros and cons. 👉 Read more: https://lnkd.in/g_ncyjBy #SharePoint #Microsoft365

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Ever pressed a button in Power BI and the rest of the screen 𝘥𝘪𝘮𝘴? That dim layer is called a scrim. A scrim is a semi-transparent overlay that sits on top of your report when an element (like a filter panel, menu - or in this case, a KPI detail view) is opened. Its purpose isn’t decoration. It’s functional: 𝗙𝗼𝗰𝘂𝘀 → shifts attention to the active panel or popup. 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝘅𝘁 → signals to the user that something is in front of the main report. 𝗨𝘀𝗮𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 → makes it clear where to click to close the panel again. In this example, each KPI card has a “more details” button. Click it, and a details panel opens while the scrim fades the rest of the report into the background. Scrims are a small UX detail, but they make reports feel more like applications - structured, layered, and easier to use. #PowerBI #UIUX #DataViz

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Did you know that when merging columns in #PowerQuery, the behaviour is different depending on whether you trigger the command from the Transform or Add column tabs? 🤯 (And no, we're not talking about the fact that one groups columns vs adding a new column - we are talking actual output differences!) In this episode of Monkey Shorts, we'll explore why adding a new column may be a better option than transforming existing ones. 🙉 #Excel #PowerBI #DataPreparation #DataAnalysis

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Ever pressed a button in Power BI and the rest of the screen 𝘥𝘪𝘮𝘴? That dim layer is called a scrim. A scrim is a semi-transparent overlay that sits on top of your report when an element (like a filter panel, menu - or in this case, a KPI detail view) is opened. Its purpose isn’t decoration. It’s functional: 𝗙𝗼𝗰𝘂𝘀 → shifts attention to the active panel or popup. 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝘅𝘁 → signals to the user that something is in front of the main report. 𝗨𝘀𝗮𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 → makes it clear where to click to close the panel again. In this example, each KPI card has a “more details” button. Click it, and a details panel opens while the scrim fades the rest of the report into the background. Scrims are a small UX detail, but they make reports feel more like applications - structured, layered, and easier to use. #PowerBI #UIUX #DataViz

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Maturing as a Power BI developer means:   ✅ Not naming your files final.pbix, finalFINAL.pbix, or FINAL_v3_NEW.pbix.   ✅ Understanding that “can you just add this filter?” is a trap.   ✅ Knowing that the users will not read every info button.   ✅ Realizing the power of Visual Calculations.   ✅ Thinking of report performance from day 1.   ✅ Accepting that bookmarks are evil.   ✅ Having a favourite date table.   ✅ Always creating a theme. #powerbi #learnings #data #analytics

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Outgrown Excel but need a fast planning solution? Meet the #PowerON Quick Planning App—planning built into #PowerBI in hours, not months. Create apps with security, approvals, versioning, and actuals, all within your Power BI workspace—no new tools or data silos. Plus, get instant insights with AI. Forecasts, scenarios, and explanations in plain language. Key benefits: - Fast deployment with best practices - Native Power BI integration - AI-driven analysis without exports See it in action! 👀 Watch our on-demand webinar to learn more: https://bit.ly/45wxRY0 #FinancialPlanning #Analytics

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The June updates for Power BI came out this past week! Thank you to the Power BI team for sharing the latest updates (especially Patrick LeBlanc for the blog content)! As we do for any other month's update, Christopher Wagner, MBA, MVP and I put together a consolidated overview of these updates as well as all of the others monthly updates since September 2021. Our top picks for the June 2025 update: - Updated Copilot tab - Power Query Online editing for Import models - Sparklines are now generally available - Paginated reports availability for organizational apps It's important to also note that you'll need to update your Azure Map tenant settings if you're using the Azure map visual in any of your Power BI reports to ensure they still work in the future. Stay tuned for more on this content and other Power BI updates to come! #PowerBI #MonthlyUpdates #AlwaysBeLearning

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AI Isn’t Magic — It’s Math and Patterns. Had the privilege of presenting to one of Canada’s largest regional accounting firms this week about how AI supports great accounting and not by replacing people, but by sharpening how we work. The biggest thought shift: It’s no longer “Will AI change accounting?” It’s “How do we use it responsibly and effectively?” We talked about: 🔹 The real difference between narrow AI and generative AI 🔹 Why prompting is becoming a professional skill 🔹 The importance of privacy, safety, and guardrails 🔹 How AI is already quietly supporting firms today The takeaway: AI doesn’t make accountants less relevant it amplifies their their skills and lets them spend less time doing “grunt” work and more time using their judgment and expertise. It’s not competition. It’s collaboration. There’s a better way to do IT — and it starts with curiosity.

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NEW Auto-refresh PivotTables - just dropped on the Microsoft 365 Excel beta channel. Auto Refresh is a per PivotCache property. This means one setting controls all PivotTables bound to that source range. Note: it does not apply to Data Model aka Power Pivot PivotTables. ℹ️ If you don't have this new feature, it'll be because you either don't have the beta channel version of Excel, or you weren't in the lucky few of those users who got it in the first release. 📢 Follow me for more to come on this new feature: https://lnkd.in/gSfhwJKk #Excel #PivotTables

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The SharePoint Online user experience is getting an update. Coming November to targeted release and then to general availability in January 2026, the look, feel, and capabilities of SharePoint document libraries will be updated. Updates include a simplified command bar and more obvious access to different library views. This is stated as aiming to create a greater alignment between the interface options in OneDrive and those in SharePoint, which, given the similar tasks each help us with, makes sense from an adoption and training perspective. It seems that SharePoint is undergoing a lot of upgrades to enhance the accessibility and useability of information it stores. This aligns with wider priorities for many organizations where data quality continues to be a barrier to Microsoft 365 Copilot efficacy, so a path that enhances the tools to manage data, and the human-focus value of this management, that also benefits accessibility and relevance for AI use makes a lot of sense. More information on this update can be found in message center post MC1179157. Do you like this new SharePoint look or are you waiting on a bigger set of changes to complement the Copilot age? 🖼️ from Microsoft 365 message center

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I was recently quoted in Accounting Today in the article, '𝘼𝙄 𝙘𝙖𝙣'𝙩 𝙧𝙚𝙥𝙡𝙖𝙘𝙚 𝙖𝙘𝙘𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙣𝙩𝙨. 𝘾𝙤𝙪𝙡𝙙 𝙞𝙩 𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧?' by Chris Gaetano on a question I hear often: Will AI replace accountants? ✅ 𝙈𝙮 𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙥𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙫𝙚 𝙞𝙨 𝙨𝙩𝙧𝙖𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙬𝙖𝙧𝙙 — 𝘼𝙄 𝙧𝙚𝙥𝙡𝙖𝙘𝙚𝙨 𝙤𝙧 𝙖𝙪𝙜𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙨 𝙨𝙠𝙞𝙡𝙡𝙨, 𝙣𝙤𝙩 𝙥𝙚𝙤𝙥𝙡𝙚. Routine, repeatable work (like data entry and basic processing) will continue to be automated. That doesn’t eliminate the role of the accountant unless those are the only skills being developed. The real opportunity — and responsibility — is for professionals to invest more deeply in judgment, context, client relationships, and industry understanding. I was also asked what would genuinely make me worried about AI replacing me personally. The answer: true artificial general intelligence — systems that can take ambiguous problems, exercise judgment, and execute end-to-end with accountability. We’re not there yet. The more immediate risk isn’t AI itself — it’s competition. Firms and professionals who use AI effectively will be more productive, more differentiated, and more cost-effective. Those productivity gains will show up in pricing, value, and client expectations. ⭐ Standing still is the real threat. Thanks you Accounting Today for asking hard questions on AI and thinking about the future of the industry in the AI age. LBMC we continue to look forward to help companies accelerate and amplify their AI journey. Thanks Lisa Namm for the help. Here’s the full article for those interested in the broader discussion: 👉 https://lnkd.in/e8gxhtTJ

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I recently learned a valuable series of lessons - some exciting, some cautionary - about Power BI CoPilot (Post 1 in a 3-post series). I recently experienced, for the first time, an instance where CoPilot was instantly my PREFERRED method for answering a question in a model I personally own. Until now I've been mostly just trying to stump CoPilot, to find its limits, and/or conjure up questions that I would never think to answer with the dashboards. But this time, I had a question that I COULD answer via the dashboards, and yet I knew CoPilot was very clearly going to be the faster and easier than manipulating dashboards - even the ones I know by heart. Joe Mulvey recently recorded nine points in a single hockey game in our league, which is pretty exceptional. I DO have a dashboard which would answer my first question - where does that rank all time - but then I realized that we changed the rules a couple years back to restrict people from scoring too many goals, which makes Joe's feat even MORE extraordinary. And I really, REALLY, did not want to go through the process of adding a date filter to the report and setting it to the proper 'on or after' date. I just knew that the season we implemented the rule was Summer of '23. I have zero idea when that season started, date wise, and kinda prefer it stay that way :) So I just asked CoPilot: "starting in summer of 2023, where does Joe Mulvey's 9-point game rank in this era?" Instant answer. No date hunting, no filter fiddling, just a natural question asked in its most natural form. Even for me - the person who built this model and all of the dashboards - CoPilot was genuinely the path of least resistance. And then we look at the bigger picture. If CoPilot made MY life easier on my own model, think of the same thought-path for non-technical business users. The cognitive load we've been putting on people to translate legitimate questions into dashboard manipulation has been MASSIVE. And mostly invisible to us. We're going to start using this demo - and ones like it - when we're showing clients what CoPilot might mean to them and their users. In addition to the "no hunting for the right dashboard, no hoping someone built exactly the view they need" wins, these sorts of real-world questions which used to translate into "add & manipulate a filter" will actually get answered now, rather than quietly suppressed. Another perspective-shifting way to think about this? I "injected" context that didn't exist anywhere in my model (what the Wheatley Rule is, when it started) right into my question. It's kinda like an "on-the-fly but temporary" enhancement of the model, because a "Wheatley Rule Era = TRUE/FALSE" column totally COULD have been implemented in the model to address this question, but I just hadn't done it. This isn't just a feature update. We're rethinking some fundamental assumptions about how people interact with data. But more to come in part 2 - the cautionary tale.

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