“I thought this was included with Dynamics 365. Why are we getting license errors?”

If you’re responsible for automating team processes, like building flows, setting up approvals, managing request, you’ve probably heard this more than once. Maybe you’ve said it yourself.

Let’s say you rolled out a Power App to streamline onboarding. It’s using SharePoint, Outlook, maybe even Teams. No problem so far. But the moment someone adds a Dataverse table or a Power Automate flow that hits a SQL database? It suddenly prompts you to start a trial or upgrade to a premium license. Now you’re faced with licensing decisions.

This confusion is one of the most common traps for operations teams using Power Platform in Microsoft 365 or Dynamics 365 environments. The tools look free. The makers assume they’re included. But under the hood? It’s more complicated.

This is the second part of our Power Platform licensing series. In our previous article, we covered Microsoft Power Platform licensing changes in 2025 and how they affect users.

Which Power Platform features are included in M365 and D365?

Bundled access comes with hidden limits. Let’s break it down.

M365: Good for standard connectors, but that’s it

Microsoft 365 plans (like E3 or E5) include:

• Power Apps with standard connectors (SharePoint, Excel, Outlook, and many more)

• Power Automate with standard connectors (triggers and actions)

• Canvas apps embedded in Teams
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But the moment your app or flow uses:

• Premium connectors (like SQL, Dataverse, Salesforce, or custom APIs)

• Model-driven apps with richer logic and relational data

• Standalone Power Apps portals (now Power Pages)

• AI capabilities or Copilot integrations

…you’ve left the “free with M365” zone. Even read-only access to premium data still requires a premium license — a common oversight that leads to compliance issues.

D365: More power, but only for licensed users — and only for the specific app

Dynamics 365 plans (like Sales, Customer Service, or Field Service) come with broader Power Platform entitlements — but there are two strict boundaries:

• Only licensed D365 users get the extra capabilities

• Only for scenarios tied to their specific D365 app
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So, if someone with a Dynamics 365 Sales license builds a Power Automate flow that connects SharePoint and Dataverse for a sales process?
Covered.

But if a non-Sales user tries to use that same app or flow?
They’ll need their own premium license.

And if the Sales-licensed user builds an app or flow for HR, Finance, or Operations?
That falls outside the licensed scope — even if it uses the same Power Platform components — and may not be compliant.

Bottom line: D365 licensing is generous within the app boundary, but it doesn’t transfer across departments, scenarios, or users.

Are hidden assumptions breaking your automations?

Let’s say your team builds a Power Automate flow to route vacation approvals. It uses SharePoint and Outlook, so you assume it’s covered under your M365 license.

But then someone quietly adds a premium connector to Entra ID or Dataverse. Nobody flags it. The flow still works, more or less. Then you start seeing:

• Flow throttling

• Unexpected errors

• Sudden license warnings
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Admins are confused. Users are frustrated. And now you’re chasing down compliance gaps and trying to keep things running, instead of focusing on scaling meaningful work.

This is the risk of assumptions. Power Platform doesn't always block you upfront — it lets you build and run… until usage crosses an invisible line.

Does usage mean you're licensed?

Here’s the tricky part: Just because something runs doesn’t mean it’s licensed.

Power Platform often doesn’t block you at the start. Apps and flows may run smoothly at first. But that doesn’t mean you’re in the clear.

Problems tend to appear later, when:

• A new enforcement rule quietly kicks in

• A background API call exceeds your entitlements

• A usage audit flags non-compliance
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And by then, it's not just a licensing problem. It’s a business disruption.

If you're not proactively monitoring usage against entitlements, you're one policy change away from broken automation and user downtime.

How to stay in control before Microsoft starts monitoring your team

If you’re not monitoring entitlements proactively, you’re not in control — Microsoft is.

If you want to avoid surprises, you need a licensing-aware automation strategy. Here’s how:

1. Know what’s “premium”

Keep a cheat sheet of premium connectors, features, and app types. Share it with your makers and approvers so they understand when they’re entering license territory.

2. Map users to roles and needs

Who’s building? Who’s consuming? What data sources are in play? Don’t assign licenses blindly. Align them with usage patterns.

3. Monitor usage centrally

Use these tools to track and stay ahead:

• Power Platform Admin Center
  See request volumes, connector usage, and license assignment gaps across environments.

• Azure Monitor (optional)
  Set alerts when flows near usage limits or exceed thresholds — useful for high-scale environments.

4. Watch for “inherited” access

Just because someone is part of a Teams channel or D365 group doesn’t mean they’re licensed for the app or flow embedded there. Shared access ≠ shared entitlement.

Don’t assume, assess

If you’re building automation at scale, especially in hybrid M365 + D365 environments, licensing can’t be an afterthought.

• M365 gives you the basics but not the premium connectors most real-world apps need.

• D365 licenses go deeper but only within narrow boundaries.

• And enforcement is now active and automated.
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So, if you want to keep building without friction, make license visibility part of your ops playbook. Stay ahead of usage, keep your team up-to-date, and model costs before they spiral.
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If you’re not sure which license is best for your team, contact us to discuss your use cases.

Up next in our Power Platform licensing series:

• Staying ahead of connector changes in Power Platform

• Request management made easy: Staying within limits and budget

• Scaling without breaking your budget

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“I just want to build and share apps. Why is licensing so hard?”

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If you’ve ever said this or heard it from someone on your team, you’re not alone. In 2025, licensing remains one of the most frustrating parts of working with Power Platform. It’s a constantly recurring topic in community forums like Reddit, Slack threads, and internal support channels, discussed by admins, creators, and even casual users.

The system is full of fine print, scattered across admin centers, with policies that quietly shift from one month to the next. And just when you think you’ve figured it out, boom, an app fails to launch due to a missing license.

The frustration is real. One admin put it bluntly on Reddit:

“I’ve been in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center, Azure AD, Power Platform Admin Center… and I still can’t figure out how to assign a license to a user.”

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So why bother trying to make sense of it?

Because Microsoft is now enforcing licensing rules particularly around API usage, multiplexing, Copilot access, and entitlement compliance.  

Licensing is no longer just a back-office detail. It now directly affects whether your apps run properly or slow down dramatically mid-process.

In 2025, Microsoft has tightened the regulations on compliance, especially around how requests are tracked, who’s licensed, and how apps are built. But if you know where to look, there’s more clarity too: they’ve finally provided better tools to help you stay ahead.

This post kicks off our new series on Power Platform licensing. If you’re in IT operations, managing Power Platform environments, or supporting citizen developers, this one’s for you.

What are Power Platform licensing options in 2025?

In 2025, Microsoft offers three main premium licensing options for Power Platform:

• Per App Plan: Best for single, focused apps. Includes one app and one portal per user. Lacks built-in consumption tracking, so admins rely on custom monitoring.

• Per User Plan: Ideal for power users and admins. Grants access to unlimited apps and environments, making it easier to manage at scale.

• Pay-As-You-Go: Great for pilots or variable usage. Billed through Azure, but requires extra setup and ongoing oversight.

Choosing the right model depends on your usage patterns, scalability needs, and how much visibility you require.

Wait, isn’t Power Platform free with M365?

Yes and no.

Microsoft 365 plans (like E3 and E5) include Power Apps, but only for standard connectors like SharePoint or Outlook. The moment you introduce Dataverse, SQL, or custom APIs, you’ve stepped into premium territory.

And here’s the catch: read-only access to premium data? Still requires a premium license.

Why is my automation suddenly slowing down? The hidden cost of exceeding licensing limits

If your flow is throttling, your app is stuck, or your chatbot has gone quiet, the culprit might not be a technical bug — it might be your licensing.

Fragmented admin centers = Fragmented visibility

One major reason automations break or slow down is that teams unknowingly exceed API or capacity limits. This often happens because the fragmented admin experience makes it difficult to get a clear, centralised view of what’s being used and what’s licensed.

Licensing and usage insights are spread across multiple portals:

• Licenses are assigned in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center

• Group-based licensing is managed in Entra ID

• Usage data lives in the Power Platform Admin Center

No single place gives you the full picture, so IT teams are forced to piece together licensing status and consumption manually.

You might be using features that aren’t actually covered

It’s common to assume that Power Apps are “free” with Microsoft 365. But once you start using premium connectors, Dataverse, or custom APIs, you’ve stepped into premium territory, and that can lead to access issues or performance slowdowns if the right licenses aren’t in place.

Power Platform = Multiple products, each with their own licensing rules

What makes it harder is that Power Automate, AI Builder, and Copilot Studio all come with separate entitlements and limitations. Even though they’re part of the same ecosystem, each requires different types of licenses, usage monitoring, and setup practices.

• Power Automate offers per-user and per-flow plans. Flows tied to individual accounts often fail when roles change or users leave. Using service accounts with Per Flow licenses can improve reliability. Also: every API call now counts toward your usage limits, background processes included.

AI features = New licensing surprises

• Copilot Studio is not bundled with most Power Apps plans by default. If your bots use custom plugins, external data sources, or generative AI, you may need extra capacity or Azure billing.

• AI Builder credits are included in some plans, but they’re limited, and they run out fast if you’re using features like form recognition or prediction models at scale.

Bottom line: If your automations are slowing down, it’s probably not random. It’s likely a licensing boundary you didn’t know you crossed.

To stay compliant and maintain performance, operations teams need to be fluent in both legacy and modern models, a growing challenge for anyone managing Power Platform at scale.

What are some common licensing pitfalls?

You don’t need to be an expert in every detail of Microsoft’s SKU catalogue, but you do need to know where teams get tripped up. These are the biggest traps we’re seeing in 2025:

Multiplexing

What it is: Multiple users interact with an app using a single licensed account, often via embedded tools, shared portals, or apps embedded in Teams or SharePoint.

Why it’s risky: Microsoft explicitly forbids it, and yes, they’re checking. This is a fast track to non-compliance.

Request enforcement

Every. Single. API. Call. Counts.

That means background syncs, Power Automate flows, and even system-generated updates all contribute to usage limits. And when those limits are exceeded, restrictions like throttling or flow suspension kick in.

How can I audit my team before Microsoft does?

Start with mapping user roles and needs before assigning licenses. Who’s building apps? Who’s using them? Which connectors are involved? This upfront planning helps avoid deployment issues later.

Here’s our recommended approach:

1. Map app dependencies

Make a list of who’s using what. Understanding which users rely on which apps and connectors helps prevent disruptions and supports better license planning.

2. Track requests‍

Mark usage spikes and high-risk flows. Monitoring API consumption helps you identify patterns, avoid overages, and spot potential performance or compliance risks.

3. Watch for multiplexing

Shared accounts are a red flag. Using a single licensed account to serve multiple users violates Microsoft’s licensing terms and can trigger audits or enforcement actions.

4. Audit license assignments‍

Ensure users have the right entitlements. Regularly reviewing who has what license helps close gaps, prevent over-licensing, and maintain compliance.

5. Plan for scale‍

Anticipate growth before it breaks your budget. Projecting future app usage and user needs lets you adjust licensing proactively and avoid costly surprises later.

What tools can I use to monitor my team’s Power Platform usage?

Power Platform Admin Center

It helps you get a detailed breakdown of:

• Request volumes per user/app

• API usage across environments

• Gaps between license assignment and actual usage

Access is available to environment and tenant-level admins with appropriate roles (such as Power Platform admin or Global admin). To get meaningful insights, ensure that telemetry and usage reporting are enabled and your environments are correctly configured.

Azure Monitor integration

You can connect your Power Platform environment for real-time insights. Set alerts when nearing request limits or use it to prove compliance during audits. This integration is available to admins with Azure and Power Platform access, and requires environment-level configuration along with proper permissions to set up diagnostics and monitoring rules.

Licensing simulators

Microsoft has introduced calculators to model license needs based on usage and app scope. These tools are available to administrators and licensing managers with appropriate access to the Power Platform Admin Center or Microsoft licensing portals, and are most effective when accurate usage data and app requirements are already mapped out. Use these early before rollout, not after failure.

A little prep goes a long way in staying compliant and avoiding surprises.

Make licensing work for your team

Licensing may never be simple but with the right strategy and regular health checks, it’s manageable. Whether you're launching your first app or scaling across teams, clarity is key to staying compliant and avoiding surprises.

You don’t need to know every rule, just how to navigate the essentials. Stay informed and stay in control.

If you’re not sure which license is best for your team, contact us to discuss your use cases.
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Up next in our Power Platform licensing series:

• Power Platform Licensing within D365 & M365

• Staying ahead of connector changes in Power Platform

• Request management made easy: How to stay within limits

• Scaling without breaking your budget

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Imagine describing an app you need in your own words and getting a basic app framework in minutes. With Plan Designer in Power Apps, that’s already becoming possible.

What is the Plan Designer?

Plan Designer is a new Copilot experience within Power Apps. It allows users to describe their app in natural language and receive a structured starting point.  

This move is part of Microsoft’s broader move to bring generative AI into everyday business tools. While it doesn't yet deliver complete or production-ready applications, it offers a strong foundation that helps teams move faster, validate ideas earlier, and collaborate more effectively with dev teams when it’s time to build.

Important to know: It’s still in preview

Plan Designer is currently available as a public preview feature. That means it’s not production-ready yet, and it’s not recommended for complex or business-critical use cases.

It’s a promising direction, and there are many more improvements in the pipeline. But for now, think of it as a way to jumpstart your ideas, not as a full replacement for expert-built solutions. Let’s see how:  

From idea to app structure, without coding

Some of the best ideas for internal apps come from the people who work closest to the process.  

You’ve likely experienced it yourself: you know exactly what your team needs, whether it’s a simple PTO planning tool or a way to track field tasks. You understand the workflow, the challenges, and the users. But when it comes to turning that insight into a working app, you’re not sure how to get started.

That’s been the reality for many business users.

Historically, PowerApps has been aimed at non-developers, people in HR, customer service, field operations, and sales. These users know their business inside and out but often lack the technical or systems thinking skills to design a well-structured, scalable app. As a result, many apps were either overly simple or hard to maintain and improve.

That’s where Plan Designer comes in.

It offers a more guided way to get started. Instead of starting from scratch, you describe what you need in natural language, for example, “I need a tool to assign jobs to field technicians.” You can even upload visuals, like a screenshot of an old tool or a process diagram.  

Based on your input, Copilot generates a structured draft of your app.  

What you get is a smart skeleton, with suggested tables, screens, user roles, and basic logic. It proposes a data model and automation ideas using Power Automate, all based on what your prompts. You can then review, adjust, or approve what Copilot gives you before it builds out the logic.

It won’t give you a finished app, but it gives you a strong starting point, one that reflects your intent and helps you think through how your app should be structured. That’s a big step forward for anyone who understands the business problem but not the development process.

What can you currently do with Plan Designer?

To access the Plan Designer, you need a preview environment with early feature access enabled. Once set up, you can start designing solutions directly from the Power Apps homepage by toggling on the new experience.

It’s still the early days, so it’s important to set the right expectations. As of April 2025, Plan Designer has the following capabilities:  

Natural language input

Based on natural language input, the Plan Designer will generate a solution tailored to your needs. This includes creating user roles, user stories, and data schemas.

Solution generation

The tool can create basic end-to-end solutions, including:

• Dataverse tables

• Canvas apps

• Model-driven apps

Iterative development

You can refine your plans by providing feedback during the design process to make sure that the generated solution aligns with your specific needs.

Collaboration and documentation

The generated plan serves as both a blueprint for development and documentation for future reference to help teams align on business goals and technical execution.

Integration with Power Platform tools

While still in preview, the tool integrates with other Power Platform components like Dataverse and Power Apps. However, some features (e.g., Power Pages support and advanced data modeling) are not yet available.

Limitations in the preview

The tool currently does not support generating full Power Automate flows or using common data model tables like accounts or contacts. Features like analytics integration, Azure DevOps compatibility, and document uploads (e.g., RFPs) are not yet implemented.

The feature set is evolving rapidly, with updates rolling out every few days. One recent improvement: Copilot now explains which AI agents are working on different tasks, for example, the requirement agent, data agent, or solution agent.

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To sum up, Plan Designer helps you get the core pieces in place in just a few minutes. It’s especially useful for:

• Prototyping apps without waiting for a developer

• Practicing prompt-writing to refine app design

• Getting a better understanding of how systems and logic fit together

It’s great for playing around, testing out concepts, and learning how to approach app development with systems thinking. Let’s see how this might change in the coming years.  

How you’ll use Plan Designer in the near future

Let’s say there’s a process in your team that’s manual, slow, or inconsistent, and you know exactly how it should work. Maybe it’s tracking field work, collecting customer data, or planning PTO.  

You have the knowledge to solve it. What you don’t always have is the time, tools, or technical background to build the solution yourself.

That’s where Plan designer is moving toward. It will help you translate your ideas into something concrete: a data model, screens, and suggested relationships. It will give you a head start, so you won’t have to start from scratch.

Here’s what that might look like in practice:

• You’re a field manager who needs to track technician assignments and jobs.

You describe your idea to Copilot, and it creates basic tables like “Jobs” and “Technicians,” with suggested relationships between them. The logic and visuals still need work, but you now have a structure to build on.

Looking for inspiration to improve efficiency in Field Service? Check out our use cases here.

• You’re in sales and want to explore upsell recommendations for client visits.

Copilot sets up a rough draft with placeholders for customer info and past purchases. It doesn’t connect to CRM data yet, but it helps you map out the concept before looping in technical teams.

• You’re on a support team and want to build a customer intake form.

You describe the form and basic routing needs, and Copilot creates a simple layout with suggested fields and logic. You’ll need to tweak it, but it’s a much faster way to get started.

While these examples are simple, they give you an idea of where things are heading. Plan Designer isn't here to replace software engineers but to allow business teams to move faster and speak the same language as your dev team.

Turning your starting point into a real solution

At VisualLabs, we follow every development in the Microsoft ecosystem closely and we’re excited about Plan Designer’s progress. It’s already a powerful tool for creating skeleton apps, exploring ideas, and learning how data models and logic come together.

But when you need more than just a starting point, when performance, integration, scalability, and usability matter, our team is here to help. We bring the expertise to take your idea and turn it into a reliable, well-designed app that fits your organisation’s needs.

AI is changing how we build apps, but human insight still makes the difference.  

Interested in what use cases our customers are prioritising? Check out our case studies here.

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I first joined VisualLabs in the summer of 2020 as a junior business analyst. As you can see from the timeline, I was part of the mass junior recruitment. With three of us, the company grew to 8 people at that time.

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In the more than 1 year I worked here from 2020-2021, I was involved in quite a variety of tasks: building and improving Power BI reports, working a lot on a contract management application I built using the Power Platform, and also gaining insight into the beauty of Business Central. The latter also gave rise to some comical memories, such as the painstaking work involved in recording and subtitling training videos for clients, and how I was then, as an undergraduate student, on 'duty' for Christmas because I had no more holidays left for the year. But I got a lot of support from my senior colleagues in these things, they didn't let me get lost in the shuffle.

3 years later, in the summer of 2024, I rejoined VL, but now I work specifically with ERP. One thing that was very nice and new to me in the company was the company timeline. Where last time I was one of the mass junior hires, I'm now a part of the company life.

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An amazing amount has happened in my time away, and it's great to see these events being shared by my colleagues, creating a stronger sense of belonging.

What has actually changed in these 3 years? I haven't had the chance to go through everything since I rejoined, and there's not enough space to go into it all here, so I'll just give you a few snippets.

Office

The first of these is probably the new office: the move from Zsigmond Square to Montevideo Street was already done when I was still here as a junior. But who I couldn't enjoy it then, and I wasn't part of the "moving in", but still, when I returned here 3 years later, I felt like I had shaped it. Interpret this to mean that the ethos that makes visuallabs to visuallabs, I think, changed very little, and the homeliness of the office reflected that.

Specialisation

The company has made huge progress in terms of specialisation and staff numbers while I was away: the team has grown to 35 people, and there are now separate business units for all the tasks I had the opportunity to join on a rotational basis as a junior. These are the CE team, who build business applications for clients, the data team, who deliver data analytics and visualisation solutions, and there's the ERP team - of which I became part - where we introduce Microsoft's enterprise management solutions (Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations and Business Central) to clients.What I would perhaps highlight from this is that even though these specialisations have evolved, it has not brought with it a siloed operation. To deliver work in our own area, we have access to the knowledge of other areas, and we mutually help each other across teams to deliver the highest quality service possible. From this perspective, what has changed in 3 years? I would say nothing; what worked then on a small scale, works now on a bigger scale.

Agile operation

We have had a solid vision of how we deliver solutions since I was a junior employee here: the agile methodology. What was in its infancy is now mature. If not fully agile, it uses the agile elements so well that it supports our work to a great extent on a day-to-day basis.It helps us communicate internally and to our customers by allowing them to post issues in DevOps that we help them resolve; we write features, user stories, test cases that help us with needs assessment and implementation. We have daily stand-up meetings with the team in the mornings where we discuss our stumbling blocks, at the end of the week we have sprint rounds where we always plan the next week's sprint, and monthly we have a retros where we pay special attention to feedback to each other, looking back on the past 1 month.

Team and all the fun

Unfortunately, during my first job, I didn't get much of that live because of Covid, but even then I had those short conversations at the beginning of a call or at the morning "all-people" DSMs that reinforced the sense of belonging to the team and the good atmosphere. Fortunately, we have kept this habit ever since, so no call is ever dull. And once the epidemic subsided, these community events only grew stronger, with regular team-building events, VL team-building retreats, co-hosted Christmas and Halloween parties.It's also a good day at the office. Although it varies from day to day, we have little rituals that colour the days and take the focus off work. For example, the daily lunch together in the office, chit-chat while making coffee, or just passing a funny comment to each other at the next desk, or the monthly office day when we all go in and look back over the past month. In short, you never get bored here. 😊

Coming back to a place where I've worked before is a special experience - especially when so much has changed in the meantime. VisualLabs has retained the supportive community and vibrancy that I grew to love, while reaching new levels of development and professionalism. This journey has been a learning experience not only for the company, but also for me, as the old and new experiences have given me a stronger, more mature perspective. I look forward to being a part of the next chapter and seeing where the company goes in the future!

Hey everyone! Here’s a summary of the Budapest BI Forum 2024, where I had the chance to dive into some intriguing topics and engage in inspiring conversations.

The first day was a full-day Tabular Editor workshop, where we covered the basics and discussed topics such as controlling perspectives, writing macros, and refreshing partitions. The other two days of the conference were packed with learning, and here are my key takeaways from my favorite sessions.

Keynote Speech: BI Trends

The day kicked off with a keynote that explored current and future BI trends.

Bence, the main organizer and host of the event, supported his key points with insights from Gartner research and similar studies. A few highlights that caught my attention:

• By 2025, data security and data governance are expected to top the list of priorities for executives.
• The rapid rise of AI introduces scenarios where users export data from dashboards to Excel, feed it into tools like ChatGPT, and generate their own insights. While exciting, this raises concerns about security and "shadow reporting," issues companies have tried to curb for years.

As a contractor and consultant I find this especially ironic. Large companies often hesitate to share data, even when it’s crucial for project development. They implement robust policies like VPNs and restricted searches to prevent leaks. But, at the same time, they struggle to monitor and control employees' behaviors, such as inadvertently sharing sensitive data.

This evolving dynamic between AI, data security, and governance will definitely be a space to watch closely.

Read more about Gartner’s 2024 BI trends here.

PBIR: Report Development in Code

This technical session introduced the PBIR format, a preview feature that allows Power BI reports to be stored as individual JSON files for each visual and page, instead of a monolithic file.

The feature’s potential for bulk modifications was the most exciting part. The presenter showed how Python scripts could iterate through the JSON files to apply changes (e.g., adding shadows to all KPI cards) across the report.

While still in preview and somewhat buggy, it’s a promising direction. I’m also intrigued by the integration possibilities with VS Code and GitHub Copilot, which could simplify automation for non-coders.

However, it seems TMDL language won’t be integrated into PBIR anytime soon—a bit disappointing, but I’m optimistic this will eventually happen.

TMDL Enhancements in Power BI & VS Code

One of the most exciting parts of the forum was exploring updates to TMDL (Tabular Model Definition Language), designed to make Power BI model development more efficient.

TMDL View in Power BI

This might be the feature I’m most excited about! The ability to edit your semantic model as code directly inside Power BI is a massive leap forward. Combining drag-and-drop, Copilot, and coding will make development smarter and faster.

Immediate Code Updates in Power BI (Planned for Next Year)

A handy feature to look forward to is real-time synchronization between modified TMDL code and Power BI. Changes to the model will reflect instantly in Power BI without reopening the file, saving tons of time during development.

VS Code TMDL Extension

The TMDL extension in VS Code offers:

• Formatting: Automatically organizes TMDL syntax.
• IntelliSense and Autocomplete: Speeds up coding with intelligent suggestions.
• Expand/Collapse Functionality: Makes navigating larger TMDL files easier.

Get the extension here.

Copilot Integration in VS Code

Copilot lets you generate measures, calculations, and scripts with AI assistance. For example, as you type "Profit," Copilot suggests a complete formula based on the context. It’s a productivity boost I can’t wait to leverage more!

Online Editing with VSCode.dev

You can now edit repositories directly in your browser using the vscode.dev prefix for your repository URL. It’s perfect for quick edits without setting up a local environment.

These updates are poised to make model development faster, smarter, and more collaborative for teams using GitHub and VS Code.

Lunch Break with Insights from Microsoft

Lunch turned into one of the highlights of the day when Tamás Polner, a key figure at Microsoft, joined our table. Tamás shared some fascinating insights about the current direction of Microsoft’s data ecosystem and upcoming trends:

• Fabric focus: Microsoft is heavily prioritizing Fabric over tools like ADF and Synapse, which are expected to receive basically no new feature updates as development resources shift toward Fabric. While this has been an industry assumption for a while, it was great to have this firsthand confirmation. The message is clear: Fabric is the future of Microsoft’s data ecosystem.
• Data security: Reflecting on the keynote’s emphasis on data security, Tamás explained that this aligns with what he’s seeing at Microsoft. The number of developers in the security team is increasing significantly, and this trend doesn’t seem to be slowing down.
• Optimized compute consumption: We also discussed CU (Compute Unit) optimization in Fabric. Tamás reaffirmed something I’d heard in Fabric training sessions: notebooks are far more powerful and efficient than UI-powered features like Dataflow Gen2. They use significantly less compute capacity, making them the better choice for many workflows.
• DP-600 exam: Tamás mentioned that the DP-600 exam has become one of the most successful certifications in Microsoft’s history, with a record high number of certifications achieved in short time.
• Copilot and AI: Copilot is a major focus for Microsoft, but its rollout faces challenges due to the high resource intensity of AI models. Tamás noted that, like other companies deploying built-in AI solutions, Microsoft needs to continue investing heavily in CAPEX for computing power to make these solutions broadly accessible.

This conversation provided valuable context and insight into Microsoft’s strategic priorities and was a great opportunity to discuss industry trends and technical strategies in detail.

Storytelling with Power BI

This session revisited a topic close to my heart: how to create Power BI reports that truly connect with their audiences. The presenter broke it down into three key phases:

1. Research: Start by understanding the report’s purpose. Who will use the report? What decisions should it support? Can the goal be summarized in one clear, concise sentence?
2. Create: Develop the report based on your research. Ensure that the visuals, design, and structure align with the user’s needs and the intended outcomes.
3. Deliver: It’s not just about handing over the report and documentation, then walking away. True success lies in monitoring how the report is used and gathering user feedback. This feedback often reveals both strengths and weaknesses you didn’t anticipate, providing opportunities to refine and enhance the report further.

While much of this was a confirmation of what I already practice, it underscored an essential point: The discovery phase and follow-ups are just as critical as the actual development process.

It’s also a reinforced me that educating clients about the value of these stages is crucial. When clients understand that investing time and resources into proper research and post-delivery follow-ups leads to better reports and happier users, they’re much more likely to embrace these processes.

Final Thoughts

The day was packed with insights, but what truly stood out was the seamless blend of technical innovation and strategic foresight. Whether it was exploring new options like TMDL and PBIR, or gaining a deeper understanding of the big-picture trends shaping the future of BI, the forum offered something valuable for everyone.

Of course, the lunch chat with Tamás was a treasure trove of insider knowledge—easily one of the event’s highlights for me. Another personal highlight was a heartfelt conversation with Valerie and Elena, who encouraged me to take the next step in my professional journey: becoming a conference speaker.

If any of these topics piqued your interest or you’d like me to dive deeper into specific sessions, just let me know—I’d be happy to share more!