3 things we’re covering today:

• Automating tasks using Power Query ⚙️
• Two improvements to PBI Pivot Tables 📈
• AI meeting summaries 🤖

⁉️ Automate Tasks With Power Query​

I didn’t release a video on Thursday - for the first time in months!

My team and I have been hard at work finalizing the last bits of a new course: Automate With Power Query: Recipes to Solve Business Data Challenges​

We want to make you a more confident data analyst by exposing you to real-world business problems. Each lesson in this new course is based on a real scenario faced by our various Power-Query-using clients.

​Sign up here to get a notification once the course is ready!

Today I was recording the automation section of the course, covering process automations with Power Automate and Office Scripts. And I realized how much Microsoft have improved Office Scripts. They’re really investing in this feature.

If you’re curious to find out more about Office Scripts and Macros, check out my intro video:

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I’m excited to wrap up the remaining recordings next week to have the course ready for mid June.

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🤓 Geeky News

📊 Power BI & Excel - Big Improvements​
Two important improvements have been made to Power BI Pivot Tables in Excel:

1. Implicit Measures will be supported now. So you can drag-and-drop aggregation fields (i.e., sum, average, distinct count, etc.). No need to create pre-defined measures (i.e., explicit measures) in your underlying Power BI dataset - unless you need them of course.
2. Dates will be properly supported. Dates used to be recognized as strings. Now they are date-and-time objects, which lets you accurately implement time-based filtering and sorting of data within your PivotTable.

📊 Excel - Excel Live​

Microsoft recently tweeted about Excel Live. Last year it was introduced as a preview feature. By now, it should be generally available. It’s a Teams feature which lets you work on Excel workbooks in real-time with your team – all without leaving your Teams meeting!

Participants can follow your presentation, interact, and edit the workbook all at the same time. And they don’t even need to have Excel running on their device. 🤯

I made a video about it - check it out.

👥 Teams - New Meeting Recap Experience​

Teams now gives you one place to review your past meetings, directly inside the app. You can access the meeting recording, transcript, all notes taken during the meeting, and any content your team shared.

And there’s even more in Teams Premium! You get the AI-powered Intelligent Meeting Recap, which includes an AI-generated meeting summary, with personalized timelines, notes & tasks. Seems pretty cool. I wonder how many companies will be investing in Premium.

📊 Excel - Immersive Reader (Currently Excel for the web only)

Excel’s new Immersive Reader lets you listen to your workbook text aloud, and read in a more immersive, accessible way.

Just select a cell that has text in it, select View > Immersive Reader, and the Immersive Reader will open in full-screen format. You can then adjust how the text appears, as well as Male/Female voice and audio playback speed.

🚀 Power Stories

Congratulations to Chonnipa on completing not one, but two of my courses: Fast Track to PowerBI & Power Query - Beginner to Pro! Thank you for the lovely feedback 💚

Got a success story about using your XelPlus skills? I’d love to hear it! Hit reply to share the details, and inspire other students 😇

See you next week,

Leila

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