This week there have been a few announcements: some big news for Excel + Power BI users is that the creation of connected tables in Excel Online is available in Excel Online for everyone. We've also been told about the Improved image mode in Power BI add-in for PowerPoint, and we've been given the On-premises data gateway February 2024 release which includes a new feature around SQL Trusted Servers.

There's also been a couple of blog posts and articles that have caught our eye this week: firstly, Mihaly Kavasi has written a detailed blog around configuring and reporting over Log Analytics for Power BI: How to start and improve insights for better model performance, and Soheil Bakhshi has written a thorough blog (based on real world experience) around Incremental Refresh in Power BI, Part 3: Best Practices for Large Semantic Models. And, on an indirectly related topic this week, my colleague James has written a thought-provoking blog titled No-code/Low-code is software DIY - how do you avoid DIY disaster?, which aims to address some of the causes that make many no/low code projects fail.

Finally, this is the last week before SQLBits begins, but there's still time to buy tickets. There are over 300 sessions to choose from, covering many technical and non-technical topics. A few of us at endjin will be speaking, including a training day that Barry and I are conducting on Tuesday all about DataOps: How to Deliver Data Faster and Better with Microsoft Cloud. What's more, almost all the endjin crew will be around on Thursday & Friday, and we'd love to meet you all. Hope to see you there!