Marc Lelijveld
Data Platform MVP | Technical Evangelist | Solution Architect Data Solutions & Insights
Haastrecht, The Netherlands
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Data Platform MVP, Power BI and Fabric enthusiastic, public speaker and passionate for everything which transforms data into action! Working at Macaw in the Netherlands as Solution Architect and Technical Evangelist in the Data Solutions & Insights team.
What I like the most? Sharing my thoughts, experience, best-practices and enthusiasm about Microsoft data platform with others. I mostly do this in public speaking at usergroups, conferences, customer presentations and end-user training. Besides that I also have my own blog which you can find at https://data-marc.com/
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Extending Fabric Monitoring for custom requirements
Microsoft Fabric offers a rich collection of out of the box monitoring functionality. No matter if you are a Fabric administrator, data steward, domain owner, capacity- or solution admin, there is a out of the box solution for your purpose.
However, there may be cases in which you want to enrich the provided reports with your organization specifics. You may want to plot the Fabric adoption across your organizational hierarchy? Or extend the retention of the data beyond 30 days?
In this session, we will show the out of the box solutions Fabric offers, to understand them and where to find them. Also, we will explain various customization purposes. From simple report customizations, to export options, to automated patterns for long term saving of the data without leaving the Fabric ecosystem!
Learning objectives of this session:
- Where to find the various monitoring reports in Fabric
- Understand these reports inside out
- Customize the visualizations in these reports
- Extract the monitoring data from the admin space for customization and long term saving
- Enriching reports with your organizational specific data
AI Is only as smart as your Semantic Model
We’ve all seen Copilot answers that promise magic but deliver confusion. Often that’s not an AI problem, it’s a data modeling problem. AI in Power BI is only as good as the semantic model behind it.
In this session, we’ll focus on the fundamentals that actually make AI work: preparing semantic models with clear descriptions, synonyms, and notes to add context, enrichments, and tone of voice. You’ll learn how to scope models for AI and enable verified answers. Next to applying governance and explicitly flag models as AI-ready so AI produces trusted, explainable, and useful outcomes.
Reaching maximum automation: Generating semantic models as part of your platform workloads
Are you a data engineer, or are you working with any of them? How many times have you had the discussion about who should be building the star schema? Is it the engineer working on the data platform, or the analyst working on Power BI?
Maybe the truth lies somewhere in the middle. One can simply not work without the other. But building semantic models and manually setting up connections to existing tables in a lakehouse or warehouse can take a lot of unnecessary time. In this session we will explore maximum automation to generate the semantic model as part of the data platform workloads - by using Fabric's Semantic Link and open-source Semantic Link Labs.
A headstart for the analyst to focus on what really matters, adding the business logic and talking to the end user about the exact requirements!
Note: This will be a code heavy session and all examples shown will only be applicable to Microsoft Fabric and semantic models.
Semantic Showdown: Tabular Editor vs. Semantic Link (Labs)
In the ever-evolving landscape of semantic model development and management, choosing the right tools can make all the difference.
In this session, we pit two powerful contenders against each other in a head-to-head comparison. Join us as we explore the strengths, capabilities, and unique features of each tool, showcasing how they approach semantic model creation, optimization, and maintenance. Through live demos, hands-on examples, and real-world scenarios, you'll gain insights into their advantages, limitations, and best use cases.
This session will help you determine which tool aligns better with your needs and goals. Let the showdown begin!
Understanding the Inner Workings of Power BI Visual Calculations
Power BI Visual Calculations have been around for a while, and even though the feature hasn’t reached general availability, its use cases are expanding rapidly. Visual Calculations let you define calculations directly at the visual level, reducing the need for complex DAX and enabling faster insight creation.
In this session, we will discuss concepts like:
- How Visual Calculations differ from other calculation options in Power BI
- Visual Calculation–exclusive functions
- Navigating the lattice of the visual matrix
- Example use cases
Bringing your visuals to the next level by leveraging Visual Calculations
Join us for a deep dive into the inner workings of Visual Calculations and learn how to make your Power BI reports more dynamic, powerful, and easier to maintain.
Mastering Fabric Data Agents: From Setup to Success
Fabric data agent has been available for a while, yet many implementations fall short of expectations. Without the right design, the agent may struggle to align with business context, produce inconsistent outputs, or require heavy manual intervention.
In this session, learn how to design smarter, more reliable agents by fine-tuning Agent Instructions, using the Data Agent SDK and training data sources.
Mastering AI in Power BI
A full end-to-end masterclass on AI in Power BI. During this training day, we’ll cover every corner of AI in Power BI, from preparing data for AI to bringing your Power BI AI assets to life with MCP.
In these times, AI literacy is both an essential career skill and a powerful value-add for organizations. The ability to quickly and easily draw insights and get answers from our data is as important as ever. Furthermore, being able to interact with our data through conversational communication is increasingly in demand.
The training day will be a mix of presentation-style teaching, interactive exercises, and workshop labs. After attending this training day, you’ll be able to set up everything around AI in Power BI end-to-end. You’ll be up to date on the newest tools for AI-powered BI—ready to develop solutions or advise clients and colleagues on how to use AI with Power BI.
Module 1: Data Prep for AI – with AI
In this module, we’ll explore how to get your data ready for AI usage. We’ll cover semantic modeling best practices, context- and prompt engineering, and how to leverage AI itself to fine-tune semantic models for AI usage.
Module 2: AI-assisted Power BI development
In this module, we'll explore the various options for improving your development productivity with the available AI toolbox. We'll cover how the built-in Copilot may help improve low-code workflows and move on to full-fledged AI coding agents. At this stage, participants will learn how to make AI agents develop whole user stories with no human involvement.
Module 3: Data Agents
The third module covers everything about using semantic models as assets for AI agents. In this module, you'll learn how to set up, configure, and refine data agents so that your semantic model data is readily available for "chat with your data" scenarios, as well as for use outside of Power BI.
Module 4: External solutions
In the final module, we explore how Power BI data can be used with AI tools outside of Power BI itself. We'll cover how to use MCP to create custom AI agents and how to use the native MCPs for quick results. Furthermore, we'll explore how to integrate your data agents and semantic models with the rest of the Microsoft AI ecosystem, using AI Foundry and Copilot Studio. Finally, we'll cover how to move beyond the boundaries of Microsoft and use the data in cloud-agnostic use cases, using today's most talked-about AI tools.
Exploring Fabric Semantic Link for Power BI folks!
If you're coming from a Power BI world, the whole Fabric thing might scare you a bit. Then suddenly, there is something called Semantic Link, which allows connections from Fabric Notebooks to read both data and meta data from your Power BI Semantic Model (dataset).
You might wonder, what's all this? How does it work and how to take benefit from it? Especially when you're not familiar yet with notebooks at all.
In this session we will explore what Semantic Link is, how you as Power BI developer/engineer can make use of it and how it will strengthen your solutions in the end. Together, we will explore various aspects like:
- Warming up your data in direct lake datasets
- Querying Dynamic Management Views,
- Reading Semantic Model meta data to generate documentation
- Extend or even forecast your data using Semantic Link
By the end of this session, you will not only grasp the basics of Semantic Link but also gain practical insights into its application so you can bring it to practice directly!
From Dashboards to Dialogues: Reinventing Data Interaction with AI
Why spend time digging through dashboards to find a KPI when you could just ask a question and get the answer instantly?
In this session, we’ll explore how Microsoft Fabric is changing the way we work with data — moving away from static reports toward dynamic conversations. You don’t need to click through filters or build visuals — just ask your question and get straight to the answer.
We’ll walk through the tools that make this possible, including:
- Natural language to SQL, KQL and DAX capabilities in Fabric
- Copilot in Power BI
- Data Agents (AI Skills) to create your own chat-based data experiences
- Copilot Studio & AI Foundry to enrich these experiences
You’ll leave with practical examples and ideas to help you rethink how users engage with data in your own use cases
A deep dive into Direct Lake
The new Direct Lake storage mode in Power BI promises to revolutionize data handling by blending the real-time nature of DirectQuery and the high performance of Import mode. Is this all just hype, or does Direct Lake truly deliver on these claims?
In this session, we will put Direct Lake under the microscope, conducting comprehensive performance testing across varied data sets and query types. We aim to stress test Direct Lake, uncovering where it meets expectations, where it excels, and where it has room for improvement.
The key areas we'll explore are:
• Direct Lake: Understanding what we know about the engine
• Analyzing performance across different scenarios
• Strengths and weaknesses
• Advice for data modelling for Direct Lake
By the end of this session, you'll have a well-rounded understanding of Direct Lake's capabilities, potential for your Power BI data modelling projects.
Visual Calculations: Making DAX easier
This is it. The day that the way that DAX became easier. After this, how you write DAX changes forever. Learn all about it in this session! The Power BI team has been working on exciting things related to DAX calculations, specifically targeted at making it easier to add typical business-type calculations (such as running totals or vs-first). Would you believe it if we told you that you don’t even have to type DAX anymore and still be able to get complex calculations done quickly? In this session, we will dive deep into visual calculations, covering everything there is to know about them including the lower level window functions.
Get ready to get your mind blown! See the future, today.
After this session you are an expert on visual calculations and ready to tackle any challenging calculation that comes your way!
Successfully collaborate with externals in Power BI
Do you know where to start if you want to share Power BI artefacts like reports, dashboards or even datasets with external people not from your company? Or maybe even want to setup B2B collaboration by sharing datasets and co-author solutions?
During this session, Marc will cover all things sharing, tenant settings, the new cross-tenant dataset sharing feature and further B2B collaboration with Power BI. We will help you to get started with what questions you need to answer before starting and how to set it up so that everything works.
We will tell you all about it and make sure you will be well equipped after this session to get your external collaboration started. Also, we will provide you with a decision tree which will help you even after this session to know what approach to use.
Power BI refreshes - reinvented!
Have you always been scheduling your Power BI refresh in the service? Struggling to get your data available in your model in a short amount of time? Then this session is for you!
During this session, you will learn advanced patterns to optimally configure and refresh your Power BI data models in the service. We will not only discuss incremental refresh, but also how you can get your data available in your model in (near) real time.
We will discuss various patterns from high frequency refresh operations, single table or partition refreshes, detecting data changes in archived partitions and more advanced patters.
After this session you will be able to;
- Configure incremental refresh.
- Refresh individual tables and partitions in a published Power BI model.
- Connect your Power BI refresh to other processes and orchestrate centrally end-to-end.
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DATA:Scotland 2022 Sessionize Event
Dutch Power BI Usergroup - Power BI Datamarts - what is it and how do I benefit from it?
For the Dutch Power BI usergroup, I presented my all new session "Power BI Datamarts - what is it and how do I benefit from it?"
Scottish Summit 2022 Sessionize Event
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Data Saturday Stockholm 2022 Sessionize Event
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#DataWeekender v4.2 Sessionize Event
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Power Platform Summit - Storytelling & interactive reports with Power BI Bookmarks & Drillthrough
Power Platform Summit Europe delivers the can’t-miss annual conference for users of the Microsoft Power platform – featuring education on all versions of Power BI, PowerApps, and Microsoft Flow. With credible peer-to-peer knowledge exchange at its core, this event provides focused learning and networking as users gain instrumental solutions for their everyday system challenges and larger organisational goals. In every industry and across the globe, Summit is well known as a premier user-centric experience.
Power Platform Summit - End-to-end monitoring for a successful Power BI implementation
Power Platform Summit Europe delivers the can’t-miss annual conference for users of the Microsoft Power platform – featuring education on all versions of Power BI, PowerApps, and Microsoft Flow. With credible peer-to-peer knowledge exchange at its core, this event provides focused learning and networking as users gain instrumental solutions for their everyday system challenges and larger organisational goals. In every industry and across the globe, Summit is well known as a premier user-centric experience.
Power BI Days 2019-01 Sessionize Event
Power BI World Tour
Presented at the Power BI World Tour in Copenhagen for an audience of 159 people about Storytelling and interactive reports in Power BI. I co-presented with one of the Microsoft Power BI Program managers.
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Marc Lelijveld
Data Platform MVP | Technical Evangelist | Solution Architect Data Solutions & Insights
Haastrecht, The Netherlands
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