Shows / Explicit Measures Podcast
Explicit Measures Podcast
Hosted by Mike Carlo, and Tommy Puglia, the Explicit Measures Podcast is a Power BI focused show that is like being around a Power BI Pro’s Water Cooler. With so many available resources in the community that focuses on the “how” in Power BI (how to do Drill Through, how to use DAX, etc.,), the Explicit Measures Podcast is all around the WHY. Why use a particular feature, does it make sense for my users? Build the toolset, learn the how, and then come to the Podcast to the listen to the why in…
Episodes
- Explicit Measures Podcast
576: Distributed Wisdom for Fabric
Mike & Tommy dive into the concept of distributed wisdom—how organizations can connect expertise spread across people and teams so that knowledge shapes…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
575: Choosing the Right Model In Fabric
Mike & Tommy tackle the question of how to match the right LLM to the right Microsoft Fabric workload, exploring whether bigger always means better or just…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
574: Data Agent Contract Layer
Mike & Tommy tackle the emerging role of the semantic model as an AI contract layer in Microsoft Fabric, weighing in on whether Data Agents should reason over…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
573: Fabric Deployment Plan
Mike & Tommy dive into Fabric Deployment Plans, exploring how this new Fabric item fills a real gap in CI/CD by giving teams explicit control over deployment…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
572: Does the Ontology Agent Change Our Minds?
Mike & Tommy weigh in on the Fabric IQ Ontology Agent, exploring whether a conversational interface built on structured business definitions finally makes…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
571: Fabric Notebook Toolkit - Measuring the Impact
Mike & Tommy dive into the Fabric Notebook Toolkit (FNTK), a Python library that makes end-to-end agentic development of Microsoft Fabric Notebooks possible…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
570: PADU & Fabric
Mike & Tommy tackle PADU — Preferred, Accepted, Discouraged, and Unacceptable — and map the four-bucket framework onto Microsoft Fabric, exploring how teams…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
569: Signal & Reporting - Write Back Belongs Where?
Mike & Tommy tackle the question of whether Power BI should stay an analytics layer or evolve into an operational one, joined by Mike Zack — former CEO of…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
568: FabCon Barcelona - Feature Draft
Mike & Tommy dive into the biggest announcements from FabCon Barcelona, breaking down how Fabric IQ, agentic app creation, ontology authoring, and a wave of…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
567: Picking the Right Model for the Task
Mike & Tommy dive into why choosing the right AI model is one of the most consequential decisions a Power BI or Fabric team can make—and why most teams aren't…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
566: Agentic Dev of PBI Reports
Mike & Tommy are joined one last time by Kurt Buhler as they dive into the agentic development of Power BI reports, wrestling with why generating a governed…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
565: Your Identity is Bigger Than Power BI
Mike & Tommy are joined again by Kurt Buhler to tackle whether calling yourself a "Power BI person" is quietly capping your career in the age of AI, exploring…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
564: Data Literacy in the AI Era
Mike & Tommy are joined again by Kurt Buhler and tackle the intersection of data literacy and AI literacy, exploring how self-awareness — or the lack of it —…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
563: Fabric Apps Fit into the PBI World
Mike & Tommy are joined by Kurt Buhler as they dive into Fabric Apps and where they actually fit in the Power BI world, weighing whether they replace…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
562: The Fabric Handoff
Mike & Tommy tackle the Fabric handoff — exploring what it really takes to transition a Microsoft Fabric environment to an organization with no prior Fabric…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
561: Using AI for Data Viz
Mike & Tommy dive into how AI is actually changing data visualization work, exploring whether the real unlock is iteration speed rather than AI-built visuals…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
560: Data Agents Got an Upgrade
Mike & Tommy break down the latest upgrades to Fabric Data Agents—MCP integration, OneLake Catalog discovery, multi-agent support, and Foundry…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
559: What is Liquid Clustering?
Mike & Tommy dive into Liquid Clustering in Microsoft Fabric, breaking down why Runtime 2.0 changes it from an experimental feature into the default table…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
558: Has Your Medallion Patterns Changed?
Mike & Tommy dive into whether medallion architecture has truly evolved in the Fabric era or whether teams are just re-labeling Bronze, Silver, and Gold with…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
557: LLMs: What Data Viz Teaches Us
Mike & Tommy dive into what data visualization can teach us about critically evaluating LLMs, exploring why fluent, polished AI output can be just as…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
556: Power BI Desktop Bridge Tips
Mike & Tommy dive into Power BI Desktop Bridge, breaking down what it actually solves, where it fits in your stack alongside Desktop, Service, Fabric, Git, and…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
555: Anonymous Rayfin Fabric Apps
Mike & Tommy dive into anonymous data access in Fabric Apps, exploring how the new capability lets builders deliver public-facing BI experiences without…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
554: Fabric as a Backend (FaaB)
Mike & Tommy dive into the emerging pattern of Fabric as a Backend (FaaB), exploring whether Fabric is becoming the default way teams think about their entire…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
553: Crawl, Walk, Run with Agentic Power BI Assets
Mike & Tommy dive into what agentic development actually means for Power BI teams, breaking down the crawl, walk, run framework for safely adopting AI agents…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
552: Talking Power BI Desktop Bridge
Mike & Tommy dive into the Power BI Desktop Bridge preview, exploring how this new local API surface lets external tools and AI agents interact directly with a…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
551: Return of the Composite Model
Mike & Tommy tackle the hub-and-spoke composite model pattern, weighing in on whether splitting a bloated golden semantic model into a core hub with…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
550: The State Business Intelligence Platforms in the Age of AI
Mike & Tommy dive into the 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Analytics and BI, breaking down what Microsoft's 19th consecutive Leader recognition actually means…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
549: Training Jr Staff on Agents for DAX
Mike & Tommy tackle a question every data team manager is wrestling with: should junior staff learn DAX fundamentals before touching agentic AI tools, or can…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
548: Can We Trust AI Pipelines
Mike & Tommy tackle the uncomfortable truth about AI-generated data pipelines — how code that looks clean and runs without errors can still deliver confidently…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
547: The Hype of RayFin
Mike & Tommy dive into Microsoft's RayFin, weighing in on whether this new code-first app experience inside Fabric is a genuine shift in how teams deliver data…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
546: Teaching Orgs to Question Themselves
Mike & Tommy dive into why data literacy might be missing its most important lesson — not how to read a chart, but how to question the story it's telling…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
545: Agents Helping with Data Governance
Mike & Tommy tackle whether AI agents can solve what the Power BI admin portal can't—giving you a true tenant-level, workspace-free view of who can access what…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
544: Using Harnesses for Fabric Projects
Mike & Tommy tackle the often-overlooked "outer context" problem in agentic Fabric development — exploring why request tracking systems like Notion, GitHub…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
543: Tracking App Usage in Fabric
Mike & Tommy tackle the surprisingly tricky problem of tracking Power BI app usage at scale, exploring why app-level telemetry is harder to surface than…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
542: Orgs Slow on AI Adoption
Mike & Tommy tackle why organizations are still dragging their feet on AI adoption even with Microsoft Fabric sitting right in front of them — weighing in on…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
541: Helping Leaders Speak Data
Mike & Tommy tackle the question of whether it's time to hold CEOs and CFOs accountable for data literacy, not just the analysts building the reports. Inspired…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
540: Self Service with AI Part 2 - Governance, Skills, & Validation
Mike & Tommy dive into the second half of the AI self-service analytics story, tackling governance, skills, and validation — and why giving everyone the…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
539: Self Service Analytics with AI
Mike & Tommy dive into self-service analytics with AI, exploring how tools like Claude are changing the way business users interact with data — and whether…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
538: Team vs Individual Microsoft Fabric Agent skills
Mike & Tommy tackle the growing tension between individual and team-owned Microsoft Fabric Agent Skills, exploring how BI teams should organize, govern, and…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
537: Are We Now Professional QA?
Mike & Tommy tackle whether Power BI developers are quietly becoming professional QA testers in the age of Microsoft MCP, weighing in on what separates a true…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
536: All About RayFin
Mike & Tommy dive into RayFin, Microsoft's new AI-first product for building, deploying, and governing agents inside Microsoft Fabric, exploring whether this…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
535: Microsoft Build 2026 Recap
Mike & Tommy dive into Microsoft Build 2026, breaking down what the "agentic apps" announcement actually means for Power BI and Fabric teams—and whether this…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
534: CI/CD Automation with Agents in Fabric
Mike & Tommy dive into CI/CD automation with agents in Microsoft Fabric, exploring how agentic workflows are reshaping deployment pipelines, whether AI-driven…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
533: Claude Design & Power BI Embedded
Mike & Tommy dive into Claude Design meets Power BI Embedded, exploring whether AI-generated UX is a shortcut or a quality risk, how semantic models stay the…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
531: You are Wasting your Time!
Mike & Tommy tackle Microsoft Fabric hints to work faster, exploring whether teams are wasting time due to self-inflicted bad workflows, poor reuse, and…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
530: Agentic Skill & Report Design
Mike & Tommy explore agentic skill and report design, diving into the "Five Minutes to Wow" framework and whether AI agents accelerate great design or amplify…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
529: Does AI Drive Your CoE?
Mike & Tommy dive into whether agentic tooling should be driving your Knowledge Center, exploring if docs, support, and governance content can—or should—be…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
528: The Importance of Skills for the Fabric Developer
Mike & Tommy explore the importance of agentic skills for the Fabric developer, weighing whether Skills are a productivity breakthrough or another governance…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
527: Semantics Layer Genie & Data Agents
Mike & Tommy dive into Databricks Genie and the growing hype around data agents, exploring whether the real challenge is natural language chat or the semantic…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
526: Stop Using Bookmarks
Mike & Tommy weigh in on whether bookmarks in Power BI are still worth the maintenance burden, exploring how field parameters, slicers, and modern features…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
525: Less Guessing? More Building!
Mike & Tommy dive into Building Agentic Tools for Microsoft Fabric With Alex Powers, exploring Microsoft's Alex Powers' new tool 'Taskflow Assistant' for…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
524: Our Most Underrated Fabric Features
Mike and Tommy review the most underrated Fabric features based on buzz and client usage Get in touch: Send in your questions or topics you want us to discuss…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
520: Overfed and Sick Golden Datasets
Mike & Tommy tackle the overfed golden dataset problem—when a single "source of truth" becomes a 100-table, 400-measure monster that takes four minutes to…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
519: Tools & Strategies for Marketing Insights Integration
This week on Explicit Measures, we tackle a critical "last mile" problem in Business Intelligence: how do you add narrative context to Power BI reports when…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
523: Databricks, Fabric, Devleopment and Vibe
Mike & Tommy weigh in on whether Databricks and Microsoft Fabric are converging into direct competitors, exploring how Databricks' push into BI with Genie and…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
522: Improving Your AI Skills Your Fabric
Mike & Tommy dive into improving AI skills for Fabric developers, exploring whether to start with prompt engineering or semantic modeling fundamentals, how to…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
521: Looking at AI Assisted Development
Mike & Tommy dive into Joachim's repo-based golden semantic model architecture, exploring whether AI-assisted development is making the classic thin-report…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
518: FabCon 2026 Recap Part 2
Mike & Tommy recap their experiences at FabCon 2026, sharing key takeaways from sessions, conversations with the community, and highlights from the second day…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
517: FabCon 2026 Recap Part 1
We are covering ALL of Fabric Con 2026 and highlighting the updates. Context: FabCon and SQLCon 2026 Announcement Major Fabric Updates - ALL OneLake Updates…
- Explicit Measures Podcast
516: Subscriptions as a Silent Hero
Mike & Tommy dive into Power BI subscriptions as proactive workflow tools, exploring whether automated data nudges can outperform interactive dashboards for…