Tag along with our MVP, Ville Gullstrand to learn 4 simple but effective tricks in Power BI that will land you the title of Power BI Hero in no time! This is for you who utilizes Power BI as an end user, so you don’t even have to have any developer skills to make this work. Power BI in PowerPoint, Chat in Teams, Subscriptions and (if you have Premium) having Power BI do the work for you with the “explain”-feature!
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Full Transcript:
Introduction: Meet Ferdin the Bull (00:00:09.22)
Thank you so much. Welcome, everyone. So, four tricks that will make you a Power BI hero.
To begin with, I would like to introduce you to Ferdinand the Bull, also known as Ferdin, because it’s easier to pronounce in this presentation. He’s a happy and calm office worker, adept, of course, in Power BI usage.
Now, all of the other bulls at the office worked tirelessly. They wanted to climb the career ladder and show management that they were the best. But not Ferdin. He didn’t care about competing like that. He didn’t want to break a sweat.
The other bulls couldn’t understand it. Why wouldn’t you want to push yourself, be as effective as possible, and make sure everyone noticed?
But Ferdin didn’t explain it. Maybe he couldn’t. He was simply happy and content.
The Promotion & the Overworked Bulls (00:01:28.15)
One day, management announced a promotion opportunity. All of the other bulls immediately started working even harder.
They ran around the office, pushing changes through meetings, trying to show management that they were the most effective workers.
But not Ferdin. He calmly walked to his desk to prepare for an upcoming meeting.
That afternoon, both Ferdin and another bull were scheduled to present to management.
The Wrong Way: Overloaded PowerPoint (00:02:40.09)
The other bull prepared what can only be described as an ugly excuse for a PowerPoint.
He crammed in as much information as possible—shrinking font sizes, squeezing content onto slides, trying to anticipate every possible question management might ask.
Management wasn’t impressed.
People focused on the content instead of what he was saying. Discussions went in many directions at once, and despite all the preparation, he couldn’t answer every question.
On top of that, he spent time preparing answers for questions nobody asked.
Trick #1: Embed Live Power BI in PowerPoint (00:03:50.10)
Ferdin took a different approach.
He opened PowerPoint, went to Insert, and selected Power BI as the visual.
In the “Let your data do the talking” window, he pasted the link to his Power BI report.
Now he had live, interactive data inside the presentation—just like working in the browser.
He considered using a snapshot, but since the meeting was only a few hours away, he chose live data.
If the meeting had been several days later, he might have used a snapshot to prevent data changes.
He also minimized the Power BI menu—no one needed to see that during the presentation.
Trick #2: Build an Overview Slide from a Single Visual (00:05:02.00)
The report was very detailed, and Ferdin wanted a way to set the scene.
He created a new slide before the detailed report slide and inserted just a single visual.
This allowed him to create a lightweight overview slide without modifying the report.
Live Insights During the Meeting (00:06:13.14)
During the meeting, they explored the report live.
All questions were answered in real time—the data did the work.
Trick #3: Sharing a Prefiltered View (00:07:27.02)
Instead of sending instructions, Ferdin shared a prefiltered report view.
The link opened exactly as configured—fast, accurate, and no confusion.
Trick #4: Dynamic Subscriptions (00:11:00.18)
Using Premium capacity, Ferdin set up dynamic subscriptions.
Recipients were filtered automatically as teams changed.
Bonus: Copilot & Analyze (00:15:49.06)
Copilot summaries and Analyze → Explain the increase revealed insights no one had seen before.
The Result: Promotion Earned (00:19:14.29)
Management was impressed. Ferdin got the promotion—without breaking a sweat.
Closing (00:20:28.29)
My name is Ville. I’m a Data Platform MVP, and I run the blog villezekeviking.com.