Explicit Measures Podcast

Mike & Tommy dive into the concept of distributed wisdom—how organizations can connect expertise spread across people and teams so that knowledge shapes decisions beyond where it originated—and explore what that means for Microsoft Fabric and agentic tooling. They tackle whether technology like semantic models, the OneLake catalog, and AI agents can actually carry human judgment across an org, or whether the real blockers are process and culture. From governance guardrails to communities of practice, the conversation surfaces practical first steps for BI teams trying to make collective intelligence real inside Fabric.
More on the topic: Fatal Risk: A Cautionary Tale of AIG's Corporate Suicide
News links:
DAX LLM Benchmark v2.0 Trailer – SQLBI
Govern Your Microsoft Fabric Data Estate from One Place with the OneLake Catalog
thisorthat.tips
Book Link
Get in touch:
Send in your questions or topics you want us to discuss by tweeting to @PowerBITips with the hashtag #empMailbag or submit on the PowerBI.tips Podcast Page.
Visit PowerBI.tips: https://powerbi.tips/
Watch the episodes live every Tuesday and Thursday morning at 730am CST on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/powerbitips
Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/230fp78XmHHRXTiYICRLVv
Subscribe on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/explicit-measures-podcast/id1568944083‎
Check Out Community Jam: https://jam.powerbi.tips
Follow Mike: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelcarlo/
Follow Tommy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tommypuglia/

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 more expensive, and how teams can build a practical model-selection strategy across Power BI, notebooks, pipelines, and more.
They break down the planning and execution decisions behind agentic tooling in Fabric—covering Power BI Desktop Bridge, semantic models, and notebooks—and land on a framework for making model choice a deliberate, cost-aware decision rather than a default.
News: Fabric Data Warehouse Integration with Fabric User Data Functions (Preview) | Data Visualization in the Agentic Era
Get in touch:
Send in your questions or topics you want us to discuss by tweeting to @PowerBITips with the hashtag #empMailbag or submit on the PowerBI.tips Podcast Page.
Visit PowerBI.tips: https://powerbi.tips/
Watch the episodes live every Tuesday and Thursday morning at 730am CST on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/powerbitips
Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/230fp78XmHHRXTiYICRLVv
Subscribe on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/explicit-measures-podcast/id1568944083‎
Check Out Community Jam: https://jam.powerbi.tips
Follow Mike: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelcarlo/
Follow Tommy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tommypuglia/

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 governed semantic models or hit OneLake directly. They explore the tension between years of invested business logic in semantic models and the flexibility of Lakehouse-first agent access, breaking down how OneLake Security, RLS, and semantic model permissions can coexist for both traditional BI and AI-powered data workloads.
This is a Mailbag episode.
Get in touch:
Send in your questions or topics you want us to discuss by tweeting to @PowerBITips with the hashtag #empMailbag or submit on the PowerBI.tips Podcast Page.
Visit PowerBI.tips: https://powerbi.tips/
Watch the episodes live every Tuesday and Thursday morning at 730am CST on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/powerbitips
Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/230fp78XmHHRXTiYICRLVv
Subscribe on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/explicit-measures-podcast/id1568944083‎
Check Out Community Jam: https://jam.powerbi.tips
Follow Mike: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelcarlo/
Follow Tommy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tommypuglia/

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 order, pre- and post-deploy actions, and environment binding — things lineage alone never reliably handled. They weigh whether a visual canvas makes deployments more approachable or just hides what's really happening under the hood, and what teams should nail down before trusting a preview feature with a production release.
Learn more: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric/cicd/deployment-plan/how-to-create-deployment-plan | https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric/cicd/deployment-plan/deployment-plan-sample-plans
Get in touch:
Send in your questions or topics you want us to discuss by tweeting to @PowerBITips with the hashtag #empMailbag or submit on the PowerBI.tips Podcast Page.
Visit PowerBI.tips: https://powerbi.tips/
Watch the episodes live every Tuesday and Thursday morning at 730am CST on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/powerbitips
Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/230fp78XmHHRXTiYICRLVv
Subscribe on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/explicit-measures-podcast/id1568944083‎
Check Out Community Jam: https://jam.powerbi.tips
Follow Mike: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelcarlo/
Follow Tommy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tommypuglia/

Mike & Tommy weigh in on the Fabric IQ Ontology Agent, exploring whether a conversational interface built on structured business definitions finally makes ontology worth the investment—or just adds another layer for BI teams to govern. They break down the real cost of building and maintaining an ontology, who owns it when answers go wrong, and whether this changes how business users get to the truth.
News: Fabric App Functions – Secure Server-Side Custom Logic (Preview) | File Data Ingestion with Materialized Lake Views in Fabric (Preview)
Learn more: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric/iq/ontology/tutorial-4-use-agent
Get in touch:
Send in your questions or topics you want us to discuss by tweeting to @PowerBITips with the hashtag #empMailbag or submit on the PowerBI.tips Podcast Page.
Visit PowerBI.tips: https://powerbi.tips/
Watch the episodes live every Tuesday and Thursday morning at 730am CST on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/powerbitips
Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/230fp78XmHHRXTiYICRLVv
Subscribe on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/explicit-measures-podcast/id1568944083‎
Check Out Community Jam: https://jam.powerbi.tips
Follow Mike: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelcarlo/
Follow Tommy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tommypuglia/