The Biggest Improvements Announced at FabCon, and the Ever-Widening Gap Between Adoption and Capabilities

04/22/25 • 28 min

What’s the value of a long-awaited feature?

Well, that depends. Have you ever tried explaining a fiscal calendar that doesn’t believe in months?

This week, Rob Collie and Justin Mannhardt dive into the latest Microsoft Fabric updates, including the long-rumored, almost-mythical custom calendar support in DAX, the highly requested user-defined functions, and the Copilot expansion that might finally be worth the hype. These updates aren’t just bells and whistles; they’re fixes to problems that have been quietly driving your team up the wall for a decade.

And while the tech is cool, the real story is what it unlocks for the people trying to build reliable reporting, reuse their logic across models, and stop wrestling with edge cases in Excel at 10 p.m.

If you’ve ever been told, “that’s just how it works,” this episode is a breath of fresh air, and a reminder that progress doesn’t always come with a parade. Sometimes it shows up in patch notes.

What’s the value of a long-awaited feature?

Well, that depends. Have you ever tried explaining a fiscal calendar that doesn’t believe in months?

Previous Episode

Data, Data, and Metadata: Letting ChatGPT Interpret Power BI Output

What happens when you hand off your Power BI output to ChatGPT and ask it to make sense of your world? You might be surprised. This week, Rob shares a deeply personal use case. One that ties together two major themes we've been exploring:

Gen AI is reshaping the way we think about dashboards.
To get real value out of AI, you need more than just data. You need metadata.

And yes, that kind of metadata—the kind you create in Power BI when you translate raw data into something meaningful.

Along the way, we revisit the old guard of data warehousing. The mighty (and now dusty?) ETL priesthood. And we uncover a delicious little irony about how the future of data looks a lot like its past, just with better tools and smarter questions.

The big twist? We're all ETL now. But the "T" might not mean what you think it does anymore.

Listen now to find out how a few rows of carefully modeled data, a table visual, and one really good AI assistant changed the game. For Rob and, just possibly, for all of us.

Also in this episode: Blind Melon – Change (YouTube)

The Data Warehouse Toolkit

Raw Data Episode - The Human Side of Data: Using Analytics for Personal Well-Being

Next Episode

Confessions of a Data Gener w/ Sakiko Stickley

Sakiko Stickley joins Raw Data to share a story that is part inspiration, part revelation, and a whole lot of truth-telling. From the first moment she discovered Power Pivot, Sakiko did not just learn data. She lived it. She rewired reporting systems, survived micromanagers, and navigated the strange realities of big consulting firms, all while quietly proving that one person, one model, and a little bit of DAX can change everything.

In this episode, we get an inside look at how a passion for smarter systems can collide with corporate inertia, what it really feels like to challenge the status quo, and why Sakiko believes AI could someday outperform human leadership, not just in data crunching but in ethics and decision-making too. (Spoiler: She might be right.)

If you have ever felt like a lone voice in a world that clings to inefficient processes, Sakiko’s journey will feel like a kindred spirit calling from across the data universe. Listen in for a conversation filled with hard truths, breakthrough moments, and a reminder that true data people do not just build models. They build better futures.