Skip to main content

Using Power BI analytics to improve end user experience

Since Microsoft introduced Power BI in 2015, its usage has grown and its capabilities have continued to evolve. With the introduction of Power BI Premium in early 2017, enterprises are now able to scale out their Power BI ecosystem while managing costs and using its wide breadth of capability.

Power BI is most valuable when a large amount of data is available to process and gain insights from, and Skype for Business (SfB) generates an endless stream of call quality and telemetry data. This data is readily available in the SfB Quality of Experience (QoE) database, but the ability to analyze it is limited to the capabilities built into SfB. Traditionally this was the Monitoring Server and more recently the Call Quality Dashboard (CQD), both of which generate reports based on this data, however these reports provide a limited number of actionable insights as the data is not easily manipulated.

These reports are crucial to understanding the state of a SfB deployment and identifying areas experiencing degraded performance and guidance on corrective actions to take. While CQD was a step in the right direction, a more powerful tool is Power BI. Power BI opens up a range of possibilities for IT looking to diagnose and troubleshoot issues, as well as for Executives looking for high level insights into adoption and usage of Skype for Business.

Making sure the user experience is optimal is the key to a successful deployment of a Skype For Business. The three components that make up the user experience are, user satisfaction, call quality, and reliability. Data on all three of these metrics are collected and stored in Skype for Business, and the use of Analytics on this data can confirm the overall user experience as well as provide information on individual users reporting poor calls.

A Power BI dashboard based on the data can be created and shared showing high level insights into the state of a Skype for Business deployment. This dashboard view is particularly valuable to Executives looking to gather information at a glance. Additional analysis can be done at more granular levels to gain insights into specific problem areas helping IT validate theories and implement change.
Common problem areas include adoption rates, device types in use, and network constraints. Data from existing network monitoring solutions can be combined with SfB data allowing for correlation between network and application layers, helping drive root cause analysis. For example, SfB may show a large number of poor calls in a particular subnet. Combining this data with network metrics from that subnet can answer the question of where the bottleneck is.

Integrating Power BI and Skype for Business is one of many innovative ways. Microsoft is a recognized leader in Analytics and Unified Communications technologies and Avanade has deep expertise implementing these solutions. Together we are realizing results for our clients and their customers through the power of the Microsoft ecosystem.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

SharePoint Framework (SPFx).

What is SharePoint Framework   Client Side SharePoint Development using SharePoint Framework (SPFx). The SharePoint Framework (SPFx) development is a great milestone for SharePoint Client Side development. It is a page and web part model. This provides full support for client-side SharePoint development. It allows to easily integrate component with SharePoint data and supports for open source tooling. With SharePoint Framework, you can use any of your preferred web technologies and tools in your preferred development environment. It is to build responsive and mobile friendly SharePoint products and apps. SharePoint Framework (SPFx)   helps to build custom user interface extensions on top of SharePoint Online in supportive and future prepared way as SharePoint Online keeps itself updated time to time. Create new web part project You need to perform following steps:   1.       Create new project directory at your opted location md helloworld-webpart 2.   
Post a Comment
Read more

Plan SharePoint Migration

Guide to a SharePoint Migration This blog will show how enterprises can approach their SharePoint migration with a few tried and tested action plans. This blog also details how you can successfully define a migration  roadmap, strategy, and goals for a successful SharePoint migration. There are four big transitions you’ll have to consider, before you dive into how to set up a pre-migration strategy. The Different Paths to Modern Management The following explains the four transitions and migrations that can be executed—successful or not. Cloud-first The Cloud-first path is perfect for startups, as there is no need for a migration. Essentially, everything is created in the cloud. Think: Cloud first and only cloud. Big Switch Transition The Big Switch path is often considered the most risky strategy, as organizations can never verify if the transition (also known as “big bang transition”) will end up as a success or a failure. Group by Group Transition
Post a Comment
Read more

3 ways to filter SharePoint lists and libraries

One of the greatest benefits of metadata is the ability to filter on it and get to what you want with just a few clicks. Filtering for information is quite a common exercise these days. Every time we do online shopping, we filter for stuff. When we shop on Amazon® for shoes (something I do every day 🙂 ), we filter on cost, shoe size, reviews, brand among other things. When you go to a bookstore website, you filter for author and genre. When you research your dream car – you filter on car type, fuel economy, color. In SharePoint, we have not one, but three ways to filter SharePoint metadata! Today I would like to describe and explain all the three options to you. Option 1: Column header filter This is the most basic option that has been available ever since custom columns became available in SharePoint. Essentially this is the filtering you do using column headers. The functionality might be well familiar to many users as this is something we can do in Excel as well.
Post a Comment
Read more