M365 Con PowerBI & Fabric Day (Part 1)

9 AM - Ilgar Zarbaliyev (MVP & Senior Manager, SumProduct Pty Ltd.)
Keynote: From Patterns to Predictions: Seasonality Analysis and Dynamic Sales Forecasting in Power BI
In this session, we’ll walk through how to uncover hidden seasonal patterns in your sales data and build a dynamic sales forecast using Power BI. Understanding sales seasonality enables businesses to identify which products sell more during specific periods, improving inventory and marketing strategies. With dynamic forecasting, we’ll leverage historical data to predict future trends—turning insights into actionable foresight. Whether you’re in retail, pharma, or any other industry, this session will equip you with practical DAX techniques and visualization best practices for smarter decision-making.

10 AM - Paula García Esteban (AI / UX for Power BI instructor, LinkedIn Learning)
Design Systems for Power BI: Transforming Dashboard Development
In this session, we will explore how design principles can transform data products and maximize their impact. We will begin by reviewing the core principles of User Experience (UX) and how they can be applied to report design, with a focus on best practices in data visualization that make insights clearer, more actionable, and easier to consume. We will then introduce the concept of a design system, explaining what it is and why it is a powerful asset for data product development. Beyond the theory, we will show a live demo and walk through practical steps on how to prepare and adopt a design system within an organization, ensuring consistency, efficiency, and scalability across analytics projects. Finally, we will look at how to integrate the design process into the typical development cycle of analytics projects in Power BI.

11 AM - Francis Folaranmi (Practice Lead - Data & AI, Manifold Enterprise Solutions)
From Capacity Chaos to Cost Control: Understanding FinOps In Microsoft Fabric
Understanding FinOps principles is critical before implementing cost optimization in Microsoft Fabric. This session starts with FinOps fundamentals, then demonstrates practical tools and techniques for managing Fabric costs effectively. We'll cover what FinOps means in the Fabric context, then explore essential tools including the Capacity Metrics App for monitoring, Chargeback solutions for cost allocation, the open-source Fabric Cost Analysis (FCA) toolkit, and automated capacity scaling using Azure Logic Apps.

12 AM - Rajendra Ongole (BI Lead Engineer, Bosch)
From Events to Insights: Working with Data in Fabric Eventhouse
Discover how Microsoft Fabric Eventhouse transforms high-volume event data into actionable insights. This session covers data ingestion patterns, schema design, querying strategies, and best practices for analyzing event-driven data using KQL within the Fabric ecosystem.