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Happy New Year!

A book I’d purchased some time back, but just finished reading recently, Show Your Work!: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered, by Austin Kleon, is an easy read, but well worth it.

cover of Show Your Work

Regardless of what field one works in, whether it be technology, the arts, or any other field really, the advice given in this book can help to make one realize the value they add to their field, and also how to showcase it to others.

For those of you who have resolved that it’s a “new year, new you”, I highly recommend reading this book now, rather than later.

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Microsoft Learn for the Win!

design from the Microsoft Lean website

Over the last ten years or so, I have worked with many different computer-based training (CBT) programs from various vendors, some paid, and some free. Of all the ones I’ve used, Microsoft Learn – which is free, as in “free beer”! – has been the best overall.

Not only is the variety of subjects available for study more diverse than the other sites I’ve used (though the Learn classes are all for only Microsoft-based technologies, as far as I know), but the quality of the lessons and the degree for which they can prepare one for at least some certifications is comparable with a paid class or set of Microsoft Press books.

I was particularly happy with the Power BI and Azure training that I took, and I plan to move on to some AI and Machine Learning courses this next year.

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Power BI Gateway Timeout Issue

Power BI logo

Recently, I was informed that one of our Power BI Datasets could not be refreshed due to an error, and that the schedule had been turned off as a result. The error that was in the refresh history was similar to the one shown below.

Power BI refresh error
Source of image: https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Service/Gateway-timeout-error/m-p/1146938

It appeared that something was causing a timeout on the Power BI gateway.

I opened the dataset in Power BI Desktop, and refreshed the queries manually to see if a similar error was thrown. Though the queries took about an hour to complete, there was no error. I found the timeout setting for the data source and saw that it was blank. I thought, being relatively new to Power BI still, that this timeout needed to be set, so I set it for 60 minutes, just to test. Still no error when refreshing manually, but when published to the Power BI service, the same error remained.

There were three queries in the dataset, and as it turns out, three separate timeout values. The data source for each query had to changed individually. When I deleted the timeout settings from all three queries and republished the dataset, it was able to be refreshed on schedule without issue.

This should be the first step in troubleshooting future timeout issues, as this is can be a quick fix for this type of problem.