Fabric & Power BI - Bristol User Group

Jul'26: "Faster Semantic Models // Variable Libraries"

Thu, Jul 16 · 5:45 PM BST

Ecosurety, 2nd Floor, 4 Colston Ave, BS1 4ST, Bristol, GB

When: Thursday 16th July 2026
Time: arrive for 5:45pm with talks starting from 6pm start prompt.
Location: Ecosurety, 2nd Floor, 4 Colston Ave, Bristol BS1 4ST

Complimentary drinks & pizza provided by our sponsor Method Resourcing Solutions. Please remember to RSVP to help us confirm numbers!

Session 1 - Making Semantic Models Faster - Ashley Warren

Tired of the dreaded "this report is slow" feedback? Sluggish reports and long refreshes are often symptoms of unoptimised models or hidden design flaws. In this session, I'll give you the practical toolkit to find and fix them

Join me for this demo-filled, intermediate-level session, where I will walk you through how to approach this scenario. We'll work through examples of poorly performing reports/models, identify the cause of the issue and discuss how they can be redesigned or optimised to help improve performance.

I'll show you how you can use tools like DAX Studio and Tabular Editor to identify and correct issues, leveraging keys features like Best Practice Analyser, VertiPAQ analyser & DAX Traces. We'll also dissect some of the most common causes of slow DAX queries & show you how to avoid them.

You’ll leave this session with the tools and skills to build faster, more efficient models and finally silence the "slow report" complaints.

About Ashley
Ash is a Senior Analytics Consultant at Advancing Analytics, a UK based data and AI consultancy. Ash focuses on analytics engineering and data visualisation, helping our enterprise customers get value out of their data

In the past, I've led data teams at small and large organisations, helping unlock the power of data through storytelling that's underpinned by strong foundations. I started out my data career as a Power BI report developer, though in the last couple of years I find myself splitting my time between building in Databricks & optimising Power BI.

Ash co-organises the Bristol Power BI & Fabric User Group and can regularly be found speaking at user groups, conferences and events, sharing what he's learnt back with the community

Session 2 - Fabric Variable Libraries - What are they and how to use them? Jon Lunn
This session is an overview of Fabric Variable Libraries, which show the features, and benefits of using them in your data pipeline and notebooks. and how to use and deploy them across multiple workspaces. It looks at the use of Value Sets in variable libraries for DEV/TST/PROD environments. It focuses on the security of the libraries, and how they should not be used like a Key Vault. This session has demos of deployment, and using them in a data pipeline and notebooks

About ~Jon
I'm a Pie Chart hating, Business Intelligence Consultant focused on Microsoft Fabric and the Azure SQL Server Platform and the Azure IaaS, PaaS and SaaS stack of tools, such as Azure SQL Database, Data Factory and other Azure services.

Most of my work is in the architecture, design and implementation of Data Warehouses/Marts/lakes and other analytical databases. As well as implementing the technology, I do Technical Pre-Sales, helping the client understand the technology and matching it with their business requirements.

We all look forward to seeing you there!!