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When you do development for many years in one platform it gives you the chance to learn a thing or two about all the different limitations across all its different versions. The same rule applies to SharePoint. Recently our team had to develop in a SharePoint 2013 environment using PowerPivot on a SQL Server 2012 environment.  For about three months our work was going well, until we went from Office 2013 to Office 2016.  Several PowerPivot files began to get an error “Call to Excel Services Returned Error” during their scheduled refresh.  If we opened the file in Excel 2016 and refreshed the file, it refreshed with no issue. Our team got a hold of the ULS logs and while we could see when the errors occurred and the stack traces, the logs were of little help.  On top of that, hours of googling left no clues.  Ultimately, our team went through a process of elimination to identify the cause of the issues.  Long story short, we whittled down the issue to the DAX formulas used in the PowerPivot files. We would like to share some do’s and don’ts when creating PowerPivot reports with Excel 2016 and using SharePoint 2013: Do’s and Don’ts

1. Do NOT use the IN function ex. (FILTER(‘Table’, [Status ID] IN {1,2}))
   • DO use the OR function instead (FILTER(‘Table’, OR([Status ID]=1,[Status ID]=2)))
2. Do NOT use the DATEDIFF function. In 2016 you can subtract dates and get negative numbers (future dates), but in 2013 ...
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Definitive Logic is pleased to announce it has been named one of the “Top Workplaces 2018” in the Washington, D.C., area by The Washington Post. This is the 4th consecutive year our company has been named a top D.C.-area employer by the publication.   “Definitive Logic is honored by this continued recognition as one of the Washington, D.C. area’s Top Workplaces,” said Mary Kerski, Definitive Logic’s human resources director. “We actively foster a culture that thrives on a passion for understanding, problem solving and teamwork. The fact this award is voted on by the employees is especially meaningful.”   The Washington Post 2018 Top Workplace survey honors companies in the D.C. area with the highest ratings from their employees.  In all, 341 organizations agreed to take the survey. Combined, they employ 105,538 workers in the Washington area.   To learn more about Definitive Logic’s culture and career opportunities, please visit the Definitive Logic Careers page ...
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Continued uncertainty and risk in the healthcare industry is pressuring healthcare executives to keep a steady focus on reducing costs and transforming delivery models to improve the patient experience. Artificial intelligence (AI) manifested through machine learning algorithms is already transforming a variety of healthcare applications including medical imaging diagnosis, drug discovery and personalized medicine. The McKinsey Gold Institute estimates that applying big-data strategies to better inform decision making could generate up to $100 billion in value annually across the US health-care system, by optimizing innovation, improving the efficiency of research and clinical trials, and building new tools sets for physicians, consumers, insurers and regulators to meet the promise of more individualized approaches.   How Machine Learning Analyzes Data  The healthcare industry sits on a goldmine of data that is generated from many sources:  research and development (R&D); physicians and clinics; patients; caregivers; insurers and others. Healthcare organizations with large networks of web-enabled connected devices have the added challenge of continually capturing and storing immense amounts of data.   To effectively manage and make sense of these enormous data sets, machine learning is becoming an increasingly important decision-making tool. Data is analyzed in two specific ways to support the process. The first method is to train the machine in an existing algorithm to browse live data faster and more efficiently than people. By combing through data stores, the machine can discover key indicators that map to a specific outcome and bring those items to the forefront. Applications such as predictive health trackers use this method to help monitor patients’ health status using real-time data collection.  The second method analyzes historical data with specific outcomes and allows the machine learning algorithm to discover previously unknown indicators to predict outcomes. This method, also called predictive analytics, can help monitor patients and prevent emergencies before they occur. For ...
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Definitive Logic Corporation now acts as a one-stop shop for Microsoft solutions for Enterprises and Federal Government Agencies, offering full service of the industry-leading products, such as Azure, Office 365, Microsoft 365, and Dynamics 365. Definitive Logic, a multi competency Microsoft Gold Partner supplier of transformative digital services, is proud to become a Microsoft Tier 1 Cloud Solution Provider in both Azure Government and Commercial ...
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Definitive Logic is pleased to announce reaching #Microsoft Gold Partner status for Application Development, in addition to our Collaboration and Content Partnership. This is a result of 10+ years of delivering successful Microsoft Solutions. Contacts us today for a free consultation in how Microsoft can help you. #modernization #IT ...
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"When we first set out to setup SharePoint Online to integrate with an Azure SQL Database with Business Connectivity Services (BCS), I thought it was going to be very quick and easy.  It probably will be from now on, but we had to work our way through some challenges.  We did our research and felt pretty confident that it was going to be very easy.  To be honest, the steps to setup BCS in SharePoint Online aren’t exactly rocket science.  But there are a few gotchas and if you’re not careful, they will get you.  In this article we will walk through the steps to setup SharePoint Online to integrate with Azure SQL Database via BCS." SharePoint Online BCS to Azure SQL Database - Part I ...
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Information Technology (IT) is at the heart of every organization and healthcare organizations are no different.  Having a well-defined enterprise architecture (EA) framework and strategy is key to driving cost savings and interoperability across a healthcare agency or system.  Many brilliant enterprise architects have spent countless hours investigating, inventorying, analyzing dependencies, and building highly insightful EA views of their organizations only to find that their masterpieces sit on the shelf and are rarely updated or used.  There are several accepted EA frameworks in the industry (TOGAF, DODAF, FEA) that characterize, in “view” format, the who, what, why, when, where, and how of each component or aspect of an enterprise.  These EA views (capability, operational, system, data, etc.) are crucial to understanding how an organization operates and the underlying enterprise system of systems.  Another difference making component of the typical enterprise is Business Intelligence which consists of reports and dashboards to aggregate data and uncover trends to help with better decision making.  Business Intelligence (BI) is highly complementary to EA and is the perfect place to transform those EA blueprints of the enterprise into highly useful and insightful models for delivering data-driven insights that match the big picture understanding of how their enterprise functions. In today’s business world, a majority of large healthcare organizations have multiple BI platforms to help with exposing the proper insights to the right people at the right time to drive business actions, whether they be corrective or opportunistic in nature.  Most BI environments consist of hundreds ...
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An ITAR compliant environment offers several distinct advantages for organizations while fulfilling the requirements of a secured environment.  The advantages can be categorized in terms of operational and corporate advantages for prospective government contracting organizations ...
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Securing Accounts on Office 365 with Multi-Factor Authentication If your organization is moving to Office 365, protecting your accounts in the cloud should be a top concern.  Thankfully Microsoft offers Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) which requires that any user with MFA enabled prove their identity in at least two of the following ways:

1. What you know
2. What you have
3. Who you are

Since you’re reading this blog online, chances are you routinely deal with the “What you know” aspect, the username and password.  With Office 365, the second proof of identity involves “What you have” and is often enforced through either a text to your office or mobile phone.  As of November 2017 a “Who you are” approach is not available when logging into Office 365.   For those not familiar with this approach, these are the steps required for a staff member to sign in to Office 365:

1. Try to log into Office 365 (SharePoint, Planner, Teams, Outlook, etc.)
2. Office 365 prompts for your username and password.
3. If the username and password is correct, you are asked to enter a verification code from your mobile device.
4. A text message is sent to your mobile device with a random code.
5. You enter that code and if the code is correct, you are authenticated and allowed to use Office 365.

This Send-Me-A-Text approach is commonly used because it is the easiest to implement and the easiest for the staff members to use (applying the Principle of Psychological Acceptability) ...
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