Category: Technology

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Telephone Techniques – How to use your voice effectively

The words we say make up only 30% of our communication. So we need to think about how we say them. To ensure that we are communicating effectively on the telephone, therefore, we must make the most of the 30% we have. Read on for four areas to focus on to improve your telephone technique.

Paralangue

This is the way that we use expression in our voice to convey a message. It covers all areas of non-verbal communication, and the four key areas below will help you to ensure that you are getting your message across as intended.

Tone

We express our emotions through our tone of voice. For example, if you think of times where you express happiness, excitement, frustration, confusion, or anger. On the telephone we need to be careful to tone down the negative emotions while exaggerating the positive ones. Even though the listener can’t see your face, your facial expressions will reflect in your voice. Try to remember, ‘smile when you dial,’ it really does work.

 

Pacing

Speed is extremely important if we want to be easily understood. Often the temptation is to speak quickly so that we can end the call. However, speaking slowly and clearly will ensure that the listener is able to really hear you and you won’t have to repeat yourself. When we communicate face to face, we focus on the other person. On the telephone, the listener will be easily distracted. Therefore, you should try to keep sentences short and to the point. If you waffle, you could easily lose the person on the other end of the phone.

Volume

We need to manage our volume carefully. If we speak to quietly, we won’t be heard. This is especially true if there is background noise. If we are too loud, we can sound aggressive. When we focus on speaking at a neutral volume, we can naturally remain calm. Even if the other person is raising their voice.

 

Energy

If you speak with high energy, you can create a sense of excitement, urgency, and positivity with your voice. By contrast, if you speak with low energy, you will come across as boring, dull, and uninterested. The message you are conveying becomes irrelevant. You can naturally increase the energy in your voice if you walk around whilst you talk. However, if you sit or even slouch at a desk, the opposite happens!

Conclusion

Think about your paralanguage next time you are making an important call and see how these tips can improve the outcome. You can be more effective in sales, customer service or many other areas!

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Power BI DAX – the mysterious Calculate function 4 – tricks

DAX (Data Analysis eXpressions) is the function language in Power BI desktop. When DAX is used to create measures, it can hard to understand the logic at times. Especially one piece, the Calculate function, can be challenging.

 

This is the fourth part of a series of blog posts, which will investigate the mysterious Calculate function.

The Calculate function react differently to row, column, filter, and table context than the other DAX functions and can be used with date intelligence and can handle many other special requirements.

 

Trick the data model to Pass Filters from Many to One Side of Relationship

In this blog post you will see how the Calculate function can trick the data model to Pass Filters from Many to One Side of Relationship.

In a report the number of cities you have sold to need to be visualised.

A DistinctCount function can count distinct entries. However, as you can see below, the DistinctCount function cannot filter the result by month. It just returns 49, which are the total number of cities sold to.

 

 

The reason that the DistinctCount function cannot filter it by month is clear in the data model.

 

It goes against the filter direction in the relationship between the Orders and the Customers table.

The Dates table is related to the Orders table, and the filter direction is going from the Dates table to the Orders table, but the filter direction in the relationship between Orders to the Customers table is going from the Customer table to the Orders table. This means that the Dates table cannot filter the cities.

Distinct Shipping Methods

The DistinctCount function can show the number of distinct shipping methods used each month. This is because the relationship’s filter direction between the Dates and Orders table is going from the Dates table to the Orders table.

The task was to count how many different cities sold to each month. So how are you going to achieve this?

The mysterious Calculate function can handle this, as it can handle a lot of other special tasks.

The DAX measure will look like this:

Distinct Cities = CALCULATE(DISTINCTCOUNT(Customers[City]),orders)

By nesting the DistinctCount function inside the Calculate function and adding the Orders table to a filter argument in the Calculate function, you now can pass filters from Many to One side of Relationship (go against the filter direction). You will need to enter the Calculate function into the expression to reference the table you want the expression from as well as in the filter argument the table, which are related to the table in the expression.

You can see above that now the measure returns the right result.

Distinct Products Sold

If you need to visualise the number of distinct products sold each month, you can use a similar approach.

Again, you will have to go against the filter direction (Pass Filters from Many to One Side of Relationship). Here the relationship between the Items table and the Line Items table.

Conclusion

I call the Calculate function the mother of all DAX functions. It is the most important DAX function (my personal opinion). But you need to understand how it reacts to row, column, filter, and table context, and can be used to handle different issues. As a result, you will get the best out of it.  Concluding in this blog which has shown how it can pass filters from Many to One Side of Relationship.

This is part 4 of a series of blog posts as mentioned at the top about the mysterious Calculate function in Power BI Dax.