The Library · Insights
Deep dives across data, automation & AI
979 in-depth articles — from Excel foundations to production machine learning. Filter by topic or difficulty to find exactly what you need.
Power AutomateFoundation
Automating Data Entry into Windows Desktop Applications with Power Automate Desktop: Launching Apps, Navigating Forms, and Submitting Records Reliably
Learn how to build a Power Automate Desktop flow that launches a Windows application, reads records from Excel, fills out forms field by field, and submits data reliably — even in legacy systems with no API. This hands-on lesson covers everything from UI element capture to loop structure and error recovery.
15 min read
Microsoft FabricFoundation
Writing and Running Your First PySpark Notebook in Microsoft Fabric: Reading Files, Creating Delta Tables, and Saving to the Lakehouse
Learn how to build a real PySpark notebook in Microsoft Fabric from scratch — reading CSV files from Lakehouse storage, cleaning and transforming data, and writing Delta tables that are immediately queryable via SQL. This hands-on lesson teaches Spark fundamentals in the context you'll actually use them.
17 min read
PythonPractitioner
Calculating Running Totals, Cumulative Averages, and Ranked Rows in pandas with expanding, cumsum, and rank
Learn how to build running totals, cumulative averages, and within-group rankings in pandas using cumsum, expanding, and rank. Goes beyond the basics to cover groupby integration, tie-breaking strategies, NaN handling, and a complete sales dashboard project.
19 min read
Power AutomateFoundation
Automating Windows System Dialogs and Pop-Up Handling in Power Automate Desktop: Detecting, Dismissing, and Responding to Alerts Without Breaking Your Flow
Windows dialogs and pop-ups are the silent flow-killers that freeze bots mid-run and derail production automations. This hands-on lesson teaches you exactly how to detect, respond to, and defensively handle every category of Windows dialog — from standard message boxes to file save prompts — so your flows keep running even when applications talk back.
18 min read
Microsoft FabricFoundation
Scheduling and Automating Fabric Data Pipeline Runs with Activity-Level Retries, Alerts, and Email Notifications
Learn how to turn a basic Fabric pipeline into a production-grade, self-healing automation. This lesson covers schedule triggers, activity-level retry policies, workspace alerts, and custom email notifications with dynamic content — everything you need to stop monitoring pipelines manually.
18 min read
Power AppsFoundation
Configuring Model-Driven App Views as Default Views, Quick Find Views, and Lookup Views: Controlling How Records Are Surfaced Across the App
Most model-driven app problems aren't about missing features — they're about misconfigured views. Learn how to set Default Views, Quick Find Views, and Lookup Views so records are always findable, searchable, and presented with the right context wherever they appear in your app.
18 min read
PythonFoundation
Validating and Profiling a New Dataset with pandas: Row Counts, Distributions, and Outlier Checks Before You Analyze
Jumping straight into analysis on a new dataset is one of the most common — and costly — mistakes in data work. This lesson teaches you a systematic profiling workflow using pandas: checking shape, completeness, duplicates, distributions, and outliers before a single aggregation runs.
15 min read
Power AutomateFoundation
Using the Power Automate Desktop Action Library: Essential Built-In Actions for File, Window, and Application Control
Learn how to use Power Automate Desktop's built-in action library to launch applications, manage windows, and manipulate files with confidence. This lesson takes you from the basics of the action library structure to building a complete, realistic file-processing automation from scratch.
17 min read
Power AppsFoundation
Configuring Model-Driven App Site Maps: Navigation Areas, Groups, and Subareas for Role-Based Menu Structures
A poorly structured site map makes even great apps unusable. Learn how to design navigation Areas, Groups, and Subareas from scratch — and wire them to security roles so each user sees exactly the menu they need, nothing more.
18 min read
Microsoft FabricFoundation
Monitoring Fabric Capacity Usage and Pipeline Activity with the Monitoring Hub
When pipelines run slow or fail silently, you need more than hope — you need visibility. This lesson teaches you how to use the Fabric Monitoring Hub and Capacity Metrics app to track activity, diagnose failures, and understand what your workloads are actually costing your capacity.
17 min read
PythonFoundation
Combining and Stacking Multiple Excel or CSV Files into One pandas DataFrame
Stop copying and pasting data between spreadsheets. Learn how to automatically find, read, and combine dozens of CSV or Excel files into a single pandas DataFrame using glob, pathlib, and pd.concat — with source tracking built in.
15 min read
Power AutomateFoundation
Capturing and Replaying Mouse Clicks and Keystrokes with the Power Automate Desktop Recorder
The Power Automate Desktop Recorder converts your mouse clicks and keystrokes into reusable automation steps — no coding required. Learn how to record, clean up, and reliably replay desktop interactions in this hands-on foundation lesson.
16 min read