Summary of Tiffany Cui's personal growth in 2023

 1. I was let go on Oct 07th, 2022 from my previous company. The laid off season in Silicon Valley continues until November 2023. Instead of crying on the couch watching Netflix eating ice-cream, I decided to try something new. I have always been an individual contributor during my past career path. How about trying to be at the management level in other industries? So, I officially became one of the managers at Walgreens on December 10th, 2022.

2. During 2023, I have learned how to be an inspiring leader motivating employee of various ethnicities, aged from 17 to 74+, with work experiences from 4 months to 38 years, work industries from Finance, Politics, Real Estate, Education and Theater. My self-esteem has been gradually built up by my team members. They make me believe I can be not only a good manager but a great leader because of my good heart and the wisdom.

Walgreens is made up by two departments: retail and pharmacy. Of course, I need to work with many pharmacists and pharmacy technicians, and they have guided me to the pharmacology.

3. I have made connections with the Walgreens customers who are attorneys and business owners. Even they are small business owners, I can always learn some management skillsets from them.

4. AI is my No. 1 interest in 2023, as long as I have time, I would like to join as many as AI events as I could.  The Stanford University Engineering Entrepreneurship Center hosts events from October to November, I have to say the guests have broadened my horizon in many ways. If they can be entrepreneurs creating their own companies, why can't I start to build my own empire? Also, I'm interested into the PHD Program provided by the Management Science and Engineering School.

5. I had a chance to talk to FeiFei Li in person I and I hope I can have more chances to meet her in 2024.

6. I had a chance to meet the Fremont Mayor Lily Mei and she has been my role model for years. I hope one day I can become like her - gentle and powerful.

7. Besides getting stronger mentally, I want to become stronger physically than before too. I started to go to the gym regularly. In November, I joined the Firefighter CERT training program learning all the necessary skillsets to protect myself and rescue others during the disasters.

8. Another stepping out of my comfort zone, I started my modeling career path at the age of 36. I made new connections with other models, photographers, hairstylists, makeup artists, fashion designers and professionals in the movie theaters. They educated me that even though I'm not tall enough to be a run-way model, I can definitely become a commercial model.

9. I went to Blackpink SF concert and many symphonies orchestra and jazz concerts this year which were healing moments to me. 

10. I enjoy listening to Lex Fridman and Andrew Huberman Podcasts every single day.

11. All the different connections have led to new directions way beyond my expectations, I have already made up my mind to work on several projects which require my full commitments at least one year. I hope I can make more accomplishments in 2024.

My past experience as a Salesperson

Am I only a techie? No. If you scroll down and check my resume, you will realize that I have several graduate certifications in accounting, finance, supply chain management, and marketing. 

Do I have business work experience? Of course, I do. Today I would like to share one of my experiences as a Salesperson.

I used to be a beauty advisor at Walgreens, meaning selling skincare and cosmetics, in downtown Ann Arbor, Michigan. There was one big problem with the location I worked for back then. Cosmetic sales were the lowest compared to the other four stores in the same region. The associate manager asked me if I had any ideas to improve the sales. I asked her if I could visit the other four stores. She gave the addresses to me. When I was off work, I drove to the other four locations to see if I could learn something from them to improve the sales. 

 

I remember the No. 1 sales Walgreens is a rural store. The first impression was when you were in nature without pressure, you felt happier. When I parked at the parking lot, I could see a big pond surrounded by trees. That means when a colleague was taking a break, he or she could always go outside walking around the pond relaxing. After I entered, I realized the whole design was quite different from the other locations. 

For example, (1) the shelves are lower than average Walgreens: that means I can grab anything I want easily. That means children can get stuff easily too. (2) at the pharmacy, instead of the chairs, there were two big sofas for the patients (3) through the window, the pharmacists could view the outside, the pond, the trees, ducks, and the birds. After the pharmacists have a tough time with the customers (if you know what I mean, pharmacists have to deal with medical insurance problems all the time), they can look outside with natural healing. (3) Do you know that Kylie Jenner once launched affordable nail polish at Walgreens? I was surprised to see her products in that specific location which I didn't see in other locations. Probably this could attract to the young generation.

Then I talked to the manager in the No. 1 sales location. I introduced myself as a beauty advisor in the Ann Arbor location. I shared my observation about the whole difference from the other locations in the city with the manager. He laughed and he added more. He said, "we know all the customers, we're friends and neighbors". For example, my friend stopped by and grabbed a box of beer for the barbecue tonight. In the evening, all the neighbors would be together enjoying the party. 

I enjoyed the whole exploring process comparing the different locations. What I have learned from the No 1 Sales was 

1. good geography: nature, trees, plants, pond, ducks
2. relationship: everybody knows each other, the customers and workers are like a big family
3. reachable and comfortable design: lower shelves and sofa
4. follow the trend: the only location selling Kylie Jenner Nail Polish

When I came back to my location, I reported to the associate manager. What we could do was to order Kylie Jenner Nail Posh, the list 4. What could we do to change lists 1 to 3?

I realize that we need to observe the needs of our regular customers coming to our location. What do they need? After talking to many customers buying skincare and cosmetics, I realized that the majority of our location customers came to shop dermatologist recommended skin products. There is a popular dermatologist around my location, so usually, the customers could stop by with that dermatologist prescription looking for the specific products. Once realizing this, I started to explore the ingredients of different skin products for different skin problems. For example, the sunscreen with Oxybenzone has the risk of entering the bloodstream extend beyond just the sunscreen wearer. One time, I even started a discussion with a professor from the University of Michigan because he was looking for sunscreen without Oxybenzone.

After several months, the Sales in my location came to No. 2. The associate manager and manager were quite happy about this. They asked me how I achieved this. I believe the keys are: 

1. Observe more
2. Know what your customers needs 
3. Learn from others who have already done well in that field
4. Care more about the details
5. Applying the best solution to suit your situation

Exploring my Perseverance in Power BI

For the past 6 months, I have been working on a Power BI project which requires a full premium capacity. I started self-learning Power BI in March, after two months, I realized that I need to get more professional. So my company paid me to get professional training with certified tutors. It is very necessary to get professional training to not only learn from the professional tutors but also build connections with your professional classmates due to their years of work experience.

I have had a very pleasant study journey gaining much knowledge in Power BI, but unfortunately, the certified tutor is not familiar with how to accomplish the specific layout or design I want to create. So she referred me to other certified professionals. After discussing with other certified professionals, without working on practical projects with this specific layout, they couldn't give me a solid solution about how to accomplish this design.

I posted two questions in the Power BI community and have patiently waited for a long time: 

1. The reply to the first question from the support team: this function is not supported by Power BI yet

2. The reply to the second question from the support team: simply repeat my question

How should I feel at this point? Should I give up? As a newbie in Power BI, I have been told by several certified professionals with over 10 years of work experience that this function is not supported by Power BI yet, it is impossible to create the design I want. I appreciate the discussion with the professionals and their ideas and suggestions are priceless in inspiring me.

At one point, I did want to give up lacking confidence and practical experience. But I know I cannot give up, it's not because this is my job, it is my personality. I always want to make something impossible to be possible with my perseverance. 

Fortunately, I shared my concerns with one of my classmates during the training. He coincidentally has worked on the same project before. Both of us are aware that Power BI doesn't support this function yet, so we decided to install a third-party tool to Power BI and then change the settings. God bless, the first big problem is solved and I consider this is the first milestone of the whole project. No words can express how much I appreciate that college's help and we are friends now. He mentioned that this solution does not come from study, this comes from real practical work experience. As the Power BI project will go live shortly within his company, I might be helpful in giving him ideas and suggestions.

There is still another big problem, what should I do? This project can only be done by Power BI paginated reports using reports builder. Power BI online service and desktop are not enough. Paginated reports previously are called SSRS. I have done for months is to explore the resources as much as I can, there are youtube tutorials for Paganiated reports or SSRS, then watch them one by one, day and night, weekends, trying to get inspiration to fit into my project. I believe once you have pushed yourself to some point, you will get some breakthroughs, just don't give up.

Now the project is going live with many people's help within my company and other companies. I'm sure there will still be this or that issue. What I need to tell myself is, be confident, be strong, trust myself and have faith that I will solve all the upcoming problems. 

Export the whole Excel with all the columns and rows through Power BI service

• Connect your database to Power BI through Power BI Desktop
• Create the tables depending on your requirements
• Publish to Power BI service 
• Export the whole excel: not analyze in excel

• Instead, click ... on the right-hand side

• Export data

Random thoughts about my career path

I recently received so many emails and messages, which makes me start to consider the difference between IT data analysts and business analysts.

After Google these two job descriptions, I don't consider myself a business analyst. Instead, I'm an IT data analyst on the path to become a data scientist.

First, my daily routine at work contains lots of programming processes. When I was pursuing my Master's degree in Information Technology, my school mainly focused on Java. But after I came to the San Franciso Bay area, I realized that Python is one of the most popular languages in Silicon Valley. So I started to learn Python by myself. Every day, after work from Tesla (2018-2019), I would go back home to practice programming in Python for around 2 hours per day. Right now, at my current job, data cleansing is a big part of my daily routine. So I use Python(Pycharm/Jupyter) to create codes concentrating specifically on the data cleaning requirements from my current company. Whenever I receive the files which need to be cleaned, I need to run those codes and adjust different lines based on the new requirements.

Second, I started building the data warehouse using Google Cloud Storage(GCS) and Google Cloud Platform(GCP). The majority of my colleges are extremely professional in the Oracle database. So it becomes my main focus to build the data warehouse. GCS and GCP are brand new to me too. So I keep learning all the new processes, just like when I was learning how to program in Python. After several months, the data warehouse has been built, of course with my colleges' support too, and the data will keep growing.

Third, I started to get professional training in Power BI in March this year. Whenever people talk about Power BI, you will think about all the beautiful charts to improve, execute, and effectively communicate significant analyses that identify meaningful trends and opportunities across the business. I agree this is part of my Power BI training and future tasks. But what I'm focusing on is how to automatically transfer the database to Power BI using parameters or even more complex functions through Power BI. This is different from what I can only create those beautiful charts.

Now, I understand clearly my career path is to become a professional data scientist. 

Dynamic Filter Using Parameters in PowerBI

A parameter serves as a way to easily store and manage a value that can be reused.

Parameters give you the flexibility to dynamically change the output of your queries depending on their value.

#1 click "Transform data" on the Home Tab

↓ 

#2 Create a unique list of RegionName as an option to choose from when the report runs. For this, right-click the RegionName column header and select "Add a New Query"

↓ 

#3 Now we still don't have a unique list of values on our list query, so right-click the column header again to remove duplicates

↓ 

#4 Now we have a unique list of RegionName, let's store this list in a form of a parameter. Click the Home tab, click "Manage Parameters"

↓ 

Click New

Note: "current value" is a default value.

Click OK

#5 The next thing we need to do is to apply a parameterized filter on the overview table so that the data loads only for the selected RegionName. To do this, click on the arrow icon on the RegionName column header, go to the "Text Filters",  and select "Equals"

↓ 

change the filter type to "parameter"

And select the parameter we just created

Click Ok, Click "Close&Apply"

Now we can only see the default value of RegionName we set up, which is the "Greater Manchester"

#6 The last thing we need to do is make this filter selection pop out to the users when they run this report. To do this, go to the File menu, click Save as, save the report with a name and change the type to Power Bi template files.

Now we run this file, you will see the system is coming out with this list of RegionName to choose from, which is a part of the parameter we created.

Then choose the RegionName data you would like to see, now the reports show the analysis only for the selected RegionName.

How to connect Oracle Database to Power BI

#1:

Make sure you have installed:

https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/windows/downloads/index-090165.html

#2:
Make sure your TNS Name file (tnsnames.ora) is correct
Test with Toad or other SQL Utility that uses the TNS NAME file
not SQL Developer (that does not use the tnsnames.ora file to Connect)
C:\app\client\your_windows_user_name\product\12.1.0\client_1\Network\Admin

#3:
In the Power BI Get Data Oracle database

In the box Server:
(DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=TCP)(HOST=service_name)(PORT=1521))(CONNECT_DATA=(SERVICE_NAME=your_service_name)))

Oracle database server format: Host:Port/SID

#4:
Use the database credentials to access your data

Helpful source: 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/connect-data/desktop-connect-oracle-database