DEV Community: Hitesh Nalamwar

PowerBI -Getting started with one of the most powerful Visualisation tool!

Hitesh Nalamwar — Mon, 02 Jan 2023 19:57:47 +0000

Power BI is a powerful tool that allows users to quickly and easily visualize and analyze data from a variety of sources. It is designed for business users, so it is easy to use even if you don't have a lot of technical expertise. With Power BI, you can create beautiful and interactive reports and dashboards that help you gain insights into your data and make better business decisions.

One of the key benefits of Power BI is its ability to connect to a wide range of data sources, including Excel, SQL databases, and cloud-based platforms like Salesforce and Google Analytics. This means you can easily bring all of your data together in one place and analyze it in a consistent way, regardless of where it lives.

In addition to its visualization and reporting capabilities, Power BI also includes advanced data modelling and analysis features, such as the ability to create data models and perform complex data transformations. This makes it an ideal tool for data analysts and other business users who need to work with large and complex data sets.

Power BI is a valuable tool for anyone who needs to analyze and visualize data in their business. Whether you're a business analyst, a data scientist, or just someone who needs to make sense of data in your job, Power BI can help you get the insights you need to make better decisions.

Power BI Applications

Some common applications of Power BI includes:

Business intelligence: Power BI can be used to analyze and report on business metrics such as sales, expenses, and customer data. For example, a company might use Power BI to create a dashboard showing monthly sales performance by region.

Data reporting: Power BI can be used to create reports and charts based on data from multiple sources, such as Excel sheets, databases, or web services. For example, a marketing team might use Power BI to create a report showing website traffic, leads, and conversions over time.

Dashboard creation: Power BI can be used to create interactive dashboards that display real-time data and allow users to drill down into specific data points. For example, a finance team might use Power BI to create a dashboard showing real-time sales data by product, region, and customer segment.

Here is an example of using Power BI to create a bar chart showing sales data over time:

Import the data into Power BI by connecting to the relevant data source.
In the "Fields" pane, select the relevant data fields (e.g. product and its Revenue over time).
In the "Visualizations" pane, select the "Bar chart" visualization.
Customize the chart title and axis labels as desired.
In the "Format" panel, customize the appearance of the graph by adjusting the colors, fonts, and other formatting options.

Sample code snippet in Power BI that creates a bar chart showing sales data by-product:

// Load data from a CSV file
let
Source = Csv.Document(File. Contents("SalesData. csv"), [Delimiter=" Columns-7, Encoding-1252, QuoteStyle-QuoteStyle.None]),
#"Promoted Headers" = Table. PromoteHeaders(Source,
[PromoteAlScalars-true]),
#"Changed Type" = Table. TransformColumnTypes (#"Promoted Headers"
{{"'Product", type text}, {'Sales", type number}}) in
#"Changed Type"


// Create a bar chart showing sales data by product
BarChart =
Chart. Custom(
data = #"Changed Type"
x = "Product"
y = "Sales",
title = "Sales by Product'
)

Here is an example of a bar chart created with Power BI, showing sales data by product:

Benefits of PowerBI:

Ease of use: Power BI has a user-friendly interface, making it easy for users to create their own reports and dashboards.
Integrations: Power BI integrates with a wide range of data sources, including Excel, SQL Server, and cloud-based services such as Azure and Google Analytics.
Collaboration: Power BI allows users to share their reports and dashboards with others, enabling collaboration within an organization.
Customizability: Power BI allows users to customize their reports and dashboards by choosing from a variety of visualization types and formatting options.
Data modeling: Power BI allows users to build complex data models to better understand their data and relationships between different data points.
Real-time data: Power BI can connect to real-time data sources, such as streaming data or data from Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and update dashboards and reports in real-time.
Mobile app: Power BI has a mobile app that allows users to view their dashboards and reports on the go.
AI-powered insights: Power BI includes features that use artificial intelligence to surface insights and patterns in the data.

Overall, Power BI is a powerful and versatile tool that is well-suited for organizations that need to analyze and visualize data to make informed decisions.

Deploying NextJS App on Amazon EC2 instance

Hitesh Nalamwar — Mon, 02 Jan 2023 10:52:09 +0000

Next.js is an open-source JavaScript framework created by Vercel that enables you to build superfast and extremely user-friendly static websites and web applications using React with the power of server-side rendering. Server-side rendering means when content on your webpage is rendered on the server and not on your browser using JavaScript.

In contrast to a React app, which typically sends a .js file to the browser, The browser JavaScript engine creates the markup after the .js file is loaded. Examples of traditional SSR languages/frameworks are PHP, Java, ASP.NET, and Node.js.

Server Side Rendering (SSR) has the following benefits:

Performance
Search engine visibility
User experience
Social sharing

Not all apps need server-side rendering, especially apps with a dashboard and authentication that will not need SEO or sharing via social media.

Although Next.js benefits outweigh the cons, it is still worth discussing:

Next.js does not provide any built-in front pages, so we need to create your front end, which will require changes from time to time that incur additional costs.
Next.js needs to use either Redux or Mobx or something else to manage the application state.
You don't have many plugins that you can plug in and use.
Next.js has a wide and robust community and support, it is widely used by the biggest and most popular companies all over the world like Netflix, Uber, Starbucks, and Twitch.

It is easy to deploy on Vercel, but for those who are new and want to deploy on an EC2 instance, it could be a challenge.

Why Amazon EC2 Instance is important service?

Amazon EC2 is one of the fastest-growing cloud computing AWS services, which offers virtual servers to manage any kind of workload. It facilitates the computing infrastructure with the best suitable processors, networking facilities, and storage systems. As a result, it supports adapting to the workloads precisely.
Amazon EC2 enables you to scale up or down to handle changes in requirements or spikes in popularity, reducing your need to forecast traffic.

Hosting NextJs App on EC2

Hosting the Next.js app on AWS EC2 is one of the popular options, and we used it for several internal projects too. In this article, we’ll see how to deploy an existing Next.js app with Nginx on a Ubuntu hosted as an AWS EC2 Instance.

Note: To check whether a domain is pointed correctly to a server's IP check it at https://dnschecker.org

If you haven't registered a domain yet you can purchase from AWS or other providers like GoDaddy, Google ( my fav. one) or Namecheap, etc.

Note: After you have created the instance, you will get a .ppk file that you need to convert into a .pem file

Here are the following steps:

$ brew install putty

$ puttygen key.ppk -O private-openssh -o key.pem

Step 1: Create an EC2 instance and make sure that it has Node.js and npm installed. You can do this by using an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) that comes with these pre-installed, or by installing them manually after launching the instance.

Step 2: Connecting to the existing EC2 Instance:

 ssh -i <.pem file path>  ubuntu@<server ip>

Step 3: point to the folder where you would like to deploy an application

Step 4: pull the code & authenticate the repository

git pull

Step 5: If the app is already running and want to be re-deploy you need to kill the existing app process before deploying new changes. To check the port we are listening to use the following command (optional)

sudo ss -lptn 'sport = :3000'

Step 6: kill the current process

kill -9 <PID>

Step 7: Execute the following commands to make it up and running. Make sure "&" means you can disconnect the app without killing it.

yarn install
yarn build then yarn start &

That's it! Your Next.js application should now be up and running on your EC2 instance at the attached domain or EC2 instance's public IP address.

Looking for a WordPress alternative? React Bricks is a great CMS.

Hitesh Nalamwar — Tue, 27 Dec 2022 20:33:53 +0000

Why you should replace your Wordpress sites with React Bricks?

Wordpress never meant to be CMS it’s an blogging platform.
After using Wordpress for several websites, I have notices lot of issues specially in terms of security untrusted plugins, shared hosting ( even if some of the sites get infected in shared your sites have chances to get infected) resulting into blacklist into your domain, banned from Facebook and google accounts if using similar domain)
Frequent updates with not backward compatibility.
Wordpress is super slow and poor in SEO
No support for A/B testing
In-built Version management
No Framework or theme locking

After waiting for years, I have come across React Bricks, the first headless CMS for content creators with true visual editing similar to WordPress but made with React. It is ideal for simple sites with a few static pages.You don't need to load heavy WordPress plugins and can instead use react animation libraries like Framer instead of heavy and paid WordPress plugins.

If you're looking for an e-commerce solution, For e-commerce, you can use Gatsby and Shopify, and for CMS, you can use React Bricks. There are published demo sites on Gatsby and Shopify with 10,000 products, and it works very smoothly and quickly compared to Woocommerce and WordPress.

Installation of React Bricks is pretty straight forward. But make sure you do create the account on react bricks before continue with the follow steps:

Step 1: Signup for React Bricks account
https://reactbricks.com/sign-up

Step 2: Go to terminal, execute the create brick app command

npx create-reactbricks-app
or
yarn create-reactbricks-app

To proceed with the installation, please press Y to install the required packages.

Step 3: Please enter the account credentials that you used to signup for the react brick account.

After successful authentication, Choose to create a new app

Select a Project type to proceed with, react bricks give you a sample project to start with

Step 4:
After you run dev, the app will work locally at http://localhost:3000

npm dev
or
yarn dev

/admin will give you access admin panel that similar to Wordpress admin panel.

Overall, with React Bricks, content editors have an easy user interface to make edits without sacrificing pixel-perfect design. The developers have full control over the code to define visually editable content blocks using React.

📖 Documentation:
Please, read the Documentation at React Bricks.
https://docs.reactbricks.com/

Also Please Read How to Deploy your Project on Vercel
https://vercel.com/

How advancement in Chatbot's tech will improve user experience!

Hitesh Nalamwar — Mon, 26 Dec 2022 11:34:46 +0000

Chatbots are computer programs designed to mimic human conversation and interact with people through various communication channels such as messaging apps, websites, and mobile apps. Chatbots are everywhere and frustrating as most of them never solve customer problems. In recent years, there has been a significant advancement in the capabilities of chatbots, particularly in the realm of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). These advanced chatbots, also known as conversational AI, use interconnected "neurons" or nodes to process and analyze data, much like the human brain.

As chatbots continue to evolve and become more sophisticated, they have the potential to revolutionize the way businesses interact with their customers and streamline various processes. In this article, we will explore the advancements made in chatbot technology and discuss future directions for chatbots in various industries.

## How Advanced Chatbots Work:

Recently chatbots use natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning algorithms to understand and respond to user input. As the chatbot is exposed to new data and experiences, it is able to learn and adapt to new situations. It can recognize patterns in the data and use this information to make predictions and recommendations.

One key component of advanced chatbots is the use of "neurons" or nodes that are connected in a network. These neurons are responsible for processing and analyzing data and are inspired by the structure of the human brain. They can learn to recognize patterns in data and make predictions about what should come next.

How are chatbots trained to be intellectual?

In advanced chatbots, the above-mentioned neurons are organized into layers, with each layer performing a specific function. For example, the input layer may process raw data, such as text or voice input from the user. The hidden layers may analyze this data and extract relevant information, and the output layer may generate a response based on the information gathered from the input and hidden layers.
As the chatbot processes more and more data, it can learn to identify patterns and make more accurate predictions about what should come next in a conversation. This can allow the chatbot to become more adept at simulating human conversation and providing helpful responses to users.

For example, if a chatbot is trained on customer service inquiries, it may be able to identify patterns in user queries and predict the most appropriate response. For example, if a user asks, "How do I return a product?" the chatbot may recognize this as a common customer service inquiry and provide the appropriate response, such as "To return a product, please follow the steps outlined in our return policy."

In addition to NLP and machine learning algorithms, advanced chatbots may also use other AI techniques such as decision trees, rule-based systems, and deep learning to improve their
ability to understand and respond to user input.

Here is an example of how to build a conversational AI chatbot:

1. Collect and clean data: First, gather a large dataset of conversational data that will be used to train the chatbot. This can include real conversations between humans, or simulated conversations created specifically for the chatbot. Once you have the data, clean and preprocess it to remove any noise or inconsistencies.

2. Choose a machine learning algorithm: There are several algorithms that can be used to build a chatbot, including decision trees, random forests, and neural networks. Choose the algorithm that best fits the needs of your chatbot and the data you have collected.

3. Train the chatbot: Use the cleaned and preprocessed data to train the chatbot using the chosen machine learning algorithm. This will involve feeding the data into the algorithm and adjusting the parameters to achieve the best results.

4. Test and evaluate the chatbot: Once the chatbot is trained, test it using a separate dataset to see how well it can respond to different types of conversations. Use this data to further fine-tune the chatbot and improve its performance.

5. Deploy the chatbot: Once you are satisfied with the chatbot's performance, deploy it to a platform where it can be used by users. This could be a chat application, website, or mobile app.

6. Monitor and update the chatbot: Regularly monitor the chatbot's performance and make updates as needed to improve its accuracy and response times. This may involve adding new data to the training dataset or adjusting the machine learning algorithm.

Here is a sample code for building a chatbot:

import nltk
import re
import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
from sklearn.feature_extraction.text import CountVectorizer from sklearn.model_selection import train_test_split
from sklearn.naive_bayes import MultinomialNB
from sklearn.metrics import accuracy_score

#Preprocessing functions

def process_text(text):

# convert to lowercase

text = text.lower()

# remove punctuation

text = re.sub(r'[^\w\s]', '', text) # remove numbers
text = re.sub(r'\d+', '', text)

# tokenize

tokens = nltk.word_tokenize(text) # remove stopwords
stopwords = nltk.corpus.stopwords.words('english')
tokens = [token for token in tokens if token not in stopwords] 

# lemmatize

lemmatizer = nltk.stem.WordNetLemmatizer()
tokens = [lemmatizer.lemmatize(token) for token in tokens] # join tokens into single string
text = ' '.join(tokens) return text

#Load Data
data = pd.read_csv('conversations.csv') data['text'] = data['text'].apply(process_text)

#create feature matrix and target vector
vectorizer = CountVectorizer()
X = vectorizer.fit_transform(data['text']) y = data['label']

#split data into train and test sets

X_train, X_test, y_train, y_test = train_test_split(X, y, test_size=0.2, random_state=42)

#train model

model = MultinomialNB() model.fit(X_train, y_train)

#evaluate model

y_pred = model.predict(X_test)
score = accuracy_score(y_test, y_pred) print(f'Model accuracy: {score*100:.2f}%')

#define chatbot functions

def classify_text(text):
text = process_text(text)
text = vectorizer.transform([text]) label = model.predict(text)[0] return label
def respond(text):
label = classify_text(text)

if label == 'greeting':
return 'Hello! How are you today?'
elif label == 'goodbye':
return 'Goodbye! Have a great day.'
elif label == 'question':
return 'I am here to answer your questions. What do you want to know?' else:
return 'I am sorry, I am not sure how to respond to that.' 

#test chatbot

print(respond('Hello, how are you?')) 
print(respond('What is the weather like today?'))
print(respond('Goodbye!'))

Benefits of Advanced Chatbots:

Advanced chatbots are revolutionising the way industries interact with customers and streamline their operations. These artificial intelligence-powered software programs can handle a wide range of tasks, including answering customer inquiries, providing recommendations, and completing transactions.
An advanced chatbot might be used in a customer service context to help customers find the right product or service. As the chatbot interacts with customers and gathers data about their preferences and needs, it can learn to make more accurate recommendations based on this information. They are also useful for e-commerce businesses. They can assist customers with their online shopping experience, providing recommendations and handling the checkout process, making it easy for customers to complete their purchases.
In addition, chatbots can assist customers with their banking needs. They can provide account information, make transactions, and even offer financial advice.
Furthermore, they are used in the education industry to assist students and streamline operations. They can provide information about courses and programs, assist with the enrollment process, and even offer academic support.
Another application of advanced chatbots is in the field of healthcare. They can be used to gather and analyze patient data, providing doctors with valuable insights into their patients’ health.
Advanced chatbots are providing numerous benefits to industries of all kinds. They can assist customers, streamline operations, and provide better service, all while reducing the workload on staff. As technology continues to advance, it's likely that we'll see even more innovative uses for advanced chatbots in the future.

The advances in chatbot frameworks and platforms are a powerful tool for businesses and organizations looking to improve their customer service and decision-making processes. By using interconnected neurons to learn and adapt to new situations, these chatbots can provide valuable insights and recommendations that can help organizations make better decisions and provide a better experience for their customers.

Overall, advanced chatbots are a powerful tool for improving any service and providing quick and accurate responses to user inquiries. By using interconnected "neurons" and "machine learning algorithms", they can learn to recognize patterns in data and make predictions about what should come next, much like the human brain. As the capabilities of advanced chatbots
continue to improve, they will likely play an increasingly important role in the customer service industry and other areas.

Increase your return on Ad spending by reaching the audiences that matter to you most!

Hitesh Nalamwar — Fri, 23 Dec 2022 05:42:17 +0000

Facebook advertisements allow a business to reach a much larger audience – up to 2 billion active users – which significantly increases brand awareness. To run ads effectively, we need to consider parameters that important to your business goals. For example - if you are an SME that operates a small restaurant to target your customers, you should consider the geographical area based on your delivery partners where you want to run ads and the demographics, interests, and behaviors of the target audiences. We have noticed that to get enough orders, consider an area that covers at least 300,000 people to get orders online.

To get the most out of your ads, you should review and consider the following three important parameters:

Audience Segment

Create an audience segment and define who your target audience is; imagine a story about how your products will help these clients, and they express interest in your products; this way, you can choose who your perfect audience fits based on your geographic region to publish ads to.

Capture with Awe

Creates stunning content to keep your audience engaged, which is the important factor, and your brand intact. Content engagement plays a vital role in attracting a new audience. Video ads or reels get the most views, as per the latest Facebook data insights for SMBs. Facebook is offering SMB collaboration, and engaging in these activities will eventually result in higher client retention rates.

Review Ads

Before publishing your Ads ensure all the content and landing pages are relevant.
Choose a goal that suits your requirements, but if you are starting with Ads or if you do not have enough customers, do not choose conversions directly, as it will affect gaining zero results.

Leverage retargeting Ads to stay connected with your Organic Audience

Retargeting campaigns not only help drive sales at a lower cost by reaching out to consumers who are familiar with your brands, but remind those who have visited your brand's owned channels organically but abandoned the shopping cart to come back later.

It is critical to retarget the same audience without causing ad fatigue because it allows them to consider brand quality and brand health when driving leads to conversations.
This way, we can effectively measure and deliver ads to a proper audience with ease, explore all strategies, and tap into experiments that help or allow you to capture a new audience. In that way, we can broaden our reach and have more conversions.

The conversions practically depend on two basic factors

Ad Spend
Placements

If ad spending is insufficient, the bidding strategy will prevent the algorithm from teaching and nurturing the target audience.

If the target audience is narrowed and excluded without advanced targeting and placements, then the reach will become minimal, resulting in the campaign achieving fewer results.

Keeping your clients engaged with your content

Share content that is relevant to your audience, so people are more likely to interact with it.

Prompt conversations and seek feedback on your products and services to learn from your customers and keep them satisfied. This is especially important if you are managing a small business, as it depends on customer retention and loyalty.
Create polls or contests for your audience. That way, you can learn about their preferences, such as which products or services are their favorites. This way, you can get more insights and feedback on your catalogue items and how you can improve to be more customer-oriented.

Create engaging stories with a swipe to like and a swipe up to see the product catalogue and many other options included, as this will result in more views for your followers, keep them engaged with your post, and help you gain comments, likes, and profile follows.

Roadmap to effectively run the campaigns

Step 1: Log in to your Facebook account and go to the Business Manager.

Step 2: Here you will see an option to create a campaign. Click on "Create," and you will get options to choose the goal of your campaign. Please refer to the screenshot below:

Choose your Objective, as it depends on how you want to proceed if you want to bring awareness of your new shop or bring traffic to the website, or Engagement for getting more messages from your potential clients regarding the details of your products/services.

Step 3: Before the creation of your campaign, you can give a name to the campaign, ad set, and ads. Please refer to the screenshot below:

Step 4: Once you click on Create a campaign, you will be redirected to the following window, where you can select Spending limit, A/B test, and Advantage Campaign budget (Always On), which helps you optimize your campaign budget automatically. Refer to screenshot below.

Step 5: In the ad set, determine the target audience that can bring you business. Identify them by geo area, and include their gender and age, as well as their detailed targeting interests, behaviors, or demographics, with a minimum audience size of 300,000 to ensure a fair target audience reach. Please refer to the screenshot below:

Step 6: After you have completed budgeting and targeting audiences, it’s time to configure your ad, establish your Facebook and Instagram identities, and choose if you want to publish a single image or video or a carousel. Once you fill in all the details and upload your content, you will be able to see a live preview of your ad in the right panel.

Step 7: The primary text, headline, and description are important factors for viewers to know your products; here is where you make a storyline and establish a connection with your desired audience. As you update these fields, the preview will show you how your ad is looking from a viewer's perspective. Refer to the below image or the screenshot below:

Step 8: Ensure your landing page and call to action are configured as the viewer clicks on the ad. Where are you redirecting them? On your website or product catalog, check if your pixel is connected so you can track and retarget the people who have shown interest.

Step 9: Review the ads you have created before publishing them; Ensure your landing pages are working, all the options for the public to connect with or contact you are visible, and your images or videos are in place for mobile and desktop experiences, etc. Refer to the screenshot below:

Overall, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp are powerful platforms for advertising your products to your target audience, and all three are linked in one Facebook Business Manager that allows you to engage or create awareness of your business and will yield tremendous results if used properly.