Author: Erik

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Let’s Get Visual! Visualization Best Practices

I make a lot of reports and I’m always looking for ways to make better and more efficient reports. I recently read The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte and found it illuminating. Although the book is often heavy in theory, its use of clear prose and myriad of examples – both historic and present – made me more introspective about the reports I create. Anyone who uses visuals in their work could benefit from reading Tufte’s book. In this post I’ll talk about my takeaways from the book.

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Land of FOIA Logs: Illinois Commerce Commission Transit Bureau

Filing FOIA requests to the State of Illinois can seem intimidating, but it shouldn’t be. I’ve requested a lot of FOIA logs from the State of Illinois. To help aspiring FOIA requesters, I’m going to review each agency’s logs and summarize the common requests, and briefly discuss the types of records available. The goal is to give you a head start in your inquiries. 

Related imageThe Illinois Commerce Commission Transit Bureau deals with trains and trucks  – of all varieties – and their related equipment. Have you ever wondered who owns a railroad viaduct? ICCTB can tell you. Want copies of grade crossings? ICCTB again! In legal speak, anything under the Illinois Vehicle Code [625 ILCS 5] you can request from ICCTB.

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How to Use SharePoint PNP to Create a Site Inventory Script

Content inventory scripts are essential for me, my teammates, and my clients. Often though, I find myself re-writing scripts because Client A wants these fields, and Client B wants those fields. To save me the headache of writing a new script every time, I wanted an inventory script that retrieves every field. I was tired of using CSOM scripts for inventory, so instead decided to try using PNP for inventory. Now instead of writing a new script every time, all I need to do is delete columns in Excel instead.

I’ve used PNP for provisioning, but never for inventory. I found that by using PNP the inventory script was much quicker to write and was much more powerful.

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