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Power BI 101

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Introduction

Microsoft Power BI is a collection of software services, apps, and connectors that work together to turn your unrelated sources of data into coherent, visually immersive, and interactive insights.

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The parts of Power BI

In order to create reports with Power BI, we must first understand the tools necessary. There are three primary components to Power BI:

Common Workflow in Power BI:

  • Connect to data with Power BI Desktop.
  • Transform and model data with Power BI Desktop.
  • Create visualizations and reports with Power BI Desktop.
  • Publish report to Power BI service.
  • Distribute and manage reports in the Power BI service.
  • View and interact with shared dashboards and reports in Power BI service or Power BI Mobile.

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Building blocks of Power BI

  • Create a semantic model: A semantic model consists of all connected data, transformations, relationships, and calculations. (data modeling)
  • Create visualizations in a report: Create a visualization, and add it to the canvas for a report page.
  • Create a dashboard A collection of visuals from a single page that you can share with others.

Components

  • Dataset: a collection of data that Power BI uses to create its visualizations.

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  • Visualization: a visual representation of data, like a chart, a color-coded map, or other interesting things you can create to represent your data visually.

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  • Tile: a single visualization on a report or a dashboard. It’s the rectangular box that holds an individual visual.

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  • Report: a collection of visualizations that appear together on one or more pages.

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  • Dashboard: a collection of visuals from a single page that you can share with others.

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Summary of Power BI workflow

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Get data with Power BI desktop

  • Download excel file “Financial Sample.xlsx” from http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=521962

  • Launch Power BI Desktop and load the excel file:

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  • Ribbon - Displays common tasks that are associated with reports and visualizations.
  • Report view, or canvas - Where visualizations are created and arranged. You can switch between Report, Data, and Model views by selecting the icons in the left column.
  • Pages tab - Located along the bottom of the page, this area is where you would select or add a report page.
  • Visualizations pane - Where you can change visualizations, customize colors or axes, apply filters, drag fields, and more.

  • Fields pane - Where query elements and filters can be dragged onto the Report view or dragged to the Filters area of the Visualizations pane.

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Create Report using Power BI Desktop

  • Sales by Segment: select Sales and Segment fields or drag and drop into report canvas

  • Sales by Country: select Map visualization and Sales and Country fields

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Publish Report to Power BI service

  • Save report to file: File > Save

  • Publish report into “My workspace”:

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View or Edit Report in Power BI service

  • Login to Power BI service: https://app.powerbi.com
  • Go to Reports in My Workspace and select a report to view
  • Select Edit report to edit it in Power BI service

  • Select Reading view to return to view mode.

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Build Dashboard in Power BI service

  • From Reading view or Edit report mode, select Pin visual to add selected visual to a New or Existing dashboard

  • Go to My workspace to view your dashboard

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View Report and Dashboard in Power BI Mobile

  • Launch Power BI Mobile app and login using your Power BI account

  • Go to My Workspace to open and view report or dashboard

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Use visuals in Power BI desktop

  • Visuals allow you to present data in a compelling and insightful way.
  • Visualizing data is one of the core parts and basic building blocks of Power BI.
  • Creating visuals is one of the most effective ways to find and share your insights.
  • You’ll discover a wide variety of visualizations in Power BI, which offers features such as simple bar charts, pie charts, maps, and many more.
  • Power BI Desktop also offers extensive page formatting tools, such as shapes and images, that help bring your report to life.

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