POWER BI – Knowledge Sharing Session

What’s in for You?

Benefits

In this module, you will:

 Understand Basic Building blocks of Power BI
 Learn how Power BI services and applications work together.
 Explore how Power BI can make your business more efficient.
 Learn how to create compelling visuals and reports.

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  Getting Started with Power BI
Module 1  Parts of Power BI
 The flow in Power BI
 Basic Building blocks

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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.
 Power BI can be simple and fast, capable of creating quick insights from an Excel
workbook or a local database.
 Power BI is also robust and enterprise-grade, ready not only for extensive modeling
and real-time analytics, but also for custom development.
 Therefore, it can be your personal report and visualization tool, but can also serve as
the analytics and decision engine behind group projects, divisions, or entire
corporations.
 If you're a beginner with Power BI, this module will get you going.

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Parts of Power BI

 Power BI consists of a Microsoft Windows desktop application called Power BI

Desktop, an online SaaS (Software as a Service) service called the Power BI service,
and mobile Power BI apps that are available on any device, with native mobile BI apps
for Windows, iOS, and Android.
 These three elements—Desktop, the service, and Mobile apps—are designed to let
people create, share, and consume business insights in the way that serves them, or
their role, most effectively.

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Getting Started with Power BI - Download

 You can download Power BI Desktop from the web or as an app from the Microsoft
Store on the Windows tab.

Download Strategy Link Notes

Windows Store App Windows Store Will automatically stay updated

Download from web Download .msi Must manually update

periodically

 Before you can sign in to Power BI, you'll need an account. To get a free trial, go to
app.powerbi.com and sign up with your email address.

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The flow of work in Power BI

 A common flow of work in Power BI begins in Power BI Desktop, where a report is

created. That report is then published to the Power BI service and finally shared, so that
users of Power BI Mobile apps can consume the information.
 It doesn't always happen that way, and that's okay. But we'll use that flow to learn the
different parts of Power BI and how they complement each other.

 The activities and analyses that you'll learn with Power BI generally follow a
common flow. The common flow of activity looks like this:
 Bring data into Power BI Desktop, and create a report.
 Publish to the Power BI service, where you can create new visualizations or
build dashboards.
 Share dashboards with others, especially people who are on the go.
 View and interact with shared dashboards and reports in Power BI Mobile
7 apps.
The flow of work in Power BI..contd
1. As mentioned earlier, you might spend
all your time in the Power BI service,
viewing visuals and reports that have
been created by others.
2. Someone else on your team might
spend their time in Power BI Desktop,
which is fine too.
3. To help you understand the full
continuum of Power BI and what it can
do, we’ll walkthrough all of it – then
you can decide how to use it to your
best advantage.

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Building Blocks of Power BI

 Everything you do in Microsoft Power BI can be broken down into a few basic building
blocks.
 After getting an understanding of these building blocks, you can expand on each of them
and begin creating elaborate and complex reports.
 Let's take a look at these basic building blocks, discuss some simple things that can be
built with them, and then get a glimpse into how complex things can also be created.
 Basic building blocks in Power BI:
 Visualizations
 Datasets
 Reports
 Dashboards
 Tiles

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Building Blocks of Power BI…contd

1. Visualization

 A visualization (sometimes also referred to as a visual) is

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

 Power BI has all sorts of visualization types, and more are

being updated.

 Visualizations can be simple, like a single number that

represents something significant, or they can be visually
complex, like a gradient-colored map that shows voter
sentiment about a certain social issue or concern.

 The goal of a visual is to present data in a way that

provides context and insights, both of which would
probably be difficult to discern from a raw table of
numbers or text

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Building Blocks of Power BI…contd
2. Datasets
 A dataset is a collection of data that Power BI uses
to create its visualizations.

 Datasets can also be a combination of many

different sources, which you can filter and combine
to provide a unique collection of data (a dataset) for
use in Power BI.

 Filtering data before bringing it into Power BI lets

you focus on the data that matters to you. Filtering
helps you focus your data—and your efforts.

 An important and enabling part of Power BI is the

multitude of data connectors that are included –
Power BI has built-in data connectors that let you
easily connect to that data, filter it if necessary, and
bring it into your dataset.

 After you have a dataset, you can begin creating

visualizations that show different portions of it in
different ways, and gain insights based on what you
see. That's where reports come in.
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Building Blocks of Power BI…contd

3. Report

 a report is a collection of visualizations that appear

together on one or more pages. Just like any other report
you might create for a sales presentation or write for a
school assignment, a report in Power BI is a collection of
items that are related to each other.

 The following image shows a report in Power BI Desktop

—in this case, it's the second page in a five-page report.
You can also create reports in the Power BI service.

 Reports let you create many visualizations, on multiple

pages if necessary, and let you arrange those
visualizations in whatever way best tells your story.

 You might have a report about quarterly sales, product

growth in a particular segment, or migration patterns of
polar bears. Whatever your subject, reports let you gather
and organize your visualizations onto one page (or more).
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Building Blocks of Power BI…contd

4. Dashboard

 When you're ready to share a report, or a collection of visualizations, you create a dashboard.

 Much like the dashboard in a car, a Power BI dashboard is a collection of visuals that you can

share with others. Often, it's a selected group of visuals that provide quick insight into the

data or story you're trying to present.

 A dashboard must fit on a single page, often called a canvas (the canvas is the blank backdrop

in Power BI Desktop or the service, where you put visualizations).

 Think of it like the canvas that an artist or painter uses—a workspace where you create,

combine, and rework interesting and compelling visuals.

 You can share dashboards with other users or groups, who can then interact with your

dashboards when they're in the Power BI service or on their mobile device

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Building Blocks of Power BI…contd

5. Tile

 In Power BI, a tile is a single visualization on a dashboard. It's the rectangular box that
holds an individual visual.

 In the image, you see one tile, which is also surrounded by other tiles.

 When you're creating a dashboard in Power BI, you can move or arrange tiles however
you want. You can make them bigger, change their height or width, and snuggle them
up to other tiles.
 When you're viewing, or consuming, a
dashboard or report—which means you're
not the creator or owner, but the report or
dashboard has been shared with you—you
can interact with it, but you can't change
the size of the tiles or their arrangement.
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Building Blocks of Power BI

 Power BI is a collection of services, apps, and connectors that lets you connect to your data, wherever it
happens to reside, filter it if necessary, and then bring it into Power BI to create compelling visualizations
that you can share with others.
 Now that you've learned about the handful of basic building blocks of Power BI, it should be clear that
you can create datasets that make sense to you and create visually compelling reports that tell your
story. Stories told with Power BI don't have to be complex, or complicated, to be compelling.
 For some people, using a single Excel table in a dataset and then sharing a dashboard with their team
will be an incredibly valuable way to use Power BI – for others, the value of Power BI will be in using real-
time Azure SQL Data Warehouse tables that combine with other databases and real-time sources to
build a moment-by-moment dataset.
 For both groups, the process is the same: create datasets, build compelling visuals, and share them with
others. And the result is also the same for both groups: harness your ever-expanding world of data and
turn it into actionable insights.
 Whether your data insights require straightforward or complex datasets, Power BI helps you get started
quickly and can expand with your needs to be as complex as your world of data requires. And because
Power BI is a Microsoft product, you can count on it being robust, extensible, Microsoft Office–friendly,
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and enterprise-ready.
Use of the Power BI service

 As we learned in the previous sections, the common flow of work in Microsoft Power BI is to

create a report in Power BI Desktop, publish it to the Power BI service, and then share it with

others, so that they can view it in the service or on a mobile app.

 But because some people begin in the Power BI service, let's take a quick look at that first, and

learn about an easy and popular way to quickly create visuals in Power BI: apps.

 An app is a collection of preset, ready-made visuals and reports that are shared with an entire

organization. Using an app is like microwaving a TV dinner or ordering a fast-food value meal: you

just have to press a few buttons or make a few comments, and you're quickly served a collection

of entrees designed to go together, all presented in a tidy, ready-to-consume package.

 So, let's take a quick look at apps, the service, and how it works.

 We'll go into more detail about apps (and the service) in upcoming modules, but you can think of
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this as a taste to whet your appetite. You can sign into the service at
Create out-of-box dashboards with cloud services

 With Power BI, connecting to data is easy. From the Power BI

service, you can just select the Get Data button in the lower-

left corner of the home page.

 So when you have signed in to the Power BI service, you will

see a similar image below

 The canvas (the area in the center of the Power BI service)

shows you the available sources of data in the Power BI

service. In addition to common data sources like Microsoft

Excel files, databases, or Microsoft Azure data, Power BI can

just as easily connect to a whole assortment of software

services (also called SaaS providers or cloud services):

Salesforce, Facebook, Google Analytics, and more.

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Create out-of-box dashboards with cloud services…contd

 For these software services, the Power BI service provides a collection of ready-made

visuals that are pre-arranged on dashboards and reports for your organization.

 This collection of visuals is called an app. Apps get you up and running quickly, with

data and dashboards that your organization has created for you.

 There are apps for all sorts of online services.

 The following image shows a page of apps

that are available for different online
services, in alphabetical order.
 This page is shown when you select
the Get button in the Services box (shown
in the previous image).
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Update data in the Power BI service

 You can also choose to update the dataset for an app, or other data that you use in Power
BI.
 To set update settings, select the schedule update icon for the dataset to update, and
then use the menu that appears.
 You can also select the update icon (the circle with an arrow) next to the schedule update
icon to update the dataset immediately

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Update data in the Power BI service…contd

 The Datasets tab is selected on the Settings page that appears. In the right pane, select
the arrow next to Scheduled refresh to expand that section. The Settings dialog box
appears on the canvas, letting you set the update settings that meet your needs.

 There are many more things

you can do with the service,
and we'll cover these later in
this module and in upcoming
modules

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In Summary

 Microsoft Power BI is a collection of software services, apps, and connectors that work together to
turn your data into interactive insights.
 You can use data from single basic sources, like a Microsoft Excel workbook, or pull in data from
multiple databases and cloud sources to create complex datasets and reports.
 Power BI can be as straightforward as you want or as enterprise-ready as your complex global
business requires.
 Power BI consists of three main elements—Power BI Desktop, the Power BI service, and Power BI
Mobile—which work together to let you create, interact with, share, and consume your data the way
you want
 We also discussed the basic building blocks in Power BI:
 Visualizations – A visual representation of data, sometimes just called visuals
 Datasets – A collection of data that Power BI uses to create visualizations
 Reports – A collection of visuals from a dataset, spanning one or more pages
 Dashboards – A single-page collection of visuals built from a report
 Tiles – Snapshots of your data on a dashboard
 In the Power BI service, we installed an app in just a few clicks. That app, a ready-made collection of
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visuals and reports, let us easily connect to a software service to populate the app and bring that
Knowledge Check 1

What is the common flow of activity in Power BI?

A. Create a report in Power BI mobile, share it to the Power BI Desktop, view and
interact in the Power BI service
B. Create a report in the Power BI service, share it to Power BI mobile, interact
with it in Power BI Desktop
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C. Bring data into Power BI Desktop and create a report, share it to the Power BI service, view
and interact with reports and dashboards in the service and Power BI mobile
D. Bring data into Power BI mobile, create a report, then share it to Power BI
Desktop

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Knowledge Check 2

Which of the following are building blocks of Power BI?

A. Tiles, dashboards, databases, mobile devices

B. Visualizations, datasets, reports, dashboards, tiles

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C. Visual Studio, C#, and JSON files

D. Power BI Desktop, Power BI Service, Power BI mobile

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Knowledge Check 3

A collection of ready-made visuals, pre-arranged in dashboards and reports is

called what in Power BI?

A. The canvas

B. The scheduled refresh

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C. An app

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  Preparing data for Analysis
Module 2  Getting data into Power Bi
 Cleaning, transforming and loading data into Power BI

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Get data into Power BI

 Before you can create reports, you must first extract data from the various data
sources –
 After gaining understanding of the systems, you can use Power Query to help you
clean the data, such as renaming columns, replacing values, removing errors, and
combining query results.
 Power Query is also available in Excel. After the data has been cleaned and organized,
you're ready to build reports in Power BI.
 Finally, you'll publish your combined dataset and reports to Power BI service – other
people can use your dataset and build their own reports or they can use the reports
you’ve already built. Additionally, if someone else built a dataset you'd like to use, you
can build reports from that too!
 This module will focus on the first step of getting the data from getting data from
Excel (for this module) and importing it into Power BI by using Power Query
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Get data into Power BI… contd

 Organizations often export and store data in files. One possible file format is a
flat file.
 A flat file is a type of file that has only one data table and every row of data is in
the same structure – the file doesn't contain hierarchies.
 Most common types of flat files, which are comma-separated values (.csv) files,
delimited text (.txt) files, and fixed width files.
 Another type of file would be the output files from different applications, like
Microsoft Excel workbooks (.xlsx).

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Get data into Power BI… contd

 Power BI Desktop allows you to get data from many types of files.
 You can find a list of the available options when you use the Get data feature in
Power BI Desktop.

 Lets say for example, The Human Resources (HR) team has prepared a flat file
that contains some of your organization's employee data, such as employee
name, staff id, email address, hire date, position, and line manager.
 They've requested that you build Power BI reports by using this data, and data
that is located in several other data sources.

 The first step is to determine which file location you want to use to export and
store your data.
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 Get data into Power BI… contd

 Your Excel files might exist in one of the following locations:

 Local - You can import data from a local file into Power BI. The file isn't moved into Power BI, and a link
doesn't remain to it. Instead, a new dataset is created in Power BI, and data from the Excel file is loaded into
it. Accordingly, changes to the original Excel file aren't reflected in your Power BI dataset. You can use local
data import for data that doesn't change.
 OneDrive for Business - You can pull data from OneDrive for Business into Power BI. This method is effective
in keeping an Excel file and your dataset, reports, and dashboards in Power BI synchronized. Power BI
connects regularly to your file on OneDrive. If any changes are found, your dataset, reports, and dashboards
are automatically updated in Power BI.
 OneDrive - Personal - You can use data from files on a personal OneDrive account, and get many of the
same benefits that you would with OneDrive for Business. However, you'll need to sign in with your personal
OneDrive account, and select the Keep me signed in option. Check with your system administrator to
determine whether this type of connection is allowed in your organization.
 SharePoint - Team Sites - Saving your Power BI Desktop files to SharePoint Team Sites is similar to saving to
OneDrive for Business. The main difference is how you connect to the file from Power BI. You can specify a
URL or connect to the root folder.

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Connect to data in a file

 In Power BI, on the Home tab, select Get data. In the list that displays, select the option that
you require, such as Text/CSV or XML. For this example, you'll select Excel
 Depending on your selection, you need to find and open your data source. You might be
prompted to sign into a service, such as OneDrive, to authenticate your request.
 In this example, you'll open the Employee Data Excel workbook (or any other workbook) that
is stored on the Desktop (Remember, no files are provided for practice, these are hypothetical
steps)

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Select the file to import

 After the file has connected to Power BI

Desktop, the Navigator window opens.

 This window shows you the data that is

available in your data source (the Excel
file in this example). You can select a
table or entity to preview its contents, to
ensure that the correct data is loaded
into the Power BI model.

 Select the check box(es) of the table(s)

that you want to bring in to Power BI.

 This selection activates the Load and

Transform Data buttons as shown in the
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following image.
Change the source file

 You might have to change the location of a source file for a

data source during development, or if a file storage location
changes.
 To keep your reports up to date, you'll need to update your
file connection paths in Power BI.
 Power Query provides many ways for you to accomplish this
task, so that you can make this type of change when
needed.
 Data source settings
 Query settings
 Advanced Editor

 For example, try changing the data source file path in the
data source settings.
 Select Data source settings in Power Query. In the Data
source settings window, select your file and then
select Change Source. Update the File path or use

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the Browse option to locate your file, select OK, and then
select Close.
Resolve Data import issues

 While importing data into Power BI, you may encounter errors resulting from factors such as:

 Power BI imports from numerous data sources.

 Each data source might have dozens (and sometimes hundreds) of different error messages.

 Other components can cause errors, such as hard drives, networks, software services, and

operating systems.

 Data often can't comply with any specific schema.

 The following sections cover some of the more common error messages that you might

encounter in Power BI.

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Resolve Data import issues…contd

1. Query timeout expired

 Relational source systems often have many people
who are concurrently using the same data in the
same database. Some relational systems and their
administrators seek to limit a user from
monopolizing all hardware resources by setting a
query timeout.
 These timeouts can be configured for any timespan,
from as little as five seconds to as much as 30
minutes or more.
 For instance, if you’re pulling data from your
organization’s SQL Server, you might see the error
shown in the following figure.

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Resolve Data import issues…contd

2. Power BI Query Error: Timeout expired

 This error indicates that you’ve pulled too much data according to your organization’s policies.
Administrators incorporate this policy to avoid slowing down a different application or suite of
applications that might also be using that database.
 You can resolve this error by pulling fewer columns or rows from a single table.
 While you're writing SQL statements, it might be a common practice to include groupings and
aggregations. You can also join multiple tables in a single SQL statement.
 Additionally, you can perform complicated subqueries and nested queries in a single statement.
These complexities add to the query processing requirements of the relational system and can
greatly elongate the time of implementation.
 If you need the rows, columns, and complexity, consider taking small chunks of data and then
bringing them back together by using Power Query. For instance, you can combine half the
columns in one query and the other half in a different query. Power Query can merge those two
queries back together after you're finished.

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Resolve Data import issues…contd

3. We couldn't find any data formatted as a table

 Occasionally, you may encounter the “We couldn’t find any data formatted as a table” error while
importing data from Microsoft Excel.
 Fortunately, this error is self-explanatory. Power BI expects to find data formatted as a table from
Excel.

 The error event tells you the resolution. Perform the following steps to resolve the issue:
 Open your Excel workbook, and highlight the data that you want to import.
 Press the Ctrl-T keyboard shortcut. The first row will likely be your column headers.
 Verify that the column headers reflect how you want to name your columns. Then, try to
import data from Excel again. This should work.

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Resolve Data import issues…contd

4. Couldn’t find file

 While importing data from a file, you may get the "Couldn't find
file" error
 Usually, this error is caused by the file moving locations or
the permissions to the file changing. If the cause is the
former, you need to find the file and change the source
settings.
a. Open Power Query by selecting the Transform
Data button in Power BI.
b. Highlight the query that is creating the error.
c. On the left, under Query Settings, select the gear
icon next to Source
d. Change the file location to the new location.

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Resolve Data import issues…contd

5. Data Type Errors

 Sometimes, when you import data into Power BI, the columns appear blank. This situation
happens because of an error in interpreting the data type in Power BI. The resolution to this error
is unique to the data source. For instance, if you're importing data from SQL Server and see blank
columns, you could try to convert to the correct data type in the query.
 Instead of using this query:
SELECT CustomerPostalCode FROM Sales.Customers
Use this query:
SELECT CAST(CustomerPostalCode as varchar(10)) FROM Sales.Customers
 By specifying the correct type at the data source, you eliminate many of these common data
source errors.
 You may encounter different types of errors in Power BI that are caused by the diverse data source
systems where your data resides.
 If you experience an error not covered, you can search Microsoft documentation for the error
message, and the resolution you need.
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Cleaning, transforming and loading data into Power BI

 This section will be a hands on practice module (Automation of Divisional Reports using BI)
 This lab is one of many in a series of labs that was designed as a complete story from data
preparation to publication as reports and dashboards.
 The following steps will be followed in the practice tomorrow
 Prepare Data in Power BI Desktop
 Load Data in Power BI Desktop
 Design a Data Model in Power BI
 Design a Report in Power BI Desktop
 Enhance a Report in Power BI Desktop
 Perform Data Analysis in Power BI
 Create a Power BI Dashboard
 This lab is designed to make you familiarize with Power BI Desktop application and how to
connect to data and how to use data preview techniques to understand the characteristics and
quality of the source data.

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 N S
S TIO
E
QU

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Thank you