Introduction to Power BI

What is Power BI?

Power BI is a powerful Business Intelligence (BI) and Data Visualization tool developed by Microsoft. It is widely used for Data Analysis and reporting purposes in organizations and across various industries.

Why Power BI?

Power BI is popular for several key reasons:

1. User-Friendly Interface
2. Data Integration: Can integrate data from different sources to one place and can perform visualization
3. Data Transformation and Cleansing
4. Data Modelling: To establish a relation between the loaded tables by performing Joins
5. Interactive Visualizations
6. Cross-Platform Compatibility: Power BI tool can be accessed from Web Service, Mobile App and Desktop
7. Collaboration and Sharing: Can publish the created report with Stakeholders
8. Data Security and Governance: All security aspects taken care of.

Power BI Features

1. Dataset Filtering
2. Numerous Data Visualizations
3. Flexible Tiles & navigation pane
4. Customizable Dashboards
5. DAX Data Analysis (DAX is basically an expression/formula through which we can create new columns or new measures in our data)

Difference between Power BI Desktop, Power BI Service and Power BI Mobile

Power BI Desktop is used for creating reports, Power BI Service (or Power BI Online) is the cloud service for sharing and collaborating on reports and Power BI Mobile allows users to access reports on mobile devices.

Data Sources

We can load/import data in Power BI Desktop from different sources in order to perform Data Visualization such as: Excel Workbook, SQL Server, different file formats such as Text/CSV, JSON files, different Databases and many other sources.

Views in Power BI Desktop

Power BI tool contains three views in order to view the data based on the available options such as: Report View, Table View & Model View.

In Report View, we usually see the visualization of data in a report form which can be shared with Stakeholders for their further Analysis.

1. In Table View, we usually see the data in table form i.e. in the form of Row and columns for better understanding of the data to improve the business model. With Table view, you can see/explore the data after it has been loaded into the model.
2. In Model View, we usually see the tables, columns, and relationships between tables.
3. In Report View, three panes sections get visible named as Filters, Visualizations & Data.

Different Pane Sections in Power BI Desktop

We have three Pane sections in Power BI Desktop: Data, Visualizations & Filters.

1. In Data pane section, we can see the tables and columns which was loaded through a Data source.
2. With Visualizations and Filters section, we can transform our data into a report, and we can also perform some transformation on the visualization of data by controlling the available features from these panes section as type of visualization, coloring, filtering based on conditions, and formatting of data under visualization.

Different Charts/Visual options in Power BI

In Visualization pane section, we have different chart types to build visuals to analyse the data and most common used are as follow:

1. Table: to show data in row and column form by fetching the required columns in ‘Columns’ field.
2. Matrices: to show data in table form but we will get three options as Row, Column and Value and we can drag and drop the required column in these options to build the visual.
3. Card & Multi-row card: to provide a piece of specific information. This can include an aggregated number of the data such as total sales done over a year.
4. Area Chart: to visualize data over a continuous time period in a graphical format such as to show the volume of a trend across time such as profit revenue per month.
5. Bar Chart: to compare different categories of data. Through bar chart, we can display the absolute value of the data.
6. Pie Chart: to show the relative sizes of different categories of data in the form of slices filled with different colours.
7. Maps: to create and customize maps to display the data based on location perspective.
8. Slicer: is used to filter the other visuals on the page so that we can sort information and can customizes our charts based on filter.
9. Funnel Chart: to show the flow of data or process steps sequentially from one stage to the next one.

Conclusion

Power BI is a tool not a language which is used for aggregating, analysing, visualizing and sharing data in form of reports.