Getting Started: Power BI Essentials

Bill Pearson
Microsoft Business Intelligence Architect
Senturus, Inc.

Bill is a 30-year BI veteran and CPA with experience in accounting/finance, ERP and CRM systems. Adept in legacy and current platforms, Bill is proficient across the Microsoft Business Intelligence stack and brings a wealth of hands-on experience to his work in Power BI, SQL Server, SQL Server Analysis Services), SQL Server Reporting Services and Excel Power Pivot.

• Introduction: Power BI Desktop
  • Ideal design environment for Power BI
    • Data models
    • Prototyping / proof-of-concept
  • Specifically designed for data analytics
• Power BI Desktop self-service use case
  • I’m an analyst who has data in flat files upon which I want to perform some analysis – and I don’t want to get IT involved in what is an exploration effort.
• Power BI Desktop walkthrough
  • Two data files (Excel spreadsheet and a CSV file)
  • Make data connections to my files
  • Import data
  • Inspect relationships
  • Build a few visualizations
  • Learn about Power BI Desktop features
  • Publish Power BI model to Power BI Service
  • Discuss how to download the free Power BI Desktop
• As a design / development environment
  • Main design steps
    • Connect to data
    • Transform data
    • Refine data model
    • Create relationships
    • Create visualizations
  • Visualizations and fields panes
• Making data connections
  • Import data
  • Direct query
    • Native query direct to data source
    • No data imported / cached
  • Live connection (SSAS only)
    • Power BI connects directly to SSAS, generates DAX
    • Power BI becomes presentation layer for SSAS
  • Options for creating data models
    • Excel PowerPivot
      • Can deploy to Power BI Service or SharePoint
      • Microsoft Office will lag Power BI Desktop
    • Power BI Desktop
      • Combines all Excel Power BI
      • Standalone, free tool
      • Monthly updates with significant advances
      • Can publish only to Power BI Service, Power BI Premium Server and SharePoint 2019
    • How to install Power BI Desktop
      • Free download
        • https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/desktop/
        • Downloads menu in Power BI Service
      • Introduction: Power BI Service
        • Azure-based, business analytics service used for PowerBI.com features, including
          • Connections to online services / sources
          • Publishing / refreshing data models
          • Viewing dashboards and reports online
          • Using Q & A (natural language search)
          • Sharing / collaborating
          • Analyze with Excel
        • Power BI Service walkthrough
          • Inspect published models and explore features
          • Navigate among datasets, reports and dashboards
          • Explain how to assemble dashboards
          • Q & A
          • Discuss how to sign up for the Power BI Service
        • Signing up for Power BI Service and Power BI Desktop
          • Sign up with a domain e-mail address – not common email address
          • Note organization constraints
          • Start with free account – will prompt for Pro account upon attempt to use Pro features (60-day free trial)
        • Signing in to Power BI Service
          • /powerbi.com
        • Understanding Power BI Service
          • Welcome to Power BI page
          • Power BI portal
          • Power BI components
            • Datasets
            • Reports
            • Dashboards
          • Power BI portal: navigation pane
            • Organizes deployed content
            • By default, all content deployed to My Workspace
            • Pro subscription can
              • Create other workspaces for collaboration
              • Select which workspace to deploy content
            • Power BI components
              • Data sources, workbooks and datasets
              • Reports
              • Dashboards
              • The elements depend upon each other
                • Datasets -> reports ->  dashboards

• Power BI components: data sources and datasets
  • Datasets can have multiple tables / other sources
  • Two primary types of data sources
    • Cloud services (SaaS)
    • On-premises data sources
  • Data can either be
    • Imported into a Power BI dataset
    • Left in original source accessed directly via a live connection
  • Power BI Components: Reports
    • Primary way to analyze data in Power BI
    • Reading view vs. editing view
    • Creating reports
      • From scratch
      • Importing from
        • Excel (Power view only – not pivot tables)
        • Power BI Desktop
      • Apps / organizational content packs – reports automatically distributed / access controlled
    • One dataset per report, currently
    • Approaches to multi-source reporting
      • Dashboard
      • Self-serve model
      • Connect to organizational model in SSAS Tabular
        • Simply connect to model
        • Nothing to build or import with dynamic connection
      • Power BI components: dashboards
        • A summarized view of metrics with drill through to underlying detailed reports
        • Creating dashboards
          • From existing reports (pinning)
          • Using Q & A to create / pin report
        • Distributing dashboards
          • Via mail
          • Via app workspaces
        • Drilling into dashboard tiles
          • If created by pinning a visualization, navigates user to corresponding report
          • If created by Q & A, navigates user to page containing natural question with its visualization