[Podcast] How to make Microsoft Power BI Data Dance
Updated: Aug 17, 2021
Microsoft Power BI is a wonderful and easy tool to use to create stunning visualizations from your data. In this podcast, we'll show you just how easy it is to make your data dance through visualizations.
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Show Notes
How to Get Data
Different Options
Excel Example
What is it?
A slicer can be shown from one of various types
What are the different types (Show Page with them listed)
How to Change Colors
How to add your logo
How to publish
How to make dashboard
How to edit mobile view
Transcript
Michael Intravartolo here from Solution Systems and today it’s time to make that Microsoft Power BI Data Dance.
SSI PODCAST INTRO
Who in today’s day-and-age who wants to look at these old boring Excel sheets to see numbers and decipher trends? Not this guy, that’s for sure. I much rather see color coded visualizations---which, just happens to be Power BI’s strong suit. So for today’s podcast we’re going to switch it up a bit and include a screen share of my Power BI Desktop so I can show you things like how to pull your data in from Excel, Slicers, Visualizations, and a few other things.
HOW TO GET DATA
Alright, the first thing we have to do is get some data into Power BI to work with. If you click up here where it says Get Data, you’ll see all the different sources that Power BI can pull data in from. For this podcast we’re going to choose Excel. We just locate our file, click open, and choose which data we want. I’m selecting financials and on the right you’ll see a preview of the data. This all looks good so I’ll click the Load Button. Oh, and don’t worry. You don’t have to keep switching between Power BI and Excel to see your data in the Excel form. You just go over to the left side of your screen and select this little Excel looking icon.
SLICER
Once the data is loaded you’ll see your fields on the right hand side of Power BI. These are reflecting our Excel Column headers. The first thing I like to do is add a slicer, which is this icon right here, and for this slicer I want to be able to use it for Month Name. So what exactly is a slicer you ask? A slicer is used to filter the results of visuals on your report page. You’ll see more of how it works in just a few minutes.
VISUALIZATIONS
Now that we have our slicer added let’s make this data dance. Over here you can see all of the visualizations that Power BI has available. Everything from a Stacked Bar Chart, to a Pie Chart, to a Matrix. I’m going to start with the Stacked Column Chart and I want to see Product and Sale Price……perfect. I now have a visual representation of my Excel data with just a matter of 3 clicks. Now let’s add a Pie Chart showing Product and Units Sold….looks good.
Since we have not selected a particular month in our slicer we’re seeing all of the data in these charts. If we want to filter for specific months we just click which month we want to see in the slicer. Let’s click April and we can see that Montana product had the highest Sale Price but that Paseo had the most units sold. Now maybe we want to see if there was a Sale Price difference between countries. We simply click the chart that we want to have this field reflected on, in this case it’s the Sale Price by Product chart, and then we click Country. Now we can see the different countries reflected on our chart. You can also hover over the information in any given chart to see the specific number. For instance, the Montana product Sale Price in The United States was 300 where as in Mexico it was 350. We can also see that Paseo had 23,653 units sold in April which was 29.98% of all product units sold.
COLORS
Ok, we have a few charts added to our Power BI page but they do not reflect our company’s color branding scheme. To change this, we simply select the chart that we want and select the format icon which is the paint roller. We then select Data colors and choose which color we’d like for each Country.
Yes, it’s really that simple.
CHANGING VISUALIZATIONS
We’ve now changed the color scheme but also realized a different chart would work better. Do you have to start all over? The answer is no. Select the chart you’d like to change and then click which visualization you’d like. I’m going to click the Stacked Area Chart and there you have it.
PUBLISH TO POWER BI WEB CLIENT
We now have the data formed into the visuals that we want. What happens if you want to show others this data or see it on your phone or tablet? Well, to answer these questions we first have to publish this data to the Power BI Web Client. Publishing to the web client will link the data to the Power BI app and this app is available for your phone or tablet.
So to publish you first have to login in to the Power BI web client. This can be done through your Office 365 login or PowerBI.com. Once you’ve logged into the web client you then have to make sure your data is saved. Next we click publish in the ribbon and it’s going to ask you to select a destination. I’ll choose My Workspace and wait a minute and we should be good to go………perfect.
Let’s now go to the Power BI Web Client and if we go into my Workspaces section I can see the dataset that I published titled Power BI Podcast. If we scroll up to Reports and click on Power BI Podcast I should be able to see exactly what I created in Power BI Desktop.
HOW TO SEE ON MOBILE CLIENT
This reports section is where I create dashboards to allow me to see the data on my mobile app or if I’m a Power BI Pro subscriber I can share these dashboards with whomever I choose.
To create a dashboard simply use the slicer and choose which data you’d like to see, I’ll select July. Next we hover over the chart we want to add to the dashboard and select the pin icon. Power BI asks us where we’d like to pin this to and I’ll select New dashboard, call it Power BI Podcast and click Pin. Now let’s scroll up to Dashboards and select Power BI Podcast and there’s my chart I just pinned. This is now viewable on your Power BI app or like I said before if you have Power BI Pro you can share this dashboard with anyone.
In our next Power BI video I’ll show you how to import new information added into your existing Excel file into Power BI desktop and then we’ll take a deeper dive into the Power BI Web Client.
Thanks for tuning in and if you have any other Power BI related questions you can reach us through our website at solsyst.com.
Remember to keep doing what you’re doing but make sure you’re working smarter every day.
Which are your favorite Power BI visualizations to use? Tell us in the comments section below. As always feel free to contact us for all your Power BI help.