What is Power BI?
Power BI is a business intelligence tool that allows you to connect to various data sources,
visualize the data in reports and dashboards, and then share them with anyone you want.
Power BI is made up of 3 main elements:
1. Power BI Desktop - a free desktop application for building and designing reports.
2. Power BI Service - the online publishing service for viewing and sharing reports and
dashboards.
3. Power BI mobile apps - for viewing reports and dashboards on the go.
What is Power BI Used For?
The purpose of BI is to track Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and uncover insights in
business data to better inform decision-making across the organization. Power BI is used in
different ways depending on the role of the individual, from developers, analysts, managers,
and directors to everyone in between.
Power BI is a data analysis & visualization software
How Does Power BI Compare to Other Tools Like Tableau and Excel?
Power BI and Tableau are both business intelligence tools and have a lot of overlap in terms of
their capabilities. There are 2 key differences between Power BI and Tableau:
1. Power BI only works on Windows, whereas Tableau supports Windows and MacOS.
2. Pricing options differ between Power BI and Tableau. However, Tableau is generally the more
expensive option.
See the Power BI vs. Tableau article for an in-depth comparison.
Excel is spreadsheet software. While it contains much of the same core functionality as Power
BI, it has limited visualization options and lacks the ability to refresh, share, and view reports
and dashboards online.
Tableau – from Salesforce (Salesforce acquired Tableau in 2019.) - A powerful tool
known for its interactive dashboards and extensive visualization options.
Power BI – Power BI, a business intelligence and data visualization tool, was first
introduced by Microsoft in July 2011. It was originally named "Project Crescent" and
was bundled with Microsoft SQL Server. In September 2013, it was officially rebranded
and launched as Power BI for Office 365. Microsoft's BI tool that integrates seamlessly
with other Microsoft products.
Downloading and Installing Power BI Desktop
Power BI Desktop is one of the core elements of Power BI and it is the main application for
designing and building reports.
It is recommended to download Power BI Desktop from the Microsoft Store as there are a few
advantages:
Windows will automatically update your Power BI Desktop with the latest version. Since
Microsoft releases updates for Power BI every month, this can be a big time-saver.
Rather than downloading the entire application for each update, Windows will only download
the components that changed in the update. This makes updates faster and is useful if you are
trying to minimize your data usage.
You are not required to have admin privileges on your computer to install or update Power BI
Desktop (as is often the case with company-provided computers). This also speeds up the
Dr.Venakta Kishore Kumar Rejeti, Associate Professor, Dept of CSE-DS
monthly update process since you won't need to contact your IT department whenever you need
to update the application.
If you need to download the Power BI Desktop application directly, go to the product
page and select 'See download or language options'. This will take you to the Microsoft
Download Center, where you can download the latest version of the application.
Keep in mind that you cannot install both the Microsoft Store version and the version from the
download center on your computer at the same time. If you do need to switch, be sure to
uninstall your current version of the application before installing the next.
Power BI will start with a blank report when you launch the application.
Or go to below link to download Microsoft power BI from Microsoft.com
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=58494
In the above window click on download button, then you will get the below window
Dr.Venakta Kishore Kumar Rejeti, Associate Professor, Dept of CSE-DS
Select PBIDesktopSetup_x64.exe and click on download.
Let's go over the components of the Power BI Desktop:
Ribbon - the top ribbon contains most of the controls and options needed for building the
report.
Views - this is made up of the report view, the data view, and the model view.
Canvas - this is the main design area where visualizations and other elements are added.
Page selector - for navigation to other pages in the report.
Filters - fields can be added here to filter the data.
Visualizations - this contains the list of available visualizations.
Fields - this section contains the tables and fields that are available in the data model.
Dr.Venakta Kishore Kumar Rejeti, Associate Professor, Dept of CSE-DS
Importing Data in Power BI Desktop
Data sources and connections
Power BI offers a wide variety of supported data sources and connections, making it incredibly
easy to connect to the data source of your choosing. For this tutorial, we will import some
sample financial data provided by Microsoft.
Importing Excel Data:
Dr.Venakta Kishore Kumar Rejeti, Associate Professor, Dept of CSE-DS
To go get data in ribbon and select excel work sheet and then browse the excel sheet.
Then you will get a navigator with all the sheet of your uploaded excel worksheet (as follows)
Dr.Venakta Kishore Kumar Rejeti, Associate Professor, Dept of CSE-DS
Check the required sheet in the check box and click on load button.
Go to visualization list and select your liked chart. (I Selected stacked column chart)
Dr.Venakta Kishore Kumar Rejeti, Associate Professor, Dept of CSE-DS
Transforming Data in Power BI Desktop (use to fix the data issues)
Data transformation in Power BI involves cleaning, shaping, and restructuring your data to
make it suitable for analysis and reporting. This process often takes place in the Power Query
Editor
Power Query Editor
The Power Query Editor can be broken up into 4 main parts:
Ribbon - the top ribbon contains almost all of the data transformation options you need to
shape your data. We will explore a few common transformations below.
Queries - this lists all the queries you have set up for this report. For complex reports, you can
organize queries into groups for better navigation and management.
Data view - this is the main table containing the data for the selected query as well as a formula
bar. A preview of the data is shown with only the first 1000 rows.
Transformation steps - the right-hand pane contains each of the transformation steps that have
been applied to the selected query. This allows you to keep track of each individual change that
has been made to the data. You can insert, delete, and move steps around as needed.
Dr.Venakta Kishore Kumar Rejeti, Associate Professor, Dept of CSE-DS
However, these are some of the most common transformation steps:
Removing rows and/or columns - some Excel data can have a lot of blank rows
and/or columns inserted for readability and aesthetic purposes, but these are not
useful in Power BI and should be removed.
Changing data types - data types such as number, date, or text should be specified
for each column. Power BI will try to automatically detect the data type, yet it can
sometimes be wrong or there can be errors so it is a good idea to always double-
check the data types.
Combining data with merge and append - similar to join and concatenate in SQL,
these transformations allow you to combine queries from multiple sources.
Pivot and unpivot - these options allow you to transform your data from a wide to
a long format and vice versa. The unpivot option is particularly useful when dealing
with Excel files that have information (such as dates) running across the columns of
a table rather than as rows.
Adding a conditional column - this is a useful transformation that allows you to
add a column based on if/then/else logic.
Dr.Venakta Kishore Kumar Rejeti, Associate Professor, Dept of CSE-DS
Different data sources
Power BI can connect to different data sources for analysis such as Excel, Web, text/CSV,
JSON, PDF, SQL server database, Access database, etc...
Power BI provides ways for its user to import data from multiple data modes which is one of
the most common ways to design a fast performance query method.
Basically these modes is of two types:
1) Direct Query Mode - is an alternate way to define the model structure using metadata
2) Composite Mode – is designed to combine import and DirectQuery mode and allow support
of multiple storage modes. ERP stands for enterprise resource planning management and CRM
stands for customer relationship management.
Dr.Venakta Kishore Kumar Rejeti, Associate Professor, Dept of CSE-DS
