Chapter 3: Up and Running with Power BI Desktop

The first step to being able to do almost anything in Power BI is to get Power BI Desktop up and running and have some data loaded to use in creating visualizations. This chapter will get you up and running quickly with Power BI by showing you how to download and install Power BI Desktop, familiarizing you with the Power BI Desktop interface, and then showing you how to work with some simple data and visualizations.

The following topics will be covered in this chapter:

• Downloading and running Power BI Desktop
• Touring the desktop
• Generating data
• Creating visualizations

Technical requirements

The following are some requirements to successfully complete the instructions in this chapter:

• You will need a connection to the internet.
• You will need Windows 10, Windows 8.1, or Windows Server 2012 R2 or later.
• .NET 4.6.2 or later.
• Microsoft Power BI Desktop requires Internet Explorer 11 or later.
• At least 2 GB of available memory (RAM).
• At least a 1440x900 or larger display.
• Microsoft Power BI Desktop is available for 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (x64) platforms, but a 64-bit processor running at 1 GHz or better is recommended.
• Check out the following video to see the Code in Action: https://bit.ly/3of2bkm

Downloading and running Power BI Desktop

There are actually three different versions of the Power BI Desktop application. Each version has its own methods for downloading and installing. The three versions of the Power BI Desktop are as follows:

• Power BI Desktop (the trusted Microsoft Store app)
• Power BI Desktop (MSI)
• Power BI Desktop (Report Server edition)

Downloading Power BI Desktop

Downloading and installing Power BI Desktop varies slightly based upon the version being downloaded.

Power BI Desktop (the trusted Microsoft Store app)

Power BI Desktop (the trusted Microsoft Store app) is the preferred Power BI Desktop application to install and use. Microsoft recommends this version of the Power BI Desktop as it is specifically built for use on 64-bit, Windows 10 and keeps itself updated automatically. This version of the desktop has the additional requirement of running Windows 10 version 14393 or later.

This version of the desktop works like other...

Touring the desktop

If you are familiar with Microsoft Office programs, many of the user interface elements of the Power BI Desktop will look familiar. The following screenshot depicts the nine major interface elements of Power BI Desktop:

Figure 3.1 – Power BI Desktop interface elements

The Power BI Desktop user interface comprises nine areas, as shown in the preceding screenshot. Let's delve deeper into each of these areas.

Header

In the preceding screenshot (Figure 3.1), the Header is the small strip at the top of Power BI Desktop. This area is standard for Windows applications, including the Minimize, Restore down/Maximize, and Close icons in the upper-right corner.

In the far-left corner are icons for Save, Undo the last action, and Redo the last action. To the right of these icons is the name of the currently opened file, or Untitled if the file has not been saved; next to that is the name of the application. For Power BI Desktop...

Generating data

Power BI Desktop is all about connecting to data, modeling that data, and then visualizing that data. Therefore, it makes sense that you cannot really do much within Power BI without data.

So, in order to get started, we are going to create some data to familiarize you with basic operations within the desktop.

Creating a calculated table

First, we will create a calculated table as follows:

1. While in Report view, click on the Modeling tab.
2. Choose New Table from the Calculations section of the ribbon. The formula bar will appear with the words Table =, and the cursor will become active within the formula bar.
3. Type the following formula into the formula bar, replacing the existing text in its entirety:

   Calendar = CALENDAR( DATE(2017 ,1 ,1), DATE(2019 ,12 ,31) )

The preceding and subsequent formulas in this book are created and tested for the English language version of Windows and Power BI Desktop. Different language settings for Windows or...

Creating visualizations

Human beings are visual creatures. In the same way that a picture is worth a thousand words, so too can visualizations of data convey information and insights in a manner that is just not possible otherwise.

Creating your first visualization

Follow these steps to create your first visualization:

1. Begin by clicking on the Report view in the Views area.
2. In the Fields pane, if your Calendar table is not already expanded so that you can see the column names in the table, simply click the > icon to the left of the table name to expand the table and show the columns.
3. Start by clicking on the IsWorkDay column and drag and drop this column onto the canvas. Instantly, you have a clustered column chart whose y axis goes from 0 to 800. If you hover your mouse over the column, you will see the text IsWorkDay 782 displayed. This popup is called a Tooltip, and this indicates that there are 782 combined working days (Monday-Friday) in the years 2017...

Summary

In this chapter, we downloaded and installed Power BI Desktop. We then took a quick tour of the desktop application's major user interface components, generated some working data to create a simple data model, and created some basic visualizations of that data model. We also learned how to format and add analytics to these visuals as well as how to control the way in which visuals interact with one another on a page.

In the next chapter, we will explore Power BI Desktop's data ingest capabilities and add more data to our data model.

Questions

As an activity, try to answer the following questions on your own:

• What are the three different versions of Power BI Desktop?
• What are the nine major areas of the Power BI Desktop user interface?
• What are the three different views available in Power BI Desktop?
• What is DAX?
• What is DAX used for?
• What are the seven different panes that can be displayed in Power BI Desktop?
• What are the three sub-panes available in the Visualizations pane?
• What three types of interactions can there be between visuals?

Further reading

To learn more about the topics that were covered in this chapter, please take a look at the following references:

• Get Power BI Desktop: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/fundamentals/desktop-get-the-desktop
• Getting started with Power BI Desktop: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/desktop-getting-started
• Apply DAX basics in Power BI Desktop: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/desktop-quickstart-learn-dax-basics
• Add visualizations to a Power BI report (part 1): https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/visuals/power-bi-report-add-visualizations-i
• Add visualizations to a Power BI report (part 2): https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/visuals/power-bi-report-add-visualizations-ii