Visualizing Data Using Power BI

Power BI is a powerful Business Intelligence (BI) tool, made for data visualization, analysis, and reporting. It allows you to generate insights from data and share them with key stakeholders. Power BI is part of the Microsoft Power Platform but goes hand in hand with the Azure data services. Data often comes from Azure or is first processed in a data warehouse in Azure before being ingested into Power BI to report on.

In this chapter, we will explore the basics of Power BI, including how it works, licensing, and how to build reports. We will also go into more advanced topics, such as DevOps, security, and self-service BI.

Following that, we will dive into building reports. We will discuss how to get data into Power BI, including Import mode, DirectQuery, and real-time data. We will also explore how to prepare data using Power Query and DAX Query. Finally, we will look at how to visualize data using reports and dashboards.

After building reports...

Learning how Power BI works

The main usage of Power BI is creating reports that give insights into data. An example of such a Power BI report can be seen here.

Figure 8.1 – An example of a Power BI report

To build and share these reports, Power BI uses multiple tools, such as Power BI Desktop, the Power BI service, and Power BI Report Server. In this section, we try to make sense of the tools and when to use them. We will split up the workings of Power BI into four layers:

• Get data
• Transform and visualize
• Share and collaborate
• Consume

We will give an overview of the layers here, before deep diving in a practical example in the Practice your skills section.

The get data layer describes connectors for getting data in Power BI. The transform and visualize layer uses Power BI Desktop, a free tool that allows you to transform data and develop reports on your desktop computer. Once ready, reports can be published to either...

Choosing the right license and pricing

Licenses are required to publish content for sharing and collaborating with other users and consume shared content. Power BI licensing comes in three flavors: Pro License, Premium Per User License, and Premium Per Capacity license. All prices mentioned are in US dollars.

Figure 8.4 – Power BI pricing (in USD)

Please refer to https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/ for up-to-date pricing.

The Pro License is a per-user license and costs $10 per user/month. This license allows you to publish content to a workspace other than My workspace to share and collaborate with other licensed users. It also allows you to consume shared content. The shared content is hosted on a shared capacity, meaning that some limitations will apply to the resource usage. For example, the data model can’t be bigger than 1 GB (after compression with Vertipaq), the dataset can’t be refreshed more than eight times per...

Practicing your skills

In this section, we are going to show a practical example of how to build a report using Power BI Desktop. As mentioned in the How Power BI works section, we’ll use Power BI Desktop to develop a report.

Getting the data

The first step is to get data. When opening Power BI Desktop, you can connect to data sources by clicking on Get data in the Home tab, or load some sample data by clicking on Try a sample dataset as outlined in the following figure.

Figure 8.7 – Try a sample dataset in Power BI Desktop

Once you have got the data, we will move on to prepare your data.

Preparing the data

Navigator provides the opportunity to change or import the data, with a preview of the data so you can check whether the data is accurate or needs any adjustment. If you need to make any changes, it is recommended to do it before loading the data. In the following steps, we will demonstrate how to use Power Query to transform...

Moving to self-service BI

Over the years, BI has undergone significant changes, with new generations of BI systems emerging to meet the evolving needs of businesses. The three waves of BI, namely technical BI, self-service BI, and end user BI, are key milestones in the history of BI.

Let’s take a look at how each wave changed the way we work in BI:

• First wave: Technical BI refers to the early stages of BI when IT staff, developers, and data analysts relied on technical tools to manage and analyze data. These tools were often expensive and required significant technical expertise to use.
• Second wave: Self-service BI refers to the emergence of BI systems that provided business users with more accessible tools to access and analyze data without relying on IT staff or data analysts. Power BI is an example of a self-service BI tool that provides drag-and-drop interfaces and data visualizations to make it easier for non-technical users to work with data.
• Third wave...

Summary

This chapter provided a comprehensive overview of the essential elements involved in mastering Power BI and transitioning toward a self-service BI approach. We began by delving into the fundamental workings of Power BI, gaining valuable insights into its capabilities and understanding its significance in empowering data-driven decision-making.

The selection of the right license and pricing model was explored in detail, highlighting the importance of aligning the organization’s needs with the appropriate licensing options. By making informed decisions, businesses can optimize their investment in Power BI and ensure they have access to the features that best support their unique BI requirements.

Furthermore, this chapter emphasized the significance of hands-on practice to effectively harness Power BI’s potential. Through practical exercises and real-world scenarios, you had the opportunity to develop and refine your skills, becoming more adept at handling...