Chapter 6: Unlocking Insights

Now that we have built and verified our data model, we will explore the many powerful features within Power BI that allow us to break down, analyze, and unlock insights about our data. These features allow the report author to create compelling stories about the data within the data model, guiding report viewers to the most important insights and information.

Unlocking insights is all about creating reports that allow business users to easily navigate a report seamlessly while providing visualizations that make logical sense to the viewer. This often means that raw data needs to be massaged into groups and hierarchies. In addition, it is important to reduce clutter and only provide data that is relevant to the viewer. Navigational aids allow viewers to seamlessly navigate complex reports intuitively, providing a superior user experience. Finally, advanced analysis techniques are useful for providing a deeper understanding of the data in a visually appealing...

Technical requirements

You will need the following to follow the instructions in this chapter:

• An internet connection.
• Microsoft Power BI Desktop.
• Download LearnPowerBI_CH6Start.pbix from GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Learn-Power-BI-second-edition/tree/main/Chapter06.
• Check out the following video to see the Code in Action: https://bit.ly/3C1Adxr

Segmenting data

Power BI provides several mechanisms for segmenting data. These include the ability to use groups, hierarchies, and Row-Level Security (RLS). Segmenting data allows you to partition or group individual rows of data into logical units that make sense to an organization. This helps ensure that business rules are enforced or that metrics can be shown in a manner that is more easily digestible by business users versus looking at individual rows of data.

In this section, we will learn how to create groups that provide business-relevant segmentation of data, as well as logical hierarchies that classify information based on business structures. Finally, we will explore how to automatically filter data so that only the data that's relevant to the viewer is displayed.

Creating groups

The easiest way to see grouping in Power BI is to use visualizations to summarize data. We can do this by following these steps:

1. Create a new page, Page 2, in Power BI Desktop...

Advanced analysis techniques

So far, we have seen how we can segment our data using groups and hierarchies, as well as how to use navigational features such as drill-through, Q&A, and bookmarks to uncover and highlight insights into our data. But Power BI still has more to offer with regard to visual features that also allow us to highlight information that is of particular interest or analyze our data in unique ways.

In this section, we will cover a variety of features that enable business users to immediately gain additional detail and insights, including analysis and summarization, Top-N filtering, advanced visualizations, what-if parameters, conditional formatting, quick measures, and report page tooltips. Using these techniques as appropriate can greatly aid in understanding the raw data and unlock meaningful insights that are important to a business.

The Analyze and Summarize features

Power BI provides powerful machine learning and artificial intelligence features...

Summary

In this chapter, we built upon the data model and calculations we created in the previous chapter and learned how to take advantage of the powerful features within Power BI. These features include the ability to segment our data into groups and hierarchies. In addition, we learned how to expand, collapse, and drill up and down through hierarchies, as well as how to use RLS. Next, we learned how additional Power BI features such as drill-through, buttons, Q&A, and bookmarks can be used to provide navigational pathways within reports that viewers can use to unlock self-service business intelligence insights.

Finally, we explored advanced analysis techniques such as Analyze, Summarize, Top-N filtering, gauge visualizations, KPI visualizations, what-if parameters, conditional formatting, quick measures, report tooltip pages, and the advanced key influencers visualization. These advanced analysis and visualization techniques allow the report author to build truly engaging...

Questions

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

• What are the two different methods of segmenting data in Power BI?
• What are the four operations for working with hierarchies?
• What feature would a report author use to ensure that people within different roles only see the information that's relevant to their particular role?
• How is drill-through different than drilling up and down through hierarchies?
• What are the six actions buttons can perform?
• Why is data categorization important for Q&A?
• What are synonyms and where can they be added within Power BI Desktop?
• What is a bookmark and what information can it save as part of its definition?
• What advanced visualization feature allows you to create a measure that can be adjusted by a report viewer?
• What are the three settings that must be adjusted when creating a report tooltip page, and how is a report tooltip page activated for use?

Further reading

For more information about the topics that were covered in this chapter, take a look at the following resources:

• Using grouping and binning in Power BI Desktop: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/desktop-grouping-and-binning
• RLS with Power BI: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-admin-rls
• Set up drillthrough in Power BI reports: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/desktop-drillthrough
• Create buttons in Power BI reports: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/desktop-buttons
• Specify data categories in Power BI Desktop: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/desktop-data-categorization
• Best practices to optimize Q&A in Power BI: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/desktop-qna-in-reports
• Create report bookmarks in Power BI to share insights and build stories: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/desktop-bookmarks
• Create and use what-if parameters to visualize variables in Power BI Desktop...