In the rapidly evolving field of data, around 402.74 million terabytes of data are created every day. It is estimated that around 90% of the world’s data was generated in the last two years alone. With Data being the key asset to every business, this presents an underlying need to ensure that such enormous amounts of data are being understood and effectively being organized into meaningful information.
Data Analytics and Power BI
Data analysis is the process of converting unorganized, raw data into structured useful insights to aid informed decision making. Data can be analysed with the help of various tools and software programs. Microsoft Power BI is one such tool, having a user-friendly UI (User Interface), this platform can be used for data preparation, visualization, distribution, and Management.
In Power BI, the process of data analysis can be broken down into the following steps:
Power BI offers reporting solutions in three main components:
In this post, we’ll dive into the first three core components of Power BI that empower you to analyze and visualize your data effectively.
1. Power BI Desktop: The Power BI desktop is a free application that can be downloaded on a local PC and offers complete data analysis and report creation tools. Here are some key features of Power BI Desktop:
- Data Import and Transformation: You can get data from various sources like SQL, Excel, Web Services etc.
- Data Modelling: Creating relationships between different data tables, defining measures, and creating calculated columns using DAX.
- Visualizations: Building reports using visuals such as charts, maps, and tables. You can customize visuals and use interactive elements such as slicers and drill-throughs.
- Power Query Editor- Provides a robust interface for data transformations such as filtering, grouping, merging tables and pivoting tables.
- Power BI Service: The Power BI service is a cloud-based service, allowing users to share, manage and organize their reports. Here are some of the features of Power BI service:
- Data Management- Manage and schedule data refreshes for datasets that are published.
- Collaboration and sharing- Organize reports, dashboards, and datasets into workplaces.
- Access and Security- Implementing Row Level Security (RLS) to control data access based on user roles. This ensures users only see data relevant to their role.
3. Power BI mobile: The Power BI mobile allows users to view their Power BI reports on their mobile phones. It is not ideal for creating reports.
A quick look at Power BI’ User Interface (UI)
To help analysts make most of their data, the Power BI desktop has three views:
Report View: This is where all the visuals are created, arranged, and formatted. It is the default view that opens when you start Power BI. It consists of the following elements:
- Ribbon: Here is where all the options for designing and enhancing your reports are available, it is like the ribbon interface in other Microsoft Office products.
- Canvas: Canvas is the white blank space which takes most of the space on the screen, this is where users build their visualizations.
- Pages Tab: Located at the bottom, the pages tab displays the pages in your Power BI report, users can add, remove, rename their pages in this area.
- Visualizations pane: This is where users can select the type of visuals, drag fields, customize colours and axes, apply filters and format visuals.
- Filters pane: All the page level filters can be applied as well as filters only on specific visuals on the page. You can expand the filter pane by clicking on the arrows.
Data View: Data view helps you inspect, explore, and understand your data. It is not the same as Power Query Editor. You can view your data in Data View once it has been loaded into the model. Key features of the Data view include:
- Data Tables: In the Data View, you can see each table that you have loaded into your Power BI model. Each table is displayed with its columns, like a spreadsheet view. You can browse through the rows and columns to understand the data better.
- Column Tools: This has options to change the Data Type, you can specify the data type for each column, such as text, number, date, etc. and format and customize how the data is displayed (e.g., currency, percentages). Data category option can be used Assign categories to data, such as geographic data types like latitude, longitude, or addresses.
- Creating Calculated Columns: You can create new columns using DAX (Data Analysis Expressions) to perform calculations on existing data. This is useful for deriving new insights or metrics directly within your data table.
Model View: All the tables, columns and relationships in your model can be viewed here. You can create relationships between tables and ensure that they are accurately defined. The tables in your database are arranged in a visual layout and you can organize them in a way that makes sense for your analysis.
In the Fields pane all the columns within a table are listed, allowing you to see the data structure and types. In the Properties Pane you can adjust properties of tables, such as renaming them, setting default summarizations, and categorizing data.
DAX Query View: Dax query view allows users to create, edit and see the results of data analysis expressions (DAX) in Power BI.
- See the DAX query of the visuals: You can inspect and see the DAX query of your visuals in case the visuals are not performing as you would expect them to.
- Create your own DAX query: Simply write the DAX query in the DAX query view and click run. You can even define and use measures and variables for that DAX query that do not exist in the model.
- Easy to use: To better comprehend the data, you may either preview the data or get summary statistics without having to write a DAX query or build graphics. In the Data pane of the DAX query view, locate fast queries in the context menu of tables, columns, or measures.
Building Blocks of Power BI
Power BI’s two primary components are semantic models and visualizations.
A semantic model contains all the connected data, transformations, relationships, and calculations. Power BI is a low code solution which means you can drag and drop fields directly on to the canvas. First, we connect to as many data sources we need for our analysis, then we clean and transform our data, after that we establish relationships between tables and create our own calculations. Lastly, we use visuals to create reports and analyse our data.
Stay tuned for the next part of this blog series, where we’ll explore the remaining components of Power BI, including gateways, report servers, and more.
