PDF Introducing Microsoft Power BI

Introducing Microsoft Power BI

Alberto Ferrari and Marco Russo

PUBLISHED BY Microsoft Press A division of Microsoft Corporation One Microsoft Way Redmond, Washington 98052-6399

Copyright ? 2016 by Microsoft Corporation

All rights reserved. No part of the contents of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-1-5093-0228-4

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Microsoft and the trademarks listed at on the "Trademarks" webpage are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies. All other marks are property of their respective owners.

Acquisitions and Developmental Editor: Rosemary Caperton Editorial Production: Dianne Russell, Octal Publishing, Inc. Copyeditor: Bob Russell, Octal Publishing, Inc. Technical Reviewer: Ed Price; Technical Review services provided by Content Master, a member of CM Group, Ltd. Cover: Twist Creative ? Seattle

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Contents

Introduction ....................................................viii Downloads ..................................................................... xi Installing the companion content ..................xii Acknowledgments .....................................................xii Free ebooks from Microsoft Press .................... xiv Errata, updates, & book support ....................... xiv We want to hear from you.....................................xv Stay in touch................................................................xv

Chapter 1: Introducing Power BI .....................1 Getting started with Power BI................................ 4 Uploading data to Power BI ................................. 10 Introducing natural-language queries ............. 13 Introducing Quick Insights....................................16 Introduction to reports ........................................... 22 Introducing Visual Interactions ........................... 30 Decorating the report ............................................. 37 Saving the report ...................................................... 40 Pinning a report.........................................................41

iii

Foreword

Refreshing the budget workbook ...................... 43 Filtering a report ....................................................... 50 Conclusions ................................................................. 55 Chapter 2: Sharing the dashboard.................57 Inviting a user to see a dashboard .................... 58

Inviting users outside your organization .... 66 Creating a group workspace in Power BI ........ 71 Turning on sharing with Microsoft OneDrive for Business ................................................................. 76 Viewing reports and dashboards on mobile devices........................................................................... 94 Conclusions .............................................................. 101 Chapter 3: Understanding data refresh ..... 103 Introducing data refresh ..................................... 105 Introducing the Power BI refresh architecture .............................................................. 107 Introducing Power BI Desktop.......................... 111 Publishing to Power BI......................................... 117 Installing the Power BI Personal Gateway.... 120 Configuring automatic refresh ......................... 128 Conclusions .............................................................. 130 Chapter 4: Using Power BI Desktop ........... 132

iv

Contents

Connecting to a database .................................. 134 Loading from multiple sources ........................ 141 Using Query Editor ................................................ 145 Hiding or removing tables ................................. 159 Handling seasonality and sorting months ... 163 Conclusions .............................................................. 179 Chapter 5: Getting data from services and content packs ........................................ 181 Consuming a service content pack................. 183 Creating a custom dataset from a service ... 197 Creating a content pack for your organization ............................................................. 211 Consuming an organizational content pack ............................................................................. 216 Updating an organizational content pack ... 223 Conclusions .............................................................. 227 Chapter 6: Building a data model ............... 230 Loading individual tables.................................... 232 Implementing measures ..................................... 236 Creating calculated columns ............................. 239 Improving the report by using measures..... 242 Integrating budget information....................... 244

v

Contents

Reallocating the budget...................................... 256 Conclusions .............................................................. 262 Chapter 7: Improving Power BI reports ..... 264 Choosing the right visualizations .................... 267

Choosing between standard visuals .......... 274 Using custom visualizations .............................. 283

First steps with custom visualizations ....... 284 Improving reports by using custom visualizations ....................................................... 291 Identifying conditions when custom visualizations are required............................. 299 Using DAX in data models ................................. 303 Creating high-density reports .......................... 311 Conclusions .............................................................. 320 Chapter 8: Using Microsoft Power BI in your company ........................................... 323 Getting data from existing systems................ 325 Understanding differences between data refresh and live connections .............. 328 Using relational databases on-premises.. 330 Using relational databases in the cloud... 335 Using live connections to Analysis Services ................................................................. 338

vi

Contents

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