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Why I started using Microsoft PowerBi and so should you

Microsoft’s stocks have been performing really well for the past couple of years now. I believe it is due to their continuous efforts in improving their cloud services and adding new applications to their long list of essential business applications for people in the enterprise, schools, and even small businesses. One of their latest applications is PowerBi, a business analytics software for data visualization and I can honestly say, people should be using this application.

First, it is free. At least for now. I use the PowerBi desktop version which doesn’t require an Office 365 account to work (by not signing in). You could then extract your data from multiple different sources, and create wonderful diagrams, charts, and interactive reports.


For me, Excel and SQL Server are among the most popular data sources for PowerBi. I, for one, use both. Even just for simple data cleaning, this amazing software works wonders.



I usually use PowerBi to clean some data before using Python (Jupyter Notebook) for data analysis. Though right now, it is for smaller-size data as it continues to improve performance-wise.

My usual steps go something like this:

  • Organize my data sources. I usually have my Excel files in my OneDrive and the SQL Server SQL commands tested using SQL Server. 

  • Using SQL when querying data makes the PowerBi file size much smaller so I test them first to get my desired data.

  • Transform data by properly changing data types, removing empty rows, or renaming some columns.

  • Then I start creating new calculated columns, measured values, or merged data.

  • I start designing the graphical interface using the visualization and filter tabs.


Familiarize yourself with the interface before we get started:


Orange Border

Data: This is where you pick your dataset from different sources like SQL Server database, Excel files, and many more. These options keep updating and growing.


Blue Border

Queries: Edit Queries (Using M language - More about this later), change the data type of each column, or refresh the data query.


Purple Border

Visualizations: Selection of different visualization (charts, slicer, table, etc.) tools.

Fields: These contain the tables/data sets obtained from a query.

Filters: Filter options per selected visualization tool.


Yellow Border

Values: When a visual is selected, this is where the user edits/adds data either by dragging a column table from the Fields, changing parameters of a chart like adding background color, changing fonts, etc.

Main Toolbar: Contains Data, Queries, Share, Calculations, and Insert options.


Green Border

Side Toolbar: Data Model, Data View (Using DAX), Relationship.


I will write more tutorials in the future regarding more PowerBi capabilities including more visualization, merging, and creating one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many relationships.


Cheers,

Philip
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Location: Edmonton

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