Category: Power BI

Quick Insights are a feature of Power BI that analyses data sets and finds patterns, trends and outliers. Once your data is uploaded to the Power BI cloud, you can use the Quick Insights feature. Using it is simple. First log into https://powerbi.com. Go to a report you have created in your app workspace and select the Quick Insights icon: Alternatively, select the Dataset and View Insights. The insights actually … Continue reading Using Quick Insights in Power BI

To create a report in the Power BI Service, go through the following steps. Log into https://powerbi.com and select your app workspace: Click on Dataset and select a dataset. If you do not have one, create one. For example, to create a dataset from an Excel file, select + Create ->Dataset: Under Files, select Get: Select Local File. I have a customers.csv file I will upload: The dataset will be … Continue reading Creating a Report in the Power BI Service

To install the Word Cloud Visual by Microsoft for Power BI, first open Power BI Desktop, and under Visualizations, select Import from marketplace: Find Word Cloud and click Add: Click OK: Now under Visualizations you will see the Word Cloud icon: Select it. In our example, our Opportunity records have a name field, which describes customer opportunities. We will use that as the Category of the word cloud. You can … Continue reading Installing and Using the Word Cloud Visualization for Power BI

To create a dashboard in the Power BI service, go through the following steps. First, select your workspace: From the top right, select Create->Dashboard: Provide a dashboard name, e.g. Carl’s Dashboard: You will see a blank screen with options. Select + Add Tile: You can select from: Web Content Image Text box Video Real-Time Data Web Content Select web content. Click Next: Here we can add web content such as … Continue reading Creating a Dashboard from Within Power BI Service

Power BI has now moved into a preview feature. In a previous post, I spoke about the announcement of Power BI Home and what it means. In this post we will explore using the new home. We can see the welcome message – “Everything you need in one place: Your top visuals are displayed for easy consumption. Your favorites, frequents, and recents are close at hand. And you can explore learning … Continue reading Power BI Home – Exploring the Features

Power BI announced a new collaborative feature of allowing users to provide comments in dashboards as well as to specific visuals. In this post, we will look at how to use this new feature. First, sign into https://powerbi.com and select an app. We will open the Sales Analytics for Dynamics 365 app: This will open a dashboard: In the toolbar, you will see Comments. Select it: On first selecting, you will … Continue reading Deep Dive into Comments and @Mentions in Power BI

Thinking of learning Power BI? There are plenty of great ways to learn Power BI and get Power BI training. Below is a list of my favorite resources. All are free, except the paid courses as mentioned at the end (no affiliation, but including these for completeness). 1. Guy in a Cube Guy in a Cube is a YouTube Channel by Microsoft employees Adam Saxton and Patrick LeBlanc: The guys do … Continue reading Thinking of Learning Power BI? Check Out My Top Learning Resources

In Power BI, we may want to compare periods with our data to create reports such as year over year comparisons. Power BI offers several DAX time intelligence functions. In this post we will look at SAMEPERIODLASTYEAR. Let’s say we have an Orders table that contains orders for the last 2 years. The table contains an Order Date and a Ship Date: We also have a standard Dates table. Now let’s … Continue reading Power BI – Year over Year (YOY) Reports using SAMEPERIODLASTYEAR

Power BI is Microsoft’s cloud-based Business Intelligence Suite. Understanding how the pieces fit together can be a little challenging. In this post, I will discuss what Power BI is and how all the pieces fit together. Power BI consists of: Power BI Desktop Power BI Service Power BI Report Server Power BI Mobile Let’s look at each of these. Power BI Desktop Power BI Desktop is a downloadable tool that … Continue reading Getting Started with Power BI – What is Desktop, Service, Free, Pro, Premium, Embedded and Mobile