- Yooo! Adam Saxton with "Guy In A Cube," and in this video, I want to
get you started with Power BI. If it's your first time
looking at all this, you wanna know where to go, what to do. Or, maybe you've been around a little bit, and you just want a refresher, it's always good to go
back to fundamentals. In this video, we're gonna walk through from start to finish, how do you actually do this? It is gonna be a quicker version of it. If you want a longer version, we do have courses available. But, we have other videos
on the YouTube channels, so definitely go check that out. But, you know how we like to do
it here on "Guy In A Cube." Let's do what? Let's
head over to my desktop. Before we can do anything, we need to download Power BI Desktop. Power BI Desktop is the
offering tool for Power BI. The best way to do this is
go to the Microsoft Store, if you're on Windows 10, or later. And you can just search for Power BI, and you'll see two options here. Power BI Desktop, and
Power BI Report Builder. Power BI Report Builder is if you wanna create paginated reports. That's not what we're gonna
talk about in this video. That is a different type of report type. We're gonna talk about
interactive reports. So, what you normally think of when you think of Power BI. For that, we need Power BI Desktop. And you'll see here, I got it installed. But you can just click in here, and instead of Open, you'll see Get. And so, you can go and just grab that. The beauty of Power BI Desktop
through the Microsoft Store, it gets updated every
month. Month over month. If you're not on Windows 10 or later, you can go to PowerBI.Microsoft.com and download Power BI Desktop there. When you get to the Marketing page, you'll go up top where
you'll see products. You'll go to Power BI,
and you can see Desktop. And if we go get Desktop here, we can see, you can download it for free. You can also see download
options, as well. And you can have the option of downloading either a 32 byte version
or a 64 byte version of Power BI Desktop. And then go on your merry
way to create reports, and work with all your awesome data. Once you open Power BI desktop, you will present it as of
the recording of this video, with a welcome screen,
it looks kind of green. That's the fabric green. This gives you options to just get data, open up recent files
that you've worked on, and also some other information that might be relevant for you. So, I'm gonna go ahead and close that. The first thing I'm
actually gonna show you here is the options and preview features. So if we go to File, let's
go to Options and Settings. In Options, I'm gonna
go to Preview Features. And you'll see there are all
sorts of preview features you can enable to play with and test with. Power BI Desktop, like I said,
gets updated every month. And so when you get a new release, just go check and see what's there. It just keeps you up to
speed on what's coming, what the team is working on. Also this is great with
Power BI team to get feedback and telemetry on like,
"How are you using things?" The way I do things, I just
enable every preview feature that's there, and I'm gonna
go ahead and do that now. I'm just gonna go ahead
and check all these boxes, and then restart Power BI Desktop. A couple of things of note,
with the preview features. I'm on the December 2023
build of Power BI Desktop for the recording of this video. And that includes on object editing, as well as this new welcome
experience, or backstage. And so, it's gonna look
a little different. This may already be there
in the non-preview version. So, before we saw this
green welcome screen. Now we get more of this typical experience you would see from an office perspective. And so here, I just wanna go
ahead and create a new report. You can look at other items here, if you're signed into Power BI, you can see different options that might be available to you. But, let me go in and
just click on report. We're just gonna go ahead and
get started with some data. To begin this journey,
we've gotta get the data into Power BI Desktop. So I have some options here. I can click on Get Data. I can click on this drop-down box. We can see all the different
sources here, Excel Files. Probably the most common
things you're gonna work with. Pay attention also, if you have data that's
already in the service. So Power BI, Microsoft Fabric. Power BI semantic models. These might be items that are
already published for you. And you can also look at the Data Hub to see other items that might be available for you to use like
Lakehouses, Warehouses, and again, Power BI semantic models. These are a great way to just get going. Hopefully, someone in your central group, maybe it's the finance group,
maybe it's someone else, they've already created that data for you. They pre-prepared it. So that you can just jump in
and start creating visuals. So definitely explore to see if this data is already available to you, without going and recreating
all this stuff again. You can also explore this in the service. So Microsoft Fabric or Power BI. I'll use those interchangeably. And you can go look at
the one lake data hub to do see if there's
data available for you to already use. In this case, we're gonna
start our journey new. So, I'm just gonna grab some Excel data. So let's go to Get Data. We can go to Excel Workbook. It's already right there
in the ribbon bar, too. Because most people use Excel. So, let's go ahead and get Excel Workbook. I'm gonna grab Adventure Works. Let's open that up. And, you'll see the different sheets that are inside of that workbook. And, I can just go ahead and select that. It'll give me a preview. We'll go through and select all of these. And one thing you're going
to see here, down below, is you're gonna be enticed to click that green load up button. Please don't do that. It wants you too, but don't do it. Instead, click the button next
to it, called Transform Data. Thank you. Hitting Transform Data allows us to actually massage this data. It lets us do things with the data before we get it into
Power BI Desktop directly. So this is just a preview of the data. I haven't actually pulled the data in yet. But, it allows me to do things like removing unnecessary columns. Maybe I wanna shape it a little further. One thing we can do
here right off the bat, we can give it a friendly
name for the table name. And so, I can just call
it Sales Territory, instead of PBI_Sales Territory, which people aren't
gonna understand, right? And we can go through and do
that for different tables. So, we're in the Power Create Editor. And so, inside of the Power Create Editor, you've got a lot of different options. So, we've got different
options up on the ribbon bar that we can do. We can remove columns. We can actually just say,
"Hey, choose columns." Maybe I wanna remove some of
these columns from this table. Or, I can right-click on things. So, if I right-click on a field itself, you'll see different options
that are available for you. Or if I right-click on a column, you'll see a different context
menu that might be there. So we can group, we can un-pivot. Based on this column, itself. So, explore Power Create itself. See what options are available for you of right-clicking on tables or queries. This gives you options. There's a lot in there. And there are a lot of hidden items as you explore with the
data that's relevant to the data that you're on at the time. And then the ribbon bars
allow you to do so much more. Transform data, we can pivot/un-pivot. Do mathematical equations. We can add columns. All of these things are available to us. So for example, maybe
I wanna add a column, and we can come to Customer. And I can select first name,
middle name, and last name. I can come up and say
column from examples. And I can say from selection. This is amazing. So, let me go where
someone's got a middle name. We'll access at from here.
And just start typing. And it automatically figures out what you're trying to do based
on the pattern that you did. So I'm gonna say to, okay, change this to full name. But what about these nulls? Well, we can right-click again. We can say replace
values, and I can say no. Plus a space, and then
replace it with nothing. And bam! There we go. We've got our names here
from a full name perspective. I could then go through
and say, well look, I don't really want
these other three columns because I'm just gonna go off a full name. And I can delete those. And you'll see these steps
over on the applied steps side. Again, we haven't pulled
the data into Power BI yet. So, what this is doing is saying, these are the steps that
I want you to transform on the data, get that
back to the data source, pull it back in, and then land that data
inside of Power BI. It's magical. So, definitely do this
before you load the data into Power BI. I will also leave you with a Maxim that Matthew Roche has said, and we leave this on "Guy
In a Cube" all the time. The Maxim data transformations. So, data should be transformed
as far upstream as possible. And as far downstream as necessary. So, do it at the source if you can. Power Query is the next step. And then we come into the
semantic model, or DAX, itself. If you have to. It just helps with performance. It helps with understanding of the data. It just makes everything better. Once you're ready with your data, and you've got everything
in the spot that you want, you can just hit the button here, it defaults the close and apply. That will pull it into
the data model, itself. And like a good cooking show, we've got everything done
in the power query side, so now let's take a look at Data Modeling. And modeling what is
called the semantic model inside of Power BI. So, this is where the magic is. So now that we're on the canvas itself, you'll see this data pane
that's available to you. So I see my tables, and my columns. And you may think that you're ready to go. But you're not. We still have some things to do. So, exploring your data, we
can do that from the data pane. We can also come over to this table view. And we can explore the different items that are here, as well. So for the different tables, I can just go look at this. I can sort things, I can
rename items if I need to. Also, when I have
different fields selected, or columns, column fields,
whatever you wanna call them, you have different options up here to also change formatting, summarization, things of that nature. Also, I've got a model view, where you can see that tables
are related to each other. So technically, if we move
this around a little bit, you'll see what's referred
to as a Star Schema. So this is a Star Schema, where your fact table is in the middle, and you've got dimensions along the side. Technically, this is
actually what's referred to as a Snowflake Schema. But let's go with Star Schema. A Star Schema is what
Power BI runs the best on. This is what it was built against. It expects a Star Schema. Please look at that in terms
of formatting your data. Your fact tables should just have integer-type data on it. Try to limit string data on it. Those should be on the dimension tables. And then you filter the dimensions, which then filter the fact table. There will be a link in
the description below that talks about why Power
BI loves a Star Schema. I highly recommend you go read that. Also, if you wanna learn more
about Star Schemas in general, check out this book. It is called "Star Schema:
The Complete Reference." It's not specific to Power BI. This is not a Power BI concept. Star Schemas have been around
way before Power BI ever was. So, this is a common industry standard. I know other tools deal
with data in different ways, but this is what Power BI does. Okay, so from this model view,
we can do different things. Maybe I wanna go to my
internet sales table, and I've got different fields
that are available here. So look, I've got Customer
Key, Sales Territory Key, and I've got Product Key, right? These are keys that
relate my other tables. When I'm authoring a report,
I don't wanna see those. So I can just say Is
Hidden, change that to yes. And bam, these are gonna be hidden. You'll see those icons change
a little bit next to those. So, you can hide items. You can change formatting
when they're selected. Come down to Advanced, here. You can also change Sort by Options, categorization for different things if you wanna specify how
this field should behave. These are all just hints
within side of Power BI. And then, a default
summarization that's there. So none versus some other things. You can go change those here. And again, when you select an item from the actual data pane, it will actually show you
some additional options where you can do some of that also. So those are some basic modeling things. And now we wanna add some calculations. Maybe you've got some
business calculation. How do you actually define a sale, right? So there may be other things that comes and takes values
from different columns. And I know DAX can be scary,
but just get started with it. And there's things to
help you along the way. Definitely go check out sqlbi.com Marco and Alberto over at that site, they've got you covered
from a DAX perspective to get you up to speed. And while I don't recommend this book when you're first, first getting started, this is definitely something
to have in your toolkit as you become more experienced. "The Definitive Guide to DAX," from Marco and Alberto over at sqlbi. So let's create our first measure in here. So, this idea of a measure,
it's run at runtime. It's not actually
materialized in the model. So this is just a calculation. We're gonna right-click
my internet sales table. We can do a couple of things. We can say New Measure, New
Column, New Quick Measure. And then, let's go ahead
and do that New Measure. And I'm gonna put in something that I've already created here. So here we go, Total Sales Amount, SUMX. Going over my internet sales. And I'm basically combining Sales Amount plus Tax Amount, plus Freight. All off of the internet sales table. And that defines what my actual
sale amount is going to be. And then, that's available. And you'll see a different
icon for those measures within inside of your model. Now, if you're really not sure, you can come up here to New Quick Measure. And you can choose some base ones that are already inside
of Power BI Desktop. Or if it's enabled within
inside of your tenant, you can actually ask co-pilot to help you with creating this DAX, based off of just common language. If you really wanna explore DAX, you can head over to the DAX Query View. Patrick's done a lot of videos on here. But to get to the DAX Query View, you'll just see this item underneath here, and you can just start writing DAX. So, we can right-click
on a given table here, and say "Quick Queries." And say "Show me the top 100 rows." And you can go ahead and
look at those things, and explore run them, and then even define a measure here, and then add it to the model. Lots of great things. You can take time to actually create and define these measures. Make sure these equations are right. And then, you can share
that out with other folks, so they can reuse those items. Overall, from the power query and the data modeling side of this, we're getting data, shaping
the data, modeling the data. This is gonna account for the majority of your time inside of Power BI. I would say up to 90% of it is getting the data in the right spot. I know everyone wants to
jump to the visualizations, the cool thing, but
you gotta get your data right before you can visualize it. However, we've done all that, right? So, now it's time to go do the fun thing and go play with the visuals. So like a good cooking show again, we've got a bunch of
different measures in here. We've got time intelligence,
we've got a calendar table, definitely have a calender
table in your data. But, we've done all the modeling. Everything's ready to
go, so now what do I do? I've got a blank canvas in front of me. How do I actually do something? There are different ways that
you can work with data here. So I could just do this. I could say Internet Sales, and I could say total sales amount. We could just drag this on the canvas, and it'll create a card visual for me. It's doing a suggestive visual
type based on the field. And then, you can go ahead and change those visuals if
you want, do something else. And/or, also add different
data, play around with it. So, that's one option. The other thing you can do, is you could just hit a visual up top. So I want a bar chart. And then, we could start adding data in. So we could just drag and drop data right onto the visual. And bam! It gets added into
it. The other thing we could do is just right-click on the
canvas, and say add visual. And then start doing the same thing. We could add data from our model, and I wanna go ahead and
add total sales amount. It's gonna suggest a visual by default. Let's go and change this to a line chart. And, I'm gonna go in and add in month. And now we can see that
we've got different data over a given time frame. Now, we can enhance this even more. And we could say, "Hey, I
wanna do by small multiples." So, let's do that by year. And then we've got those different years that are available. Definitely take the time to
see what options are here for the different visual types. The other thing, too, is
understand the formatting that might be available. So, let me go ahead, and
let's just say right-click and format on the visual. It brings me to the format pane. There's so many things here
that you can do to change. We can add data labels, we can adjust those things
that are available to it. You can really fine-tune
this to what you want within inside of that visual, itself. So many options, so many things you can do with the different visuals, and the team is constantly updating to enhance them to give
you more options available. What about AI Visuals? They are different
options inside of Power BI that let you do this, so
let's take a look at that. From here, I'm gonna
go up to the top here, and we're gonna choose under AI Visuals, I'm just gonna choose a decomp tree. We wanna analyze data, so
we're gonna say Internet Sales. So this is the main measure
that we're gonna go after. And then, I wanna explain that by a couple of different things. So, we can go in and we
can say Sales Territory. We could say Country, Continent. We can also go into product. And I could say I wanna do it by color. And we can do it by calendar. We can say, giving year and quarter. And then we could see, we've got our internet sales right here. And so, I could just say, maybe I don't know what it is. So, let's go ahead and
just say the highest value, and we can see that its sales
continent, North America. And if I explore that a little bit more, we can see sales country,
United States. That's cool. And then, let's just say
I wanna do this by color. And we can see the different
colors that are there. So, this just allows you to explore and interact with those items. And so if I say, "Hey, I see that silver
is the lowest here." So, if I click on silver, you'll notice that my line
charts adjust it, right? So, it's filtering. So if I switch between these,
you'll see how they update. By default Power BI Visuals, we'll actually go ahead and
interact with one another. And so, this is where you
can explore that data, and tell a story with the data, and learn insights with that data. I would also challenge
you to don't just use a straight table visual. Use the other visuals
to help tell that story. If you do want table-type
options available for you, because that's what
the business is asking for. Maybe look at paginated reports, also. Those are meant for raw table outputs. The old traditional operational
reports that we have. But for Power BI interactive reports, it's more about the other visuals. Yes, you can use table matrix
visuals inside of Power BI. But, understand that it's meant more for exploring your data. Not necessarily printing
off the 300 page reports, at first that I wanted to look at. Maybe these visuals that
are inside of Power BI just don't meet your needs,
and you want something else. And so, we have this
idea of custom visuals within inside of Power BI. Let me go create a new page down here. And we can go, if you
scroll all the way down, you'll see Get More Visuals. This allows you to actually
go get custom visuals. These may be from Microsoft, they may be from other partners. And they can offer a lot
more to your experience than just what the base visuals are. I've already included one
called the Aquarium Visual. And if I go ahead and add that visual, then we'll say fish size is gonna be on... Let's do this on total sales. And we will do the actual fish on, let's do it on month. So, you'll see floating fishies. And they can help tell the story. It's just kind of a fun way to do that. And yes, I've seen an actual
customer use this visual, and they had it on a display
TV within their organization. Explore this visual
with a negative number. You'll thank me later. Right, we've taken the
time to explore visuals. We've created those. We've got a report. Maybe we've added a background in there, everything looks great. And now, we need to share it with others. We can't just use it in Power
BI Desktop, so what do we do? This is where the Power
BI service comes in. And hopefully you're signed
into Power BI Desktop so you can do that. Once you've got everything ready to go, you can hit this Publish icon. And when you hit Publish,
you wanna save? Sure, I do. And, you can publish it to a workspace. You could publish it to My Workspace, but I ask that you not do that. You should publish it to an actual regular workspace that's out there. So, let me go ahead and find the workspace that I
want to publish this to. That's gonna be Power BI Tutorial. I'll hit Select. And now, it's pushing it to
the Power BI service, itself. All right, it says that it was
published, but disconnected. This is because it's
going to an Excel file, so you need to define how it's
gonna refresh in the service. So those are things you'll have to do, once you get it up to the service, probably through an
on-premises data gateway. But we're not gonna cover gateways. We're setting that up. I just wanna get you into the
service and get you going. Let's head over to Microsoft Fabric. So Microsoft Fabric is where Power BI is. I'm in the Power BI persona,
within Microsoft Fabric. And I'm inside of my Power
BI Tutorial Workspace. And, you'll see that our report is here. So I can click on that. I can view the report, and then I can go ahead
and share this out. So I could share it via this button here. I can publish an actual app, or I could just manage
access to the workspace and give folks access
directly to the workspace. And we went through all that, but one thing that's come up recently, is this idea of co-pilot. And I wanna tease that just a little bit. So, let's say that you've got your datasets already created. The datasets available
in the Power BI service, and you just wanna explore using Co-Pilot. Let's see what that looks like. So, you'll see here that
I've got my semantic model, so this was already published. And, I wanna come in to here
where we see our tables, so that's fine. I'm going close this,
so I can explore this. We can see Discover Business Insights. And we can see other
items up here, as well. And I can say "Explore this data, "create a blank report." And when I do that,
assuming Co-Pilot's enabled inside of your Microsoft
Fabric environment, and your administrators have
allowed this to be useful, or to be used within inside
of your organization. You will come in here, and you
will see this co-pilot item. One thing to also be aware of, is as of the recording of this video, it may not be available for everyone, because it's still being pushed out. So hopefully by March 2024,
everyone will have it. Assuming its been enabled. And if I come in and hit Co-Pilot, it's gonna go off of the
data that's inside here. And we can just say "Suggest
content for this report." We're gonna run it, it's gonna think. It's gonna give you some
things that it thinks might be useful here. So, let's go ahead,
internet sale performance. Cool. Let's create that report. And bam! It's gonna create
that report for you. Let me collapse some of
these so you can see it. That's pretty good. You can further explore and fine-tune it. I'm not gonna use this whole video to go through Co-Pilot, but that's an option that's
available for you, as well, just to get up and running quickly. Take the time, explore all the options. There's so many things to do in Power BI. I keep learning things every day still. And I've been using it
since the very beginning. Let me know down in the comments, what's your favorite part
of Power BI specifically. I would love to know. And have you used the custom visual, and if so, which one? If you wanna learn more
about Microsoft Fabric, and how to just get going, check out the playlist above
my head. We've got you covered. As always, thank you so much for watching. Keep being awesome, and we'll
see you in the next video.
