QUICKLY EXPLORE your SEMANTIC MODELS in Power BI Service using the EXPLORE Feature

in this video I'm going to show you how you can use the Explorer feature in the powerbi service to do some ad hoc exploration in your data we're going to look at what it's for its prerequisites as well as how you can use it to save your Explorations with or without parba premium all of that and more so without further Ado let's get started hi my name is fernan and welcome to the solutions abroad YouTube channel where we go over tips tricks and best practices when working with powerbi I upload new videos every week so make sure you hit that subscribe button and the bell icon to get notified when a new one is out so the explore feature in the parbi service is a feature that I believe was released back in November and it basically gives you the ability to do some adhoc exploration to the data sets that is published in the parba service so this is useful for users that want to you know get a feel for the data that they are going to be working with if they haven't before without the complexities of powerbi desktop so it gives you a lightweight version of the kind of powerbi giving you the ability to you know do some basic features like putting your data in visual adding some filters so very simple basic stuff so what do you need to get started with this explore feature so the first thing is that you need to have a semantic model that you have access to in the parba service typically published by you or one of of your team members so let's have a look at this example right now so here we are in my powerbi service in my own tenants I have a workspace here with you know just a few reports here that I have set up and here I have a dynamic subscription which is a report that I built to to actually funny enough it was meant to be a video on Dynamic subscription but it seems that Dynamic subscription is only available for us and I'm from the UK so Dynamic subscriptions don't work for me but anyway this is what we're going to use in our demo for today so to get started with explore it's fairly simple so you look for the semantic model that you want to explore you click there are two options actually so you click more options and explore this data which you will see it's denoted with a preview because it's a previous feature or you select the semantic model itself and you will have this option explore this data both of these options will bring you to this window which will give you this nice simple view of your data and some VIs ual that you will do here so we can kind of get started really if you can't see the explore dialogue option for you that means that you don't have enough permissions to you know to explore your semantic model or that semantic model rather so the minimum requirement is I believe you need to have a build permission for the semantic model for you to be able to explore it so if you don't have a build permission then you might need to ask for that permission to be updated so let's have a quick look at what is available to us here from this dialogue box which as I mentioned is a lot more cleaner and a lot more streamlined than your typical powerb a report right so on the right hand side here you will have access to the semantic model itself so the tables the measures the columns that is in that model for you to explore and the idea is that you go through this all of this data and just to give you a feel of what is actually in them so let's pick out something here so let's pick out maybe the sales measure that I've created and then let's take the month as well so it's done something here so we've ticked the sales and the month and let's have a look at what it's done so at the bottom here it's opened up this panel rearrange data which if you're familiar with parb already are the kind of field Wells where you put in the data that you choose RBA by default tries to suggest where those where those data needs to go in these field Wells so you don't need to worry so it's put the month and the values in the respective wells in the middle here we have a preview of our data in a matrix type format so it will give you the month and the sales value on a table and the idea is that you know you work with the different combinations of your data to kind of understand how it's built so it gives you some preview which in in a matrix type view here you can change the Sorting months or sales we'll just leave those for now you will see at the bottom you have an option uh the visual option here which lets you visualize the data that you brought in into a visual you know that is not the Matrix essentially so if you expand on that what it will do is it will visualize the data that you have selected into a visual essentially into a chart so um by default this uses or creates suggestions onto what type of VIs you want to use to show your data so for example here it knows that we're bringing in a date type column and a calculation type column and the suggestion that it gave us is a line chart which is the typical visual that you would use for time series type you know calculations or data but if you want to choose your own visual you can choose you can choose it as well so maybe you wanted a bar chart instead so you can just simply change it into a bar chart and it will just give you that as you notice you won't have a lot of the other options that you might you might be familiar with so the formatting options you know changing the labels or things like this and that's obviously because the purpose of this is simply to explore data not to build a full scale uh reporting tool on it right so you won't have a lot of these options for you to change if you wanted to there's also other options that you can use if they are applicable so for example the sorts would be there if for example you had maybe a legend so maybe let's let's give it a try so if I put a legend here as you can see it changes the Matrix to show us what what the data looks like and how that is visualized using the chart that we selected here in the visual section so you can sort sort your Legends here if it's applicable as I mentioned and you also have the option to drill again if it's applicable so in this case if we put month in the x axis here let's see if you at the moment is giving us on a date level the sales um which is being shown here as well on the Matrix but if you drill up it will just give you like on a month level because that's the one level up from where the date is so those are how those two functions essentially work so what else um so you can adjust how you want to split the view so at the moment it's horizontally but you can change it to vertically so have them side by side if doesn't easier way to visualize your exploration and you can also add a filter so very simple filters that you can add so you can choose any from your data in this visual or you can choose any data in your table so if you just want to have a a specific view like I don't know why it does that okay maybe that's a bug so let's choose again categories here we go so if you choose a specific category it will just apply that filter uh across your visual so fairly simple so once you're happy with your exploration you do have an option to save it which you will see on the top left hand side here you have you have the option to save it but what you'll notice is that if you do try to save it you will encounter this issue where it won't let you if you don't have a premium capacity workspace so for example uh for me it doesn't allow me completely even though it's published in a premium per user workspace um so it seems that you do need like a proper premium license for this which unfortunately I don't have so I won't be able to save this exploration but I imagine it just saves it into an exploration type file or item in your service which you can then share to your colleagues within your same tenants but let me give you a different option in case you you are not able to do this like me so when you hit save you have the option to save as a report so what it does is it essentially converts your exploration into an actual parba report so if you click save as report we name this one three we'll save it in the same workspace and there you go so in the same workspace it's basically recreated the exploration that we've created with the filters that we've applied and the visuals that we've uh We've chosen into a proper parb report connected to that semantic Tech model so what this means is that you know it gives us now since it's a full report it gives us all of the options that you would normally have in editing a parb airport so changing the formatting adding more visuals than just one because I believe exploration only supports one visual at a time so that is one option for you if you want to save your Explorations without having the premium capacity and then from here because it's a normal powerway report you can share it to your team as you normally would any other parb airports there are a bunch more known limitations with the Explorer feature in the parba service especially because it's a preview feature at the moment so if you want to learn more about this feature and some of its quirks I will leave a link to the blog posts in the description box below and that's really it for this video I hope you now know how easy it is to start using this explore feature to do some ad hoc Exploration with your semantic models in the powerbi service thanks for watching as usual give this video a like if you found it useful give it a dislike if you didn't to do better for next time ask your questions in the comment section box below so I can help you and you can help others if you like this video you have a patreon page where you can support the channel and get exclusive perks like Early Access demo files and credits at the end of these videos thanks again for watching and see you in the next one bye-bye

Channel: Solutions Abroad

Views: 2,014

Keywords: solutions abroad, power bi, powerbi, power bi tutorials, power bi for beginners, beginners guide to power bi, data analytics, dax, data modelling, data visualisation, business intelligence, how to power bi, power bi how to, power bi best practices, power bi tips and tricks, power bi standards, power bi patterns, power bi help, power bi tips, power bi 2023, power bi explore, power bi service, power bi semantic model, power bi model, power bi explore this data

Id: Ih9KyS-MBQw

Length: 10min 21sec (621 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 20 2024