How to get started with PowerBI - Building your first report with PowerBI tutorial for beginners

once you have the power bi desktop software downloaded from the Microsoft website then it should show up on your desktop over here or sometimes it'll be on your taskbar or sometimes it'll be on your Start menu so if you don't have the program you have to go up to the Microsoft website Microsoft comm and then go to the Downloads area and then search for power bi and you should be able to get to download now I am using the free version of the desktop so that's what we have right over here if you don't have that you have to go to the Microsoft website to get it so I'm going to go ahead and double click on power bi desktop now every time I go into power bi I'm gonna get this window and then the following window will come up so you're gonna get this window now here I can do updates to the software there's a blog forums and there's some other help here as well but I'm gonna close this window okay so now we see the power bi environment so it's a lot like the other Microsoft programs it has the similar menus so if I pick in the file menu then I can open a report or save them or that's one place I can get the data we can go to options and settings I'm gonna close that window out if I pick on the home menu that's why I could do cut and paste and copy and paste and here is where I'm going to use the get data and a few minutes from now and then we can see a new every each different report type over here is called a visual or a visualization alright so we can add new ones here we're gonna add text boxes I'll pick on the insert menu now the report can be made up of multiple pages so I can add pages here under the insert menu I could add pages down here we can go back and forth among our pages over here also under the insert menu that's another way we can add our new visuals then I'll show you what a Deakin business composition treated as later on we could add text boxes and so on shapes images if I pick on the modeling menu this will make more sense we have actual data on our report so this is how we maybe would manage the relationships between our data sources the View menu is where we can change different themes and the page view and so on right so you have your standard menus there's lots of help available for power bi as well now if we come over here to the side then this icon will show you the visualizations for that report that'll make more sense in a little while this is where we will see the role data for each different data source and then this is where we can manage their relationships as well so we're gonna go ahead and go back to the report icon down here of course is where we can go back and forth among our pages so each page can have multiple visualizations and your report can have as many pages as you need when we come over here to the right hand side the report can have different filters which will talk about the different report types are called visualizations now there's plenty that come with it and then when you get more advanced you can pick on this icon to get more visuals and actually there's tons and tons available on the internet some that come from Microsoft and some that at the MIDI from other people and then when we have some more data then over here we'll see the fields so this will make more sense when we start adding our data in now let's go ahead and start to add some data into our report the great thing about power bi is you can add data for many different data sources and if you could find a common field among those data sources you can link them all together or join them together in those common fields and then you can make your report from all your different data sources so power bi follow-ups the relational data base concept and that will make more sense as we continue forward so so we're gonna go under the home menu and I'm gonna pick where it says get data now there's some basic data types that we can use Excel sequel server text files and so on this would be like from a web page but to be to see a more complete list I'll pick on the word more and then you'll have a much bigger list just about every kind of data source can be pulled into power bi so here we see excel text or CSV XML JSON even PDF is in there now SharePoint sequel server access Oracle so look at all the different data types just about every data type will be in here quite frankly Microsoft Azure is in there then if we scroll down we'll see Microsoft Exchange Microsoft Dynamics now a catch-all category could be ODBC or olee most databases will fall into those categories so if you look through this list just about every kind of data can be imported into power bi and we and we can find a way to link those together as well so let's go back to the top and let's start with an Excel spreadsheet so I'll pick on connect so I'm going to use this excel spreadsheet and I'll pick on open so now in this case these are your sheet names within the Excel spreadsheet so I'll pick on the customers customers one and then I'm going to pick on load and now that data set is part of your power bi report the report can has as many data sets from as many data sources as you need let's do that again I'll pick an get data and I'll pick an excel this time to see the more complete list I'll pick on more that but we'll just go with Excel I'm going to use that same one and this time I'll use the orders table showed you a preview of that data now if we pick onload it'll pull all of the records from that data source into power bi if you wanted to sort it or filter or do some different things will do transform data I'll do one of those in a few minutes or in a different lesson that's really what we did a power query part so I'll pick onload and now that data source is part of our report as well now let's go get data from other data sources so I'll pick on get data up and in this case I'll pick on more let's try a text file a really popular data source is a text file or a CSV which is a comma delimited text file so I'll pick on connect and then in this case I'm going to use the categories file and it's going to pull that one right in so with that text file it will be important that the top row has your field names okay and then it could be comma delimited or tab delimited whatever it might be this one happens to be calm at the limits hit but you can see the other ones are in that the Papa ones are in there so I pick onload and now that's part of our did a source let's try an Access database so I'll pick line and get data and I'll pick one more so there's tons of Access databases that are still out there I'll pick on access and I'll pick on connect so I'm gonna go with this Access database now we should actually be able to pull in more than one more than one table from that data source at a time so I'll get the employee's table and then I'll get the order details table so you can do them one at a time or you can pull more than one at it at the same time like I'm doing now and then each one of those will pull into its own separate table so remember when we pick on load it's going to pull all of the records in from that data source in the power bi now we're going to see where all these are landing soon but I'm just trying to show you how versatile power bi is and how it can connect to many different data sources so let's try a sequel server database I'll pick on get data and I'll pick on more and then we see sequel server that is going to be in that list all right now with the sequel server I have to get the server name so people connect here notice how it's looking for the server name so watch what I'll do I'm actually going to pick one cancel for a second so that I can go to my sequel server and get the get the name of the sequel server so I'm gonna go into the sequel server database yarr and then in this case if I just pick on file and then connect then there's the server name that it's looking for so I'm just gonna highlight that and copy it now let's go back to power bi again so I'll go back into power bi let's connect that one in so I'll pick on get data a few sequel server is on this list as well good now watch I'm going to paste that name in alright now sometimes this might ask you for the username and password of that database if you don't know that then your IT team can provide that for you so I'll click on OK and now it did connect to that sequel server database and in this case I'll use this database and I'll use the products table alright so your data can come from many different sources as we can say I'm going to put in the word load right there now let's see where all those landed so first of all if I pick on this one the data icon then you'll be able to see the role data so notice how we have our tables over here so if I pick in the categories table it'll display that table if I pick on customers it'll display that one so the tables will actually be over here on the right and then we can see the raw data but even though this all came from different data sources power bi kind of neutral and pulls them into data here so then I could join those together which we'll do in the next lesson actually probably joined a lot of those together already so if I pick in the data tab then you can see the role data and then over here you can go back and forth between the different tables let's come over here and pick on the model icon so if it found a common field it'll join those tables together for you on the common field so the customers table if I click on the this this link it'll show you which fields are relevant for that relationship and in this case it used the customer ID so it tries to find a common field names and usually guess is properly although you can make your own if you wanted to as well so now we have the other tables in here as well so in this case it's showing the employees table and the orders table by the employee ID let's see they've got the order details and the orders table by the order ID this one is going to be the categories is five join to the products table so it did a pretty good job of joining those tables together as we can say now the one outlier that I see is the shippers table let me show you why on the shippers table the field is called shipper ID but on the orders table the field is called ship via so it wouldn't know that those are related because they have different field names watch how we're gonna make that relationship so I'm gonna pick on the shippers table you don't have to move the boxes around like that but I'm just going to move it so I can see both of those in the same window at the same time good so I'll pick up ship via from the orders table and drag it to the shipper ID on the shippers table and now it made that relationship so of course it wouldn't have made that relationship itself because they have different field names so notice when the tables had similar field names made some guesses and usually a guess is right now I can double click on that relationship and then see more about it so here it's using the orders table and the customers table and it's using the customer ID from the orders table and they can get to the customer D from the customers table now this is one that it made by itself because they found that common field so this is a one-to-many one customer has many orders so maybe a one-to-many alright so if you thought that it made the incorrect relationship I can click on that relationship and then press my Delete key to delete that ok or we can right click on it and pick on delete good I'm going to say delete that so if it didn't make the proper relationship for you then you can delete it and then make your own so in this case I'll pick on customer ID from the customers table and then drag it to the customer ID of the orders table and then it'll reestablish that relationship as we can say but this is pretty incredible to me that we pulled the data sources we pulled the data in from four different data sources Excel access a text file and even the sequel server and we can if we could find a common field we can join all of those together and incorporate all of those into the same report so really a huge benefit of power bi is that you can pull your data from different data sources and then be able to join those together if you can find the common fields and make your report from all three different data sources I mean that that is pretty powerful right though it really does involve the relational database concept now each table has to be joined to another table so that's why I took the time to join the shippers table into the orders table so notice how each one is linked to at least one other table now it'll never be the case where all the tables are joined to each other it just happen that way as long as each table is joined to one other table then you'll be in good shape but it's never going to be the case where they're all linked to each other just listen happen that way it would never happen that way but you know now you'll be able to make your report from all the different data sources because they're all linked together in some way so so now let's start making our first report so I'm going to go back to the report icon over here so now that is how all your fields are on the the right hand side if I think when that clacks collapse the table so I can expand the table with the down arrow or collapse that atom and we'll do some more with those tables obviously so let's start to make our first visual so we have the blank page here so really I could just add a new visual in multiple ways if I click on the blank page then I'm just going to click on this first one over here to stack the bar chart okay good now you can clearly see that we can resize that as we need to right so let's say I want to make a report from the customers table so let's expand the customers table over here on the right and we see the different fields so you're going to build your visual in this section over here first so let's say I want to have a summary by country so I'll pick up country from the customers table and drag it over here Tauruses add data fields so let's say I want to do a count by country so then you know it doesn't really matter which field that I count so I'll pick up the customer ID field and drag it to where it says I did it fields for the values so now look what happened over here so it did sort of by the count so if I move my mouse through that blue section it says USA has 13 and France has 11 and so on right so we're starting to have some results right away now of course it will be better if maybe that number would show on the actual chart so watch what we're going to do to start to format the chart I'm gonna pick on this the paint roller all right so it says format but you can see that would be a paint roller so I'm going to click that and these would be similar to what you might see in Microsoft Excel so even in Excel the numbers for each bar would be called the data labels so look I'm just going to click that on and now right away we see how we see the numbers show up in the visualization so we got some pretty good results right away so in other words we have 13 for USA and France has 11 so now we have our first of visualization here in power bi let's go ahead now let's take a look at what we're really sitting here if I let's go back to the raw data and I'm going to pick on the customers table and you can see there's many different customers if we look down here says there's 91 rays but if we scroll over notice how we have the country column so I'm just going to click on this pulldown for the country and you know you have your classic sort and filter that so I'll say sort so now we see three for Argentina two for Austria two for Belgium and so on right well our chart is now showing us that there are there's three for Argentina and two for Austria so let's go back to our actual report and then remember how we were just looking at those numbers and Austria had to write Argentina had three and the chart is showing that now let's go a little bit further with that chart so I can click on that visualization now for each different one you'll be able to do some choices so I can pick on a filter right there but the filter actually is showing up on this window over here so there'll be a way to get the filter if I want to expand that and fill the screen then I'll pick on the focus mode and you can see how now it just expanded that it's going to fill this Green now we can see it more clearly I'm gonna go ahead and go back to the individual report okay then let's pick on the three dots and see what we have there so we can export that data into like a CSV file and then maybe pull that into a different database like Excel or access let's see what the data really looks like if I show it as a table then we see the chart up there and this will be a representation of the data you know USA 13 France and 11 so that's what really would export into the CSV file so I'm just going to go back now so the way we got that was we picked them two three dots and then I said show as a table I can remove that visualization let's see what spotlight does see how that really focuses on that one report so we can sort it ascending or descending and you can pick on different fields to sort by so if I want to sort it alphabetically by country then I can do that as well and that change the personality of their report let's try that again we'll say sort by I want to sort ascending by country and now they're in alphabetical order right so either way is perfectly fine but with all the visualizations you should be able to make it a focused mood which is kind of make a full screen like that I'll pick on back I can pick on the three dots so I can export that data as a CSV file if we show it as a table then that's what you would really see that's the actual data that would export it down to a CSV file then we can also sort it in different ways on this window now let me show there's something that's called a drill down so I just picked on Brazil right so notice how that one that one data point is higher because I clicked on it so if I say show as a table then in this case it got that same kind of result right so let's try that again I'm going click on Brazil right click on it if I say show data and point as a table then it shows all of the Brazil items right so we can drill down on these reports watch that one again so let's say I'm going to pick on Germany I'm going to right-click on Germany and I'll show data point as a table and then now I have just the ones from Germany so we call it a drill down and then even those can be exported all right so you have a lot of flexibility here I just went back to the report again so this is really our first visualization now let's come over here to the filters the reports can be filtered in any way that you want it to so let's go ahead and pick on country and then guess what you have your classic filter so what if you didn't want to see certain countries so then let's say I wanted to see the top 10 I'll pick on top end and then we'll say the number 10 there all right and then in this case for add data fields here so I want to do the customer ID again move that right into there and then we'll do it by the count and now when we apply that notice how the report got smaller cause it's only the top 10 so that was an interesting filter we came over here for the country and you know there's the basic filtering advanced filtering and here we did the top end and then I took the number 10 down and then I want to base that I had to drag the customer ID into that screen into that field and then we base it on the count all right so now what we're looking at the top 10 countries if I want to clear that filter then over here we do have the icon to clear the filter and that I'll get all the records back again otherwise we can do the base to filter where we can pick and choose similar to what you would do in Microsoft Excel right so the filters are going to be there for your report and this window makes it pretty easy that this happened pretty recently so now the filters are very obvious as we can say you