How to Use Power BI: A Get Started Guide

You might wonder how to use Power BI if you are accustomed to spreadsheets in Excel. Power BI (PBI) is a much more powerful data analysis tool.

You need to understand its features and the kind of data visualizations that you have access to. This way, you can utilize it effectively. Most importantly, you need to ensure that you work with good-quality data. A powerful tool is not a replacement for bad data.

You also need to ensure that you work with data in the correct format. Access and permissions should also be granted carefully. Defining your data points and KPIs will also make it easier to work with PBI.

In this article, we learn how to use Power BI and define it. We’ll discuss core PBI features and, finally, how to use PBI to create charts for data analysis.

Table of Contents:

1. Introduction to Power BI
2. Key Features of Power BI
3. How to Use Power BI for Data Insights?
4. Wrap Up

Introduction to Power BI

Microsoft Power BI is a business analytics service created by Microsoft. It enables users to visualize and analyze data in a user-friendly way. Users can also create informative and interactive data visualizations using a wide range of data sources.

Power BI, including Power BI for Mac, can help businesses make data-driven decisions. This is because you can garner critical insights from your data. The platform is designed for non-technical users as well as data professionals, making it accessible to a wide range of users.

Learning how to use Power BI helps you analyze data from a variety of data connectors, including:

• Excel spreadsheets,
• databases,
• cloud-based and on-premises data sources,
• and other third-party applications.

Key Features of Power BI

1. Data Connectivity: Power BI permits you to interface with a great many information sources, including data sets, cloud services, and Succeed documents, and that’s just the beginning. This adaptability guarantees that you can consistently incorporate your information into Power BI for examination.
2. Data Transformation: Once connected, Power BI provides robust data transformation tools to clean, shape, and data model. You can easily transform raw data into a structured format that is conducive to analysis.
3. Data Visualization: The essence of Power BI lies in its ability to create compelling visualizations. As one of the leading data visualization tools, it offers a vast array of charts, graphs, and maps at your disposal, allowing you to present your data in a manner that is both intuitive and visually captivating. Additionally, implementing a robust Power BI deployment pipeline ensures seamless delivery and management of your BI solutions, empowering your team to leverage data effectively.
4. Interactive Dashboards:  Power BI, including its versatile tool, Power BI Report Builder, empowers you to construct interactive dashboards that solidify key measurements and experiences in a single focal area. Clients can investigate the information, dive into explicit subtleties, and gain an exhaustive comprehension of the data within reach.
5. Natural Language Queries: Power BI incorporates natural language capabilities, allowing users to ask questions about their data in plain English. This feature simplifies the process of extracting insights and makes data analysis more accessible to a broader audience.
6. Sharing and Collaboration: Collaboration is streamlined through Power BI’s sharing capabilities. You can publish reports and dashboards to the Power BI service, where colleagues can access and interact with the data. Real-time collaboration enhances decision-making across teams.
7. Data Modeling and Relationships: Explore how Power BI allows you to create relationships between different data tables, facilitating more complex analyses. Understand the importance of data modeling in building accurate and meaningful reports.
8. Advanced Analytics with DAX (Data Analysis Expressions): Delve into the powerful world of DAX, a formula language used in Power BI. Learn how to create calculated columns and measures and perform advanced analytics to derive deeper insights from your data.
9. Power BI Service: Introduce users to the Power BI service, where reports and dashboards can be published, shared, and accessed online. Discuss the collaborative features, including commenting, sharing, and real-time collaboration, which are especially useful when working on reports like a cost of living comparison by city. These tools make it easy for teams to analyze, update, and interact with the data together in real time.
10. Data Refresh and Scheduled Updates: Highlight the importance of keeping data up-to-date. Explore how Power BI enables automatic data refresh and scheduled updates, ensuring that your reports reflect the latest information.

How to Use Power BI for Data Insights?

In this section, we learn how to use Power BI for data insights.

Stage 1: Logging in to Power BI

• Log in to Power BI.
• Enter your email. Click the “Submit” button.

• Enter your password and click “Sign in“.

• Choose whether to stay signed in.

Stage 2: Create a Data Set and Select the Data Set to Use in Your Sankey Chart

• Click on the “Create” option on the left-side menu.
• Select “Paste or manually enter data“.

• The following cash flow data will be used for this example.

Total Cost	Company Type	Company Name	Expertise Categories	Expertise	Cost
Total Cost	Subcontractor	Skyline Contractors	Mechanical Installation	Plumbing & Heating	15456
Total Cost	Subcontractor	Skyline Contractors	Mechanical Installation	Mechanical Work	10159
Total Cost	Subcontractor	Onyx General Contractors	Mechanical Installation	Plumbing & Heating	18045
Total Cost	Subcontractor	Onyx General Contractors	Mechanical Installation	Mechanical Work	12695
Total Cost	Subcontractor	Living Well Remodeling	Mechanical Installation	Plumbing & Heating	14589
Total Cost	Subcontractor	Living Well Remodeling	Mechanical Installation	Welding	11456
Total Cost	Supplier	Power-up Builders	Raw Material	Cement	20561
Total Cost	Supplier	Power-up Builders	Raw Material	Steel	32456
Total Cost	Supplier	Five-star Construction	Raw Material	Bricks	10253
Total Cost	Supplier	Five-star Construction	Raw Material	Timber	9000

• Paste the above data table into the “Power Query” window.
• Select the “Create a dataset only” option.

• Click on the “Data Hub” option on the left-side menu.
• Power BI populates the data set list. (If you have not created a data set, refer to the Error! Reference source not found section.)

• Choose the data set you want to use to create your Sankey diagram.
• Power BI populates the screen as shown below:

• The data set and its fields are shown on the right side. The middle area shows report and data set options.
• Click on the “Create a report” dropdown.
• Select “Start from scratch“.
• You should see the Report Canvas screen as shown below:

Stage 3: Adding the Power BI Sankey Diagram Extension by ChartExpo

• To finish creating our Sankey Diagram, we’ll use an add-in or Power BI visual from AppSource.
• Navigate to the Power BI Visualizations panel.
• Click the ellipsis (…) highlighted above to import the Power BI Sankey Diagram extension by ChartExpo.

• The following menu opens:
• Select the “Get more visuals” option.

• • The following window opens.
  • Enter “Sankey Diagram for Power BI by ChartExpo” in the highlighted search box.

• You should see “Sankey Diagram for Power BI by ChartExpo” as shown in the image below.

• Click the highlighted “Add” button.

• Power BI will add the “Sankey Diagram for Power BI by ChartExpo” icon in the visualization panel.

Stage 4: Drawing a Sankey Diagram with ChartExpo’s Power BI extension

• Select the “Sankey Diagram for Power BI by ChartExpo” icon in the visualization panel.
• The following window opens in the report section of your dashboard:

• You can resize the visual as needed.
• Navigate to the right side of your Power BI dashboard. You should see “Fields” next to “Visualizations“.

• You’ll select the fields to use in your Sankey chart here.
• The ChartExpo visual needs to be selected, though.
• Select the field in the following sequence:
  • Total Cost
  • Company Type
  • Company Name
  • Expertise Categories
  • Expertise
  • Cost

• You’ll be asked for a ChartExpo license key or email address.

Stage 5: Activating your ChartExpo Trial or Applying a Subscription Key

• Select the ChartExpo visual. You should see three icons below “Build Visual” in the Visualizations panel.

• Select the middle icon, “Format visual“.
• The visual properties will be populated as shown below.

• If you are a new user:
  • Enter your email address in the “Email” textbox in the “Trial Mode” section.
  • This should be the email address that you used to subscribe to the ChartExpo add-in. It is where your ChartExpo license key will be sent.
  • Ensure that your email address is valid.
  • Click “Enable Trial.” You’ll get a 7-day trial.

• You should receive a welcome email from ChartExpo.
• The Sankey Diagram you create under the 7-day trial contains the ChartExpo watermark (see below).

• If you have obtained a license key:
  • Enter your license key in the “ChartExpo License Key” textbox in the “License Settings” section (see below).
  • Slide the toggle switch next to “Enable License” to “On“.

• Your Sankey diagram should now be ready (see below). Note that it does not have a watermark.

• Let’s add the prefix (e.g., the $ sign) to the numeric values in the chart.
• Expand the “Stats” properties.
• Add the prefix value (e.g., the $ sign).

• To add colors, expand the “Level Colors” properties and select a color.
• Do this to change the color of each node.

• Automatically, all changes will be saved.

Insights

• At level 1, the total cost of the procurement is $155K.
• At level 2, $72.3K (46.7%) was spent on suppliers. $82.4K was spent on subcontractors, which is 53.3%.
• At Level 3, Power-up Builders and Five-Star Construction charged $53.0k and $19.3k, respectively. While $82.4k in subcontractors’ costs was spent on 3 companies:
  • Skyline Contractors,
  • Onyx General Contractors,
  • and Living Well Remodeling.
• They charged $25.62k, $30.7k, and $26.0k respectively, for their services.
• At Level 4, suppliers provided raw materials for procurement, which cost $72.3k. Companies that provided mechanical installations billed $82.4k.
• $72.3k was spent on purchasing raw materials. It was split between cement ($20.6k), steel ($32.46k), bricks ($10.3k), and timber ($9k), respectively. $82.4k was spent on mechanical installation costs. It was split between plumbing, heating, mechanical work, and welding. Their costs were $48.1k, $22.9k, and $11.5k, respectively.

FAQs:

What is Power BI, and why is it used?

Microsoft Power BI is a business analytics service. It is used to find insights within an organization’s data. It helps connect disparate data sets and transform and clean the data into a data model.

Knowing how to use Power BI helps you create charts or graphs to visually represent the data. The visualizations can be shared with other Power BI users within the organization and externally.

What is an example use case for Power BI?

Power BI is a powerful business analytics tool. It can be used for a variety of purposes in different industries. Some of the common use cases to understand how to use Power BI:

• Creating interactive Power BI reports and dashboards
• Tracking various metrics and KPIs
• Data analysis
• Creating data visualizations like bar charts, line charts, scatter plots, pie charts, tables, and maps

Wrap Up

Power BI is one of the most powerful business intelligence tools for analyzing and visualizing data.

Our main focus throughout this article has been learning how to use Power BI. To do this, we went through the process of using it to create a data analysis chart.

We used the ChartExpo add-in from AppSource to help us create our chart.

We also looked at what Power BI is and briefly discussed its core features. The most important features include data visualizations, customizable templates and dashboards, and data integration.

Finally, we answered some FAQs. We hope you are ready to explore and learn how to use Power BI.