Views in Power BI: Key Tips for Creating Impactful Insights

Having Power BI at your fingertips is one of the best ways to get the most out of your business data. With Power BI, you’ll create simple visuals from complex information. One way of getting the most out of the tool is using views in Power BI.

In this guide, you’ll discover what views in Power BI are, why it matters, different views in Power BI, and how to use views in Power BI.

Table of Contents:

1. What are Views on Power BI?
2. Why Does the Power BI View Matter?
3. How to Use Views in Power BI?
4. How to Create Visualizations in Power BI?
5. What are the Best Practices for creating views in Microsoft Power BI?
6. Wrap Up

First…

What are Views on Power BI?

The Power BI Desktop mode is free for everyone, and it comes with three views namely:

• Report
• Data
• Relationships

These three functions help creators to quickly access their data, build their visualizations, and work on multiple charts.

• Report View

The Report view is the default view, and that’s what you’ll see as you open the Power BI Desktop. Creators use the report view to create visual reports based on the data. Most of the time, creators work with this screen.

• Data View

The Data view is the middle option, and you’ll see it after modeling your data. In the Data view, Visuals are laid out piece by piece in a grid format.

• Relationship View

Also known as the Model view, the Relationship view enables creators to see the relationship between their data models.

Why Does the Power BI View Matter?

Here are the major reasons why Power BI views are important.

• Data Management and Exploration
• Enhanced Data Visualization and Reporting
• Collaboration and Sharing
• User-Centric Analysis
• Efficiency in Data-Driven Decision Making

How to Use Views in Power BI?

In this section, you’ll discover easy ways of using views in Power BI.

Use Model View

Navigate to the left side of Power BI Desktop, and select the Model icon.

Create Separate Diagrams

The Model view enables you to create diagrams of your model that have only a subset of the tables in the model. This setup helps the user to easily work with complex semantic models and also provides a clearer view of the tables.

To create a new diagram with the subset of the tables, you’ll have to navigate to the bottom of the Power BI Desktop window, look out for the “+” button next to the “All tables” tab, and select it.

The tool allows you to drag a table from the “Data pane” onto the diagram surface. You can also right-click the table, and choose “Add related tables” from the options displayed.

After that, tables related to the original table are displayed in the new diagram. The image below will be displayed after choosing the “Add related tables” option.

Use Model Explorer (Preview)

Navigate to the left side of the Power BI Desktop, and select the Model icon. This ascertains that you’re in Model view. Next, select “Model” in the “Data pane” to see an image similar to the one below.

The Model explorer displays a tree view of the data model or semantic model along with the number of items in each node.

Set Common Properties

To select multiple objects at once, hold down the “Ctrl” key and select multiple tables. After selecting multiple tables, they become highlighted in the Modeling view. Since multiple tables are highlighted, changes applied in the “Properties” pane will apply to the selected tables.

For instance, users can change the visibility for multiple tables in the diagram view by holding down the “Ctrl” key, selecting the tables, and changing the “hidden” setting in the “Properties” pane.

How to Create Visualizations in Power BI?

Stage 1: Logging in to Power BI

• Log in to Power BI.
• Enter your email address and click the “Submit” button.

• You are redirected to your Microsoft account.
• Enter your password and click “Sign in“.

• You can choose whether to stay signed in.

• Once done, the Power BI home screen will open.

Stage 2: Creating a Data Set and Selecting the Data Set to Use in Your Chart

• Go to the left-side menu and click the “Create” button.
• Select “Paste or manually enter data“.

• We’ll use the sample data below 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 data table into the “Power Query” window. Next, choose the “Create a dataset only” option.

• Navigate to the left-side menu, and click the “Data Hub” option. Power BI will populate the data set list. If the data set has not been created, you’ll get an error message.

• Choose your preferred data set to be used for the Sankey diagram. After that, Power BI will populate the screen as shown below.

• Click on the “Create a report” dropdown, and select “Start from scratch.”

• The Report Canvas screen will appear as shown below:

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

• To create a Sankey Diagram, you’ll need an add-in or Power BI visual from AppSource. You’ll have to navigate to the right side of the Power BI dashboard and open the visualizations panel. To import the Power BI Sankey Diagram extension by ChartExpo, click the ellipsis symbol (…).

• On the menu that opens, select the “Get more visuals” option.

• Input “Sankey Diagram for Power by ChartExpo” into the search box. After that, you’ll see the “Sankey Diagram for Power BI by ChartExpo.”

• Click the “Add” button.

• The “Sankey Diagram for Power BI by ChartExpo” icon will be added to the visualization panel.

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

• To do that, select the “Sankey Diagram for Power BI by ChartExpo” icon from the visualization panel. A window similar to the one below will open in the report section of your dashboard.

• You can resize the visual. Next, navigate to the right side of the Power BI dashboard. Look out for “Fields” found next to “Visualizations.”

• You have to select the fields in the following sequence:

• • Total Cost
  • Company Type
  • Company Name
  • Expertise Categories
  • Expertise
  • Cost

• You’ll have to provide your email address or ChartExpo license key.

Stage 5: Activate the ChartExpo Trial or Apply a Subscription Key

• Select the ChartExpo visual. After that, navigate to the visualizations panel and look out for the three icons below “Build Visual.”

• Choose the middle icon “Format visual.” Next, the visual properties will be populated as shown below.

• As a new user, look out for the textbox under the “Trial Mode,” and input your email address. After that, toggle “Enable Trial’ to activate the 7-day trial.

• You’ll notice that the Sankey Diagram comes with the ChartExpo watermark.

• If you have a license key, navigate to the “License Settings” section, and input it into the “ChartExpo License Key” textbox. After that, you’ll have to slide the toggle switch next to “Enable License” to “On.”

• You’ll notice that the Sankey diagram doesn’t come with a watermark.

• To add a prefix (like the $ sign) with the numeric values in the chart, you’ll have to expand the “Stats” properties and include the prefix value.

• To add colors to each node, expand the “Level Colors” properties and select the colors.

• Changes will be saved automatically.

Insights

Here are three insights from the chart.

• At Level 1 (Total Cost), the procurement cost is $155K.
• At Level 2 (Company Type), out of the $155K cost, $82.4K (53.3%) was spent on subcontractors, while $72.3K (46.7%) was allocated to the supplier.
• At Level 3 (Company Name), the 72.3K supplier cost was divided into two: Five-star Construction and Power-up Builder with charges of $19.3K and $53.0K, respectively.

What are the Best Practices for creating views in Microsoft Power BI?

Here are the best practices for creating views in Power BI.

1. Understand Your Audience: Your data presentation and visuals should be tailored to meet the preferences and needs of your audience. Always use terms and languages your audience can relate to.
2. Plan Your Reports and Dashboards: Always sketch out your dashboard or report on paper before building it in Power BI. Whiteboard is also a great alternative for this process. Define the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and metrics that are to be highlighted.
3. Data Preparation and Modeling: Your data has to be accurate, clean, and well-structured before you import it into Power BI. The data model has to be robust in such a way that enables well-defined relationships between tables. You can enhance your data model by using calculated measures, columns, and hierarchies.
4. Use Appropriate Visuals: You need to choose the visual that best fits the data you’re presenting. For instance, users who will be making comparisons should opt for bar charts, while those looking out for trends should opt for line charts. Additionally, do not use multiple types of visuals on one page.

FAQs

How many views are there in Power BI?

There are three main views in Power BI. They include Report View, Data View, and Model View.

What are the three core views of Power BI?

The three core views in Power BI are:

• Report View for report creation
• Data View for data inspection and cleaning
• Model View for creating calculations and managing relationships.

Why use views instead of tables in Power BI?

Views allow for better performance, optimized data transformations, consistent data structures, simplified data management, and improving the overall report maintainability and efficiency.

Wrap Up

Views in Power BI help in the creation of reports, inspecting data, and managing relationships. With it, users can easily improve their data visualization, management, and performance.

The different views in Power BI include the Report View, Model View, and Data View. Power BI Views can be used in creating visuals, managing relationships, and cleaning data.

To get started, you’ll have to create a dashboard in Power BI. After that, use visualizations like the Sankey chart to represent the evolving total over time. All these help in having an effective data evaluation.