Create Reports and Dashboards with Power BI: Part 1

Quick reference

• 00:04 So let's take a look at this Power BI report in a little bit more detail.
• 00:09 So we can start to understand how we might want to modify or change this report.
• 00:13 Now, I've opened my report in Power BI desktop.
• 00:16 And the first thing you need to understand when you're looking at this report is
• 00:21 that all of the visuals that you can see on here are basically built using tables.
• 00:26 So, again, add data from project for
• 00:28 the web is stored in tables within the dataverse.
• 00:32 And when we connected Power BI to the dataverse,
• 00:35 it basically downloaded all of those tables that are relevant to this report.
• 00:40 And we can see those tables all the way over on the right hand side in this
• 00:44 fields area.
• 00:45 These are the different tables that contain columns and rows full of data.
• 00:50 So if we take one of the most basic tables that we have here,
• 00:54 project bucket and expand it.
• 00:56 You can see we have a table called Project Bucket and
• 01:00 it just has the bucket name in that table.
• 01:03 If we take something a little bit more complex like projects and expand that.
• 01:07 You can see this particular table contains a lot more information.
• 01:11 So we have columns for the board URL, the duration, the effort,
• 01:15 effort completed, so on and so forth.
• 01:18 So this would be a much larger table of data.
• 01:21 And these work in a very similar way to when we're building a pivot table report.
• 01:26 We basically drag and drop these fields in order to build our visualizations.
• 01:31 And we can tell which fields from which tables are in use in our visualizations
• 01:37 simply by clicking on any of the charts or tables you can see in here.
• 01:41 So if I click on this one projects by progress, this donut chart.
• 01:46 And now, take a look over in the fields area, notice that one of my
• 01:51 tables now has that little yellow circle with a tick inside.
• 01:55 So that means that this donut chart is using one or
• 01:59 more fields from this particular table in order to build it.
• 02:03 So if I expand projects out again, I can see that in order to build this donut
• 02:07 chart, it's using the project count fields.
• 02:10 So how many projects, I have and the project progress field.
• 02:15 And that would make sense if we take a look at this.
• 02:18 This donut chart basically represents the number of projects that
• 02:22 we currently have in progress versus not started.
• 02:26 So those two fields from that table have been used to build that visual.
• 02:30 If I click on the next one, so Effort by Project,
• 02:34 you can see again, it's using fields from this projects table.
• 02:38 But this time, it's using Effort Completed, Effort Remaining and
• 02:42 the project name, in order to build this visualization.
• 02:45 So that is where the data for these visualizations comes from.
• 02:49 And for example, if we take a look in the visualizations pane that's next to fields.
• 02:54 This is where we go to add visuals to our report.
• 02:57 So if I was building this report from scratch and I wanted to add column chart,
• 03:01 I would come into the visualizations pane and select something like stacked column
• 03:05 chart, or maybe a line chart, or whatever I want to add.
• 03:08 I can then choose which fields I want to use in those particular visualization.
• 03:13 And you can see just below for this particular chart here which is a stacked
• 03:18 column charts, the x-axis is using the project fields.
• 03:22 So it's showing me the project names and
• 03:24 the y-axis is showing me the Efffort Completed and the Effort Remaining.
• 03:29 If I click on something like this Table Visualization, because I have so
• 03:33 much information in here, lots of columns.
• 03:35 You can see,
• 03:35 if we scroll down, all of the different fields that we have added in here.
• 03:40 So these represent all of our columns.
• 03:43 And you can see that all of those come from the project task table.
• 03:46 And also the project's table as well, and we can very simply adjust
• 03:51 these by dragging these fields out of the columns area to remove them.
• 03:57 So maybe looking at this table,
• 03:58 I decide I'm not interested in the Effort Hours column.
• 04:01 I can simply find it and I can click on the cross to remove it.
• 04:06 The table will update and that column has now disappeared.
• 04:09 So it's very simple to make changes.
• 04:12 I could switch out the information in this particular chart.
• 04:15 So maybe I decide I want to get rid of Effort Remaining and Effort Completed.
• 04:20 I want to keep the project name, but maybe I'm interested in the progress instead.
• 04:24 Let's drag that field to the y-axis and
• 04:27 you can see that that visualization will now update.
• 04:30 So really simple to make changes to different visualizations in your report.
• 04:35 We even have things over here like cards, so
• 04:38 this is simply just showing me the number of projects that I'm currently managing.
• 04:43 And you can see looking at the tables,
• 04:45 it's taking the project count field from the project's table.
• 04:48 Now, right at the top here I have some little filters or slices.
• 04:53 So I can choose to monitor my project progress and
• 04:57 I can also choose which project manager I'm interested in.
• 05:02 Now, I'm the only project manager, so this little filter,
• 05:06 this little slicer is taking up room and it's not particularly useful.
• 05:10 So I might want to switch this out for something else.
• 05:14 So what I could do here is I could select the slicer, click the three dots and
• 05:19 I can remove it.
• 05:20 I could also press the Delete key to delete out any visualizations.
• 05:23 Now, if I wanted to add that slicer or that filter back in again.
• 05:27 And have it display different information,
• 05:30 I can simply select it from my visualizations pane.
• 05:33 So you can see this one here is slicer.
• 05:36 It's going to adding the slicer, it's not showing anything,
• 05:40 because I need to add the fields.
• 05:42 So what would I like my slicer to show?
• 05:45 Well currently, this dashboard is showing all of my projects.
• 05:49 So I might want to be able to break this down, so I can just see information for
• 05:54 each individual project.
• 05:56 So I'm going to go to the projects table and
• 05:59 I'm going to grab project name and drop it into the fields area.
• 06:03 So now, in this slicer, it's listing out all of those projects.
• 06:07 And I can just resize this to make it a bit neater.
• 06:10 Now, this particular slicer doesn't have the look and
• 06:13 feel of the Project Progress slicer next to it.
• 06:15 So what we can do here is we can click on it, click the drop-down.
• 06:19 And instead of showing our projects in a list,
• 06:21 we can choose to have them in a drop-down menu.
• 06:24 And now, you can see that looks a lot neater.
• 06:28 So what I'm going to do is I'm going to drag this over here and line it up nicely.
• 06:32 And what I'll also probably want to do is make the formatting the same.
• 06:35 You can see that Project Progress is slightly bigger than Project Name.
• 06:40 Now, when it comes to formatting different elements on our report,
• 06:44 this is where we would go to the Formatting tab in the visualizations pane.
• 06:49 This allows us to select any visual, and then we have lots and
• 06:53 lots of different formatting options that we can choose.
• 06:56 Now, a quick way, if you just want to copy the formatting of another element on
• 07:01 your page is to simply copy it.
• 07:03 So I'm going to select Project Progress.
• 07:06 I'm going to choose Format Painter, and
• 07:08 then I'm just going to click on Project Name.
• 07:10 So now, I can go into this drop-down and
• 07:12 maybe I'm only interested in a couple of these projects.
• 07:16 If I want to select multiple, I need to hold down CTRL.
• 07:19 I'm going to select Employee Onboarding > Kitchen Renovation and
• 07:23 the Upgrade Server Project.
• 07:25 And you can see that my entire report updates just to reflect that information.
• 07:31 So very simple to make minor modifications to the visuals that we have in our report.

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