Power BI Workflow

Description

A review of the Power BI workflow

When to use

Developing Power BI solutions follows a linear process that eventually comes full circle.  Having said that, you could end up looping back to a previous step at any time to expand the system or correct issues.

Instructions

The main steps in the development process for a Power BI solution are:

Get & Transform Data

• Power BI can collect data from files, web pages, databases, and more
• We have a rich set of transform tools to clean up the data
• We can refresh any collection and transformations by hitting the Refresh button
• The technology behind the “Get Data” and “Transform Data” buttons is also known as “Power Query”

Relate Tables

• Commonly known as ‘Modeling’
• Allows us to create links between tables so that data from multiple tables can be used in a single (or multiple) visuals

Develop Measures

• Measures are portable formulas
• They use a formula language called DAX, which is VERY similar to Excel’s formula language for “Power Pivot”

Develop Visuals

• Power BI contains a rich variety of built-in visuals configured via a drag-and-drop interface
• All visuals can be customized to make them look good
• All visuals are interactive and cross-filter each other
• Custom visuals can be imported if you need more than the “out of the box” supply

Publish, Explore & Share

• Reports can be published to the web
• We can then build dashboards that can be shared with others
• Reports and dashboards are always as up-to-date as the latest data uploaded
• Refresh can often be scheduled to happen automatically

Hints & tips

• Projects can become slow with too much data
• Try to keep your BI scoped (make several projects, don’t try to solve everything in one)