Module 6

Interactive Data Visualizations

Module Overview

• Creating Power BI Reports

• Managing a Power BI Solution
Lesson 1: Creating Power BI Reports

• Creating Charts
• Using Geographic Data
• Histograms
• Adding a Custom Visualization
• Demonstration: Adding Visualizations to a Report
Creating Charts

• Power BI includes a wide range of chart types:

• Bar and column—stacked, clustered, 100% stacked
• Line and area—area chart fills data area
• Line and column—combines columns and lines
• Scatter and bubble—use scatter for two values, bubble
for three values
• Pie and donut—pie is solid, donut has hollow center
• Table and matrix—add data fields to create columns
• Tree map—proportional rectangles, large to small
• Others include funnel, waterfall, gauge, card, multirow
card, KPI, slicer, and R script visual
• Charts can be formatted
Using Geographic Data

• Map and filled map charts:

• Power BI integrates with Bing to determine location
• Bing makes a best guess—known as geocoding
• Always include location—longitude and latitude are
aggregated
• Include additional data for better accuracy
• Add data categories to columns for better accuracy
• Concatenate string address fields into one column

• Map chart represents data as proportionally

sized, color-coded bubbles
• Filled map chart uses shading across a region—
darker shades for higher values
Histograms

• Histograms differ from bar charts:

• No spaces between the bars
• Bars (or bins or buckets) represent a range of values
• Ranges must be contiguous
• Width of the bars represent a proportion of the total
bin limit
• Download Histogram visual from the Power BI
community gallery
• Specify a data field for the Values (bin) and a
field for the Frequency
Adding a Custom Visualization

• Create new or extended visuals by using the

Microsoft Power BI visuals project:
• Download the free, open-source project from GitHub:
• Code for more than 20 visuals
• Framework to interface with Power BI
• Test tools
• Visuals coded with TypeScript, built with D3, and
compiled into browser-compatible JavaScript code
• Install Git, Node.js, and Visual Studio Community 2015
with Microsoft Web Developer Tools
• Test visuals by using the Power BI Playground
• Upload your visuals to the community gallery, download
visuals created by others, and add to a Power BI report
Demonstration: Adding Visualizations to a
Report

In this demonstration, you will see how to:

• Connect to an Azure SQL Database and import
data
• Add visualizations to a report in Power BI
Desktop
Lesson 2: Managing a Power BI Solution

• The Manage Data Portal

• Usage Analytics
• Shared Queries
• Data Sources
The Manage Data Portal

• The Manage Data portal solves the problem of

organizational data management:
• Makes analysts aware of data that is relevant to them
• Enables users to request access to data
• Creates a central location for finding and managing
data sources
• Provides secure data sources that can be trusted
• Reduces the dependency on IT to develop reports
• Users can find and share queries and data sources

• Self-service information management (SSIM)

removes IT dependency to manage data sources
Usage Analytics

• Provides Office 365 global admins with

information on activity within a tenant
• Located under Settings > Admin Portal from the
Power BI Admin Center
• Identifies:
• Most active users and most popular dashboards and
datasets
• Inactive users and finds out why they are not using
Power BI
• Two views: User and Group
Shared Queries

• Share queries by using Get & Transform

• Manage the queries in the Manage Data portal:
• Analytics
• Manage
• Share
• Delete
Data Sources

• The Data Catalog within the Manage Data portal

enables you to manage data sources:
• Provides a cloud-based repository to view, edit, and
manage data sources created from shared queries
• Enables users to quickly find and request access to secure
data sources
• Control how users access the data sources
• A status icon indicates Complete, Incomplete, or
Missing
• You can view the name of the user who last modified the
data source
• Set an approver for access requests to email or URL
• You cannot delete a data source by using the Data
Catalog
Lab: Creating a Power BI Report

• Exercise 1: Connecting to Power BI Data

• Exercise 2: Building Power BI Reports
• Exercise 3: Creating a Power BI Dashboard
• Exercise 4: (Optional): Adding Visualizations

Logon Information
Virtual machine: 10989B-MIA-SQL
User name: ADVENTUREWORKS\Student
Password: Pa$$w0rd

Estimated Time: 60 minutes

Lab Scenario

Adventure Works employees are increasingly frustrated by

the time that it takes to implement managed BI services.
The existing managed BI infrastructure, including a data
warehouse, enterprise data models, and reports and
dashboards, are valued sources of decision-making
information. However, users increasingly want to explore
relationships with other, currently unmanaged data, and it
takes too long for the IT department to incorporate these
requirements into the corporate BI solution.
As a BI professional, you have been asked to explore ways
in which Adventure Works can empower business users to
augment their managed enterprise BI solution with self-
service BI.
Lab Review

• Discuss the tools that you used to shape and combine

data in the labs. How did this compare to using Excel, or
coding Transact-SQL to deliver the same results? Do you
think it is quicker to use Power BI rather than the
applications that you use at the moment?
• Discuss some of the visualizations that you used in the
optional exercise to create a report that was relevant for
your organization. If you did not have time to do the
optional exercise, which of the charts that you used in the
lab will you reuse to create reports for your organization?
Can you think of data that you can present by using the
map charts?
Module Review and Takeaways

• Review Question(s)
Course Evaluation

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