preloader

A Beginner's Guide to Power BI

Getting Started with Data Analysis


large hero image of data analysis with Power BI text next to man typing in futuristic computer

Getting to Know Power BI

Microsoft's Power BI is a business intelligence (BI) and data visualization tool that empowers users to transform raw data into compelling visual stories. Compared to traditional spreadsheet software like Excel, Power BI takes data analysis to a whole new level. While Excel excels at tabular data manipulation and basic charting, Power BI offers a more robust and dynamic environment for creating interactive and highly customizable visualizations. It also seamlessly integrates with a wide range of data sources, from on-premises databases to cloud-based services, ensuring that your analysis draws from the most up-to-date information.

With it’s endless data visualization options, advanced analytical abilities, and powerful AI-embedded features, companies like Metropolis have built solutions such as Expo XT and ProfitWatch Power+ entirely on Power BI, providing deeper context into business communications.

Because of it’s powerful data visualizations and AI-embedded features, Metropolis has built Expo XT and ProfitWatch Power+ entirely on Power BI for deeper context into business communications.

Benefits for Power BI Users


Businesses of all sizes have found Power BI to be incredibly beneficial for expediting the transformation of their data into holistic views of their operations. The software’s versatility and gentle learning curve allows beginners to ease into data visualization, while more experienced analysts can enrich their data insights with AI-enabled tools, customizable charts, maps, and dashboards. Perhaps most crucially, Power BI's scalability ensures a future-proof solution that grows alongside evolving organizational needs.

Power BI offers:

  • Ease of Use: Power BI's intuitive interface and drag-and-drop features make it accessible to users with varying technical backgrounds, reducing the learning curve for creating complex reports and visualizations.
  • Interactive Visuals: Having a variety of interactive visualizations including charts, maps, gauges, and custom visuals from the Power BI community, users can craft engaging and insightful data stories that captivate their audience.
  • Real-Time Data Access: Data sources connected to Power BI are live, ensuring your analyses and dashboards reflect the most current information for informed decision-making.
  • Collaboration and Sharing: Power BI has built-in sharing and collaboration capabilities, so users can share reports and dashboards with others securely while maintaining control over data access and permissions.
  • Scalability: Supporting from SMB to the enterprise of scalable solutions to grow with the organization.
  • Cost-Effective: Compared to many other BI tools on the market, Power BI offers a compelling value proposition with its affordability and feature-rich capabilities.
  • Mobile Accessibility: With dedicated mobile apps for iOS and Android, Power BI empowers users to access their reports and dashboards on the go, enabling data-driven decision-making anytime, anywhere.
  • Secure and Regularly Updated: Microsoft constantly updates Power BI with modern features and upgrades, ensuring it stays current with available technologies and developments. This includes security features such as Row Level Security (RLS), Object Level Security (OLS), and role-based permissions.
  • Vibrant Community Support: Power BI boasts an active and supportive community of users, developers, and experts who contribute custom visuals, share best practices and provide valuable resources for learning and troubleshooting.
Chart showing BI tables, charts, pie graph and other visuals

Real World Data Analysis with Power BI

Power BI shines in real-world data analysis scenarios by seamlessly integrating with multiple data sources and providing insightful visualizations. Consider a software engineering firm that aims to enhance operational efficiency and product quality. By connecting Power BI to tools like Jira and Zendesk, Power BI can aggregate and visualize data from development metrics and customer support interactions.

In this scenario, Power BI would track code commits, build success rates, and bug patterns, helping identify and resolve issues rapidly. Simultaneously, it can analyze customer feedback and support ticket trends, revealing opportunities to improve user experience and product features. This dual capability of monitoring internal processes and external customer feedback empowers the firm to make software improvements and eliminate bugs quickly to keep customers happy.

How Power BI Works

Power BI works by first connecting to various data sources, including databases, applications, or even streaming data. Once connected, you can extract and transform the data using Power Query, which is a built-in data preparation engine. This allows you to clean, reshape, and combine data from multiple sources into a single data model and then create interactive visuals (i.e. charts, graphs, dashboards, etc) using the Power BI Desktop application.

Expo XT has MetroLink built in, making the connection, storage, and labeling process between varied CDR, SMDR, GRAPH and other UC specific data sources simple.

Installing and Connecting the Power BI Desktop

The Power BI Desktop Application is a free Windows-based tool that runs on your local machine and supports over 100 data source types. For installation, navigate to the Microsoft store, do a quick search, then select ‘download Power BI’.

screenshot of the Power BI Desktop from the Appstore

Power BI can be connected with various data sources like files, databases, Azure services and much more.

chart of power bi data sources by files, db, cloud services, uc sources

Data Transformation and Power Query

Data transformation in Power BI helps ensure your data is clean, consistent, and structured appropriately for your analysis needs. This is done by using the Power Query tool, an ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) that is integrated into Power BI and acts as a bridge between your raw data and meaningful insights. The data transformation step allows you to clean, manipulate, and standardize your data easily before you move into the data modeling step to ensure you get the best results for your analysis.

Common transformations include:

  • Removing unnecessary rows or columns
  • Changing data types
  • Shaping data by splitting or merging columns
  • Filtering data
  • Grouping and aggregating data
  • Pivoting or unpivoting tables
screenshot showing options in power query editor

Working with Multiple Data Sources

When using multiple data sources or looking to join two related data tables, you’ll want to merge them into one. All the tables to be merged need to have at least one joining data point to connect them (i.e. a customer number or email that appears in both tables).

If you have data tables that have similar data split across different tables (for example, multiple months of performance data with each month located in separate files), you can load this into the Power Query and blend the tables together through the Append option.

Merging Queries:

  • Joins related data tables
  • Requires at least one common data point (e.g., customer number, email)

Appending Queries:

  • Combines similar data split across different tables
  • Useful for data like monthly performance reports in separate files
For more advanced data shape transformations, to combine queries, and to edit M code, you can use the Advanced Editor.

From Transformation to Analysis

Once your data has been shaped, transformed, and combined as needed, it can be loaded into Power BI Desktop. This is where the real magic begins, as you can now leverage your clean, structured data for powerful analysis and visualization.

Power BI Visualizations

To create visualizations in Power BI, you’ll work primarily from the Report View. Power BI offers four main views for designing and managing your data:

  • Report View - Design your reports using charts, tables, graphs, and other visual elements
  • Data View - View your data in a tabular format to see all the queries and their results
  • Model View - View how your data tables are interconnected
  • DAX View - Create and manage Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) formulas for advanced calculations
screenshot of Power BI power query highlighting the icons for view options

Creating Visualizations

From the Report View, you can create various visualizations, including charts, tables, matrices, and maps. Power BI allows extensive customization, such as changing measures and dimensions, adding legends, and comparing multiple measures. Once you've set your desired parameters, you can pin these reports to interactive dashboards, providing at-a-glance insights across multiple data sources.

The Role of Filters

Filters are essential in Power BI for refining data to focus on specific subsets. They help you drill down into data by allowing you to include or exclude particular data points based on certain criteria. Filters can be applied at different levels:

  • Report Level Filters: Affect all the visualizations in the report.
  • Page Level Filters: Affect all the visualizations on a specific report page
  • Visual Level Filters: Affect only a single visualization

Using filters, you can interactively explore data, highlight trends, and make more informed decisions by viewing the most relevant data points. This enhances the ability to analyze data from different perspectives and uncover insights that might not be immediately apparent from a broad dataset.

Understanding DAX

DAX allows users to create measures, calculated columns, and tables that go beyond basic aggregations. For instance, while a simple sum or average can be done with built-in features, DAX enables calculations like year-over-year growth, running totals, or custom metrics that dynamically adjust based on user interactions within a Power BI report.

DAX Syntax and Functions

The syntax of DAX is similar to Excel formulas, but it's tailored for more complex and relational data operations. DAX includes a rich set of functions, such as aggregation functions, logical functions, and time intelligence functions, which allow users to perform detailed analysis over time series data and across different relational tables.

  • Aggregation Functions: SUM, AVERAGE, MIN, MAX
  • Logical Functions: IF, SWITCH
  • Time Intelligence Functions: DATESYTD, SAMEPERIODLASTYEAR, TOTALYTD

Saving Reports in Workspaces

Power BI has a wide range of choices for sharing, collaborating on, and integrating reports and dashboards.

  • Publish to Web: This feature generates public links that can be shared broadly, allowing anyone with the link to view the report.
  • Direct Sharing: Users can send email invitations to colleagues, granting them access to view specific reports directly within Power BI.
  • Power BI Apps: These packages contain related content such as dashboards and reports, making it easier for users to access and interact with relevant data.
  • App Workspaces: Within the Power BI Service, app workspaces provide a collaborative environment where team members can work together on reports and datasets, streamlining the process of report creation and data analysis.

Applying Your Power BI Skills

As you finish your reports and share them with colleagues, you'll find that Power BI becomes an indispensable tool in your data analysis toolkit. The more you use it, the more proficient you'll become at uncovering insights and telling compelling data stories.

Power BI is constantly evolving, with new features and improvements released regularly. Stay curious, explore the Power BI community for inspiration, and don't hesitate to experiment with advanced features as your skills grow. With practice and persistence, you'll soon be transforming raw data into actionable insights that drive informed decision-making across your organization.

CTA-expo xt leverages power bi