Intro - Get started building with Power BI

Question 1

What is Power BI?

Answer 1

• A collection of software services, apps and connectors that turn unrelated data sources into interactive visuals

Question 2

What are the Power BI parts?

Answer 2

• Microsoft Windows desktop application called Power BI Desktop
• online SaaS (Software as a Service) service called the Power BI service
• mobile Power BI apps that are available on any device

Question 3

How do the Power BI parts link?

Answer 3

• Create reports in desktop –> publish reports in service –> consume reports in app

Question 4

What is the flow of activity in Power BI?

Answer 4

1. Bring data into Power BI Desktop, and create a report.
2. Publish to the Power BI service, where you can create new visualizations or build dashboards.
3. Share dashboards so that users of Power BI Mobile apps can consume the information.
4. View and interact with shared dashboards and reports in Power BI Mobile apps.

Question 5

Visualizations? What is the goal of a visualisation?

Answer 5

• A visualization (sometimes also referred to as a visual) is a visual representation of data, like a chart, a color-coded map, or other interesting things you can create to represent your data visually.
• Ultimate goal - to present data in a way that provides context and insights, both of which would probably be difficult to discern from a raw table of numbers or text.

Question 6

Datasets?

Answer 6

• A dataset is a collection of data that Power BI uses to create its visualizations.
• Multiple sources dataset - datasets can also be a combination of many different sources, which you can filter and combine to provide a unique collection of data (a dataset) for use in Power BI.

Question 7

What is a data connector?

Answer 7

• An important and enabling part of Power BI is the multitude of data connectors
• Many built-in connectors that let you easily connect to that data

Question 8

Reports?

Answer 8

• In Power BI, a report is a collection of visualizations that appear together on one or more pages.
• Reports contain visualisations and pages

Question 9

Dashboards?

Answer 9

• When you’re ready to share a report, or a collection of visualizations, you create a dashboard.
• The dashboard has a canvas which is filled with visualisations from the report

Question 10

Tiles?

Answer 10

• In Power BI, a tile is a single visualization on a dashboard

Question 11

How can you quickly create a dashboard in Power BI service?

Answer 11

• Power BI apps
• App is a collection of ready-made visuals

Question 12

How to use Power BI Apps? Explain with an example

Answer 12

• Get data –> Discover content (apps from your organisation or external software services) OR Create new content (files or Databases or Dataflows) –> Choose App (ready-made visuals) –> Connect data
• Different apps have different requirements e.g. YouTube Analytics App requires YouTube account
• Apps will be configured to a report or dashboard based on the creator (e.g. you can explore the data within the App)

Question 13

Update data in Power BI service?

Answer 13

Update icon -> Datasets -> schedule refresh

Question 14

Summarise the different Power BI building blocks?

Answer 14

Visualizations – A visual representation of data, sometimes just called visuals
Datasets – A collection of data that Power BI uses to create visualizations
Reports – A collection of visuals from a dataset, spanning one or more pages
Dashboards – A single-page collection of visuals built from a report
Tiles – A single visualization on a report or dashboard