Visualize & Analyze the Data Flashcards
What visualization is good to use when measuring multiple measures that have different scales?
Combination Charts
What is a slicer
A slicer is an on-canvas visual filter that allows report users to segment the data by a specific value.
Examples of filters include by year or by geographical location.
When would you use a basic area chart?
To see & compare the volume trend across a time series
for an individual series representing a physically countable set
What visual can be created using the report editor or Q&A?
Card
What visual is best used to compare a particular value section to the whole?
Doughnut chart
What visual is good for showing how values increase and decrease over time?
Waterfall chart
What visual would you use to compare 2 different measures or highlight outliers?
Scatter Chart
What does the play axis allow you to do on a chart?
Animate a chart over time
What visual would you use to measure progress or distance to a goal or to compare a value against one or 2 targets?
KPI
What map visual would you use to compare regions on a map using color?
Shape Map
What map visual is only available in Power BI Desktop?
The shape map is only available in power bi desktop and not in Power Bi service or mobile
What map must be enabled before you use it?
The shape map is only in preview and must be enabled before you can use it.
How do you enable the shape map?
File
Options & Settings
Options
Preview Features
Select Shape map visual
What are the field wells of the variations of bar charts offered?
Axis - columns to be placed on the horizontal or vertical axis. (when using more than 1 column users can drill down)
Legend - The categorical column used to color items
Values - one or more numerical fields to be plotted (if you use a legend, you can put only one field into this field well)
Tooltips - additional fields that users can see in the tooltip when they hover over a bar or column. The default tooltips will be shown when you hover over the bars or columns
When are bar charts best used?
When comparing values across categories.
What are the field wells of the line and area charts offered?
Axis - Columns to be placed on the horizontal axis (when using more than 1 column users can drill down)
Legend - The categorical column used to color items
Values - one or more numerical fields to be plotted (if you use a legend, you can put only one field into this field well)
Tooltips - Additional fields that users can see in the tooltip when they hover over the bar or column
When are line & area charts best used?
When you want to show historical trends or compare values across time.
What are the field wells of the combo charts offered?
Shared Axis - columns to be placed on the horizontal axis (when using more than 1 column users can drill down)
Column series - Similar to a legend; one column may be used
Column values - one or more numerical fields to be plotted (if you use a legend, you can put only one field into this field well)
Line values - One or more numerical values to be plotted as lines
Tooltips - Additional fields that users can see in the tooltip when they hover over the bar or column
When are combo charts best used?
when you have a line chart and a column chart with the same X-axis.
to compare multiple measures with different value ranges.
to illustrate the correlation between two measures in one visualization.
to check whether one measure meet the target which is defined by another measure
to conserve canvas space.
What are the field wells of the ribbon charts offered?
Axis - Columns to be placed on the horizontal axis (when using more than 1 column users can drill down)
Legend - The categorical column used to color items
Values - one or more numerical fields to be plotted (if you use a legend, you can put only one field into this field well)
Tooltips - Additional fields that users can see in the tooltip when they hover over the bar or column. *When you hover over the ribbons between columns you will see how the values changed between two columns
When are ribbon charts best used?
When you want to show the progression of ranking changes between different categories.
What are the field wells of the Waterfall charts offered?
Category - Columns to be placed on the horizontal axis. (when using more than 1 column users can drill down)
Breakdown - You can use 1 column here to show changes between categories
Values - One numerical field to be plotted
Tooltips - Additional fields that users can see in the tooltip when they hover over the bar or column. *When using the breakdown field, hovering over a breakdown item will show the change between two categorical items
What are the field wells of the Funnel charts offered?
Group - For one or more categorical columns, where each item is a stage. (when using more than 1 column users can drill down)
Values - One numerical field to be plotted
Tooltips - Additional fields that users can see in the tooltip when they hover over the bar or column.
*When you hover over a categorical item in a funnel chart, you’ll see a tooltip with the proportion that category makes up of the first & previous items. It also shows the size of the last item relative to the first one.
When are funnel charts best used?
Funnel charts can be a proper choice for showing values by stages
What are the field wells of the scatter charts offered?
Details - you can use one or more categorical columns in this field well to plot points.
Legend - The categorical column used to color items
X-axis - one field to be placed on the horizontal axis
Y-axis - one field to be placed on the vertical axis
Size - For one numerical field to be used for relative bubble sizing
Play Axis - You can use a column here, which is usually a time-series column such as Year or Date
Tooltips - Additional fields that users can see in the tooltip when they hover over the bar or column.
What are the field wells of Pie & Donut charts offered?
Legend - For 1 or more categorical columns used to color items. When using more than one column, you can drill down.
Details - Each slice may be split by a categorical column used here
Values - YOu may use one or more numerical fields here; if you show Details, you are limited to only one field
Tooltips - Additional fields that users can see in the tooltip when they hover over the bar or column.
When are Pie & Donut charts best used?
When comparing a section to a whole.
Both charts are not considered best practice in data visualization with one exception: you may use a Pie & Donut chart when there are only two categories
What are the field wells of the Treemap visual offered?
Group - For one or more categorical columns that will define the relative size of rectangles. When using more than one column, you can drill down.
Details - Each rectangle may be split by a categorical column used here
Values - One or more numerical fields to be plotted; if you show details; you are limited to one field only.
Tooltips - Additional fields that users can see in the tooltip when they hover over the bar or column.
When are Treemaps best used?
When you want to show proportions between each part and the whole, as well as highlight the most important contributions and outliers
What are the field wells of the variations of map visuals offered?
Location - For one or more categorical columns that contain locations to be plotted. When using two or more, you can drill down.
Legend - you can use a column here to color items
Latitude - one field can be used here
Longitude - one field can be used here
Tooltips - Additional fields that users can see in the tooltip when they hover over the bar or column.
Size field - for different bubble sizes based on a numerical field.
What are the field wells of the gauge visuals offered?
Value - For a numerical field; displayed in the center
Min value - A numerical field may be used as the start of the scale
Max value - A numerical field may be used at the end of the scale
Target value - you can use one numerical field here, which is displayed as a line/needle on the gauge
Tooltips - Additional fields that users can see in the tooltip when they hover over the bar or column.
When are gauges best used?
When tracking KPIs or targets; especially those with known maximum values such as proportions
What are the field wells of the KPI visual?
Indicator - for a numerical field; displayed in the center
Trend axis - for a column, preferably one that contains time-series data (like year or date)
Target goals - For one or two numerical fields against which the indicator is compared
When is the card visual best used?
when there’s only one value to display
When is the multi-row card best used?
When you want to display several metrics across a category. It’s good for displaying several unrelated metrics at once.
What happens with performance if you have a lot of visuals on one page?
It slows the performance down.
What are the common formatting options for visuals?
General - Height, width, alt text, title, header icons, tooltips, effects (background color and transparency)
Title - Title text, word wrap, font color, background color, alignment, text size, & font family)
Background - background color and transparency
Lock aspect - when you adjust the size of a visual manually, its aspect will be locked
Border - border color and radius
Shadow - Shadow color position and preset
Tooltips, where you choose to use the default tooltip or to use a specific report page as a tooltip.
Visual Header - where you hide the whole visual header or some of its element
Slicers accept only ____ as fields to filter by
Columns
In what ways can slicers be displayed?
List
Drop Down
How can you search on a slicer visual?
You can add a search bar to a list or dropdown slicer by hovering over it and selecting more options
What options are available in the selection control of a slicer?
Force a single selection
Select whether the CTRL key is required for multiple selections
Show the select all option
What is required to create a hierarchial slicer?
Multiple columns from one or more related tables
What filter options are available for slicers that use a numeric column?
Between
Less than or equal to
Greater than or equal to
What options are available for slicers that use a date/time column?
Between
Before
After
Relative Date - can filter one or more periods such as days or months before or after today’s date. It can also filter for the current period
Relative Time - For time periods such as minutes or hours
What does filter on this visual filter option do?
These filters apply to a specific visual you select and this is visible only when you select a visual. You can use both measures and columns on the visual.
*Fields that are in the field well, usually automatically appear in the “filters on this visual” section
What does the filter on this page filter option do?
These filters will apply to all visuals on the currently selected page
What does the filter on all pages filter option do?
These filters will apply to all visuals across all pages.
you can’t make specific filters ignore these filters and you can only use columns to filter on
How do you add fields into the fields pane?
Drag & drop
Right-click the field and select add to filters & the select the section you want to add the field to
When hovering over a filter card in the filter’s pane, what options are available?
Lock Filter - locks the filter selections preventing report viewers from changing them
Hide filter - Hides filter from report viewers
Remove filter - removes a filter card; not available for fields that are used in visuals
When does locking and hiding filters on a report work?
only when you’re viewing a report published to the Power BI Service
How do you clear conditional formatting?
to clear conditional formatting, right-click on the metric with conditional formatting applied and select ‘Remove conditional formatting.
How do you sync a slicer?
click on the View ribbon and select ‘Sync slicers.’ You can then choose the pages to sync the slicer and show the slicer.
How do you change the page settings?
When no visual is selected, chose the format option
what page settings are availabe?
Page Information - The page name can be changed here as well as allow the page to be used as a tooltip
Page size
Page background
Page alignment - you can set the vertical alignment of the page to Top or Middle
Wallpaper - similar to background except it also covers the area outside of the page
Filter pane - you can format the filter pane here by selecting various colors and sizes
Filter cards - you can format the available and applied filter cards separately
What are the 2 accessibility options?
Under the view tab:
colorblind safe colors. These can be found in the report color theme in the View ribbon. If you hover over the icons, a title will come up, one of which is ‘Colorblind safe’.
keyboard navigation. You can adjust the tab order of your visuals by going to the View Ribbon and selecting Selection > Tab order. You can then select an object and use the up and down arrow buttons to move the hierarchy. Alternatively, you can choose an object with your mouse and drag it into the position you would like in the list.
What storage mode supports page refresh?
DirectQuery
Where is the “Analyze in Excel” feature available?
Power BI Service, select the … next to the dataset or report and select analyze in excel
Or In Power BI Service on the report page at the top select Export and then analyze in excel
You can download it to use in Power BI Desktop
What is analyze in excel?
an external tool for Power BI desktop
When should you use Analyze in Excel?
Verification of data results
When should you use a paginated report?
When the report has to be printed or output as a PDF document
Data grid layouts could expand and overflow
What are dashboards composed of?
pinned tiles from reports
How do you pin tiles to dashboards?
The first is to pin a report element
The second option is to pin an entire report as live to a dashboard.
How do you pin a report element to a dashboard
hover over the image you want to pin to your dashboard. You will see a pin come up on the left side; click on this.
Next, a screen will come up and ask which dashboard you would like to add the report element to. This is where you can select an existing dashboard or a new dashboard
What does it mean to pin the entire report page ‘as live
Pinning as live means that the tiles are live within the dashboard so that you can interact with everything within the dashboard.
Any changes you make in the report editor, such as layouts, changing fields, or adding filters, will be reflected within the dashboard live tile.
How do you Set mobile view?
In the Power BI Service Navigate to your workspace where you uploaded your data
Click on the report.
Click on ‘Edit’ at the top of the page.
Next, click on ‘Mobile layout.’
Select the page visuals and drag them onto the phone grid and resize them to fit.
Where & how do you configure data alerts?
In Power BI Service (for Dashboards)
Hover over a tile in a dashboard
Select more options, Manage Alers, Add alert rule
Who receives data alerts?
Only the user who configures the alerts will see it.
In what ways (format) are data alert notifications sent?
You will receive a notification in the Power BI service and mobile apps. Email notifications are sent by default but can be disabled.
Where is Q&A available?
Reports & Dashboards
How do you start using the Q&A feature?
To start using Q&A in a dashboard, select ask a question about your data on the dashboard and enter a question.
When would you use quick insights?
When you have a dataset and aren’t sure where to start, need to build a new dashboard quickly, or would like to look for insights you may have missed.
Quick insights can also be run for individual visuals
How do you run quick insights?
Choose a workspace where the dataset is located, select the ellipses, and choose “get quick insights”
How do you apply a dashboard theme?
On the dashboard, select edit dashboard theme
Choose the theme you want
How do you pin a live report to a dashboard?
From your report page in Power BI Service, select the edit menu at the top of the page, then select Pin to a dashboard, lastly selectly pin live. Then choose if you’re pinning it to a new dashboard or current dashboard
What is the purpose of a bookmark?
Bookmarks allow you to save the states of your pages & switch between them in presentation mode or by linking them.
What can be saved as a bookmark?
Filters, including cross-filtering and selection in slicers
Current page
Objects visibility
Sort order
Drill-down level
How do you create a bookmark?
Open the bookmarks pane by selecting view
Select Bookmarks
Apply the filters for the bookmark
Select Add
Rename bookmark
What options are available once the bookmark has been created (more options)?
Update - Make updates to the state of the bookmark
Delete -
Rename - rename the bookmark
Group - You can group bookmarks together. You can ungroup as well
Data - determines if the filter, sort, & drill state of the page is saved in the bookmark
Display - determines if the bookmark saves the visibility of the visuals
Current page - determines whether selecting the bookmarks takes you to the page where it was created
All visuals - determines whether the bookmark is applied to all visuals or selected visuals only
Selected visuals - you can create a bookmark & only apply it to the visuals that were selected at the time the bookmark was created
What are custom tooltips?
Report pages that you configure to show instead of the default options
What is cross-highlighting?
selecting a data point in a visual will highlight portions of other visuals
What options do you have when editing interactions and what will each option do?
Filter - Only shows values that relate to the selected data point
Highlight - highlights portions of visuals that relate to the selected data point
None - Ignores selections
What power BI tools can you use to implement report navigation?
You can configure Buttons, shapes, and images to link to specific report pages or bookmarks
What are the steps to configure report navigation?
Select an existing visualization or insert a new one
With the item selected, in the visualization pane set the “action” toggle to on
Expand the action section in the visualization pane
Select page navigation or bookmark from the “type” dropdown list to go to a page or bookmark
Selected the desired page or bookmark from the destination or bookmark dropdown list
How do you change the sorting of a visual?
Hover over the visual
Select more options
Sort By
Select the field you want to sort by
How do you sort descending or ascending on a visual?
Hover over the visual
Select more options
Choose Sort descending or Sort Ascending
What are the 2 ways you can sync slicers?
Copy slicer from one page to another and select sync when the prompt appears asking if you want to sync slicers.
Select the View tab, Sync Slicers
What is the purpose of the selection pane?
The selection pane allows you to control the visibility of visuals
How do you group visuals within the selection pane?
Select several visuals (ctl c)
Right-click one of the selected visuals
Select group then select group again
What happens to the title of a visual when you rename the visual from the selection pane?
The visual will be renamed
What does the layer order of a visual determine?
Which visuals get selected when you click in an area where two visuals overlap.
What is tab order?
Tab order is an accessibility feature that lists the order the visuals that will be selected when a user is using a keyboard
What does drill through allow report users to do?
create a destination target page in your report that focuses on a specific entity selected by the user
How do you set up drill through in Power BI?
Create a target page with the visuals you want for the type of entity you’re going to provide drillthrough for
On the drillthrough target page in the fields section of the visualization pane, drag the field for which you want to enable drill through into the “drillthrough” filters well
When have an option to drilldown into data what options may be available?
Drilldown - goes to the next level of hierarch within the selected point
Show next level - goes to the next level of the hierarchy with no filter on the previous level
Expand to next level - combines the current and next levels
Drill up - goes back up one level
How do you export report data?
Hover over the visual you want to export data from
Select more options then export data
select the folder you want to export data to
Enter a new file name and save
*This saves data to a CSV file
How do you create a report to be viewed on a mobile device?
Select the View tab
select mobile layout
Add the visuals you want to the canvas
What happens if you don’t design a mobile view and a user view the report from a mobile device?
The report will automatically appear horizontally
What is the Analyze feature in Power Bi?
A feature that allows you to learn the cause of fluctuation in your data
How do you use the Analyze feature?
Right-click a data point on your visual and select analyze
Select explain increase/decrease (depends on data) or show where distribution is different
What is grouping
Groping allows you to manually group values in a column by leveraging a user interface instead of having to write DAX.
What does binning do?
Splits numeric and date/time data into groups of equal size.
With binning, what type of groups are used for categorical values?
List
With binning what type of categorical groups are used for numeric and date/time values?
Bins
What is the benefit of clustering?
Clustering allows you to quickly find groups of similar data points in your data
How is clustering performed?
you can use clustering on your scatter chart by clicking the ellipses in the top right and then selecting automatically find clusters
You can enter the # of clusters you want to be found. If not all clusters will be found
What visuals can you find clusters on?
Scatter chart and Tables
What are the 3 AI visuals in Power BI?
Q&A
Key Influencers
Decomposition Tree
What will the key influencers visual do?
Help you understand the factors that drive a metric you’re interested in.
When would you use key influencers?
See which factors affect the metric being analyzed
Contrast the relative importance of these factors.
Ex: do short-term contracts affect churn more than long-term contracts?
What tabs are on the key influencer’s visual and what is the purpose of the tabs?
Key Influencer - shows the top contributors to the selected metric
Top Segments - shows the top segments that contribute to the selected metric value. A segment is made up of a combination of values
Dropdown box - the value of the metric under investigation
Restatement - helps interpret the visual on the left
left pane - visual
Restatement helps interpret the visual on the right
right pane - one visual usually the values for the key influencer
Check box - filters out the visual on the right pane to only show values that are influencers for the selected field
What does the average line in the key influencer visual tell you?
The average is calculated for all possible values EXCEPT the selected influencer
How does the decomposition tree visual breakdown a measure?
It automatically aggregates your data & lets you drill down into your dimensions so that you can view your data across multiple dimensions
What’s the benefit of the forecast feature in Power BI?
It allows you to forecast metrics to make to determine the direction of future trends
What type of visual is forecasting used in?
Forecast is available for line charts only.
What format does the x-axis of the line chart have to be for forecasting?
The x-axis value needs to have a date/time format or be a uniformly increasing whole number.
It can’t contain text or decimal numbers.
Sometimes x-axis values appear to be dates, but they’re actually formatted as text. They won’t work for forecasting.
How do you add a reference line using the analytics pane?
Select the visual
select the Analytics icon from the Visualizations section.
select the type of line you want to create to expand its options.
To create a new line, select + Add. Then you can name the line. Double-click the text box and enter your name.
If you want the data label to appear, change Data label from Off to On
Where can you use quick insights at (desktop or service or both)
In Power BI Service
What storage modes can you use quick insights with?
Import Only
What data type does Anomaly detection work with?
time-series data in the chart’s axis
How many line values are supported with Anomaly detection?
A single line value. Anomaly detection is not supported on visuals that have multiple value lines.
Where can you create and view Anomalies? (Desktop or Service)
In power bi desktop or power bi service
Outside of the Play Axis feature, what is another option to configure a report using animation?
Play Axis Dynamic Slicer. A certified visual from the app store that acts like a slicer. When you play it, the other visuals on the page interact and show how their values change over time.
