Power BI is a powerful tool which can be used for creative interactive and live reports. Reports can be generated from various data sources ranging from an excel spreadsheet to a large SQL database to a website.
For this example, I will be using an excel sheet to create different kinds of report and then relating these reports with one another.
- The first thing is to clean the data source. The better the quality of data, the better will be the report. For an .xlxs or .csv file the following are the things to check:
- Header/Column name
- Spelling in each data set
- Remove any data field that is not needed for the report (Reduces the file size)
- Power BI can read both spreadsheets and tables. But for now, we will use tables.
- To create a table, select all the rows and columns and press Ctrl + T.
- Now when the data source is ready, it is the time to open the Power BI Designer.
- This is the first welcome screen on the designer.
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Figure 1: The Designer
- You can now open a recent designer file or create a new one.
- To create a new one, click on Get Data.
- You will see a window with all the available data sources.
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Figure 2: Get Data
- Select Excel and then connect.
- Select all the tables that you require to create the report and load it.
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Figure 3: Connect
- Once the data is loaded, you will see the following window:
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Figure 4: Report
- The Visualization pane consists of all the different types of visualizations that can be used to create the report.
- The Fields pane consists of all the column names that has been loaded previously.
- Now select any type of chart you want. For this, I will be using a pie chart.
- Click on the pie chart icon and you will see a place holder for it.
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Figure 5: Place Holder
- It is now time to fill the data into the pie chart. For this, you need to drag the required field and drop it in text boxes under visualization.
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Figure 6: Required Field
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Figure 7: Visualization
- Similarly you can create other types of reports as well.
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Figure 8: Create Folder
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Figure 9: Report1
- Now the reports are interlinked in such a way that clicking on certain portion of one of the visualizations will also change the visualization of the others on the same page. By clicking on the female portion of the pie chart, it changed the age distribution in the bar chart.
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Figure 10: Interlink
- You can add as many reports you want on this page. You can even add pages and create different types of reports.
- Now save your work.
- The next step would be to upload it in the Power BI portal and share it with people inside your organization.