Creating dynamic reports is crucial for analyzing business data in real time. Power BI, one of the leading platforms in the business intelligence industry, offers users the ability to transform complex data into intuitive and interactive visualizations. In this article, we'll explore the detailed process for creating a dynamic report from scratch using Power BI.
Power BI is part of the Power Platform suite, developed by Microsoft to optimize business processes. This suite provides users with essential tools to create workflows with Power Automate, develop business apps with Power Apps, and analyze data with interactive and customizable charts, just like with Power BI.
In the next few chapters, we'll explore the various features of Power BI, its possible integrations, and different licensing options. We will guide you through the process of creating a report starting from importing and cleaning the data.
Our goal is to clarify the role of Power BI in simplifying the exchange of information to accelerate business decision-making. This tool is designed to simplify the analysis, visualization and sharing of data within the company, allowing people to accurately assess situations and intervene promptly.
With advanced features such as multi-source data collection, the interactivity of graphs, and collaboration with AI to provide suggestions and forecasts, Power BI has rapidly gained popularity among businesses of all sectors and sizes, becoming a key element in increasing the productivity of both individual professionals and entire organizations.
However, another feature that has helped to increase its popularity is linked to the integrations, made possible and multiple by belonging to the Microsoft universe.
From this it derives The deep synergy between the functionality of Power BI and those of products such as Excel and SharePoint.
The advantage here is twofold, because, on the one hand, it is possible to work with data already present in the company; while on the other, you have the certainty of transferring and reprocessing the information in an environment protected by the authorization and data protection system typical of Microsoft.
Regarding the integration with Excel, Power BI shares the support of the DAX language to create and use customized measures and advanced calculations in its reports. In addition to allowing, of course, the import of content from one or more worksheets. In relation to SharePoint, on the other hand, the user can decide whether to reprocess the data stored in his libraries, or whether to incorporate a report or a dashboard into a site, for example the intranet, thus making the data accessible to the corporate public.
But the strength of this tool also lies in its ability to collect data from Microsoft Azure business databases (Azure SQL Database, Azure Blob Storage, Azure Data Explorer, Cosmos DB and Azure Data Lake Storage) and from third-party sources, again thanks to Power Query.
Power Query is an ETL (Extract/Transform/Load) software that allows you to collect information from a myriad of sources, including those present in systems outside Microsoft's orbit, including:
So imagine being able to bring together this heterogeneous set of information to build analyses, aesthetically appealing as well, without having to use programming languages or risking losing sight of crucial insights for your company's strategies with a watertight approach.
Let's see the services and licenses you could use.
Power BI includes 4 products:
The first is the main component of the platform, which consists of the desktop app with which to create personalized and complete reports and dashboards. And free.
In fact, Power BI has a Free license precisely to allow users to access its basic functionality without consumption costs or subscriptions. The only condition is that the analyses are for personal use only. This means that with Power BI Desktop, it is not possible to collaborate with other users to build charts, much less publish the final report online.
To do this, you need to purchase the Pro license. Power BI Pro is a single-user license that allows you to read and interact with reports published in the Microsoft cloud through the use of Power BI Service.
This second product represents the cloud-based version of Power BI and is used to share a project, work in real time with your team and embed reports and dashboards in:
And if your organization has special needs in terms of control over shared information, you can expand the capabilities of Power BI Pro with Premium license. The Premium version includes Power BI Report Server, which is the on-premise solution with which a company can manage and publish content in its IT infrastructure, with advanced features for data protection. In addition, Power BI Premium also provides user-based access to specific capabilities for artificial intelligence and the scalability of data sets.
As far as Power BI Mobile is concerned, the name is rather self-explanatory. In fact, it is the free app for mobile devices, with which users can enter their work area and interact with the saved reports.
Finally, Power BI Embedded It is a product with a separate license and more complex purposes.
It is generally used by developers and software houses both to incorporate reports and dashboards into their applications and to automate, manage and integrate an advanced analysis system. Unlike Power BI Pro, Power BI Embedded does not require any type of subscription to customize the interaction with reports. It therefore has greater flexibility and allows you to pay based on the consumption of the resources incorporated in your applications.
In addition, it offers advanced functionality for:
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A separate mention should be made of DAX and Power Query M, two of the most powerful features of Power BI.
Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) is a language for creating formulas and expressions, which uses a library of functions and operators very similar to that contained in Excel.
With DAX, you can create advanced calculations and queries on data already imported in tabular form from Power Query. For example, you can generate measures for direct calculations (capable of interacting with the other components of the report) or you can create entire columns and tables starting from a function or a formula.
For its part, as the name suggests, M is the Power Query language and is therefore used to build customized queries in an intuitive way.
Let's go into detail and see together what are the steps to follow and the considerations to keep in mind to create a dynamic report from scratch. To summarize the procedure, we can already tell you that There are three macro-phases.
The first involves the use of Power Query and consists in configuring the sources and transforming their data; the second involves the construction of a data model, that is, a model in which the various imported information is related to each other; finally, the third is to create the actual report and the attached dashboards.
So let's start with Power Query and how you can use it to model data.
To import data, Power BI offers you three different ways:
The first two are located in the 'Data' section of the upper command bar; the third, you can find immediately next to it, in the 'Queries' section.
Our advice is to access the Power Query editor, since here you will have the possibility not only to configure the sources, but also analyze and fix the imported data directly.
As for the sources, just click 'New Source', at the top left, and then 'More' to see the full list of possible data sources that you can connect. Remember that you can choose between cloud and on-prem sources, both internal and external to your Microsoft work environment.
The only clarification: if the data you want to import comes from a local source of the company (for example a file or a server), you must use a Gateway. This is a free component that allows you to securely import and then share locally stored data.
Once the data has been loaded from the selected sources, you will have to fix and clean the table that will be shown to you by the editor. In fact, you will have to delete all the data that is incomplete or not relevant to the final report.
First, you must then assign each column the correct data type*.
*In reality, the platform is responsible for making this assignment automatically, when importing the data, but the result is not always satisfactory.
To do this, click on the column heading, on the left, and choose one of the options that will appear in the drop-down menu.
After that, you can take action with one or more of the following actions:
To perform any of the actions listed, refer to the following ribbon commands:
When your table is completely cleaned and reordered, you can click on”Close & Apply”, always at the top left, to move on to the second phase.
At this point, it is necessary to establish what relationships exist between the imported information. In other words, you must define a data model to specify how the data should be analyzed by Power BI and you can do this in the 'Models' section (the third icon on the left of the main interface). Here, in fact, you will find the tables that you have configured in the Power Query editor and that are now ready to be linked together. You therefore have several possibilities available, including the '1 to many' relationship.
With her, it's possible link a table containing certain values to be analyzed (Fact Table) with one of the tables that show the way in which the values should be interpreted (Dimension Table). Let's clarify with an example.
Let's take the case where there is a table with the list of the codes of the merchandise that was purchased in a given region, together with a table that shows the name of the item sold for each code. It will be enough to connect the “code” fields of the two tables to make the graphs of the report show the name of the product sold in each of the registered regions.
Let's take another example. Let's say you have tables, each containing different values but united by having temporal events in one of their fields. To report the date of these events in the final report, you could create a 'time table', or Date Table, and link all event fields to the latter.
Done with the data model, it's time to build the report. Go to the dedicated screen (first icon on the left of the main interface) and let's continue with the third phase.
To create the report starting from the data imported with Power Query and structured in the data model, you can finally use the graphics that made Power BI famous. In fact, you have a vast and continuously updated range of visualizations available to highlight business trends and obtain at a glance the key information to decide future strategies.
To give you an idea, we list below some of the most important and used graphics on the platform and that you can find in the window on the right of the 'Report' screen:
Obviously, there are numerous other graphics that are missing from our list and that we invite you to explore directly in Power BI, or by taking a look at the dedicated Microsoft page. What we want to emphasize, in addition to the heterogeneity of the available graphs, are the features that make the reports dynamic. By 'dynamic', we refer to two characteristics in particular:
*With the Pro license, you can set 8 daily data refreshes; while with the Premium license, the number of automatic updates reaches 48.
In addition, there is the possibility of constantly updating reports and their dashboards with 'Direct query'. This mode allows you to query queries without interruption and in real time, but, of course, we recommend it only in some cases. If your query were to weigh several hundred MB, there could in fact be significant slowdowns in updating the data, thus making it useless.
Once you have inserted the graphics and chosen the update mode, you may want to create a dashboard or you may need to share the result of your work. When it comes to creating a dashboard, the matter is pretty simple.
First, you need to sign in to Power BI from your browser. After that, enter the report, select one or more charts and click “Pin to dashboard” from the three dots in the top command bar. In doing so, a new dashboard will be created in the personal 'Workspace' area with the chosen views. The utility will be to be able to provide an overview of your analyses, while limiting the use of filters by the users invited to the project.
Speaking of invitations, it is worth specifying here the sharing methods offered by Power BI. Let's start by saying that you need a Pro license both to share and publish reports online and to access the content as a guest user. This means that even users invited to collaborate, or even just to view, must have their own Microsoft account with access to Power BI Pro. Only in this way, in fact, is it possible to guarantee the security of the shared data.
If the invited users meet these criteria, they will be able to interact with the report and the related dashboard based on the permission granted by the owner (change or read only) and can do so both directly in Power BI and from the site where the project was incorporated.
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