Module 6

Interactive Data Visualizations

Module Overview

• Creating Power BI Reports

• Managing a Power BI Solution
Lesson 1: Creating Power BI Reports

• Page Layout and Formatting

• Working with Multiple Visualizations
• Creating Charts
• Using Geographic Data
• Histograms
• Demonstration: Adding Visualizations to a Report
Page Layout and Formatting

• Customize each report using formatting options:

• Page Name: give each report a name to describe the
content, rather than Power BI default of Page 1, Page 2
• Page Size: default aspect ratio is 16:9. Change to 4:3,
Cortana, Letter, or set width and height in pixels using
the Custom option
• Page Background: change the background color and
transparency. Use theme color, or own color. Use
image to create highly customized reports
• Page View: alter the zoom on the page. Default is Page
view—fits all visuals onto screen. Choose Actual Size
for one-to-one pixel mapping
Working with Multiple Visualizations

• Use settings and formatting to ensure multiple visuals

interact correctly on a report:
• Edit interactions:
• Filter: only show corresponding data
• None: show all data, do not interact
• Highlight: shows all data, corresponding values highlighted
• Show categories with no data: displays categories with empty
values, value of 0 included by default
• Default summarization: change from the default sum to average,
minimum, maximum, count, count distinct
• Default Categorization: for example, ensure address fields
categorized as City rather than Country, or State
• Arrange report elements: sending visuals forwards or backwards
to create layers—known as z-order
Creating Charts

• Power BI includes a wide range of chart types:

• Bar and column—stacked, clustered, 100 percent stacked
• Line and area—area chart fills data area
• Line and column—combines columns and lines
• Funnel – symmetrical bar chart
• Scatter and bubble—use scatter for two values, bubble for three
values
• Pie and donut—pie is solid, donut has hollow center
• Table and matrix—add data fields to create columns
• Tree map—proportional rectangles, large to small
• R visual—analyze statistical data using R installation
• Others include waterfall, gauge, card, multi-row card, KPI, and
slicer
• Charts can be formatted
Using Geographic Data

• Map and filled map charts:

• Power BI integrates with Bing to determine location
• Bing makes a best guess—known as geocoding
• Always include location—longitude and latitude are
aggregated
• Include additional data for better accuracy
• Add data categories to columns for better accuracy
• Concatenate string address fields into one column

• Map chart represents data as proportionally

sized, color-coded bubbles
• Filled map chart uses shading across a region—
darker shades for higher values
Histograms

• Histograms differ from bar charts:

• No spaces between the bars
• Bars (or bins or buckets) represent a range of values
• Ranges must be contiguous
• Width of the bars represent a proportion of the total
bin limit
• Download Histogram visual from the Power BI
community gallery
• Specify a data field for the Values (bin) and a
field for the Frequency
Demonstration: Adding Visualizations to a Report

In this demonstration, you will see how to:

• Connect to an Azure SQL Database and import
data
• Add visualizations to a report in Power BI
Desktop
Lesson 2: Managing a Power BI Solution

• Power BI Admin Portal

• Power BI Service Settings
• Power BI Desktop Settings
• Dashboard and Report Settings
• Demonstration: Creating Featured Questions
Power BI Admin Portal

• View and manage administrative settings

• Only available to:
• Power BI service administrators
• Office 365 Global Admins

• Usage Metrics: most used reports and

dashboards
• Manage Users: link to Office 365
• Audit Logs: link to Office 365
• Tenant Settings: configure functionality for the
tenant
• Sharing, publishing, exporting, printing
Power BI Service Settings

• General
• Manage privacy, language, close account, enable custom visuals,
and ArcGIS maps
• Dashboards
• Show or hide the Q&A search box, and enable tile flow
• Datasets
• View refresh history, manage connections, manage credentials,
schedule refreshes, and configure Q&A
• Workbooks
• Rename and delete workbooks
• Alerts
• Turn off, rename, delete, and configure alerts
Power BI Desktop Settings

• Global: set the data load cache, Query Editor options,

and unrestricted measures on DAX queries; configure R
home directories and IDE; set global privacy; enable
sending of usage data to Microsoft; turn on diagnostic
tracing, and manage auto recovery options to prevent
accidental loss of work
• Current File: manage data load options, change regional
settings (locale), set privacy, and auto recovery
• Data Source: change location of file sources, manage
credentials and privacy levels: None, Private,
Organizational, or Public
Dashboard and Report Settings

• Customize reports and dashboards using settings:

• Filter dashboard: use Focus mode to open a tile, then apply filters
to categories and values
• Featured questions: add custom featured questions, and enable
results in Cortana and Q&A
• Print dashboard and export questions: print a hard copy of a
report or dashboard; export dashboard data to CSV, or report data
to XLSX or CSV
• Publish to web: create URL to send in email or social media; use
embed code in webpage or blog post
• Custom URL and title: change the default destination when
clicking on a tile to a URL; alter title and subtitle
Demonstration: Creating Featured Questions

In this demonstration, you will see how to:

• Add Featured Questions to a Power BI
Dashboard
• Use Featured Questions to enhance the user’s
experience when using dashboards
Lab: Creating a Power BI Report

• Exercise 1: Connecting to Power BI Data

• Exercise 2: Building Power BI Reports
• Exercise 3: Creating a Power BI Dashboard

Logon Information
Virtual machine: 20778B-MIA-SQL
User name: ADVENTUREWORKS\Student
Password: Pa55w.rd

Estimated Time: 60 minutes

Lab Review

In this lab, you learned how to import data from

Azure, shape and combine data, add visualizations
to a report, and publish the report to the Power BI
service. You also learned how to create a
dashboard.
Module Review and Takeaways

• Review Question(s)