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Customize Your Data Visualizations With Power BI

This document provides a guide to creating interactive reports in Power BI using a case study approach. It introduces Power BI licensing and connectors. It then discusses using a CRM system case study to demonstrate connecting to data, organizing data, and creating effective marketing campaign reports. The guide provides practical tips for building simple, contextual, filtered, hierarchical, and meaningful Power BI reports with customization.

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Angela Biro
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© © All Rights Reserved
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100% found this document useful (1 vote)
335 views40 pages

Customize Your Data Visualizations With Power BI

This document provides a guide to creating interactive reports in Power BI using a case study approach. It introduces Power BI licensing and connectors. It then discusses using a CRM system case study to demonstrate connecting to data, organizing data, and creating effective marketing campaign reports. The guide provides practical tips for building simple, contextual, filtered, hierarchical, and meaningful Power BI reports with customization.

Uploaded by

Angela Biro
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 40

Customize your

data visualizations
with Power BI

Take your reports to the next level.

Follow our step-by-step guide and get

useful tips for making the most of your data

Paweł Szczecki Dawid Detko Joanna Sypuła


Predica’s CEO Microsoft MVP Data Platform Team Lead

Expert in Azure and Expert in Advanced Data Lab

Advanced Data Analytics Data Analytics


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Data visualization has been one of the most important areas of


Business Intelligence for a long time. In order to be useful, and
at the same time provide user convenience, data should be
presented in a form suited to the user’s needs. It also needs to be
demonstrated in a transparent and effective, as well as engaging
and friendly way.

Well-visualized data means greater involvement in the use of BI


solutions and fast insights into data, which translates into project
success and a significant improvement in the efficiency of the
decision-making process within the company.

In this e-book, we want to show you how fast you can build
interactive dashboards that will allow you to easily analyze your
business data. We would like to present our idea for creating
reports that show the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.

From this e-book, you will learn step by step how to build your
own interactive reports to analyze your business data, based on
a case study.

You will find three sections that will give you all the necessary
information allowing you to build your own reports based on the
data that you have – see the table of contents on the next page.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION TO POWER BI
• Power BI licensing 4
• Power BI connectors 5

CASE STUDY FROM PREDICA


• Introduction to the CRM system 8
• Data connection 11
• Best practices for organizing your data 14
• Effectiveness of marketing campaigns at Predica 15
• Case study: Marketing campaign reports 17
• Embedding Power BI reports in CRM 20

PRACTICAL TIPS FOR POWER BI REPORTS


• Simplicity 22
• Context 27
• Filters 30
• Hierarchies 33
• Meaningfulness 35
• Customization tips 36
• Key takeaways 39

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INTRODUCTION
TO POWER BI

Power BI is an easy-to-use tool for advanced business analysis.


Automation saves time and data is immediately segregated.
Plus, Power BI has many tools for visualizing data using a lot of
templates and presenting them in the form of graphs, charts or
tables, making them more easily digestible.

The software offers many advanced functions for data analytics.


However, you do not have to be a data expert to use it. In fact, it
can be a very useful tool regardless of your knowledge of data –
which is how it should be!

Power BI licensing
Available versions of Power BI start with free licenses:
• Power BI Desktop – licensed by user, with free report
authoring and ad-hoc data exploration
• Power BI Free – licensed by user; quick, easy-to-use self-
service analytics for personal use.

Additionally, this tool offers more advanced versions:


• Power BI Pro – licensed in the per-user model. Quick, easy-
to-use self-service analytics for users requiring collaboration,
dashboard sharing, ad-hoc analysis, and report publishing
• Power BI Premium – licensed by capacity. Power BI Premium

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is offered in the form of a service based on a dedicated


infrastructure, with a specific performance configuration. The
use of Power BI Premium consists of creating a dedicated space
for the publication of reports prepared by users having a Power
BI Pro license. Publication to the Power BI Premium space is
based on the Power BI application mechanism.

You may be wondering how to determine the level of Power BI


Premium service that will be needed to address the needs of your
organization. Do you also want to know the price of the solution?
If so, please contact us.

Power BI connectors
Power BI gives you the option to choose a connector which you can
find in the Get Data section in the top panel of Power BI Desktop.

The connectors on this list specify the main types of data sources
that you can use for your reports.
You can choose from data sources such as:
• File (Excel, JSON, XML, TEXT/CSV etc.)
• Database (Oracle, SQL Server, Access etc.)
• Azure (Azure SQL database, Azure SQL Data Warehouse, Azure
Blob Storage etc.)
• Online services (SharePoint Online, Dynamics 365, Google
Analytics etc.)
• Other (Spark, R Script etc.).
This list contains a lot of different types of data, but not all of them.

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If you need to connect to a different data source not


mentioned here, Power BI shared a feature called Custom
Data Connector with which you can code your own connection
provider. When you create your own connector, it will be listed
under Get Data where you can also choose other connectors.

Image 1. Data connection options

Power BI is a great solution for data visualization and (some) data


transformation, no doubt about it. Over the last few years of its
development, it has gained many great features and capabilities.
If you don’t know them yet – shame on you! I recommend keeping
an eye on the Microsoft Power BI blog to be up-to-date with new
features and releases. There are also many resources available
on the Internet if you’re looking for training materials (which is

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not what you’ll find here). I assume you’re a little familiar with this
technology, but at the same time, you’re not a hardcore analyst as
you’d probably know all these tips already.

Use R script to create analytics and visualizations in Power BI

With R code you can extend the functionalities of Power BI

considerably. There are many questions on the web about how to do

it, especially when building your own package with R visualization.

To help answer some of them, I have gone through the possible

areas of application of R script to Power BI. It will help you see your

data more clearly and make better informed business decisions.

To learn more, check out this article on our blog.

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CASE STUDY
FROM PREDICA

The next step is to define a data source that you would like
to analyze. There are a lot of data sources that you can connect
to, but in this case we would like to show you our solution for
monitoring customer relationships and marketing activities. We
use a CRM system to store that data. In this chapter, we will explain
how to connect to it.

Introduction to the CRM system


What exactly is a CRM system?
Your CRM system is the hub for all customer communications.
It is the perfect tool to store information about your customer
relationships, sales performance, service management or
marketing activities.

If you enrich this information with insights from Power BI, you can
create an all-in-one solution for managing your business processes.
With this guide on integrating Dynamics 365 with Power BI, you
can take your customer service to the next level.

Find a way to connect your data with a visualization tool


When you work with Dynamics 365 and manage a team or sell
projects, you need to have a full overview of your situation for
your company to thrive. Without writing a single line of code, I’ll

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show you how fast you can change the way you analyze data from
Dynamics CRM using Power BI reports.

Tip

You can connect to your data source using one of three ways:

• Data import – the selected tables and columns are imported into

Power BI Desktop. As you create or interact with a visualization,

Power BI Desktop uses the imported data. You must refresh it,

which imports the full dataset again, to see any changes that

occurred to the underlying information since the initial import or

the most recent refresh.

* This is the only option when you use a Dynamics CRM connection.

• DirectQuery connection – no data is imported or copied into the

software. For relational sources, the selected tables and columns

appear in the Fields list. Power BI Desktop queries the underlying

data source, which means you’re always viewing current data.

• When connecting to SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS), there is an

option to either import data from, or connect live to, the selected

data model. If you select import, you define a query against that

external SSAS source, and the data is imported as normal. If you

select to connect live, then there is no query defined, and the entire

external model is shown in the field list. If you select DirectQuery,

as visuals are built, queries are sent to the external SSAS source.

* The only way to connect several data sources at the same time is

to choose an import method. Otherwise you can only connect to

one data source.

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In this material, you will also find out how to:


• Get API from your CRM properly and establish a connection with
Power BI
• Analyze data with Power BI directly from your Dynamics CRM

• Embed specific tiles from Power BI reports into Dynamics CRM.

You’ve covered the data, user interfaces, and management


aspects, but what about data visualization? Power BI could make
data more useful and provide greater insights. The next chapter
will give you a clearer picture of how to combine Dynamics 365
and Power BI. Then, you can decide how you can implement this
solution in your own organization.

Let’s get started!

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How to quickly connect to data from Dynamics 365?


• The first way to connect to Dynamics data is to
work with ready-to-use, pre-defined dashboards
and reports, wrapped in a thematic Content Pack.
If you’d like more information about this, visit the

Power BI blog

• The second way is to use a Web API. Depending on the region


where Dynamics is located, you can receive different access
links to the source. The best and most reliable way to find
a dedicated link to your Dynamics data is to get it directly from
your Dynamics CRM.

For the purposes of this tutorial, I have chosen the second way –
a connection to our CRM system which contains information on
the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns.

Before you begin, find your CRM connection URL.


1. Log in to your CRM instance, and go to Settings.

Image 2. CRM view

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2. Click Customization and then Developer Resources.

Image 3. CRM settings view

3. At the top of this page, there is a Connect your apps to this instance
of Dynamics 365 option where you can get the Service Root URL.
This is the URL you want to use in the URL field after selecting Get
Data in Power BI.

Image 4. Service Root URL

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You can use one of the six available methods for authentication,
but at Predica, we usually use authentication with an organizational
account through OAuth2. If you want to know more about available
authentication methods and which one you should choose, contact
our subject matter expert Tomasz Onyszko.

Image 5. Authentication panel

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How best to organize your data?


For efficient data analysis with Power BI, you can organize
workspace in three different ways:
• Analyze data on your desktop via Power BI Desktop
• Access your reports through Power BI Service
• Embed report tiles into Dynamics CRM (I’ll describe this in the
next section).

When you analyze data from Dynamics 365, you will encounter the
problem of data transformation. You will need to choose entities
appropriate for your problem analysis. Let me give you a little hint
about the ones you should focus on. For marketing analysis, the
entities you should analyze are:
Lead
Contact
Opportunity
Active Campaign
Campaign Reach
Social Interactions
Likes
Post Clicks
Campaign Cost
User
You should be able to create and gather useful insights from your
Dynamics data based on these entities. Now, let’s see how you
can use them to effortlessly and intimately analyze marketing
information.

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Effectiveness of marketing campaigns at Predica


Marketing campaigns are more and more measurable, and
therefore more effective. A thorough analysis of the impact of
marketing activities on consumer behaviour allows effective
campaigns to be run at optimal costs.

At Predica we decided to take a closer look at our marketing


campaigns conducted on the Internet. Therefore, we created
a tool using Power BI, which in a very simple and transparent way
allows us to measure the effectiveness of our marketing activities.
This tool can become very useful when planning activities in the
future; it can also be used during business meetings.

Before you start creating reports, you have to determine what do


you want to achieve by visualizing your data. You need to know
which questions you want to find the answers to and in response
to that, you can start creating a dashboard.

We have identified some key issues that we wanted to answer:


• What is the effectiveness of a marketing campaign?
• How many leads from a marketing campaign are converted into
a real project?
• What is the trend of social interactions in the social media?
• What is the cost of a marketing campaign?
• What is the average cost of a lead?
• Which of our campaigns are the most popular and what is their
profitability?

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• What is the involvement of users in social media?

The solution we have implemented has allowed us to find answers


to all of the questions. Additionally, we gained a wider insight into
the development of marketing activities.

Now we can start building our visualisations!

On the screenshots that follow, you can see Power BI reports


presenting our marketing performance data.

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Case study: Marketing campaign reports


On the screenshot below you can see pages from our custom
visualizations created to monitor our marketing efforts.

Image 6. Page 1: Effectiveness of marketing campaigns – summary

This report shows the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. Here


we can see the key effectiveness metrics of marketing activities,
such as:
• Campaign reach – this is the total number of people who
see your content. Impressions are the number of times your
content is displayed, regardless of whether it was clicked or not
• Social interactions – for Facebook, an interaction is considered
to be a like, comment, or reaction
• Leads – these are the potential sales contacts, individuals or
organizations that expressed interest in your goods or services
• Contacts – signify real contact with the potential clients
• Opportunities – an opportunity is more down-funnel than
a lead or a sales-accepted lead.

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In addition, on the funnel, we can see how ranges built


with social media translate into real projects implemented
within the company. The KPI on the right panel shows the
financial dimensions of the campaign. You can also see
KPIs measuring the ratio of transition to the next phases.

Image 7. Page 2: Marketing campaign analysis

On this page of the report, we show the key indicators for


analyzing marketing campaigns. With the filters on the left panel,
you can analyze the results of selected campaigns. You can make
a selection by date when the campaign was created, as well as
filter them by name. Here we present the key information for
running campaigns, such as:
• number of active campaigns

• number of experts that have published an article as part of


marketing activities
• obtained leads

• an average number of leads acquired as part of one campaign.


The bubble chart on the side of the report shows profitability

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of the current marketing campaigns. Cost-effectiveness is


shown by the cost estimates for a given campaign (X-axis) and
leads (Y-axis) that were obtained as a result of the campaign.
In addition, the graph allows us to analyze the results over
time, a function enabled by the play button, located below.

Image 8. Page 3: Facebook campaigns analysis

This visualization contains statistics for campaigns running on


Facebook. In addition to previously used metrics, there are also
post likes and clicks which are characteristic Facebook metrics.

In the first chart, we present the ranking of our best marketing


campaigns. We define this by the number of engaged users,
generated likes and built ranges.
The second graph below shows the commitment of users over
time. Thanks to the filters placed on the left side of the page, we
can freely watch the selected marketing campaigns or analyze
campaigns in the timeframe we are interested in.

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Embedding Power BI reports in CRM


Responding to the question about organizing workspace, Dynamics
365 has advantageous features. In particular, it allows you to
publish chosen tiles from Power BI dashboards directly into your
Dynamics panel.

Power BI and Dynamics 365 run on the same O365 account, thanks
to OAuth2 authentication. It is, therefore, possible to nest reports
without providing additional credentials. Moreover, low-level
security and other functionalities are also migrated and enforced
in nested reports.

What you should know is that we do not use Power BI Embedded


reports, and instead get tiles directly from the Power BI service.
More precisely, we get tiles that pin to dashboards. The advice from
this is that you should first publish reports to Power BI Service and
pin chosen elements to the particular panel. Then, you’ll be ready
to start nesting your tiles in Dynamics CRM.

Tip

Before you start, you should also enable the possibility of nesting

Power BI reports in Dynamics 365. To enable and configure this,

go to your Dynamics CRM, click on Settings > Administration >

Reporting, and then tick the checkbox.

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The final step is to create a new dashboard in Dynamics 365 and


select Power BI from the grid. Now you can choose specific reports
or tiles to embed from the drop-down list.

In steps:
• Enable Power BI tiles in Dynamics 365

• Publish report to Power BI Service or connect to a ready-to-use


content pack
• Choose specific tiles and pin to dashboard

• Go to Dynamics 365 and create a new dashboard

• Select Power BI from the grid and select tiles to embed from the
drop-down list.

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PRACTICAL TIPS
FOR POWER BI REPORTS

Tip #1: Simplicity – don’t go too fancy on visualizations


Following the idea of delivering a message… There is an increasing
number of visualizations available in Power BI which you can get
from the gallery. Some of them are pretty complex and can show
you relations between data elements in an unordinary way that
can make sense… quite rarely (for example, if you’re a hardcore
analyst).

For most of us ‘ordinary people’ – and I’m saying, probably 98% of


us – simple means better, easier, clearer, ...er [put here whatever
you think suits]. So, focus on simplicity! In most cases, a (boring)
bar or line chart will surely suffice.

Also, don’t fear the old-school and “ugly” tables – they are still the
best way to present raw data, which is sometimes all you really
need (and what you keep using Excel for!). For example, I try to
avoid pie charts and treemaps for a very simple reason – you
cannot see the difference between pie fields which have similar
values.

The following report shows the volume of marketing campaign


reach compared by type – try to tell if light or dark blue is bigger
or by how much they differ:

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Image 9. Pie chart of marketing campaign reach

Notice how the pie chart makes it hard to differentiate between


Content Marketing Productivity (light blue) and Webinars
campaigns (dark blue).

The next report shows reach volume per campaign after changing
the visualization method from a pie chart to columns. Notice how
easily we can see the difference in the reach of our campaigns and
immediately notice the winner:

Image 10. The same report presented in a bar chart

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The general rules-of-thumb about visualizations:


1. Remember that people read from top left to bottom right, so
put the most relevant stuff (KPIs?) where users go first

Image 11. Key metrics

2. Vertical bars for general data display – avoid rankings, use


sorted data, it’s easier to read

Image 12. Vertical bar chart of campaign reach

3. Horizontal bars are actually best for data rankings

Image 13. Horizontal bar chart of campaign reach

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4. Line is usually best for time series when you need to compare
multiple series of data, but for single bars it works just as well.
Using a chart as in the picture below, you can determine the trends
and seasonality, as well as check when your marketing activities
were the most popular.

Image 14. Line chart of campaign reach

5. Bar/line mixed to present two values of different types (like


money and percentage). In this example, we have data showing in
column:
• Facebook users’ post clicks

• Facebook likes
and in line:
• Campaign reach
The below graph gives us the opportunity to present data on one
diagram using two scales:

Image 15. Line and clustered column chart of social media profitability

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6. Bubble to present 4 different number values (two axes, bubble


size and bubble color intensity).
In this example, we wanted to show the profitability of marketing
campaigns. To monitor this indicator, we used:
• X-axis – campaign cost
• Y-axis – leads that were obtained as a result of these campaigns
• bubble size – using this dimension, we have determined the
number of likes received by posts linked to this campaign. By
using this chart you can simultaneously see which marketing
campaigns were profitable for your company, and which despite
the large financial contribution did not bring the expected
results (in the form of leads and user reactions on social media).

Image 16. Bubble chart of social media profitability

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Tip #2: Context – interrelations between elements


One of the coolest features of Power BI is the cross-filtering capability.
It means that once you have two charts with connected data next
to each other, when you click on an element on one, the other will
be filtered based on what you clicked. This greatly helps with data
comparison, types of visual drill-downs, and simple analysis.

But what might not be obvious at first sight, is that you can
actually use three ways of filtering and connecting data to make
your analysis experience better and easier. Let’s consider a project
management example, where you’re interested in seeing the
time reported by people (top bar in the below example) and time
reported each month (the bottom bar), where you can see the
different behaviours the interactions provide:
1. None. No filtering happens between elements. In the example
– clicking on the bar in the top chart does not influence data
displayed on the bottom:

Image 17. Facebook campaign statistics overview

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2. Highlight. The filtered value is displayed in the context of the


total – use when you want to show how much of the total the
selected element forms. In the example – clicking on the bar in the
top chart fades out the bottom chart leaving only the part of the
bar highlighted which is applicable to the clicked element:

Image 18. Facebook campaign statistics highlighted

Highlight is a form of filtering that after clicking on one of the


top bars changes the color of the relevant data displayed on the
bottom.

3. Filter. The actual filtered value is displayed – use when you


want to see what hides behind the selected element, when you
are interested in the detailed data and not its relation to the total.
In the example – clicking on the Expert’s Name on the left side
panel filters out all of the charts on this page and leaves only the
data applicable to the clicked element:

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Image 19. Facebook campaign statistics filtered

Filter. When you click on one of the positions on the left panel
filter, it will display just the relevant data. As you can see, all of the
charts and metrics on this page show only campaigns in which
Tomasz Onyszko participated as an expert.

So, depending on the context in which you are viewing your data,
it may have a significant difference to what relationship you will
select. Especially, when there’s a lot of data elements, it might
greatly influence the ease of use of the report, especially for not
advanced users (which we usually create such tools for).

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Tip #3: Divide and conquer (or slicing and dicing) – filters
The most basic concept of data visualization, yet you might still be
surprised by how many filtering possibilities there are in Power BI
reports – there are 5 obvious ones.

Basic report filters panel:


• Visual level filter – filter data only at the selected visual level,
which can be particularly useful if you want to have some
background (not visible in the chart) data used only for filtering
• Page level filters – apply to all elements on the page
• Report level filters – apply to all pages, which can be particularly
useful when the user is supposed to move through the pages to
see the data in the same filtering context, but with a different
view presented on each page – once you select the filter and
move to the next page, the filter stays selected which allows
you to see the data in the same context:

Image 20. Report filters panel

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Report filters panel is best for those who are supposed to go


through pages to see data in the same filtering context. Once you
select the filter and move to the next page, the filter stays on.

Two in-canvas filters:


• Slicers (in-canvas filters). Filters are available as single or
multiple selection checkboxes or dropdowns. I found them not
particularly useful, as they take up canvas space and considering
cross-filtering capabilities of most visualizations, they do not
provide much value. Also, like the page level filters, they work
only on a particular page which in the majority of cases I worked
with is rather limiting, as when you go to the different page you
lose the context of the data you worked with.

Image 21. In-canvas filters panel

Using this filter however helps you to easily search the information
that will be interesting to you. In our example, you can choose

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the period of the campaign, the expert who participated in it


or choose a specific campaign – and then the whole page of this
report will present data only for this campaign.

• Cross-filtering (as described in the previous point). The


additional idea behind these filters is that they can be used
instead of (somewhat dull…) slicers to include additional
information (selected metric). If instead of, for example,
a checkbox list, you create a vertical chart, you can use it just
for filtering – just click the bar to filter out everything else:

Image 22. Filtered social media campaign report

Notice: if you click the bar on the top chart you filter out everything
else.

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Tip #4: High or low perspective – hierarchies


Hierarchies are a great way of showing data analytics on various
levels of granularity using the same visualizations.

For example, in a social media campaign popularity report,


a marketing manager may be interested in the progress of
a campaign(s) and time reported in months, whereas a marketing
specialist could be interested in a weekly or daily level to look into
what is happening more closely.

Obviously, you can create different reports for each of them, but
then you will end up managing and supporting a large number of
such cases. Alternatively, you can be clever and design a report
in a way that means it can be used by both. And this is where
hierarchies come in handy.

There are three ways to use hierarchies:


• They can come from the data source (typically OLAP/Tabular-
like). so basically present in the data model
• They can be simply based on date and time data – here Power
BI does a nice thing for us and allows to present any time data
as a Year/Quarter/Month/Day hierarchy
• Or you can put more than one dimension in the visualization,
which doesn’t make them visible but allows to drill from one
to the other. Once you have some dimensions, just notice the
small arrows that appeared in the corner of the chart which
you can use to go up and down the hierarchy levels:

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Image 23. Quarterly view of the reported time of projects

Image 24. Monthly view of the reported time of projects

The same visualization and report are used to achieve different


perspective views.

Since it’s easy and quick to create reports in Power BI, you may
be tempted to create many of them, just because you can. But
think of the poor users who will be working with these reports
and how they can get confused when they get tons of reports or
pages showing similar things…

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Tip #5 Meaningfulness above all – think about the message rather


than the graphics
Once you let people into a tool like Power BI, the result could
easily end up being a Picasso-like analytical painting with many
colors, but without much real value to it. Within seconds, you can
produce any number of beautiful charts showing any number of
data pieces, like a well-operating assembly line. Yet, the Power BI
reporting canvas is like a PowerPoint slide – having no scrolling or
pagination can make you feel… limited.

But that’s the whole point – the time you spend in Power BI should
be spent on trying to fit and visualize the information in that space,
so that it is clear and easy to digest by potential users at first sight.
This is particularly important when you consider that Power BI has
two display areas:
• Dashboard – the primary point where users go to, but with
no filtering or interactions. Dashboard tiles are just links to
underlying reports and their purpose is to present the current
status of things
• Reports – analytical spaces with all interactive capabilities.
Their purpose is to dig into data details to understand the
reasons why certain things happen.

Image 25. Marketing campaigns dashboard

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Tip #6: Think non-standard and enhance your reports


Some reports are so unattractive that we immediately turn our
eyes away from them. However, good visualization is not about
adding decorations, but about presenting data in an attractive way,
without distractions. You don’t have to be an artist to design an
attractive dashboard. The main thing, however, is the knowledge
of the basics of visual perception.

Well-presented data is the key to success and can be something


very interesting for users. However, it is very important to maintain
a proper form. If it is interesting enough and affordable – the data
will not be boring and will catch the users’ attention. It may also
make the users happy to use them, which can certainly have an
effect on your company.

At this point, it is worth noting that an interesting presentation


of data is of great importance. A well-prepared report can be
a ready-made tool for presenting data inside the company.

Power BI offers a lot of interesting charts which you can use. By


just adding a few small elements, and with little effort, you can
make your report more attractive. What do I mean?

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• Take care of your reports’ background – it’s a little thing


that changes a lot. If you add a background to the report, you
will make it stand out from the others. It can be a patterned
background, but also a classic color that fills the whole report

Image 26. Patterned background Image 27. Solid color background

• Facilitate your work – create a color theme

Image 28. Color theme panel

You can specify your own set of colors for the report. I recommend
you create your Custom Theme. Full instructions on how to build
your own custom theme can be found here.

• Try to adapt the report to the needs of a contemporary


recipient – make it visual. Use icons and other non-standard
elements – they will make your report more attractive.

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Make sure that your report is ready for presenting data to the
company. If you customize it properly, it will certainly be used
during business meetings, and it will take less time to create
a presentation.

• Customize your report – Power BI shares many different types


of visual effects that are available when you are creating
or editing a report. But you are not limited to this set
of visualizations. You can build your own, or choose one of the
visuals created by members of the community or by Microsoft,
all of which are hosted on AppSource.

So, remember: it’s easy to create a Power BI report, but it’s

a little harder to create a meaningful report. Contact us to make

sure you only have the best ones!

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

• With visualizations less can be more – don’t use too many


different charts and choose the right one for your type of data
• You can view your data in different contexts – make sure to
clearly define interrelations between various elements
• Make use of filters, either in the panel or in-canvas, to better
understand your data
• Utilize hierarchies to view the same data at different levels,
without the need for separate reports
• Be specific with your reports – choose only the most useful
data, not necessarily the most visual
• Do not forget about recipients! Customize the look of your
reports and tailor it to the group of consumers.

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Contact us
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www.predica.pl

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