Get Data with Power BI

Desktop
ANGELES UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION
College of Computer Studies
 What is in this module?

• Overview of Power BI
Introduction Desktop
• Explore Power BI Desktop
Learning Objectives • Connect to data sources
• Get data from Excel
• Transform data to include in
a report
• Combine data from multiple
sources
Course Description HERE
• Clean data to include in a
report
Overview
of
Power BI
Desktop
What is Power BI Desktop?
Power BI Desktop is a free application for PCs that lets you gather,
transform, and visualize your data.

Power BI Desktop and the Power BI Service work together.

You can create your reports and dashboards in Power BI Desktop, and
then publish them to the Power BI Service for others to consume.
 Install Power BI desktop and have a Power BI Service
account set up

Download Power BI Desktop

01 You can download Power BI Desktop from the web or as an app
from the Microsoft Store on the windows tab.

02 Sign in to Power BI service

03 Download sample data

Explore
Power BI
Desktop
Launch Power BI Desktop
When you launch Power BI Desktop, the Getting Started dialog box
will appear, which provides useful links to forums, blogs, and
introductory videos. Close this dialog box for now, but keep the Show
this screen on startup option selected so that you can explore it later.
Explore the report building environment
In Power BI Desktop, you'll begin to build reports in the Report view.
You'll be working in five main areas: • Ribbon - Displays common tasks that are
associated with reports and visualizations.
• Report view, or canvas - Where
visualizations are created and arranged. You
can switch between Report, Data, and Model
views by selecting the icons in the left column.
• Pages tab - Located along the bottom of
the page, this area is where you would
select or add a report page.
• Visualizations pane - Where you can
change visualizations, customize colors or
axes, apply filters, drag fields, and more.
• Fields pane - Where query elements and
filters can be dragged onto the Report view or
dragged to the Filters area of the Visualizations
pane.
Create a visual
To create a visual, drag a field from the Fields list onto the Report view.

Power BI Desktop automatically created a map-based visualization because it recognized that the State field
contained geolocation data.
Publish a report
After creating a report with a few visuals, you're ready to publish to the Power BI
service. On the Home ribbon on the Power BI Desktop, select Publish.

You’ll be prompted to sign in to Power BI. When you've signed in and the publish process is complete, the
following dialog box will appear. You can select the link below Success!, which will take you to the Power BI
service, where you can see the report that you published.
Pin a visual to a dashboard
When you view a published report in the Power BI service, you can choose the 
Pin icon to pin that visual to a dashboard.

You can choose whether to pin the visual to an existing dashboard or to create a new dashboard.
 Connect
to
Data Sources
Connect to data sources
• Power BI Desktop connects to many types of data sources, including local
• databases, worksheets, and data on cloud services.
• Sometimes when you gather data, it's not quite as structured, or clean, as you
want it to be.
• To structure data, you can transform it, meaning that you can split and
rename columns, change data types, and create relationships between column.
• You can connect Power BI Desktop to many types of data sources, including
on-premises databases, Microsoft Excel workbooks, and cloud services.
• Currently, there are about 60 Power BI-specific connectors to cloud services
such as GitHub and Marketo.
• You can also connect to generic sources through XML, CSV, text, and ODBC.
Power BI will even extract tabular data directly from a website URL.
Connect to data
• When you start Power BI Desktop, you can choose Get Data from the ribbon
on the Home tab.
Connect to data
• In Power BI Desktop, several types of data sources are available. Select a source to
establish a connection. Depending on your selection, you'll be asked to find the source on
your computer or network. You might be prompted to sign in to a service to authenticate
your request.
Choose data to import
After connecting, the first window that you'll see is the Navigator. The Navigator window displays the
tables or entities of your data source, and selecting a table or entity gives you a preview of its contents.
You can then import your selected tables or entities immediately by selecting Load, or you can select 
Transform Data to transform and clean your data before importing.
Choose data to import
After you've selected the tables that you'd like to bring into Power BI Desktop, select the Load button.
You might want to make changes to those tables before you load them. For example, if you only want a
subset of customers or a specific country or region, select the Edit button and filter data before loading.
Get Data
From
Excel
Make sure that your data is formatted as
a table
For Power BI to import data from your workbook, that data needs to be formatted as a table. In Excel,
you can highlight a range of cells, and then on the Insert tab of the Excel ribbon, select Table.

Make sure that each column has a good name; it will make it easier for you to find the data that you want
when creating your reports in Power BI.
Import from a local drive

Wherever you keep your files, Power BI makes importing them simple. In Power BI, you can go to Get
Data > Files > Local File to select the Excel file that you want.

After the file has been imported into Power BI, you can begin creating reports.

Your files don't have to be on a local drive. If you save your files on OneDrive or SharePoint Team Site,
that's even better.
Create reports

After your workbook's data has been imported, a dataset is created in Power BI and it will appear
under Datasets.
Create reports

Now, you can begin exploring your data by creating reports and dashboards. Select the Open menu icon
next to the dataset and then select Explore. A new blank report canvas appears. On the right-hand side,
under Fields, are your tables and columns. Select the fields for which you want to create a new
visualization on the canvas.

• You can change the type of

visualization and apply filters and
other properties under 
Visualizations.
• If you use any of Excel's
advanced BI features like Power
Query, Power Pivot, or Power
View, you can import that data
into Power BI, too.
Transform Data
to Include in a
Report
Launch Power Query Editor

To begin, select Edit from the Navigator window to launch Power Query Editor. You can also launch
Power Query Editor directly from Power BI Desktop by using the Edit Queries button on the Home ribbon.
Launch Power Query Editor

After loading your data into Power Query Editor, you'll see the following screen.

1. In the ribbon, the active buttons

enable you to interact with the data
in the query.
2. On the left pane, queries (one for
each table, or entity) are listed and
available for selecting, viewing, and
shaping.
3. On the center pane, data from the
selected query is displayed and
available for shaping.
4. The Query Settings window lists
the query’s properties and applied
steps.
Transform data

On the center pane, right-clicking a

column displays the available
transformations. Examples of the
available transformations include
removing a column from the table,
duplicating the column under a
new name, or replacing values.
From this menu, you can also split
text columns into multiples by
common delimiters.

The Power Query Editor ribbon contains additional tools that can help you change the data type of columns,
add scientific notation, or extract elements from dates, such as day of the week.
Transform data

As you apply transformations, each

step appears in the Applied
Steps list on the Query Settings
pane.
You can use this list to undo or
review specific changes, or even
change the name of a step. To
save your transformations,
select Close & Apply on
the Home tab.

After you select Close & Apply, Power Query Editor applies the query changes and applies them to
Power BI Desktop.
 Combine Data
From
Multiple Sources
Add more data sources

To add more sources to an existing report, from the

Home ribbon, select Edit Queries and then select New
Source. You can use many potential data sources in Power
BI Desktop, including folders. By connecting to a folder, you
can import data from multiple Excel or CSV files at once.

Power Query Editor allows you to apply filters to your data.

For example, selecting the drop-down arrow next to a
column opens a checklist of text filters. Clearing a filter
allows you to remove values from your model before the
data is loaded into Power BI.
Merge and append queries
You can also merge and append queries. In other words, Power BI pulls data that you select from multiple
tables or various files into a single table. Use the Append Queries tool to add the data from a new table to
an existing query. Power BI Desktop attempts to match the columns in your queries, which you can then
adjust as necessary in Power Query Editor.
Write customized queries
You can use the Add Custom Column tool to write new customized query expressions by using the powerful
M language.
 Clean Data
to Include in a
Report
Clean data
Fortunately, Power Query Editor has tools to help you quickly transform multi-column tables into datasets
that you can use.

Transpose data
By using Transpose in Power Query Editor, you can swap rows into columns to better format the data.
Format data

You might need to format data so that Power BI can properly categorize and
identify that data. With some transformations, you'll cleanse data into a
dataset that you can use in Power BI. Examples of powerful transformations
include promoting rows into headers, using Fill to replace null values, and 
Unpivot Columns.

With Power BI, you can experiment with transformations and determine
which will transform your data into the most usable columnar format.
Remember,
the Applied Steps section of Power Query Editor records all your actions. If
a transformation doesn't work the way that you intended, select the X next to
the step, and then undo it.

After you've cleaned your data into a usable format, you can begin to create powerful visuals in Power BI.
 END
By: Jewel Anne R. Atanacio