Introduction
Power BI is a powerful business intelligence tool that allows users to create interactive and visually appealing reports and dashboards from various data sources, weather you are a data analyst, business user or a decision maker, creating compelling and insightful reports in essential.
Step 1 — Install Power BI
If you haven’t installed power bi yet, visit the official Microsoft power bi website to download the power bi (https://power.microsoft.com) and download the appropriate version for your operating system.
Step 2 — Gather and Connect Data
The first step is to gather the data you want to include in your report. power bi can connect to various data sources such as excel files, SQL databases, SharePoint lists and cloud based services like azure and google analytics.
- Open power bi desktop
- Click on “Get Data” button located at the home tab.
- Once, you click on get data, it will open drop-down menu for many data sources, simply select “Excel workbook” from there and after selecting it will open another dialog box and re-direct you into your local system to pull data file and click on “Open” button located at the bottom right corner of the dialog box.
- After clicking on open button, it brings another dialog box named as navigator and in this dialog box you need to load the data file which you have uploaded earlier, To do this simply click on “Load” button located at the bottom right corner of the dialog box.
Step 3 — Transform and Clean Data
Before creating the report, it essential to ensure that your data is in the right format and cleaned, especially if it comes from different sources. Use power query editor, which opens when you load data to perform data transformation.
- Click on “Transform” data in the power query editor to modify the data as required.
- Use various tools like filtering, splitting columns, sorting, removing duplicates and aggregating data to get the desired format.
Step 4 — Design Your Report
Now comes the exciting part, designing your report. Power BI provides an intuitive interface to create visually stunning and interactive reports.
- Drag and drop the relevant fields from the fields pane onto the report canvas.
- Choose appropriate visuals (charts, tables, maps) from visualization pane to represent your data.
Step 5 — Format and Customize Visuals
To make your report visually appealing and easy to understand, you can format and customize the visuals.
- Select a visual on the report canvas.
- Use the format and analytics panes to modify colors, fonts, titles and other visual properties.
Step 6 — Create Relationship
If your data comes from multiple tables, you need to create relationship to combine the data.
- Goto modeling tab and click on “Manage Relationship” from the home tab.
- Define the relationships between the related tables.
Step 7 — Add Filters and Slicers
Filters and slicers allows users to interact with the report and focus on specific subsets of data.
- Goto the visualization pane.
- Drag and drop fields onto the filters or slicers section.
Step 8 — Implement Drill-down and Drill-through
Drill-down and drill-through features provides users with the ability to explore more detailed information in a report.
- Right click on a visual.
- Choose drill-down or drill through and configure the settings.
Step 9 — Create Report Pages
To organize your report better and present data in a structured manner, you can create multiple report pages.
- Click on the “New Page” icon at the bottom of the report canvas.
- Design each page with relevant visuals and information.
Step 10 — Add Report Interaction
To make the report more dynamic, you can define interactions between visuals. This means one visuals selection will affect other visuals.
- Goto the “Page Report” view.
- Click on the “Edit Interactions” icon in the top menu.
- Define interactions between visuals by selecting the appropriate options.
Step 11 — Save and Publish Report
Once, you have designed the report and are satisfied with its appearance and functionality, its time to save and publish it.
- Save the report (.Pbix) extension, to your desired location.
- If you have access to power bi service, you can publish the report there for sharing and collaboration
Conclusion
You have successfully designed a report in power bi. Remember that practice and experimentation will improve your report design skills over time. Don’t hesitate to explore power bi various features and capabilities to create even more insightful and compelling reports.
