Figure 988 A sample dashboard.

USE Q&A TO INVESTIGATE YOUR DATA

Problem: I don’t know what to look for in the sample data.

Strategy: Click in the Q&A section at the top and type a question. As you type, Power BI will create an answer.

Figure 989 Ask a question, Power BI generates an answer.

Additional Details: You can make the Q&A more flexible by defining synonyms. If your data has a field called Revenue but your company generally calls this Sales or Book or Ralph, you can define those syn- onyms.

CLICK A DASHBOARD ELEMENT TO OPEN THE UNDERLYING REPORT

Problem: Where is the interactivity?

Strategy: Someone can share a dashboard with you. The shareable unit in Power BI is a Dashboard. But behind the Dashboard is a report. In general, Reports are far more interactive than Dashboards. Click on a chart in a Dashboard to open the Report behind that element. Note that a Report might have several worksheet tabs across the bottom.

CLICK IN ONE CHART TO FILTER OTHER CHARTS

When you are viewing a report, clicking a column in one chart will cause all of the other charts to be fil- tered to that item.

Here is a report with four elements:

3

Figure 990 Start with an unfiltered report.

Click on the South region in the top right column. The top left chart will grey out the portions of the rev- enue that are not from the South. The bottom two visualizations will show only customers in the South.

Figure 991 Click one element to filter the other elements.

Click again on South to return to an unfiltered state.

Note that you could have chosen to click on product DEF in the top left chart instead. The other three charts would be filtered.

ENABLE DRILL-DOWN MODE

If the data model includes a hierarchy, you can turn on drill-down mode.

The Power BI team must love using tiny subtle icons, because Power BI is full of them. In the top right of a chart, this icon turns on Drill-down mode.

Figure 992 This icon appears when there is a hierarchy in the data.

When you click on the East region, you will see a chart with just the states in the East.

In the top-left of the chart are three icons related to drill-down.

●● The first icon goes up one level. Click this to return to all regions after view states.

●● The second icon moves down one level in the hierarchy without filtering to one region. Click this icon to move from a Region report to a State report. Instead of seeing only states in the East region, you will see all states.

●● The third icon is Expand All One Level Down. Click this while viewing the East Region states to see all East Region States and Cities.

Figure 993 Expand the current selection to include cities.

Figure 994 Instead of listing White Plains, Kenilworth, Murray Hill, you see both State and City.

SORTING IS HIDDEN BEHIND MORE OPTIONS

Problem: How can I sort the data in the chart?

Figure 995 Sorting is hidden behing the … in the top right of the chart.

OPTIONAL STEP 2: CONNECT TO AN EXISTING SERVICE

Before you start uploading your data to Power BI, you can use one of several built-in connectors to connect to accounts you might already have. For example, if you already use Google Analytics to monitor traffic at a website, you can connect Power BI to your data at Google Analytics.

To browse what is available, click the Get Data button shown previously in Figure 986. Then, click the Get button under Services as shown on the right side of Figure 987.

Browse through the long list of services. If you recognize a service where you have an account, click the Get button. You will have to provide a userid and password to connect to the other service.