Book Image

Microsoft Power BI Quick Start Guide - Third Edition

By : Devin Knight, Erin Ostrowsky, Mitchell Pearson, Bradley Schacht
Book Image

Microsoft Power BI Quick Start Guide - Third Edition

By: Devin Knight, Erin Ostrowsky, Mitchell Pearson, Bradley Schacht

Overview of this book

Updated with the latest features and improvements in Power BI, this fast-paced yet comprehensive guide will help you master the core concepts of data visualization quickly. You’ll learn how to install Power BI, design effective data models, and build basic dashboards and visualizations to help you make better business decisions. This new edition will also help you bridge the gap between MS Excel and Power BI. Throughout this book, you’ll learn how to obtain data from a variety of sources and clean it using the Power Query Editor. You’ll also start designing data models to navigate and explore relationships within your data and building DAX formulas to make data easier to work with. Visualizing data is a key element of this book, so there’s an emphasis on helping you get to grips with data visualization styles and enhanced digital storytelling. As you progress, you’ll start building your own dataflows, gain an understanding of the Common Data Model, and automate dataflow refreshes to eradicate data cleaning inefficiency. You’ll learn how to administer your organization's Power BI environment so that deployment can be made seamless, data refreshes can run properly, and security can be fully implemented. By the end of this Power BI book, you’ll know how to get the most out of Power BI for better business intelligence.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)
11
Other Books You May Enjoy
12
Index

Visualizing trend data

The term trend data refers to displaying and comparing the change in value over time. Power BI provides many options in this category, each with its own focus. The idea for each of the visuals is to draw attention to the total value across a length of time. Create a new report page called Trend Data, and dive right in to see what the differences are between the following options:

  • Line and area charts
  • Combo charts
  • Ribbon charts
  • Waterfall charts
  • Funnel charts

To begin, let’s explore the line and area charts. These are the most commonly used charts for visualizing trend data, and the ones that the visualizations report consumers are likely most familiar with already.

Line and area charts

The Line chart is the most basic of the options when it comes to analyzing data over time. The Area chart and Stacked area chart are based on the Line chart; the difference is that the area between the axes and the line...