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 KPI data

KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators, are measurable values that demonstrate how well a company is achieving a certain objective. Power BI has several options to measure the progress being made toward a goal for operational processes. The strength of a KPI visual lies in its simplicity. It displays a single value and its progress toward a specific goal.

Create a new report page called KPI Data and take a closer look at the gauge and KPI visuals.

Gauge

The Gauge visual displays a single value within a circular arc and its progress toward a specified goal or target value. The Target value is represented by a line within the arc. With the current dataset, there is no measure that can be used to illustrate an accurate business goal, so one will have to be created. Before setting up this visual, a new calculated measure will need to be created.

The gauge will be using the Total Sales field as the Value field. The target will be 10% more than the previous...