Original subtitles

Instructor: All right, so let's talk about the workflow

that we're gonna be following

as we build this course project.

It's a very common,

very popular business intelligence workflow,

and it's gonna take us

through all of the core components of Power BI.

So we're gonna start by extracting

and transforming our raw data

inside of the Power Query editor.

Just like Excel, this is gonna open up in a separate window.

It's where we're gonna conduct all of our ETL steps

to clean and transform and prep our data

for analysis and visualization.

And once we've done those steps,

we're gonna load it into what we call Power BI's front end.

And within that front end, there are three core views,

the model view, the data view, and the report view.

So collectively,

that's what we typically call the front end,

whereas the Power Query editor

is what we'll often refer to as the back end.

And this is something that Aaron's gonna dig into

in a bit more depth in the next section of the course.

So if we take it one layer deeper,

let's look at the four stages

of the workflow that we're gonna follow here.

Again, starting with the Power Query editor,

this is where data is loaded and transformed.

Step two is where we configure and build our data models.

We do this inside of Power BI's model view.

Step three is where table features and calculations

can be added inside Power BI's data view.

And then finally, step four,

that's where we bring our data to life,

and create visuals and reports in the report view.

Now, there are a ton of menus and ribbons

and tools and tabs here.

Don't worry about that right now.

We're gonna dig into all of those features and functions

later in the course.

But for now, what I want to do

is jump into the Power BI environment

with a fully built model open

so we can take a quick 10,000 foot view

of the BI workflow and interface.

All right, so here we are inside of Power BI.

As you can see, we've got our AdventureWorks report

pulled up here,

and right now we're inside of what we're calling

the front end, right?

We've got our report view, which we're looking at now,

got our data view and our model view as well,

which I'll talk about in a second.

But if we're following the same flow

that we just talked about,

typically we're gonna begin inside of the query editor.

And to get there, we can either create a new data connection

or query from the get data menu,

or we can head to transform data

to open up the query editor.

So note that this opens up in a separate window,

completely separate from the Power BI app,

just like it does in Excel.

And this is where all of those ETL steps take place.

It's essentially where we're taking our raw data,

and preparing it for further analysis inside of Power BI.

So once we've done our data prep,

we're gonna close and apply.

That data's gonna load into the Power BI front end,

and here we are.

So remember step two is about creating our data model,

which we can access here.

This is where we actually define those table relationships.

We can view each table as an independent object,

and we can design our relational model for analysis.

Next, we've got our data view here.

This is the one place that we can actually see the details

of our tables in rows and columns, just like Excel.

And one thing to call out here

is that Power BI has contextual menus.

It has a contextual ribbon just like Excel.

And what that means is that based on what you're selecting,

you'll see different menu options.

So right now I have a table selected, Product Lookup.

So I see a table tools menu here.

If I select a specific column, I see column tools,

if I select a specific measure, I'll see measure tools,

and so on and so forth.

Now, the last view we talked about

was the report view, and of course,

this is where we're gonna add all of our charts and graphs

and visuals to create custom reports

and interactive dashboards.

One thing that's pretty cool is that just like Excel,

we've got these tabs here

to break out different views of a report

that we can navigate just like we're inside

of an Excel workbook.

So there you have it.

Hopefully that's a helpful high level overview

of the Power BI workflow and user interface.