Original subtitles

Welcome to the section.

In this section, we're now going to start looking at the Power BI desktop.

In the previous section we had a quick look at the Power BI service and we saw that it runs on the internet.

Now the Power BI desktop is a little bit different.

It is a Windows application, so please note this only runs on Windows.

It doesn't run on Chromebook, does not run a mac, it has to be on a Windows system.

You download it from Microsoft and basically just install it like any other Windows application.

So once you've got to download it, when you load it, you should be greeted with a splash screen like

this.

Now you'll see that there's quite a bit of information on this splash screen.

On the right hand side, you'll see that there's options where you can actually see what is the new

functionality that is coming out with Power BI This is quite important part of your releases new features

on a monthly basis, so it's quite useful to keep up to date with what's happening.

You'll see the next part is, is that you can actually go to forums.

Forums can be really useful when you're trying to find out functionality or how things work or you have

specific problems that you'd like to ask other members of the community.

The Power BI blog is something I'd also recommend keeping in touch with what the updates are and what

they're designed to do is really useful and really just gives you a lot of new information about what's

happening about Power.

BI You'll also see that there's some tutorials, there's also some videos that you can watch as well.

On the left hand side, we do get the option to be able to get some data or we can open up some recent

reports that we've been working with.

Now, in this case, what I'm going to do is I'm actually just going to close the splash screen and

we're going to go straight into Power BI.

We're going to load our data from within Power BI So you can see that we're greeted from a screen,

and the screen that we get is our report view.

Now you're going to see that it does look very familiar to what we saw in the Power BI service.

So in the middle here is where we're going to design our reports.

This is the information.

But first off, you can see that we need to be able to add data to our report.

So this is the first task that we're going to do.

Now, in the middle, you do get these options where you can access specific data sources, but if you

look up at the top, you will see that you do get a data menu.

Now, this data menu is actually got a lot more options.

So you get again, you'll see that you do have some shortcuts that you can use at the top or you can

go to the get data button and you'll start to see here that a lot of different data sources that you

can use.

Again, this is just the most common ones that it shows.

If you go to more, then you'll get a full list of all the different data sources.

Now you can see that they're actually broken up into different sections.

So if you want to see the file based ones, you can see that you can get text, XML, JSON, PDF and

others as well, databases, quite a wide range of databases that you can access.

And then obviously Microsoft works with its own power platform, so you can see that we can access the

Power BI data sets.

And you'll remember from the previous section that one of the powerful things you can do is when you

get a data set and you upload it into the Power BI service, you can then access that data set for other

authoring, which is really powerful.

However, you can also go to data verse and you can access something called data flows as well, which

gives you data through the Microsoft platforms.

If you're using the Azure SQL, then you can see there's a lot of Azure services that you can access.

There's also online services that you can use as well.

Things like Google Analytics, for instance, may be of interest.

And then they've also got a other option, which gives you even more access to different data.

Now, in this course, we're going to be focused really just on Excel data.

So we've got the Excel data source that we used in the previous section.

We're going to be uploading that into our Power BI desktop, So we're going to actually go to file and

we could use Excel.

You're probably thinking that we could have just selected this option over here.

Import data from Excel.

Yes we could.

It would have been a nice little shortcut, but I just wanted to show you some of that functionality.

So we're going to select Excel Workbook and we're going to click on the Connect button.

Once you've navigated through to where you've downloaded the files that you've downloaded from the Udemy

resources, then please choose the training data one file again.

So make sure you've got training data, one selected and we're going to select the open option.

And what it's going to do now is it's going to connect to that file and it's going to start reading

in the data and it produces a preview of the data that is available now to be able to see that preview,

all you do is you select one of the options.

Now, what it's done here is it's actually looked at the Excel file and it says, I actually find a

table of data and I find a sheet of data.

And in this case, it's exactly the same data.

It's a table and it's a sheet.

So it doesn't really matter which one of these two you choose, although tables tend to be better to

access because they are better formatted most of the time.

So I would suggest that if you see this blue line, then you would know that you're accessing a table

of data.

But as I said, it doesn't really matter which one you access.

If you choose the other one and you'll see we get the same data that's basically been shown.

Don't choose both.

You'll bring in two tables of data and it's just exactly the same data.

So just make sure you only have one selected.

So we're going to have data one and we're going to choose the table.

And as I said, it's got the blue stripe at the top.

And as you can see here that you actually have, then a preview of the data that you're working with.

Now, what you'll see is a couple of options.

You do have a load ability and a transform data ability.

Now, later in the course, we're going to be looking at transforming of data.

So it's really useful when you want to take your data, you want to do some basic transformations and

changes to that data.

In this case, though, we're just going to actually select the load option.

So we're going to choose load and we're going to let that load go.

Once the data is loaded, you will then see that it now comes into your system.

So what we've got here is we've got two off fields and if you open this, you just select this, you

then you'll see that it'll expand.

So we've currently got our table of data, which is called data one in this case, and we've now imported

all these fields of data.

So we're going to be looking at this data in a little bit more depth as we go through the course.

We're going to be making our reports and using that in our visualizations.

Now, as we mentioned with the Power BI service as well, you do have your visualizations and you should

see that this is pretty much the same as what you saw in the service.

And also you remember that we had our filters as well.

This is something that we're going to look at later on in the course as well.

It's really powerful, the filtering that we can do.

If you move over to the left hand side, what you'll see is that you do get some navigation options.

Now, one of the big differences between Power BI desktop and Power BI service is the ability to do

a lot of data modeling.

Now, recently Microsoft have been introducing new features into the Power VR service, which allows

you to do some data modeling as well.

So the lines have got a little bit more blurred as to which product you should use for which function

at the moment.

But in the past you used to use Power BI desktop to actually do your data modeling.

So if you move down one, you will see that we get the option to be able to access our data.

Now, with our data, what you'll see is like a spreadsheet table view of your data.

So what we've actually downloaded is the Excel file and you'll see that we got 15,000 rows of data that

have been loaded.

These are now then all of the fields that have been loaded into this.

So this is quite nice that you can actually come in and you can enter your, review your data and have

a look at your data.

Please also note that you can actually filter this just like an Excel table.

So if you went into your dropdown, it works just like you would expect with a Excel table.

You could say, for example, anyone to see, for example, say catalog, so you could turn select all

off, just choose catalog, for example, click okay.

And now you'll see that this has just been filtered and you see the little filter icon only to show

the catalog down at the bottom here.

It shows me there's 884 filtered rows.

So that's how many rows I've got of panel, but also see that it's got some other filters as well.

So you do get more comprehensive text filters where you can look for things that equal something.

Start with something, end with something contains.

So it's a type of logic that you're probably used to working with.

If you want to clear the filter and just get a clear filter there.

You may have noticed as well that at any point you can sort by specific fields, so you can change your

sorting pretty easily.

If you move to a numeric field, let's say we want to look at our sales field again.

You'll see that you get your number filters.

So let's say we only want to find values that are greater than a specific value or less than a specific

value.

You could do that as well.

And you can see that you got the usual types of operators you'd work with equals between less than and

greater than.

So again, you could just filter this data if you wanted to.

You'll also see the same with your data as well.

So you've got a list of all the dates here, but if you use your data filters, again, you can find

things that equal a date for data after a date or between specific dates.

So you can come in here.

As I say, use this just like a table, gives you an access to your being able to look at your data.

And it can be quite useful when you just reconciling your data.

What you'll also notice is that once we're in this table as well, is that at the top our menu options

have changed and we've now got something called column tools, and it's now showing me a different ribbon

to what we were looking at just now when I when I was not within a specific.

And you'll see that this will change depending on which field that I select.

Now, I am going to review this just a little bit later on.

In the lesson, we're going to look at fact of using the column tools a little bit more detail.

But before I get there, what I do want to do is just move across to this side and just look at the

other view that we can use, which is our modeling view.

So now when I select my modeling view, click on my modeling view.

You'll see then it shows me a different view.

So basically, this is now my table with all of its fields.

Now, if I had other tables that were also within the model, it would then show me those in a view

here.

This is really useful when we're doing relationships and this is what you tend to work with when you're

working in this view.

And you can even see that the little icon here shows it as basically a relationship model.

So we're going to look at this a little bit later also when we cover relationships.

But I just want to show the differences in the views that you can work with.

So as I say, this is basically your relationship view.

This is your data view where we can look at all the data.

And this is your report view where we're going to be creating our reports.

So hopefully that gives you a little bit of an overview of our Power BI desktop.

The next section, we're going to be spending a lot more time just getting to grips with the fact of

how to create a visualizations, how to do some basic data modeling, how to do some formatting.

So let's conclude this lesson and I will see you in the next one.