13 Tips for Getting Started w/Power BI
for Office 365
The Baker’s Dozen
Business Intelligence
13 SQL Server /
Business Intelligence
Productivity Tips
Kevin S. Goff
Microsoft SQL Server MVP
Kevin S. Goff – Brief BIO
• Developer/architect since 1987 / Microsoft SQL Server MVP
• Columnist for CoDe Magazine since 2004,
“The Baker’s Dozen” Productivity Series”, 13 tips on a SQL/BI topic
• Wrote a book, collaborated on a 2nd book
• Frequent speaker for SQL Server community events and SQL Live!360
Conferences
• Email: kgoff@kevinsgoff.net
• My site/blog: www.KevinSGoff.Net (includes SQL/BI webcasts)
• Releasing some SQL/BI video courseware in 2015
Intro to Power BI for Office 365
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Today’s Topic
• 13 steps to get started w/Power BI for Office 365
• This is an Introductory Session
• Two objectives:
– To provide you with steps to set up a Power BI for Office 365
site
– Give a general roadmap of the major components of Power BI,
and a quick glance at what can be built
• Will provide some links at the end to study Power BI
further, and a quick look at what’s coming in the future
• Many detailed screen shots to use for reference, so
going to limit tabbing around
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Topics for today
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
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10.
11.
12.
13.
What is Power BI and Power BI for Office 365?
Power BI for Office 365 vs SharePoint On-Premises
What can we build with Power BI for Office 365?
Getting Started: Creating a Power BI for Office 365 site/account
Creating Data Sources and Data Management Gateways
PowerPivot
PowerPivot DAX Formulas
PowerView
PowerMaps
PowerQuery
Deploying/Saving Content to Power BI for Office 365 sites
Setting up Data Refreshes back to On-Premise Sources
Recommended Reading/Links
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1: What is Power BI for Office 365?
• One way to look at it – there are 2 major parts
• The first is a set of Excel 2013 add-ins (Power BI itself)
– Power Pivot (a simple way to create analytic pivot tables)
– Power View (a new data visualization tool for creating “image” reports and
charts)
– Power Map (formerly GeoFlow, creates 3-D geographic visualizations using
Bing Maps under the hood)
– Power Query (search and query data from public sources – ETL inside Excel)
• The second is based on Office 365 Cloud Services
– Office 365 Power BI sites that offer a cloud-based version of SharePoint
portals for sharing Excel content
– Data Management Gateway so that IT can control data sources published
on Power BI sites (as well as user access)
– Mobile BI device support for Windows 8, Windows RT and iOS tables (iPads)
to view visualizations using HTML5
TOC
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2: Power BI for Office 365 vs SharePoint On-Premises
• In a traditional SharePoint 2010 or 2013 environment:
• Works well, but requires SharePoint licenses and maintenance
Users then publish the
Excel content to a
SharePoint site
collection
SharePoint
Enterprise Server
Site Collections for Excel,
PowerPivot, Power View
Galleries
Business
Users/Developers take
data from SQL Server
(or other sources),
create Pivot Tables
and Pivot Charts in
Excel
TOC
Other document libraries
containing Business
Intelligence Data
Larger set of users
interact with the data in
SharePoint
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2: Power BI for Office 365 vs SharePoint On-Premises
• But what if….???
Users then publish
the Excel content to
a SharePoint site
collection
What if this piece could exist “in the
cloud”, in an external portal that
could render all the Excel content ,
and even work with newer versions
of Excel add-ins?
SharePoint
Enterprise Server
Site Collections for Excel,
PowerPivot, Power View
Galleries
Business
Users/Developers take
data from SQL Server
(or other sources),
create Pivot Tables
and Pivot Charts in
Excel
TOC
Other document libraries
containing Business Intelligence
Data
And what if mobile users
could access this site with a
Surface table or an iPad?
Larger set of
users interact
with the data
in SharePoint
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2: Power BI for Office 365 vs SharePoint On-Premises
• That’s the basis of Power BI for Office 365
Users then publish
the Excel content to
an Office 365 site
Office 365 site, managed by
Microsoft, that contains
stripped down version of
SharePoint, with simpler
management features
Office 365 Server (with
SharePoint support)
Site Collections for Excel,
PowerPivot, Power View
Galleries
Business
Users/Developers take
data from SQL Server
(or other sources),
create Pivot Tables
and Pivot Charts in
Excel
TOC
Other document libraries
containing Business Intelligence
Data
Larger set of corporate users
interact with the data by accessing
Office 365 site (either with desktop
or laptop or mobile device
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2: Power BI for Office 365 vs SharePoint On-Premises
• That’s the basis of Power BI for Office 365
Users then publish
the Excel content to
an Office 365 site
Business
Users/Developers take
data from SQL Server
(or other sources),
create Pivot Tables
and Pivot Charts in
Excel
TOC
Max workbook upload
is 250 MB
(compressed)
Office 365 site does not contain
ALL features of SharePoint
Enterprise (such as
PerformancePoint Services and
Reporting Services Integration)
Office 365 Server (with
SharePoint support)
Site Collections for Excel,
PowerPivot, Power View
Galleries
Other document libraries
containing Business Intelligence
Data
Larger set of corporate users
interact with the data by accessing
Office 365 site (either with desktop
or laptop or mobile device
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2: Power BI for Office 365 vs SharePoint On-Premises
But when the content in the database
changes, do we need to rebuild and redeploy
the Excel spreadsheet?
Power BI for Office
365 site
Step 4: Set up a Data Refresh , so that the
deployed content can refresh from the onsite, on-premises data source
But it requires that we configure a Data
Gateway and Data Source on the Power BI
for Office 365 site
Deployed Excel
sheet contains data
(compressed using
xVelocity)
Step 2: Deploy (Save) Excel
Power BI Content to Power BI
for Office 365 site. Remember,
it contains the actual static
content from the original
database
Step 3: Users can
access Excel
content on the site,
in the browser or
from a mobile
device, even if they
don’t have Excel
Step 1: Created PowerPivot /
Power View content in Excel
against SQL Server database
TOC
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3: What can we build with Power BI for Office 365
•
•
•
•
Excel Spreadsheet
Built against SQL
Database
Deployed to Power BI
site
Can Navigate against it
without Excel in browser
or mobile device!
DAX formulas for KPIs, Return %,
and Ranking
TOC
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3: What can we build with Power BI for Office 365
DAX formulas for Moving
Average
TOC
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4: Getting Started with Power BI for Office 365
• First, load up on the Excel Add-Ins for Excel 2013
• Get PowerPivot, Power View, and (maybe) Power Maps
–
–
–
–
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/bi/powerpivot.aspx (Power Pivot)
Install/Configure steps for PowerPivot
PowerView is an add-in that comes with Excel 2013 Pro
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=38395 (Power
Maps)
– http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=39379 (Power
Query)
• “Getting started” information for Power Query & Power Maps
– http://blogs.msdn.com/b/powerbi/archive/2013/07/07/getting-startedwith-pq-and-pm.aspx
– A great overview of the components of Power BI
• These are KILLER add-ins that allow Microsoft to compete with
other self-service BI tools like QlikView and Tableau
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4: Getting Started with Power BI for Office 365
•
•
•
•
Main Power BI Site
Power BI Blog
Power BI Support/FAQ
Pricing and Free Trial
A free trial starts with basic
credentials and a user ID
Main portal only has
ADMIN enabled to
start. Must do some
provisioning
TOC
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4: Getting Started with Power BI for Office 365
Admin dashboard – need to
add any additional users and
start services
TOC
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4: Getting Started with Power BI for Office 365
Either use new domain
(based on original ID) and
then add any additional users
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4: Getting Started with Power BI for Office 365
Final checklist
Remember
https://portal.office.com
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4: Getting Started with Power BI for Office 365
The main SharePoint portal admin center.
At this point we have a public SharePoint site
Our next step is to configure and provision a Power BI
New public
Office 365
SharePoint site
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4: Getting Started with Power BI for Office 365
Power BI Admin Center
Our objective is to deploy some BI content, where refreshes will point “back” on on-site, on-premise data source
Need to establish Data Source and Gateway
TOC
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5: Creating a Data Source/Gateway
But when the content in the database
changes, do we need to rebuild and redeploy
the Excel spreadsheet?
Power BI for Office
365 site
Step 4: Set up a Data Refresh , so that the
deployed content can refresh from the onsite, on-premises data source
But it requires that we configure a Data
Gateway and Data Source on the Power BI
for Office 365 site
Deployed Excel
sheet contains data
(compressed using
xVelocity)
Step 2: Deploy (Save) Excel
Power BI Content to Power BI
for Office 365 site. Remember,
it contains the actual static
content from the original
database
Step 3: Users can
access Excel
content on the site,
in the browser or
from a mobile
device, even if they
don’t have Excel
Step 1: Created PowerPivot /
Power View content in Excel
against SQL Server database
TOC
Intro to Power BI for Office 365
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5: Creating a Data Source/Gateway
Back in the Power BI Admin Center, if you try to define a data source, it will prompt to install a Gateway first
TOC
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5: Creating a Data Source/Gateway
Must download Microsoft Gateway Management client
When gateway client loads,
enter the Gateway key from
above
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5: Creating a Data Source/Gateway
Now that we have a gateway established, we can define an
on-site data source for the Gateway
Provide credentials
for when Gateway
reads “back” to onsite source
Define Connection, onsite database server, and
database name
TOC
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6-PowerPivot
Compressed Star
Schema Model “in
the basement” of
the Excel Sheet
TOC
1. Users can point Excel to database
content
2. Can create the equivalent of a
“mini-cube”, compressed using
xVelocity compression
3. The Power Pivot Data Model lives
“inside” the Excel Sheet
4. Users can create many Pivot
Tables or Pivot Charts off the
Model
5. Users can also create Power View
report visualizations off the data
model
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6-PowerPivot
Must create
relationships if source
was views
Model can come from
physical relational
tables or database views
This is somewhat like building
SSAS OLAP cubes, except it
doesn’t support advanced
fact/dimension relationships
TOC
Can implement
dimensional hierarchies
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6-PowerPivot
KPI scorecards in
Excel, similar to other
SharePoint
dashboarding tools
Garrett’s sales as % of Quota was 80.18%. That’s “OK”, so
status is yellow. But his sales one year ago was 85.13% of
quota – so his % of quota is trending down, and that’s not good
User can
look at
sales and
quotas by
Employee
for a year
or a
quarter
The % of Quota last year represents a DAX formula to express
the % of quota for “same time period last year”
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6-PowerPivot
Geography Hierarchy, and evaluating sales
in 2 different sale channels (customer
internet and reseller/vendor
Visual Slicers
Excel Generic
Feature, % of
Row Parent
TOC
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6-PowerPivot
Monthly Sales + 12
month moving average,
plotted as a line chart
(Requires a set of DAX
formulas)
TOC
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6-PowerPivot
Sparkline (compressed graphic, a line chart
with markers for high and low month)
More Visual Slicers
TOC
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7-DAX Formulas
• For formulas and Expressions, PowerPivot provides
a language called DAX
• Very Loosely speaking, DAX is to PowerPivot as
MDX is to OLAP Cubes
• Some websites state that DAX is easier than MDX
• That “depends”
• For basic formulas, basically true
• But for more complicated expressions, DAX can be just as involved
as MDX
• When comparing PowerPivot to SSAS OLAP, worth noting that
PowerPivot does not directly support advanced fact/dimension
relationships (like role-playing dimensions and many-to-many bridge
tables). So DAX is necessary to manually set relationships through
code.
TOC
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7-DAX Formulas
Calculate a ratio on the fly:
not too bad
Express in terms of a year ago:
arguably a bit more involved
DAX formula to express
% of Quota in terms of
one year ago
TOC
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7-DAX Formulas
More complicated DAX code to calculate a Moving Average
Must determine, for any one month, the 12 month range (start month and end month of range)
Must average the internet sales over the span of that range
DAX is sometimes advertised as “easier” than the MDX language used in SSAS/OLAP
applications, but sometimes DAX can be just as involved
TOC
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8: Power View
• Report Visualization Tool for Power Users
• Great for storyboard-type reporting, “facestyle” reporting where a page or subset of a
page tells a story
• Not intended for full blown detail reports
• Not as much developer functionality as
Reporting Services
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8: Power View
Power View visualization
against the Power Pivot
Data Model
Scatter chart
plotting city
observations of
Sales revenue and
# of orders
Can use year as “Play
axis” to show that while
Beaverton is top city in
Oregon across all
years, it wasn’t top city
in 2007
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Intro to Power BI for Office 365
User can
filter on
Country
– State
Province
34
8: Power View
While this has nice interactive features, advanced users
might want to show a linear regression line, and also the
correlation coefficient (impact of order count on sales)
Here is where tools like SSRS or even Excel Pivot Charts
are a better option – Power View does not have these
features
We can even select a single city
and plot the progression of
annual sales for a city over time
TOC
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8: Power View
Cross filtering – I can click on the
pie slice for Australia, and the
bar chart above shades the
monthly sales just for Australia
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9: Power Maps
• As name implies, ability to create map visualizations
based on geography definitions
• Geography Definitions can come from country /
state / city names, or from latitude/longitude points
• For those who used maps in SQL Server Reporting
Services, these maps are more interactive
• Power BI Blog has links to examples that showcase
some very fancy maps!
TOC
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9: Power Maps
Can map based on geography
labels or latitude / longitude
points
TOC
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9: Power Maps
Can use nav
controls to
zoom in/out
TOC
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10: Power Query
• Essentially “ETL” against many data sources using a
query language inside Excel
• Can query from many public websites (Facebook,
Wikipedia) with nothing but a URL
• Can be used to shape and format data into an Excel
Pivot Table
• Strong book recommendation,
by Chris Webb
TOC
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10: Power Query
We can point to a site,
and then a table within
the site, and utilize Power
Query syntax
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10: Power Query
Regardless of whether
opponents were scoring 15
points or 30 points, Chiefs
generally surrendered same
number of yards
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11: Deploying
Uploading is very easy – in the Power BI site,
just take the option to Add/Upload a file, and
then select an XLSX file saved locally
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12: Setting up Data Refreshes back to On-Premise Sources
In the Power BI for Office 365
site, click the ellipsis button and
take the option to schedule a
data refresh
History page to show history of
successful (or failed) refreshes
Verify the connection (there
could be more than 1), and set
frequently of schedule
Notifications
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13: Power BI Future Enhancements/Reading
• Power BI News from WPC:
– http://www.jenunderwood.com/2014/07/14/microsoft-power-bi-news-from-wpc2014/
– http://cwebbbi.wordpress.com/2014/07/14/new-power-bi-features-shown-at-wpc/
– http://cwebbbi.wordpress.com/2014/05/11/more-thoughts-on-the-new-power-bifeatures/
– http://cwebbbi.wordpress.com/2014/05/08/power-bi-announcements-at-the-passba-conference/
– WPC Demo (requires Windows Live ID sign-on - Power BI starts around 20 minute
mark)
– Rundown of new features:
•
•
•
•
TOC
New KPI/Dashboard Editor (possible replacement for PerformancePoint Services)
Support for new data visualizations
Support for SSRS Reports, which can point back to on-premises data sources (HUGE!!!)
Data Sources for SalesForce, MS Dynamics, Facebook, Google Analytics, Twitter
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13: Power BI Future Enhancements/Reading
Deploy project
to Power BI site
Local
SSRS
project
Power BI
Site “in the
cloud”
Secured Data
Gateway, so cloud
reports can access
on-premises data
Users access
reports in
Power BI
Dashboards
Company on-premises
database
Follow the blog of Chris Webb for details
http://cwebbbi.wordpress.com/
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