Tao Verse 10

Hold fast to the Power of the One

Power BI Report Chart Visual - Snack 15

That last visual proved interesting.  Let's add something a bit more interactive.

Jump into EDIT mode on your report.

Ensure you do not have anything select by clicking in the blank space.

A quick double-check is to look at the "Build Visual" section of the Visualizations pane.  "Values" should display nothing more than "Add data fields here."

Let's do that.

1. Drag-and-Drop the date field to that little box.
1. A new visual should appear with the date
2. It is broken out by Year, Month, Quarter, Day.
1. That is good.
2. Do the same and Add Sales.
1. You should be able to Drag-and-Drop it just below the Date portion.
3. Add Gross Sales.
4. Add Profit.
1. We are back to a boring table.
5. Under the Visualizations pane, 
1. click on the icon for "Line and clustered column chart."
1. The boring table should change to a fancy bar chart.
1. If it does, great!
2. If it does not, and only a new blank visualization appears, that means your table was not selected when you clicked that icon.  Select your table visual and try again.
1. You can also select the other blank visual, hit that little ". . ." menu and choose to remove it.
6. Stretch out your new visual so you can see more of it.
1. It is probably only displaying 2 years columns, and how come there is a line on the icon and none on the chart?
7. Return to the Visualizations pane,
1. click and drag "Sum of Profit" down to where it says, "Add data fields here" in the section beneath that for "Line-y axis."
1. Ta-Da!  We have a line!
2. Still a little boring though.
8. Hover over the visual.
1. Click the icon that looks like two down arrows that split into two.
9. Save.

That's better.  Your screen should look relatively similar to the screenshot.

Make absolutely sure you saved before reading on.

Did you SAVE?

Are you sure?

You should probably exit and come back into the report to ensure you do not muss anything.

There is no exit.  I am not sure why.  Close the tab.

Access the report again.

Now, about the arrows ... 

The arrows enable you to interact with the visual, as well as set the default appearance.

When I first started helping folks out with using Power BI, I made a little cheat sheet for these little icons that shows up below.

Play around with the arrows to better understand how they work.

Planning for the Yellow Stone - Phase 5

Just when you thought there was nothing left to plan for, guess again.

Things need piled up.  Plans need distributed to those with concern. New hiking shoes need broken in. 

It would be a little ridiculous to get on the trail with a stiff pair of shoes.  

I cannot think of a better way to get blisters.  

Beating up the new foot cushions on local trails are good insurance against that, especially if they are an entirely new model, with different traction and balance considerations dynamics.

There is a distinct difference the new set and my old pair of Columbia Redmond III.  Discovering that they were no longer made proved extremely disappointing.  I have been using that model for years.  They are heavier than most, with a much thicker tread that just seems to grip better.

Replacement tires are Merrell Accentor 3.  They are definitely lighter, though lack the same grip, leaving me stumbling about a little more than anticipated.  There will definitely be a period of adaptation.

Power BI Report Card Visual - Snack 14

That little table we made is nice.  It would be better if it were a little more reactive to changing conditions in the report.

What does that mean, anyway?

As mentioned previously, Power BI is not meant to simply display plain old ordinary data in the same plain old ordinary way that Excel does it.  What would be the point of that?  It is meant to offer opportunities for manipulation, interactivity, and self-service analysis.

Let's jump into EDIT mode on our report and I will show you what I mean.

1. Select the table visualization that we created last time.
2. Right-Click
1. Copy
2. Copy visual
3. On the keyboard <CTRL>+V
1. A copy of the table should appear
4. Grab the new visual and drag it out of the way somewhere but keep it selected.
5. In the Visualizations pane,
1. Click on "Card," which looks like a little box with a "1 2 3" inside.
2. It should change your table to plain white box with 127.93M inside.
6. File -> Save

So, what is this showing?

Look over in the Visualizations and see that there is only one item in your Fields section.  It should be displaying the same number as "Sum of Gross Sales," though abbreviated.

Most folks looking at this sort of thing are probably not interested in gross sales though.  Let's go ahead and change to what everyone really cares about, profit!

Make sure you still have that visual selected, and ...

Drag and drop the [Profit] field from the Data pane into the Fields section of the Visualizations pane.

We started off saying something interactivity though.

Click each of the years in your table in turn now.  

The card visual will change to match your selection.

We can look simply at sales as a table, with profit independent of that in another visual.

This enables me to drop [Profit] out of that table now, since we have it showing up somewhere else.

If you want, if you still have the visual selected, you can visit the "Format visual" tab under the Visualizations pane and change the look and feel to fit your taste.

Otherwise, that is all we have today!  I am hoping to get these out a little earlier in the day on Friday, since it has become more of the catch-up-and-learn-things day for the workforce.

Hold on a minute!!!

There is some sort of little triangle with an exclamation point above the card!  

That doesn't look good.

It is not doing any damage.  It is because we copied the table visual to create another visual.

If you hover over that icon, it will tell you what is going on. 

This is a bug Microsoft recently introduced that is a super annoying.  It seems that they failed to recognize that this copy/paste of visuals happens all the time.  I mean, who wants build everything from scratch?  

Looks like you are going to get to "Format visual" anyway.

To fix that little issue, go over to the Visualizations pane and switch to "Format visual."  That is the one with the paintbrush icon over the bars.  Change your "Style presets" to "Default."  It goes away.  The option for "Style presets" go away too.  

Ain't that fancy?   

Don't forget to SAVE one more time.

Oh, and going forward, the image attached will be my final screen.

Power BI Report Question - Snack 13

For any true analytics to occur, we really need a question.

We cannot just give answers to questions that do not exist.

Sometimes, we have to come up with our own questions too, on top of what has already been asked. 

Other times, we are just given a bunch of data and told to make sense of it.

That is where we are now.

Let's start simple.

What are year-to-year Sales totals and what is our Profit from those Sales?

We could answer that with the table we have, but there is entirely too much noise in there.

We should pair that down into something useful that actually answers that question and gives us some space to answer other questions.

Get into your report and jump into EDIT mode. 

Under the Columns in the Visualization pane, you have a list of all of your columns.

If you have not noticed before, there is a little "x" next to each one. That enables you to remove the column from your visualization, which is our table, in this case.

You can also grab ahold of each one of those little boxes and reorder them (drag-n-drop).

Based on what you already know, see if you can figure out how to make yours look just like that in the screenshot.

You will need to ...

• Add a field
• Remove multiple fields
• Change the style on your table.
• Change how a field is displayed
• Save the report.

OK.  Here's what you need to do ...

• Add the Year column to the beginning of your list of columns
• Change the Year column to "Do not summarize"
• Move "Sum of Gross Sales" behind the "Year" column
• Move "Sum of Sales" behind that column
• Move "Sum of Profit" behind that column
• Change the visualization Style Preset to "Alternating Rows"
• File
• Save

If you are unable to figure it out, message me and I will give you a hand.