Home › Forums › Cool Tools & Tips › Share Your Cool Excel Tips Forum › Microsoft Power Bi – Analytic Data Visualization

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    • cmcarthur
      Keymaster
      May 1, 2023 at 1:43 pm
      Post count: 24
      #3633

      Power Bi – Self-Service Business Intelligence Tool

      What is power BI?

      Power BI is a collection of software services, apps, and connectors that work together to turn your unrelated sources of data into coherent, visually immersive, and interactive insights. Your data might be an Excel spreadsheet, or a collection of cloud-based and on-premises hybrid data warehouses. Power BI lets you easily connect to your data sources, visualize, and discover what is important, and share that with anyone you want.

      The Parts of Power BI

      Power BI consists of several elements that all work together, starting with these three basics:

      ·         A Windows desktop application called Power BI Desktop.

      ·         An online software as a service (SaaS) service called the Power BI service.

      ·         Power BI Mobile apps for Windows, iOS, and Android devices.

       

      How do I use Power BI at Algonquin College?

      • ·         View equipment, work requests and preventative maintenance data
      • ·         Analyze room categories and type data ex. classrooms, labs, meeting rooms
      • ·         I belong to a Power BI User group – our group has grown to 73 volunteer members since its creation in Sept 2021

       

      Please check out https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/ for more information

      • This topic was modified 1 year, 6 months ago by cmcarthur.
      • This topic was modified 1 month, 4 weeks ago by Phil Rouble.
    • Rich McEvoy
      Keymaster
      May 1, 2023 at 4:23 pm
      Post count: 72
      #3643

      Thanks for sharing Colleen.  Fanshawe Facilities has been using Qlik for many years to combine and visualize data in a similar way.  I’m jealous of your user group – very impressive!

      When looking at data this way, we often discover insights we didn’t set out to find.  It’s very helpful for improving data integrity.

    • cmcarthur
      Keymaster
      May 2, 2023 at 8:22 am
      Post count: 24
      #3644

      Thanks Rich, good point. I often use it for data cleansing too! It makes viewing data interesting and fun 🙂

    • Phil Rouble
      Keymaster
      May 4, 2023 at 6:31 pm
      Post count: 25
      #3648

      Thanks for sharing the tip, Colleen.

      I have used Excel pivot tables for many years to comb through Excel tables and gain insights. I agree that data exploration and discovery this way can be very eye opening, enabling and fun!

      I have been curious about PowerBI for some time now so thanks for pointing the way. I looked up a couple of short Youtube videos that also give a quick overview and sense of how it works:

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