What is Power BI?
30/03/2016 By- Remedios Castillo (Reme.Castillo@westwoodsoftware.net)
Power BI is centered on powerbi.com, an online service where you can quickly create dashboards, share reports, and directly connect to (and incorporate) all the data that’s important to you. Power BI also introduces the Power BI Desktop, a dedicated report authoring tool that enables you to transform data, create powerful reports and visualizations, and easily publish to the Power BI service. Power BI extends to all your mobile devices, too.
Power BI is a suite of business analytics tools to analyze data and share insights. Power BI dashboards provide a 360-degree view for business users with their most important metrics in one place, updated in real time, and available on all of their devices. With one click, users can explore the data behind their dashboard using intuitive tools that make finding answers easy. Combining data from disparate databases, files, and web services (including Microsoft Dynamics CRM) with visual tools that help you understand and fix data quality and formatting issues automatically.
Power BI can unify all of your organization’s data, whether in the cloud or on-premises. Using the Power BI gateways, you can connect SQL Server databases, Analysis Services models, and many other data sources to your same dashboards in Power BI.
Connecting Power BI to MS Dynamics CRM
01/04/2016 By- Remedios Castillo (Reme.Castillo@westwoodsoftware.net)
The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online content pack for Power BI allows you to easily access and analyze your data. The content pack uses the OData feed to create a descriptive model, with all the entities and measures needed such as Accounts, Activities, Opportunities, Product, Leads, Users and more. Power BI now supports data refresh with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.
How To Connect
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Register to preview Microsoft Power BI. It’s free.
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In the Microsoft Power BI Public Preview, click Get Data, select Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and then click Connect
3. Enter the OData service URL of your Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online instance, such as https://OrganizationName.crm.dynamics.com/XRMServices/2011/OrganizationData.svc, where OrganizationName is the organization name of your instance of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, and click Next. (The address of the OData endpoint can be found by navigating to Microsoft Dynamics CRM > Settings > Customizations > Developer Resources. The OData URL is listed under Service Endpoints).
4. Under Authentication method, select oAuth.
5. Your Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online organization data is imported and several dashboards become available.
Combine data in Power BI
01/04/2016 By- Remedios Castillo (Reme.Castillo@westwoodsoftware.net)
With Power BI Desktop, you can connect to many different types of data sources, then shape the data to meet your needs. Shaping data means transforming the data – such as renaming columns or tables, changing text to numbers, removing rows, setting the first row as headers...
You also can enter your data by creating a new table. By click Edit Queries> Enter Data.
You can edit the data at any time. Edit Queries > select the table, in the Applied Steps section click on the Gear next to "Source" and it will pop up your manually built table and you can modify/add/remove values and save.
Shape data in Power BI
04/04/2016 By- Remedios Castillo (Reme.Castillo@westwoodsoftware.net)
Expand a Column
When you shape data in the Query Editor, you’re providing step-by-step instructions to adjust the data as Query Editor loads and present it. The original data source is not affected; only this particular view of the data is adjusted.
A column of complex values, such as tables, lists, records or links, can be expanded to reveal the values contained in the complex value. Complex columns that can be expanded to expose the inner elements have an expand icon in the column header.
Expand a column
1. Click the expand icon in the column header.
2. In the column names drop-down, unselect any column you are not interested in.
3. Click OK.
To apply changes and close Query Editor, select Close & Apply from the Home ribbon tab. The transformed dataset appears in Power BI Desktop, ready to be used for creating reports.
Manage Relationships
05/04/2016 By- Remedios Castillo (Reme.Castillo@westwoodsoftware.net)
When you import multiple tables, chances are you’re going to do some analysis using data from all those tables. Relationships between those tables are necessary in order to accurately calculate results and display the correct information in your reports.
If you query two or more tables at the same time, when the data is loaded, Power BI Desktop will attempt to find and create relationships for you. Cardinality, Cross filter direction, and Active properties are automatically set. But if Power BI Desktop cannot determine with a high-level of confidence there is a match, it will not automatically create the relationship. You can still use the Manage Relationships dialog to create or edit relationships.
To create the new relationship
1. Click Manage Relationships.
2. In Manage Relationships, click New. This opens the Create Relationship dialog, where we can select the tables, columns, and any advanced settings we want for our relationship.
3. In the first table, select "Entity Name", and then select the column. This is the many side of our relationship.
4. Go ahead and click OK in both the Create Relationship dialog and the Manage Relationships dialog.