Introduction:
Creating your first Power BI report is simple. With just a few steps—connecting to a data source, transforming data, and designing visuals—you can turn raw information into meaningful insights. This guide is designed to help you begin using the tool efficiently and with ease.
Creating Your First Power BI Report :
Connect to a Data Source
In this example, we’ll connect to an Excel file.
Start by opening Power BI Desktop on your computer. Click on the “Get Data” button located on the Home ribbon, this opens a list of available data sources you can connect to, such as Excel, SQL Server, SharePoint, and more. Alternatively, you can click the Excel Workbook button located to the right of the Get Data button.
Browse and select your file. When you want to connect your data, Power BI opens the Navigator window where you can see all available sheets. Choose the ones you want to use and click Load.
In the screenshot below, you can see that the sheets or tables have been loaded.
Similarly, I repeated the same steps for the other table or sheet.
Adding Visuals
I added a slicer by clicking on the Visualizations pane on the right-hand side. You can also rename the page tabs and duplicate a page as needed from the footer.
Next, I added the Contract Number field to the slicer from the Export worksheet table.
Then, go to the Visualizations pane, select the slicer, and in the slicer settings, choose the 'Dropdown' option.
After that, I added a card visual from the Visualizations pane.
Choose the Contract Number field to display the count of contract numbers.
Then, I added a table visual from the Visualizations pane and added fields to the Columns section. You can drag and drop fields from the table into this section. You can change the order of the fields by simply dragging them to a new position.
I used various charts to represent the data effectively.
Publishing the Report
Save the report by clicking on File > Save or using Ctrl + S. If you're not signed in to Power BI Desktop, sign in using your Power BI (Microsoft) account first. Go to the top-right corner and click Sign in.
Once signed in, click the Publish button on the Home ribbon. Select a workspace. In this case, I chose "My workspace". Click Select to complete the publishing process.
Checking the report on the Power BI service
Go to the Power BI Service. Open your browser and go to: https://app.powerbi.com. Sign in with the same account used to publish.
Navigate to the Workspace. Navigate to Workspaces from the left-hand panel. Open the workspace where you published the report. In this case “My workspace”.
Find and select your report to open the file that has been published.
