BI for beginners (session 2)

Power BI
beginner
Published

August 25, 2025

Session materials

Previous attendees have said…

  • 60 previous attendees have left feedback
  • 100% would recommend this session to a colleague
  • 97% said that this session was pitched correctly

Three random comments from previous attendees
  • Great walkthrough of the basic functionality and explanation of what we should see in the future sessions. Great pace, allowed for questions and solutions. Really glad I attended. I wasn’t aware that it was 2 hours long, maybe that could have been made clearer (although might be I just missed it on the comms entirely!). Very valuable, can’t wait to apply it to some benefit data I am collating.
  • Sessions are great - some info went over my head a bit, but Brendan is excellent at describing everything and also having alternative methods of working so everyone can follow.
  • Supportive session, well explained and demonstrated, and great to have the materials to hand for future reference too. Thank you!
Forthcoming session(s)
Booking link Date
BI for beginners (session 2) 14:00-16:00 Tue 11th November 2025
BI for beginners (session 2) 14:00-16:00 Wed 28th January 2026

Session outline

If you’d like to get a sense of the core content, you might have a look at the video outline for this session:

Visualisation overload!

  • we’re going to build several visualisations
  • we’ll use some tidied data for this - today is all about using data to do interesting things
  • next time, we’ll get into the data wrangling needed to sort that data out

ETL

(as a preview of the next session)

  1. extract
  2. transform
  3. load

Today’s visualisations

  • maps
  • column charts
  • line graphs
  • numeric summaries of data
  • filtering and slicing tools

The goal

Task

Open BfB_s02.pbix to have a look

Today’s data

Task
  1. Start a new report in Power BI
  2. Open data/s02_data.xlsx
  3. Select the two tables (gp_size and weekend_service) and have a look at the previewSelect both tables
  4. Load those tables

Visualising service use

Service use dashboard

Finding our data

Task
  1. Go to the data view
  2. Open the weekend_service table and inspect the data

Add a line chart

Task
  1. Go to the report view
  2. Go to the visualisation pane, and add a line chart
  3. Expand it to fill the bottom three-quarters of the visualisation areaExpand the line chart to fit

Add data

Task
  1. Click the date column in the data pane, and drag the Date Hierarchy to the X-axis field
  2. Drag the three site columns to the Y-axis fieldAdd three site columns to the y-axis field

Add a slicer

Task
  1. Click off your line graph, then add a slicerSlicer
  2. Drag the year field from the Date Hierarchy into the slicer Field
  3. Add a second slicer in the same way
  4. This time, drag the weekend column into the Field
  5. Select the Format your visual menuFormat your visual
  6. Format the slicer to use a dropdownDropdown slicer

Add some cards

Task
  1. Add a cardCard
  2. Drag site_a into the Field
  3. Use the dropdown on Sum of site_a to select average
  4. Repeat for site_b and site_c
  5. Adjust the decimal places via the Callout value section of the format menu

Tidy up the names

Task
  1. Go round using Rename for this visual to tidy up the namesRename for this visual
  2. Name the page of the report appropriately

End result

Final dashboard

GP practice size

GP practices map dashboard

Add a map

Task
  1. Add a new page to your report
  2. Add a map and expand to fill the left-hand half of the visualisation areaAdd a map
  3. From the gp_size table, drag the Postcode column to the Location field
  4. Now drag the ListSize column to the Bubble size field

Format the map

Task
  1. From the Format visual menu, change the map style to greyscaleGreyscale map
  2. (feel free to play around with the bubble size too)

Colour the bubbles by health board

Task
  1. Can you find a way of colouring the bubbles by health board? Colour bubbles by health board

(add the HBName to the Legend field)

Add a slicer

Task
  1. Add a slicer for health board
  2. Use the Format visual options to change this to a dropdown
  3. Test what happens when you change this

Add a practice details card

Task
  1. Add a card (new)
  2. Drag the ListSize and SIMD2020v2 columns to the Fields area
  3. Make sure that the SIMD2020v2 value is set to Min
  4. Add a title showing the practice name via the Format Visual options
  5. Format to suit Format the title

Add a column chart

Task
  1. Add a column chart
  2. Add the Name on the X-axis, the ListSize on the Y-axis, and the HBName in the legend

Tidy up the names

Task
  1. Go round using Rename for this visual to tidy up the names
  2. Name the page of the report appropriately

End result

Final dashboard

Homework tasks

  1. Is there any relationship between practice size and SIMD2020 deprivation scores in the GP data? How could you show that relationship in a visual?
  2. Is there any month-to-month or seasonal change in the weekend service use data? How could you show that relationship in a visual?