Why bother with Power BI?

Previous attendees have said…

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

Three random comments from previous attendees

• It provided a snap-shot of the capabilities of Power BI and if I wanted to learn more, to join in the structured sessions.
• Having heard of but never seen Power BI I was interested to find out more. This introduction was perfect.
• I think its great for an introduction to BI, and it is information that I would not have access to from anyone on my team. It has been very encouraging from development perspective. I do better with slower paced learning and benefit from repetition, so generally learn better from a tutorial type session like the ones on linked in. That way I can go back an review when things don’t quite work how I think they should. I am very interested in Brandon’s approach to data and will continue to attend sessions. Thank you.

Welcome

• welcome to Why bother with Power BI?
• this session is 🥬 - a non-technical introduction for pre-beginners
• if you can’t access the chat, you might need to join our Teams channel: tinyurl.com/kindnetwork

The KIND network

• a social learning space for staff working with knowledge, information, and data across health, social care, and housing in Scotland
• we offer social support, free training, mentoring, community events, …
• Teams channel / mailing list

Session outline

• two minute overview of Power BI
• strengths and weaknesses
• making Power BI work for you
• next steps and training

A brief overview of Power BI

• new
• integrates several existing Microsoft products (bits of Excel, PowerPivot, PowerQuery…)
• produces interactive dashboards
• proprietary, closed-source, paid-for

Central idea

• data is complicated
• good data analysis helps make services better
• but predicting what data users will need is hard

Why are users so fussy about their data?

• data can be used to answer lots of different kinds of questions
  • answering which/when questions
  • seeing effects of changes
  • comparing different areas
  • looking at services over time
  • …

Power BI

• lets users re-arrange their data to suit (interactive)
• provides a standard way of accessing data from lots of sources (data hub)
• scales really well (dashboard example)

Power BI demo

take a spreadsheet and load that data

preview the data

work with the data in Power BI

tidy/wrangle the data in Power Query

### add a map visual

populate with our data

add a column graph

populate with drag and drop

add slicer

slicers change our visualisations

add a numeric summary

publish

See preview - although note that access might require permission

Five top tips

• potentially has the power to get lots of new good out of existing data
• Power BI needs tidy input data - so use Excel tables etc
• don’t believe the no-code lies - you’ll need some DAX and Power Query M
• publishing is complicated and potentially expensive, so needs investigating before building a product
• complex IG picture across Scotland, so please get official guidance early

Chat, queries, questions

• Teams channel: tinyurl.com/kindnetwork
• weekly email update: tinyurl.com/kindupdate
• Training mini-site: tinyurl.com/kindtrain