Why bother with Power BI?

Power BI
overview
Published

June 13, 2024

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
  • This was my first experience of any of these courses and also the first time I saw Brendan. I must say I was very impressed. Brendan’s presentation style and interaction with the groups comments was a joy to watch. The session itself was very informative and got a lot of information across in only 30 minutes. Also the fact that there are so many links in the notes to follow up on is a great added bonus. I will gradually be getting my whole team signed up for this and similar courses. Many thanks to Brendan for making this information available. Mark Menzies (NHS GG&C)
  • Overall very positive, whipped through everything, did what was needed. As a person who is easily distracted, I do get a bit distracted when you reply to comments and go on tiny tangents involving programming with unfamiliar names and acronyms, but I get that the vibe overall is that you want people to be involved and commenting etc. I really appreciate these sessions as I try to get my head round new things.
  • It was a very good introduction to Power BI, and helped me understand what it was and how it could be useful in my workplace. I don’t have any experience with coding and think Power BI could be quite useful for those without coding experience. Would be keen to learn more.

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

Import data from Excel

preview the data

Data preview

work with the data in Power BI

Table view in Power BI

tidy/wrangle the data in Power Query

Transform data ### add a map visual Add a map visual

populate with our data

Bubble map of Scotland’s GP practices

add a column graph

Column graph

populate with drag and drop

Column graph of Scotland’s largest GP practices

add slicer

Slice to show specific NHS boards

slicers change our visualisations

Resulting filtered bubble map for NHS Dumfries and Galloway

add a numeric summary

Add cards containing quantitative summaries of data

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