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

• Good introduction to the topic but maybe think about how much emphasis was put on the negatives and whether the audience would know what Power Pivot etc. were. A novice might not have understood what the advantages of BI were over Excel or Powerpoint. I think the comment re licences was very relevant as was the one re Power BI is easier to get started with than say R however the more complicated the requirement R etc. may be a better long term bet. I’d like to have heard the pros and cons of BI versus Microstrategy or Tableau etc. Microstrategy is widely used across the NHS but would we be better to “upgrade” to BI? That’s a question I don’t know the answer to but is very relevant to myself and my team. Overall it was a good session.
• Having heard of but never seen Power BI I was interested to find out more. This introduction was perfect.
• 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.

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