PowerBI-Step by Step Guide

Power BI is a Data Visualization and Dashboard tool that makes it easy to share and maintain summary-level and trend reports on the web and mobile devices, but using local data, with the ability to drill into detail if required.
It very good at displaying, sharing, and synchronizing data that that already been sanitized, or is very similar in nature.
Also works well with onedrive, sharepoint, azure, and other web, or cloud data sources
It is NOT a replacement for SSRS
It is NOT a standalone data warehouse (Use SQL).
It will NOT magically sanitize your data and join it perfectly (Use SQL).
It will NOT periodically run routines to transform existing data (Use SQL). (The gateway will synchronize data on a schedule between your local data sources and Power BI Online account.)

1. Download Power BI Desktop
1. https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/desktop/
2. Enter Data (Custom Tables in Power BI)
3. Edit Queries (Filter Source Data)
4. Create Roles
1. Each Role can have predefined filters on tables
5. Home>Get Data>Choose Data Source
1. Data is copied into PowerBI
2. Excel Sheets are treated as File Data Sources
3. SQL Connections can use Windows or SQL authentication
1. If you update sql views or tables, the changes will reflect in the data source after you refresh data and reload the page
4. You can also put the excel sheet into onedrive, then use the excel sheet as a web data source using the onedrive web link for the file
1. this also auto-synchronizes data when onedrive synchronizes
6. PAGES
1. Select fields (just like Pivot Tables)
1. Select fields
2. Right click fields>Create Hierarchies
3. Right click fields>Create Measures
4. Set row, column, Filter options
5. Set display options
2. Add multiple panes in page to build dashboard
3. Selecting Values sets filter on all panes
4. Build Pretty Dashboards
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rS8xmkoasQU
2. Use Background images for dashboard theme
3. https://powerbi.tips/
4. 
   
5. Use appropriate charts
1. http://extremepresentation.typepad.com/files/choosing-a-good-chart-09.pdf
6. Edit Queries
1. Allows you to set sorting options that will be used for all data including matrix reports
7. TABLES
1. View Data
8. RELATIONSHIPS
1. Connect Tables
9. Setup Data Gateway (required to sync local data to Published Power BI Dashboards)
1. https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/gateway/
2. Download and install (Not the personal one)
3. Register Gateway
1. Sign in with office 365 account
2. Gateway clusters are for redundancy, if one gateway fails, it will switch to another in the cluster
3. Add recovery key
4. Enable Gateway
1. Gear>Manage Gateways>Tick all options
2. Create a Cluster
3. Top left above "Gateway Clusters">Click Add Data sources to the cluster
1. For Files, Enter Local path, windows login and password, Privacy level blank
2. If any data sources are incorrectly configured, they all stop working
5. Schedule Data Source Refresh
1. My Workspace>Datasets>Select Dataset>Ellipsis(...)>Settings
2. Gateway Connection>Select Gateway>Use Data Gateway
1. Slide the "Use Data Gateway" option to "On"
2. If you leave this off, the Data Source Credentials and Scheduled Refresh menus are greyed out and disabled
3. Gateway Connection>Select Gateway>Scheduled Refresh
4. Re-Publish your solution after creating the gateway
6. Manual Data Refresh
1. On the left, under My workspace, hover over data set
2. Click ellipsis(...) > Refresh Data
10. Publish your Dashboard
1. File>Publish
2. If you do not have Power BI Pro License, you cannot view shared content
11. Access your Dashboard
1. https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/landing/signin/
2. Select Dashboard
3. Click Share in top right hand corner (Requires Power BI Pro License)
12. Notes
1. TEST ALL REPORTS and Data Connections right through to publishing and scheduling before starting any serious work
2. Data may give trouble to sync
3. Schedules may give trouble to run