Building reports and dashboards is my favorite part of Data Analysis and Visualization. I like building visualizations using visualization tools more than usinf Python or R and among all the visualization tools available, Microsoft Power BI is my favorite because of its easy user interface and a large number of visualization options. In this blog post, we will be building a Power BI sales report from importing data to publishing our report.
What is Power BI?
Power BI is a visualisation tool which help you turn raw data into appealing analysis reports and dashboards. These reports and dashboards are the need of today's business World as they help managers make better decisions with all the important business insights available at their fingertips.
The Dataset
I found this supermarket sales data on Kaggle, downloaded it and used it to build a responsive Power BI dashboard. Click here to explore the data on Kaggle yourself.
The Project
The dataset we are using is in csv format and will be downloaded in a Microsoft Excel Comma Seperated Values file. Dataset contains only one table so this project is quite easy to deal with.
1. Downloading Power BI desktop
Microsoft Power BI can be downloaded from Microsoft store. Power BI desktop is 1.7GB in size.
2. Importing Data
Now when you have downloaded the dataset and Power BI both, you are ready to get your hands dirty in Power BI. This screen will be displayed where different options for importing data are given.
Click on Import from Excel, click on Microsoft Excel, select connect and click the file you have downloaded. After you have selected the file, click on Transform data.
3. Data Analysis
You will now be redirected to Transform data window. our data is already clean so we don't need to transform it. However, you can see how you can filter and transform data similar to how we do it on Microsoft Excel. Click on Close & Apply on top left corner.
4. Building Dashboard
We can now finally build the dashboard. In the report view, you can see we have fields and visualizations pane. You will se the data file name you have imported on the fields pane. Click on it and now you will be able to see all the fields (columns) your dataset has. Our first visualization will be Total sales by city. For this you just have to drag and drop total column in the empty report area. You can see a chart with blue bars right? Now drag and drop the city column in the same chart. You can see the cities on x-axis and total on y-axis right? Congratulations! You have created your first visualization in Microsoft Power BI.
Time to customise your visualization now. Click on the arrow on the right of axis in Visualizations pane right below the values and select rename for this visual. Change the name from total to Total Sales. And, voila! You have your first visualization ready. Do the same to create other visuals of your choice and just play around it. I created visuals for total by month, totals by city, totals by product line and a clustered bar chart for gross income by customer_type and product line.
You can check different types of visualizations by changing them from the visualizations pane and check which one of them suits best for your relationship.
We are done for now, save your report and show it to your friends, they will be proud of you!
In next Power BI tutorials we will explore ways of detailing our visualizations and dashboards.
Thank You for reading. Feel free to give any feedback and stay tuned.
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