Hi everyone! Today was an introductory session to Power Query and Power BI, and although these tools seemed daunting at first, Robbin helped us thoroughly understand everything that was going on, step by step. Here's some things I learnt today:
What is Power Query and Power BI?
Power Query is actually part of the Power BI application. Power Query is the place where you go and clean up all your data, whilst Power BI is the place where you go and visualised your clean data set. For some comparison, it is similar to Tableau Prep and Tableau Desktop, but it is all embedded into one application.
Something I learnt about Power Query
If you're familiar with Tableau Prep, picking up Power Query should be a little easier. Whilst both tools perform similar tasks, the UIs are drastically different, and it may take a while to assimilate to it. For example, Power Query has various options across the ribbon at the top of the screen, however you may find that different tabs have the same option. Look below:
As you can see, the extract option is in both 'Add Columns' tab and 'Transform' tab. Whilst it essentially performs the same thing, the outputs are a different. If you select the 'Extract' option from the 'Transform' tab, it will just transform your current column into your selected input. If you select 'Extract' from the 'Add Column' tab, it will add another column, with your selected input.
Something I learnt about Power BI
The interface for Power BI, the section where you get to visualise your data and create reports, seems a little daunting at first, but once you get the hang of it, you could say its intuitive. In order to build a chart here, you simply select your chart type, drag it to your report, then drag in the values you wish to report - and done! The UI for Power BI feels a little busy, but as I said, once you get used to it, it all just kind of makes sense .
Final Thoughts
Having been introduced to Tableau first, I feel like I will always use it as a benchmark comparison for other data visualisation software. And to be honest, I do like Power Query and Power BI. I feel like getting the hang of it is relatively quick, and once you're there, its easy to get a grasp of what you need to do. Robbin's teaching definitely made this process easier - Thanks Robbin!
Below is the work I managed to do today as my introduction to Power Query and Power BI 😄