Know how to Create Custom Dashboard With the Help of Power BI
Microsoft Power BI refers to a self-service business analytics software that enables you to visualise information and share important insights across the team, or even incorporate them into your website or application. It does not just analyse the data, but integrates, aggregates and shares the same as well. A part of the Microsoft Office 365, Power BI helps you create customised dashboards that highlight your business’ most crucial metrics. Much like other Microsoft tools, you do not require additional training and can take quick and valuable decisions that can transform your business. Here is how you can use Power BI to create live dashboards:
Before doing anything, you should first access the data. Import the information from the Microsoft Excel workbook, and open Power BI on Office 365. Next, choose the ‘Get Data’ button at the navigation pane’s extreme bottom or lower-left corner. The screen will display the ‘Files’ option, and select accordingly from an Excel file, Azure SQL Database, Sharepoint site or OneDrive for Business. Locate the file and select the ‘Connect’ button, and wait for the file to upload.
Microsoft BI comes with different visual features such as icons, column charts, bar charts, columns, stacked bars, half-doughnuts, pies, area charts, line graphs and waterfall charts, to state the least. The ‘Field’ section on the right panel helps you choose between different data fields. You can populate the charts and data fields with different kinds of data as per your requirement. Check the blank workspace after you have imported the file, and select the dataset from the navigation panel on the left. After the workspace changes into a visualisation creating tool with several options.
Reports and data are better understood with visuals and charts, and Power BI offers you with many options categorised based on the functionality, i.e., relationship, composition, distribution and comparison. These are some of the options:
●Stacked charts: Used for showing composition and comparison
●Column charts and bar charts: Used to check comparison and distribution amongst different ranges and periodic data
●Scatter plots: To compare between two or more variables
●Pie charts: To compare percentages, ensure that the values sum up to a hundred
●Area charts and line charts: Used for comparing time-series data
●Card visuals: To display important statistics in bold text
Every kind of audience needs a different layout, which is important to engage their attention. Power Bi Pro enables you to design reports and charts, maintaining a visual element over large chunks of text. Space out the visual elements to help identify patterns and insights, for a neat look.
Choose your dashboard theme
Click on the three little dots on the right side of the dashboard, and click on ‘Dashboard theme’. Next, choose one of the themes available on Power BI Pro subscription or even download customised options from the ‘Themes’ gallery. Select themes that reflect the company’s brand colours, along with separating dashboards as per project, brand and season.
You can customise Microsoft Power BI dashboards to highlight the most important charts for your meeting is easy. To do this, click on ‘Add Tile’ to ‘Create a Visual’, and choose the ‘Pin’ icon and drag it to the new dashboard. Thus, you can drag, drop and arrange icons as per your need.
Save and publish the dashboard
Once the layout is created with the right balance of text and visual information, select the ‘Save’ button from the toolbar. As per the rules of Microsoft BI, the charts will update themselves as you do the same on the Excel spreadsheet. Save the dashboard and share with your team as a single collaborative platform.
In case you are not satisfied with the current dashboard, you can work on Microsoft’s premier data visualisation software – however, this is a more challenging process.
Working with Power BI is not a difficult task, but needs a little bit of practice. If you’re unsure about using Microsoft Power BI at all, take a look at the Power BI Guided BI page. You should have a basic understanding of Microsoft Excel, SQL Server and Business Processes to understand and work with BI. If you arere looking for an extensive Power BI solution, please visit us at http://walkerscott.co/.