Power BI Quick Start Guide

Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................................................ 3

Process Overview ...................................................................................................................................................... 3

Importing Data ........................................................................................................................................................... 4

OData Feed ............................................................................................................................................................ 4

Ad Hoc Report Data Feed ...................................................................................................................................... 5

OData Feed for Vision ............................................................................................................................................ 6

SQL Mirror for Vision .............................................................................................................................................. 6

Excel/CSV .............................................................................................................................................................. 6

Online Sources ....................................................................................................................................................... 6

Choosing Data ........................................................................................................................................................... 7

Visualizations ............................................................................................................................................................. 7

Columns and Measures ............................................................................................................................................. 8

Columns ................................................................................................................................................................. 8

Measures ................................................................................................................................................................ 8

Tables from Formulas ............................................................................................................................................ 8

Formatting Data ......................................................................................................................................................... 8

Relationships.............................................................................................................................................................. 9

Further Learning ...................................................................................................................................................... 11

Publishing Data to the BI Service ............................................................................................................................ 11

Scheduling Data Refresh ......................................................................................................................................... 11

Configuring BI Access in Bromcom ......................................................................................................................... 12

Viewing Dashboards in Bromcom MIS .................................................................................................................... 13

Appendix 1: Data from Google Doc ......................................................................................................................... 15

Appendix 2: Use OneDrive for Business links in Power BI Desktop ...................................................................... 16

Get a link from Excel, starting in the browser ...................................................................................................... 16

Use the link in Power BI Desktop ........................................................................................................................ 17

Document version 1.2 updated 25/02/2019 Ed Cadwallader

Introduction Microsoft Power BI is a powerful, commercial grade piece of software for visualizing data and monitoring KPIs. Customised dashboards built in BI can be embedded into Bromcom MIS and Bromcom Vision to let you monitor data from your school, LA or MAT.

Process Overview BI Dashboards are first designed using Power BI Desktop. The software is free and can be downloaded here: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/desktop/ Having designed your dashboards you then upload them to the Power BI Cloud Service (note that this requires a Power BI Pro account). The cloud service also lets you schedule regular data updates. You can then embed the dashboards in Bromcom MIS, using the single Power BI Pro account for all authorized users.

Power BI Desktop

Power BI Cloud Service

Embedded BI Dashboard in Bromcom MIS

Importing Data The first step after downloading and installing Power BI Desktop is to get data. There are two ways of getting data from the MIS, the OData Feed and the Ad Hoc Report Data Feed and two ways of getting data from the Vision Database, the Vision OData Feed and an SQL Mirror (used for large MATs).

OData Feed

Click the Get Data Dropdown on the Home tab and select ‘OData Feed’. You will be prompted to provide a URL for the feed. Enter: https://cloudmis.bromcom.com/Nucleus/OData You will then be asked to provide credentials.

The credentials type is Basic Username: Your 5 Digit School ID Password: Your User Access Key (You can generate/access your UA Key via the ‘My Account’ menu in the top right-hand corner of the MIS.)

User Access Key from the ‘My Account’ section of the MIS

Ad Hoc Report Data Feed To link data from an Ad Hoc report, design and run the report in the MIS (note only table reports can be used as BI data sources). Click the green ‘Live Data Feed’ button and copy the unique URL

In Power BI, expand the ‘Get Data’ menu and choose ‘Web’.

Enter your credentials as above. Type: Basic Username: 5 Digit School ID Password: User Access Key Local Installs: Note that if your system is hosted on your own servers not the cloud then your OData address will be different. Please contact helpdesk for advice.

OData Feed for Vision Importing via the OData feed for MAT Vision works in exactly the same way. The URL is https://visionApi.bromcom.com/OData The Username is the MAT Vision Customer Code and the Password is the API Key, which can be found on the BI Integration page of MAT Vision.

SQL Mirror for Vision Large MATs may use an SQL Mirror connection instead of OData. This is set up via Get Data| SQL Server. Credentials are supplied via the Customer Account Manager.

Excel/CSV Data can be imported to BI from Excel or CSV by choosing them from the ‘Get Data’ menu and following the instructions. If you import data in this way, go to ‘Edit Queries’, right click on the imported tables and untick ‘Include in Report Refresh’. Otherwise scheduled refreshes of the data will fail as the Excel/CSV files won’t be available to the BI Cloud Service.

Online Sources A google doc can act as a data source for Power BI. Instructions for configuring this are included as Appendix 1 at the end of this document. Appendix 2 has instructions for connecting Excel sources saved in OneDrive.

Choosing Data OData feeds present you with a list of tables to choose from. The fewer you import, the faster your dashboard will be so you should only choose the data tables you require.

You can delete tables at any time by right clicking on them in the list on the right hand side of the BI screen. You can also add more by selecting ‘Recent Sources’ from the Home Ribbon.

Visualizations The main screen shows tables and fields on the far right, next to a vertical ribbon with visualizations. Selecting a Visual when nothing is selected on the canvas places that visual. You can then drag fields to populated its Axis, Legend and Value fields. Value fields are usually summarized by default and have a drop down menu to change the summarization from Sum, to Count, Average etc. Note that when a Visual is selected on the canvas clicking a different visualization button changes the type of the selected visual.

Detail from the right side of the Power BI Desktop screen

Columns and Measures

Columns You can add calculated columns to tables using a syntax very similar to Excel formulas. Note that calculated columns take up memory (so should be used sparingly with very large data sets) and do not respond to slicers placed in the dashboard.

Measures Measures are summary calculations that float on top of the data tables and do respond to filter contexts. You can add Columns and Measures by right clicking tables and adding them in the formula bar.

Tables from Formulas The ‘New Table’ button on the Modelling table allows tables to be created using DAX formulas. This is useful for filtering existing tables or pulling the unique values from a larger table.

Formatting Data To change the format of a value, highlight it in the field list, then choose its format on the Modelling tab

List of tables and fields

Visualisations

Select a field (right) then change its format on the Modelling tab (top)

Relationships The way that tables are joined together in your BI database has a significant impact on the way your visuals and measures work. To view the relationships between tables click on the ‘Manage Relationships’ view on the left hand side of the screen.

This takes you to the Relationships page

One-to-Many Join between table Students and table ExamResults

Relationships must be one to many, meaning that a shared field appears in only one record on one table but can appear many times on the other table. Here the relationship has been formed by dragging StudentId from table Students (where it the one side as there is one record per student) to the StudentID field of the ExamResults table. ExamResults is the many side of the relationship as each student can have many exam results. Note that an arrow on the relationship points from Students to ExamResults. This means that filters applied to the Students table will restrict which exam results appear on visuals, but filters applied to exam results won’t restrict which students appear. For that to be the case you need to double click the relationship and edit it so that its ‘cross filter direction’ is ‘both’. Then arrows will point in both directions

Editing the properties of the join so that it filters in both directions

Further Learning A full explanation of Power BI, Columns and Measures and ‘DAX’ (the syntax language they use) is beyond the scope of this document. The following free resources are useful places to expand your knowledge of Power BI. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/guided-learning/ - Microsoft’s online PBI course for beginners https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/desktop-quickstart-learn-dax-basics - Introduction to DAX https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/query-bi/dax/dax-function-reference - List of all DAX functions http://powerbiforschools.blogspot.com/ - School Specific BI Blog

Publishing Data to the BI Service After logging in with your Power BI Pro credentials to Power BI Desktop you can share your finished dashboard to the online BI service but pressing ‘Publish’ on the Home Ribbon

Your Dashboard will then be available online at https://app.powerbi.com/

Scheduling Data Refresh The data you import in Power BI Desktop then publish to the Power BI cloud service is static, unless you schedule an automatic data refresh. To do this go app.powerbi.com then to ‘My Workspace’ and select ‘Datasets’

My Workspace in app.powerbi.com

Here you will see a list of your updated dashboards. To schedule a refresh click the page refresh icon next to the dashboard.

Dataset Settings in app.powerbi.com

The first time you do this you may have to re-enter your credentials. Enter you school ID and API key under ‘basic’ for the OData feed. For all the other sources for the Headteacher’s Dashboard, choose Anonymous. Then Select ‘Scheduled Refresh’ Turn Scheduled Refresh on and choose a frequency and add a time. For best performance avoid scheduling a refresh during school hours.

Configuring BI Access in Bromcom BI dashboards can be viewed in the Analysis Module. First go to Analysis| Power BI Configuration choose ‘Use Shared Account’ and enter the credentials of the Power BI Pro Account

(Note if you select ‘Use Individual Accounts’ then each user will need a Power BI account to view BI Content and you will need at least one Power BI Pro Account to share the BI content. The advantage of this approach is it lets you control who sees what data. The disadvantage is the higher cost/administrative burden involved).

Viewing Dashboards in Bromcom MIS Now when users click on Analysis| Power BI Viewer they will see the list of published dashboards on the Power BI Pro Account supplied above. Note that when using shared account access, all users will have access to all the published data, irrespective of their MIS Permissions. You should use the MIS permissions to ensure that only authorised users can access the PowerBI Viewer at all.

Clicking on a Dashboard from the list shows it below

PowerBI Viewer in Bromcom MIS

Appendix 1: Data from Google Doc

1. Publish google doc to shareable link using the ‘Share’ button, top right, when viewing the sheet in Google

Docs

2. Modify the shareable link and add the following parts:

From:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/<google-sheet-guid>/edit?usp=sharing To:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ <google-sheet-guid>/export?format=xlsx&id=<google-sheet-guid>

e.g.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ohAz8SD6viEGIrcor-JC-vCt2yRbgY1c-7Uflv-_hrA/edit?usp=sharing -> Becomes https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ohAz8SD6viEGIrcor-JC-vCt2yRbgY1c-7Uflv-_hrA/export?format=xlsx&id=1ohAz8SD6viEGIrcor-JC-vCt2yRbgY1c-7Uflv-_hrA 3. Create a blank query in Power BI via Get Data, Blank Query, Advanced Editor

let Source = Excel.Workbook(Web.Contents("the-link-in-step-2"), null, true) in Source

Appendix 2: Use OneDrive for Business links in Power BI Desktop Many people have Excel workbooks stored on their OneDrive for Business drive that would be great for use with Power BI Desktop. With Power BI Desktop, you can use online links for Excel files stored in OneDrive for Business to create reports and visuals. You can use a OneDrive for Business group account, or your individual OneDrive for Business account.

Getting an online link from OneDrive for Business does require a few specific steps. The following sections explain those steps, which let you share the file link among groups, across different machines, and with your coworkers.

Get a link from Excel, starting in the browser

1. Navigate to your OneDrive for Business location using a browser. Right-click the file you want to use, and select Open in Excel.

2. In Excel, select File > Info and select the link above the Protect Workbook button. Select Copy link to clipboard (your version might say Copy path to clipboard).

Use the link in Power BI Desktop

In Power BI Desktop, you can use the link you just copied to the clipboard. Take the following steps:

1. In Power BI Desktop, select Get Data > Web.

2. Paste the link into the From Web dialog (do not select OK yet).

3. Notice the ?web=1 string at the end of the link - you must remove that portion of the Web URL string before selecting OK, in order for Power BI Desktop to properly navigate to your file.

4. If Power BI Desktop prompts you for credentials, choose either Windows (for on-premises SharePoint sites) or Organizational Account (for Office 365 or OneDrive for Business sites).

A Navigator window appears, allowing you to select from the list of tables, sheets, and ranges found in the Excel workbook. From there, you can use the OneDrive for Business file just like any other Excel file, and create reports and use it in datasets like you would with any other data source. Note

To use a OneDrive for Business file as a data source in the Power BI service, with Service Refresh enabled for that file, make sure you select OAuth2 as the Authentication method when configuring your refresh settings. Otherwise, you may encounter an error (such as Failed to update data source credentials) when you attempt to connect or to refresh. Selecting OAuth2 as the authentication method remedies that credentials error.