Greetings, dear friends, Anton Buduev is with you. From this article, I begin to consider a very deep and important topic for each of us, which I fell head over heels in love with - end-to-end analytics in business using Microsoft's amazing analytical platform - Power BI.
The fact is that in the realities of today, regardless of who you are - the owner of a business or CEO, managing manager or leader, aspiring entrepreneur or a specific specialist (for example, in the advertising industry or in marketing), we all have to process a huge amount of incoming information and, based on it, quickly make certain informed decisions. Which, as a result, turn into concrete actions, and results are already obtained from them.
If we look at things in terms of cause and effect, then in order for the results to meet our expectations, it is necessary that the actions be correct. And the actions will be correct if the primary information is, as one of my mentors says - TPSI!
IN summary TPSI stands for Information:
- solid (that is, real, undistorted, without errors),
- complete (that is, comprehensive, without concealment),
- timely (that is, "right here and now" ... outdated does not suit us).
In the extended version of the decryption, definitions are also added:
- comparative (that is, we must compare it with something ... since everything is known only in comparison),
- beautiful (that is, visually understandable, in graphics ... as a person thinks and thinks in images).
So that you have solid, complete, timely, comparative and beautiful information in your business, on the basis of which you could really make a truthful analysis. And, accordingly, taking the actions that are needed right here and now to achieve your goals is well and even very well suited for a whole range of programs and services called MS Power BI (speaking in Russian “Power BI”), acquaintance with which and this article is about.
If there are any errors, problems in your formulas, and the results of the formulas are constantly not what you expect and you need help, then the free express course "Quick start in the language of DAX functions and formulas for Power BI and Power Pivot ".
Power BI - what is it? Description of the software.
So, PowerBI - what kind of program is this, what kind of system is this from Microsoft?
If we talk about its description in just one sentence, then Power BI is an analytical environment (a set of programs and online services), which allows you to:
- easy connection to any download of information from different sources,
- combining and bringing this information into a single standardized data model (single information well),
- calculating the required parameters and KPIs based on these combined data,
- building visual graphs, and .
And all this is fully automated, auto-updating and available online for analysis from any device (PC, tablet, smartphone) in an interactive mode with individual access for viewing by different users.
For your better understanding of what Power BI reports and analytics are, below is an example of a simple interactive report on advertising sources and paid claims.
Power BI features
What opportunities does Power BI provide for you and me? In fact, the list can be written huge, but we will limit ourselves to an overview of the most basic features:
- Collection of information from absolutely any data sources. These can be various services, databases, files, Google Docs, Yandex-Disk, Excel, csv, folders, documents, data from the Internet, APIs and various other connectors that the Power BI team develops and adds to the program every month;
- Processing of the received data, their reduction to a single form and standard. Combining and linking all these disparate tables into a single data model (information well), which allows you to draw data on the state of the business at any level of information detail, getting to the very foundation, sorting everything literally to the "bones", to the true root causes of the results available in the business;
- Development and modeling of own formulas, metrics, indicators and KPIs to control and analyze the necessary business management parameters;
- Interactive visualization of all metrics, KPIs, tables in graphical form. What incredibly improves and greatly speeds up the process of tracking, comparing and analyzing operational information in business management;
- Presentation of all reports and dashboards via the Internet through the Online service or through the Power BI Mobile application;
- Providing separate access rights for employees;
- Using the server power of the Microsoft cloud for automatic processing of any amount of data;
- Automatic update all information (in the data model of your reports) hosted in the Power BI cloud, which allows you to get up-to-date data in Power BI reports online "right here and now";
- Automatic notification the system of the right employees when reaching critical values in the given KPIs
What will the use of Power BI and end-to-end analytics in general give you?
The present time is the age of information. And in modern business, regardless of its size, there are a lot of data flows: production, sales, profits, employees, organizational data, technical data, logistics, finance, advertising, marketing, and so on.
Each of these areas has dozens of its own metrics and KPIs. Moreover, these metrics and KPIs are divided into groups, segments, categories, departments, managers, sellers, stores, and more. In general, the indicators for which control is being collected are not even hundreds, but thousands.
And if you want to be successful, on the crest of the wave and ahead of all competitors, then you need to be able to quickly compile all control indicators, analyze them and make the right decisions.
But, the problem is that there is a lot of data and often in many businesses, and even more so for start-up entrepreneurs, all analytics comes down to the process of manual copying (copy-paste). Moreover, this copying is very tedious, long and contains a high probability of making mistakes.
As a result, all this is abandoned, no analytics is conducted, and if it is, then at the most primitive level, and as a result, all decisions in business are made on the basis of some personal conclusions, which are wrong in 99% of cases. And because of this, the business not only does not develop, but vice versa, loses and slides down, incurring huge losses.
So, now you can solve all this with the help of Power BI, and you can’t even, but you just need it, because:
- End-to-end analytics with today's Power BI technologies is, in fact, easy and simple, no more complicated than Excel. Absolutely every entrepreneur will be able to cope with it, regardless of skills, age, resources, and so on. Absolutely everyone!
- By implementing end-to-end analytics and Power BI, you will have clarity and love your business and management. You will feel confident in yourself and in your decisions. Just because you will clearly understand your business and what processes your results depend on and how to influence these processes.
- By implementing end-to-end analytics and Power BI, you will increase the profitability of your business by 1.5-2 times, or even higher literally “from scratch”, reducing unnecessary costs, enhancing your advantages and improving your disadvantages every day.
- End-to-end analytics and Power BI are your competitive advantage, you will develop faster and better than your competitors due to control and work on moments that are often invisible to the naked eye. After all, the whole secret is in managing the root causes.
- End-to-end analytics and Power BI are your structured knowledge about any aspect of your business. In any of its sections, from any viewing angle, under any prism online "here and now". It is your power to react to changes with lightning speed.
Therefore, if what I wrote above resonates inside you, if it is close to you and you finally want to reach a new level, then I invite you to join me and Power BI on this adventure!
Previously, in my business, I did not conduct any analytics at all, and if there was any, it was at the most primitive level. But, I always understood that this is not good.
I completely plunged into the issue of end-to-end analytics. Now I am her fan. Now everything fell into place. Now I just love the business, because I know what happens in it, what parameters and how they affect the final results that I have planned. Now I just know what to do. Now I am completely clear. What do you wish!
So that you can better understand the composition of all PowerBI programs, why each of these programs is needed and how it will be useful to you. What will you get from each of these programs, where we will continue to explore the amazing Power BI tool that is essential for any business. Namely, we will analyze the architecture of MS Power BI (that is, we will graphically analyze the composition of programs, the movement of all processes and what follows in general scheme work, as well as how it benefits you and your business).
Best regards, Buduev Anton.
Project "BI is simple"
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Introduction to Power BI
What is Power BI?
First of all, I want to clarify that Power BI is not part of Excel, but an independent program for business analysis, which will need to be installed separately on a PC. But it's worth it. Power BI itself includes a large set of tools that allow you to process and display all the necessary information about any company indicators (and not only) using interactive visualization. Simply put, with the help of Power BI, you can easily and quickly, without long training and special skills, create beautiful interactive charts based on almost any data. Now it is very fashionable to call such sets of visualizations "dashboards":
A couple of things to know about Power BI first:
Power BI itself is divided into three applications (although you only need to install one):
- Power BI Desktop- the main application in which reports are generated
- Power BI Service(Power BI service) - an online platform in which all created reports are placed and sent for publication to the service
- Power BI for Mobile is an app for smartphones and tablets that allows you to view reports published to the Power BI service
What you need to do and know before you start working in Power BI
- First you need to install the Power BI Desktop application, because. it is where all the reports are prepared. You can download it from the link: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/desktop/
- As soon as the download starts, you will need to enter your data, including e-mail. The same e-mail must be entered when you first start and register the application. I pay special attention that the e-mail must be corporate. Those. no there [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] etc. Otherwise, it may well turn out that it will be possible to create a report, but it will no longer be published
- After installation and registration, you can start creating your first reports in Power BI
After starting Power BI, the main window will appear. For starters, it’s enough just to be able to navigate the work areas. On the screenshot below, I tried to highlight the main work areas of this window. 
Menu button- opens a menu with access to basic commands and settings, such as Publish, Import and Export, Save, Help, exit account Power BI, etc.
– on the tabs of this panel, the main tools for working with queries and visual elements
Region navigation- the main area is the area of visualizations (the first icon from the top), in which all visual reports are built. But you can also go to the table view to view data and change certain field settings (Data types, Sorting, Adding columns and measures, etc.) and in visual presentation relationships between tables. You can also set up links here.
Visualizations- this is probably one of the main areas of this window. This is where the buttons for creating charts directly are located (they are called visual elements). Clicking on an icon that reflects an approximate view of a visual element automatically adds such an element to the visualization workspace.
Filters- this area allows you to create filtering of data that enters the visual element. For example, having information on Income and Expenses in the data table, you can use filters to build a visual element only for expenses or only for income. The filter area, in turn, is divided into three sections:
- Visual Level Filters- filters placed here apply exclusively to the visual element to which this filter belongs
- Page Level Filters- filters placed here apply to all visual elements of the page to which this filter belongs
- Report Level Filters- extends its action to all visual elements of all pages of the report
fields- all fields of all query tables are listed here. It is on the basis of the data in this area that visual elements are built. Adding data from the fields to a visual element or filter area is done by simply dragging the mouse.
Just below the workspace there is more sheet navigation area, where you can add a new sheet to the report, rename or delete existing ones.
When creating any request (tab home -To get data) another of the main windows will appear - the query window. For those who have worked in Power Query from Excel, there is hardly anything new there, because. Power BI has completely taken over the work with queries from Power Query: 
Menu button– opens a menu with access to basic commands such as Close, Save, as well as data source settings
Ribbon panel with a set of commands- as you might guess, this is the main working area, because. it is on this panel on the tabs (Main, Transformation, Add Column, View) that the main tools for working with queries and data are distributed
Request area- This lists all queries loaded into the current data model. Query names can be changed either by double clicking on the query name in the Query Pane or in Property panes of the current request.
Preview area- here a preview of the type of data that will be loaded into the model after all our actions is displayed. With its help, you can visually see the resulting data set and identify errors.
Formula bar(Formula bar) - the text of the last action performed with the query is displayed here. The text is displayed in the built-in M language and can be changed directly in this line. You can show or hide it from the tab View -Formula bar.
Current Request Properties Panel– the properties of the selected request are collected here. You can change the name of the query, and if you expand the All properties item, you can also give a description of the query and not include the query in the data update (by default, all queries loaded into the model are updated with one Refresh button from the Power BI main window).
Panel of operations performed in the request(Applied steps) is a very handy thing. It displays step by step all the actions applied in the request: starting from loading the data and ending with the last transformation. If some operation in the request was made by mistake or simply the parameters were wrong, you can simply delete the last step (or several). We can say that this feature replaces the rollback of actions in office programs ( ctrl+Z). It is also very convenient to learn the syntax of the M language - you can step by step see what operation is called in this language. You can also see the entire text of the request by going to the tab View -Advanced Editor.
Briefly about the workflow in Power BI:
- first, the input data is loaded into the model and prepared (given in a form convenient for building visualizations) using Power Query
- further, based on the prepared data, charts and other visual reports are built by simple drag and drop without complex manipulations
- generated reports are uploaded to the cloud, where other users can view these reports from a browser or from mobile application
At the same time, you can work in Power BI without programming skills - to create visualizations, the “button” functionality of the program and built-in DAX formulas (Data Analysis Expressions - data analysis expressions), which are very similar to formulas in Excel, are enough to create visualizations. But for more advanced users, there is a place to turn around - Power BI has its own M programming language, which allows you to expand the standard features well. Plus, it is possible to create your own separate visual elements using the R script editor. And by my visual elements, I mean my own, author's, unique visualizations, and not just some mixed charts(similar to those in Excel). For those who do not know how or do not want to create it themselves, the collection of such copyright elements is constantly updated on the Power BI website: https://app.powerbi.com/visuals/
Who is Power BI for?
Microsoft believes that Power BI will be useful for a small, medium or large company. I believe that such an application is necessary for everyone who is somehow involved in data analytics and building all kinds of reports.
Table of characteristics and differences basic version and Pro:
| Power BI | Power BI Pro | |
|---|---|---|
| Basic characteristics | ||
| Cloud storage (for storing reports in the Power BI service) per user | 1GB | 10GB |
| Create, view, and share personal dashboards and reports | YES | YES |
| Create reports in Power BI Desktop | YES | YES |
| Creating complex queries in the M query language | YES | YES |
| Access to dashboards with mobile devices for iOS, Windows and Android | YES | YES |
| Pre-installed data processing algorithms from popular services such as Dynamics, Salesforce and Google Analytics | YES | YES |
| Import raw data and reports from Excel files, CSV and Power BI Desktop | YES | YES |
| Data update | ||
| Scheduled update interval | Daily | Hourly |
| Stream data to Power BI dashboards and reports | 10,000 lines per hour | 1,000,000 lines per hour |
| Connection to data sources without manual update and publication of information in Power BI (the data source is accessed when the report is opened and the necessary data is loaded immediately) | NO | YES |
| Access to on-premises data sources using a personal gateway (installation on Personal Computer and updating data from Excel and Power BI Desktop) and data management gateway (installed on a server with SQL Analysis Services) | NO | YES |
| Collaboration | ||
| Collaborate using Office 365 Groups | NO | YES |
| Creation, publication and viewing of pre-configured enterprise content sets (creation of a content pack with a set of dashboards that will be available to all users at the organization level or a specific group of users) | NO | YES |
| Managing access rights with Active Directory groups | NO | YES |
| Sharing queries using the data catalog (ability to share queries through the Power Query add-in in Excel 2013) | NO | YES |
| Price | For free | 7 450 rubles/year |
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Platform Microsoft power BI or simply Power BI is a new development direction for Business Intelligence (BI), which is a set of cloud-enabled business intelligence services for data analysis and visualization. The main advantage of this technology is the ability to build beautiful dashboards (dashboards), usually with key company performance indicators, available on any device.
What can Microsoft Power BI do?
Power BI allows you to show all the key indicators of your organization on any device in a convenient dashboard:
Power BI can directly load data for visualization from almost any source:
- Service Integration SQL Server Analysis Services (Microsoft BI OLAP)
- SQL Server Integration (Microsoft BI SQL)
- Excel Integration
- CSV integration
- Text integration
- Access integration
- XML integration
- Microsoft Dynamics NAV Integration
- Microsoft Dynamics CRM Integration
- SQL Azure Integration
- SharePoint integration
- AD Integration
- IBM DB2 integration
- Oracle Integration
- PostgreSQL integration
- MySQL integration
- Google Analytics integration
- and so on.
Power BI Desktop
- Power BI Desktop is a convenient and intuitive application for loading, analyzing and visualizing data on dashboards, which also allows you to publish ready-made dashboard reports on the Power BI portal.
Power BI Desktop 
Power BI Portal
- Power BI Portal is a Power BI cloud portal located at (https://app.powerbi.com) and is used for publishing dashboard reports and collaborating with Power BI reports.
Power BI Portal 
If an organization has business intelligence at the Business Intelligence (BI) level, Power BI can be the entry point (containing KPI level reports) to the main BI, from which, if necessary, any KPI of the company can be:
Power BI reports can be embedded in any web application, for example, Demo BI (http://bireport.ru)
- Example: Built-in interactive Power BI report
Additionally:
Power BI Premium
- Level decision Power BI Premium are advanced Power BI business intelligence tools that enable you to deploy Power BI services on servers within your organization. This approach will allow you to move Power BI cloud components to local (i.e. deploy them on servers within your organization). First of all, this allows you to replace the Power BI cloud portal (https://app.powerbi.com), which is used to publish reports, with the local Power BI Report Server portal, for example (http://bireport.ru). Power BI Premium has a separate licensing model that does not require you to purchase licenses for each user.
Power BI Mobile
- Business intelligence application Power BI Mobile allows you to open and view any Power BI reports that are published on the Power BI cloud portal (https://app.powerbi.com) or on the local Power BI Report Server portal (http://bireport.ru).
- Application Power BI Mobile works on any device with operating system Windows 10, iOS and Android. This allows you to access Power BI reports using mobile devices.
Power BI Embedded
- Power BI Embedded are Power BI integrations designed for third-party developers software. With Power BI Embedded, you can embed Power BI business intelligence components directly into third party application using a special set of APIs.
Power BI Report Server
- Server Power BI Report Server is an on-premises portal for publishing Power BI reports that is included with the Power BI Premium solution and is an alternative to the Power BI cloud portal (https://app.powerbi.com). The Power BI Report Server portal is deployed on servers within your organization and is available at your corporate domain, for example (http://bireport.ru)
Power BI Insights apps
- Applications Power BI Insights apps- This turnkey solutions business analytics implemented on the Microsoft Power BI platform
We offer the following level applications Power BI Insights apps.
If you are constantly working with large amounts of data from different sources, while these operations are not automated in any way, BI systems (Business Intelligence) are what you need.
Using the examples of models proposed by the participants of the CoRe Hackathon (Construction & Recommendation Hackathon), see how to use the Power BI platform for business benefit.
Why Power BI
What do companies most often use to process large arrays? That's right, Excel. You can imagine how much time (sometimes specialists) take manual reports in spreadsheets. At the same time, it is convenient to view and edit them only on a wide screen.
More automation and specifics are offered by the analytical systems Yandex.Metrika and Google Analytics, but they also lose to BI systems, since they have:
- Interfaces for the average user;
For example, the banal calculation of statistics for a group of campaigns requires too many gestures: you have to sort through all the IDs manually, mark them with checkmarks, combine them into segments, and then only work on them.
- Standard data sources, difficult to supplement on your own;
At the moment when the user performs actions on the site, you need to know what exactly you want to know about him and his behavior. So that the counter is already ready for this. Historical data, for which you did not set parameters, is problematic to analyze.
- The data is recorded only once and cannot be corrected.
Special programs help to avoid these and other difficulties, which themselves extract data from any sources and visualize it to “five plus”, you just need to set the algorithm.
Main Power benefits BI:
- Clear interface;
- Interactive information panels (dashboards);
- Data from different systems (ready-made files on a computer, API, Yandex and Google counters, etc.) in a single space;
- Access to key performance indicators on any device;
- The possibility of deep research without the involvement of IT and analysts.
Power BI offers a free desktop app Power BI Desktop(in it we combine data and form reports from them) and cloud service on the portal powerbi.com(we upload ready-made reports there and monitor them).
Power BI Desktop
Download and install the program on your computer:
At each launch, a welcome message appears, where you can add new data or open ready-made reports:
By default, a new report window appears:
Power BI Desktop lets you edit and report on data. About everything in order.
Data connection
Get data / More information.
Select a source. For example, a web page. Get Data / Internet / Connect:
Fill in the address. OK.
After that, in the navigator you will see the contents of the page. Select items from the list for further work.
Data Shaping
What you do: You create instructions on how to load and display data in the program. The query editor fixes them in the "Applied steps" block:
What you get: every time a query is connected to a data source, the algorithm is executed automatically, the data is formed according to the same principle. In this case, it is not the source that changes, but the specific representation.
How to set it up?
To format data, convert or remove columns, and more, use the Transform ribbon:
As well as the menu in the query editor:
Attention! The sequence of the prescribed actions affects the data setting. Therefore, it is worth checking how each step affects the next before deleting it.
Combining data (queries)
Two methods: merge (merge tables of multiple queries) and padding (add rows from another query to the current one).
Merge settings:
At the end of the query, a NewColumn appears, which contains the data (all columns) of the table that was merged with the current query. You can expand the table and include the ones you want.
When there is enough data to create reports, you can save the file.
To load the Query Editor changes, click Close and Apply:
Building reports
The Report view gives you the following options:
To create a visualization, drag the desired field onto the view.
A report is a set of visualizations. How many of them - depends on your tasks.
- Graphs, histograms and line charts:
- Combination, layered and donut charts:
- Cards, slices and individual images - contain important parameters or logos:
- Maps and cartograms:
- Scatter, bubble and funnel charts (suitable for building business processes):
- Indicator charts (show how close the data is to the target), flat trees (rectangle sizes correlate with the data):
There are also custom ones - for the most obsessed analytics fans.
Examples:
- Calendar visualization is a great event planner for example.
- Word cloud / tag cloud - frequently used words and expressions.
- Graph of strength - connections between data, the thickness directly depends on the strength of the relationship between points.
- Vector diagram - for example, to display test results, visual interpretation of studies.
Basic principles of visualization:
- Convenient and understandable;
- Access to any data in three clicks;
- Correctness for displayed patterns;
- Separate dashboards for each task.
When the report is ready, you upload it to the portal.
portal powerbi.com
Log in to the site using an account with an active Office 365 subscription:
The portal allows you to perform the same tasks as the application, except for editing.
Attach data from the necessary reports to the dashboard and monitor online from any device:
You can adjust to a convenient size, move with the mouse, expand to the entire canvas, delete, change the order of data inside, etc.
How to setup general access to reports (3 ways):
- Publish to Power BI Service:
Sign in to Power BI to see the uploaded file under Dashboards, Reports, and Datasets.
- Download PBIX file from Power BI service:
Click Get Data to start the download from Power BI Desktop:
A page will appear on which you select the source "Files":
Once you've transferred the file, you'll find it on the left side of the Reports menu.
- Save and send file by email:
What allows you to implement Power BI: hackathon results
The teams were given initial data - uploads on two real estate sites (all data are anonymized):
- For sessions from the Logs API - 500,000 lines;
- By hits from the Logs API - 1,100,000 lines;
- Calls from CoMagic;
- Aggregated Yandex.Direct data for each site.
The task is to create a system that will help marketers and sales managers in their work.
Here are examples of solutions that won prizes. Evaluate how they are adapted for business and beautifully executed!
UraAnalytics
The 3rd place winners used end-to-end analytics. This is how the charts look in which they combined the actions and calls of the audience:
The information panel on missed calls shows when they are received more often, what percentage they occupy in the total number of phone calls and other valuable indicators:
First Party Data
The solution from the team with the 2nd prize allows you to track campaigns and the effectiveness of the sales department.
Have you heard about the Power BI tool from Microsoft? This is the hottest topic among internet marketers right now. Everyone wants to work with this service, but few know how. Our expert Rustam Gizatullin will introduce you to Power BI, show you its capabilities and applications for solving everyday problems.
What is Power BI from Microsoft?
Of course, in one article it is impossible to describe all the features of Power BI. But after reading, you will be able to understand whether this product is interesting to you or not. So, Power BI is a solution from Microsoft consisting of the Power BI Desktop desktop application, the Power BI Mobile mobile application, and the Power BI Service WEB service. Power BI allows you to:- connect to a variety of data sources,
- process this data
- present data in the form of convenient interactive reports.
How does Power BI work?
For example, consider creating a report based on data from Google Analytics and Yandex. Metrics. To connect to data sources, process data and create reports, we need the Power BI desktop application. You can download it Power BI by default can connect to all the most common data sources: files, databases, web analytics services, social networks, CRM systems, etc. In this case, you can use third-party connectors written for Power BI. For example, I will use connectors to connect to Yandex. Metrika and Google Analytics by Maxim Uvarov.
3. And now the most interesting thing, for which all this was started, is the creation of visualizations for data analysis.
Using the built-in set of visualizations, you can create various interactive reports. At the same time, you can display both the data obtained during import and new metrics calculated based on the original data.
Conclusions and comments
1. If you are constantly working with data, bringing together data from various sources, and these operations are not automated in any way, then Power BI is what the doctor ordered. 2. You can learn how to work in Power BI on your own. The following links will help you:- excellent
