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Power BI: The Ecosystem and the Desktop Interface

First lesson of the Getting Started with Power BI Desktop course, free to read: about 15 minutes, 3 exercises and 3 quiz questions. This is the catalogue's base lesson; in the student space, it is rewritten for your profile.

Objectives

  • Place Power BI Desktop, the Power BI service and the mobile app in context
  • Identify the main views of Power BI Desktop and their role
  • Describe the typical workflow: get, transform, model, visualize, share

Power BI ecosystemPower BI Desktop interfaceBI workflow

Why Power BI?

In many companies, the figures live in Excel files, CSV exports or databases. Power BI is Microsoft’s business intelligence platform that lets you gather this data, clean it, link it together and present it in interactive reports. The goal: let everyone quickly find answers to their questions (“Which store sells the most?”, “How are sales changing this month?”).

The Building Blocks of the Ecosystem

Component Role
Power BI Desktop Free application for Windows. You import data, build the model and design reports in it.
Power BI service Website (app.powerbi.com), integrated into Microsoft Fabric. You publish, share, refresh and secure reports there.
Power BI Mobile Apps for viewing reports on a phone or tablet.

In this course, we work only in Power BI Desktop, installed on your Windows virtual machine.

A Tour of the Interface

When you open a blank report, you find:

  • The ribbon at the top, with tabs (Home, Insert, Modeling, View…). This is where the Get data button is.
  • The views, as icons in the vertical bar on the left:
    • Report view: the canvas where you place visuals;
    • Table view: the rows and columns of the loaded tables;
    • Model view: the tables and the relationships that link them;
    • depending on your version, additional views such as the DAX query view or the TMDL view, which we will see later.
  • The panes on the right: Data (the list of tables and fields), Visualizations (choosing the visual type and formatting it) and Filters.
  • The page tabs at the bottom of the canvas: a report can contain several pages.

Microsoft updates Power BI Desktop every month: the exact location of a button may vary slightly. Remember the logic (ribbon, views, panes) rather than the pixel-perfect position.

The Workflow

Almost all projects follow the same steps:

  1. Get the data (Excel, CSV, SQL database, folder, web…).
  2. Transform the data in the Power Query editor (types, cleaning).
  3. Model: link the tables, create calculations with the DAX language.
  4. Visualize: build the report pages.
  5. Publish and share through the Power BI service.

All your work is saved in a .pbix file. This file contains the queries, the imported data, the model and the report pages. There is also a project format (.pbip), made of folders of text files, handy for teamwork with Git.

A first DAX calculation looks like this (you will write it in the DAX course):

Total ventes = SUM ( Ventes[Montant] )

Don’t worry if this seems abstract: the rest of the course has you build a report step by step.

Exercises

Solutions and tests stay on the server. In the student space, your code is run and checked, and the tutor gives hints before the solution.

  1. TaskDifficulty 12 hints

    Tour the interface

    Open Power BI Desktop in your VM and create a blank report.

    1. Locate the ribbon and the Home tab.
    2. Click each of the views in the left bar in turn and note their names.
    3. Locate the Data, Visualizations and Filters panes (if they are hidden, show them again from the View tab).
    4. Add a second page with the + button at the bottom of the canvas, then rename it “Brouillon” (double-click the tab).
    5. Save the file as C:\Formation\decouverte.pbix.
    • The file decouverte.pbix exists in C:\Formation
    • The report contains 2 pages, one of them named "Brouillon"
    • The learner can name at least the Report, Table and Model views

  2. Multiple choiceDifficulty 11 hint

    The role of the Power BI service

    What is the Power BI service (in the browser) mainly used for?

    • Publishing, sharing and refreshing reports
    • Writing SQL queries on Excel
    • Replacing Power Query to clean data
    • Installing Power BI Desktop

  3. Multiple choiceDifficulty 11 hint

    Where do you see the loaded rows?

    You want to check the values of a column after the import. Which view do you use?

    • Report view
    • Table view
    • Model view
    • The Filters pane

End-of-lesson quiz

  1. What does a .pbix file contain?

    • Only the visuals
    • The queries, the imported data, the model and the report
    • Only the raw data

  2. In what order does the typical workflow unfold?

    • Visualize, get, model
    • Get, transform, model, visualize, publish
    • Publish, transform, get

  3. Which view shows the tables and their relationships?

    • Model view
    • Report view
    • Table view

The rest of the course

  1. Importing Your First Data File15 min
  2. Creating Your First Visuals20 min
  3. Filtering: Slicers, the Filters Pane and Interactions20 min
  4. Formatting and Finalizing a First Report20 min
Build my pathSee the full syllabus

Getting Started with Power BI Desktop · Beginner · 1 h 30 min