Self-Service AI with Power BI Desktop


Book Description

This book explains how you can enrich the data you have loaded into Power BI Desktop by accessing a suite of Artificial Intelligence (AI) features. These AI features are built into Power BI Desktop and help you to gain new insights from existing data. Some of the features are automated and are available to you at the click of a button or through writing Data Analysis Expressions (DAX). Other features are available through writing code in either the R, Python, or M languages. This book opens up the entire suite of AI features to you with clear examples showing when they are best applied and how to invoke them on your own datasets. No matter if you are a business user, analyst, or data scientist – Power BI has AI capabilities tailored to you. This book helps you learn what types of insights Power BI is capable of delivering automatically. You will learn how to integrate and leverage the use of the R and Python languages for statistics, how to integrate with Cognitive Services and Azure Machine Learning Services when loading data, how to explore your data by asking questions in plain English ... and more! There are AI features for discovering your data, characterizing unexplored datasets, and building what-if scenarios. There’s much to like and learn from this book whether you are a newcomer to Power BI or a seasoned user. Power BI Desktop is a freely available tool for visualization and analysis. This book helps you to get the most from that tool by exploiting some of its latest and most advanced features. What You Will Learn Ask questions in natural language and get answers from your data Let Power BI explain why a certain data point differs from the rest Have Power BI show key influencers over categories of data Access artificial intelligence features available in the Azure cloud Walk the same drill down path in different parts of your hierarchy Load visualizations to add smartness to your reports Simulate changes in data and immediately see the consequences Know your data, even before you build your first report Create new columns by giving examples of the data that you need Transform and visualize your data with the help of R and Python scripts Who This Book Is For For the enthusiastic Power BI user who wants to apply state-of-the-art artificial intelligence (AI) features to gain new insights from existing data. For end-users and IT professionals who are not shy of jumping into a new world of machine learning and are ready to make that step and take a deeper look into their data. For those wanting to step up their game from doing simple reporting and visualizations by making the move into diagnostic and predictive analysis.




Introducing Microsoft Power BI


Book Description

This is the eBook of the printed book and may not include any media, website access codes, or print supplements that may come packaged with the bound book. Introducing Microsoft Power BI enables you to evaluate when and how to use Power BI. Get inspired to improve business processes in your company by leveraging the available analytical and collaborative features of this environment. Be sure to watch for the publication of Alberto Ferrari and Marco Russo's upcoming retail book, Analyzing Data with Power BI and Power Pivot for Excel (ISBN 9781509302765). Go to the book's page at the Microsoft Press Store here for more details:http://aka.ms/analyzingdata/details. Learn more about Power BI at https://powerbi.microsoft.com/.




Artificial Intelligence with Microsoft Power BI


Book Description

Advance your Power BI skills by adding AI to your repertoire at a practice level. With this practical book, business-oriented software engineers and developers will learn the terminologies, practices, and strategy necessary to successfully incorporate AI into your business intelligence estate. Jen Stirrup, CEO of AI and BI leadership consultancy Data Relish, and Thomas Weinandy, research economist at Upside, show you how to use data already available to your organization. Springboarding from the skills that you already possess, this book adds AI to your organization's technical capability and expertise with Microsoft Power BI. By using your conceptual knowledge of BI, you'll learn how to choose the right model for your AI work and identify its value and validity. Use Power BI to build a good data model for AI Demystify the AI terminology that you need to know Identify AI project roles, responsibilities, and teams for AI Use AI models, including supervised machine learning techniques Develop and train models in Azure ML for consumption in Power BI Improve your business AI maturity level with Power BI Use the AI feedback loop to help you get started with the next project




Expert Data Modeling with Power BI


Book Description

Manage and work with business data effectively by learning data modeling techniques and leveraging the latest features of Power BI Key Features Understand data modeling techniques to get the best out of data using Power BI Define the relationships between data to extract valuable insights Solve a wide variety of business challenges by building optimal data models Book DescriptionThis book is a comprehensive guide to understanding the ins and outs of data modeling and how to create data models using Power BI confidently. You'll learn how to connect data from multiple sources, understand data, define and manage relationships between data, and shape data models to gain deep and detailed insights about your organization. In this book, you'll explore how to use data modeling and navigation techniques to define relationships and create a data model before defining new metrics and performing custom calculations using modeling features. As you advance through the chapters, the book will demonstrate how to create full-fledged data models, enabling you to create efficient data models and simpler DAX code with new data modeling features. With the help of examples, you'll discover how you can solve business challenges by building optimal data models and changing your existing data models to meet evolving business requirements. Finally, you'll learn how to use some new and advanced modeling features to enhance your data models to carry out a wide variety of complex tasks. By the end of this Power BI book, you'll have gained the skills you need to structure data coming from multiple sources in different ways to create optimized data models that support reporting and data analytics.What you will learn Implement virtual tables and time intelligence functionalities in DAX to build a powerful model Identify Dimension and Fact tables and implement them in Power Query Editor Deal with advanced data preparation scenarios while building Star Schema Explore best practices for data preparation and modeling Discover different hierarchies and their common pitfalls Understand complex data models and how to decrease the level of model complexity with different approaches Learn advanced data modeling techniques such as aggregations, incremental refresh, and RLS/OLS Who this book is for This MS Power BI book is for BI users, data analysts, and analysis developers who want to become well-versed with data modeling techniques to make the most of Power BI. You’ll need a solid grasp on basic use cases and functionalities of Power BI and Star Schema functionality before you can dive in.




Beginning Microsoft Power BI


Book Description

Analyze company data quickly and easily using Microsoft’s powerful data tools. Learn to build scalable and robust data models, clean and combine different data sources effectively, and create compelling and professional visuals. Beginning Power BI is a hands-on, activity-based guide that takes you through the process of analyzing your data using the tools that that encompass the core of Microsoft’s self-service BI offering. Starting with Power Query, you will learn how to get data from a variety of sources, and see just how easy it is to clean and shape the data prior to importing it into a data model. Using Power BI tabular and the Data Analysis Expressions (DAX), you will learn to create robust scalable data models which will serve as the foundation of your data analysis. From there you will enter the world of compelling interactive visualizations to analyze and gain insight into your data. You will wrap up your Power BI journey by learning how to package and share your reports and dashboards with your colleagues. Author Dan Clark takes you through each topic using step-by-step activities and plenty of screen shots to help familiarize you with the tools. This third edition covers the new and evolving features in the Power BI platform and new chapters on data flows and composite models. This book is your hands-on guide to quick, reliable, and valuable data insight. What You Will Learn Simplify data discovery, association, and cleansingBuild solid analytical data models Create robust interactive data presentations Combine analytical and geographic data in map-based visualizations Publish and share dashboards and reports Who This Book Is For Business analysts, database administrators, developers, and other professionals looking to better understand and communicate with data




Data Modeling with Microsoft Power BI


Book Description

Data modeling is the single most overlooked feature in Power BI Desktop, yet it's what sets Power BI apart from other tools on the market. This practical book serves as your fast-forward button for data modeling with Power BI, Analysis Services tabular, and SQL databases. It serves as a starting point for data modeling, as well as a handy refresher. Author Markus Ehrenmueller-Jensen, founder of Savory Data, shows you the basic concepts of Power BI's semantic model with hands-on examples in DAX, Power Query, and T-SQL. If you're looking to build a data warehouse layer, chapters with T-SQL examples will get you started. You'll begin with simple steps and gradually solve more complex problems. This book shows you how to: Normalize and denormalize with DAX, Power Query, and T-SQL Apply best practices for calculations, flags and indicators, time and date, role-playing dimensions and slowly changing dimensions Solve challenges such as binning, budget, localized models, composite models, and key value with DAX, Power Query, and T-SQL Discover and tackle performance issues by applying solutions in DAX, Power Query, and T-SQL Work with tables, relations, set operations, normal forms, dimensional modeling, and ETL




Extending Power BI with Python and R


Book Description

Ingest, transform, manipulate, and visualize your data beyond Power BI's capabilities. Purchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free eBook in PDF format. Key Features Discover best practices for using Python and R in Power BI by implementing non-trivial code Enrich your Power BI dashboards using external APIs and machine learning models Create any visualization, as complex as you want, using Python and R scripts Book DescriptionThe latest edition of this book delves deep into advanced analytics, focusing on enhancing Python and R proficiency within Power BI. New chapters cover optimizing Python and R settings, utilizing Intel's Math Kernel Library (MKL) for performance boosts, and addressing integration challenges. Techniques for managing large datasets beyond available RAM, employing the Parquet data format, and advanced fuzzy matching algorithms are explored. Additionally, it discusses leveraging SQL Server Language Extensions to overcome traditional Python and R limitations in Power BI. It also helps in crafting sophisticated visualizations using the Grammar of Graphics in both R and Python. This Power BI book will help you master data validation with regular expressions, import data from diverse sources, and apply advanced algorithms for transformation. You'll learn how to safeguard personal data in Power BI with techniques like pseudonymization, anonymization, and data masking. You'll also get to grips with the key statistical features of datasets by plotting multiple visual graphs in the process of building a machine learning model. The book will guide you on utilizing external APIs for enrichment, enhancing I/O performance, and leveraging Python and R for analysis. You'll reinforce your learning with questions at the end of each chapter.What you will learn Configure optimal integration of Python and R with Power BI Perform complex data manipulations not possible by default in Power BI Boost Power BI logging and loading large datasets Extract insights from your data using algorithms like linear optimization Calculate string distances and learn how to use them for probabilistic fuzzy matching Handle outliers and missing values for multivariate and time-series data Apply Exploratory Data Analysis in Power BI with R Learn to use Grammar of Graphics in Python Who this book is for This book is for business analysts, business intelligence professionals, and data scientists who already use Microsoft Power BI and want to add more value to their analysis using Python and R. Working knowledge of Power BI is required to make the most of this book. Basic knowledge of Python and R will also be helpful.




Power BI Data Modeling


Book Description

Build Power BI Models Efficiently and Effectively KEY FEATURES ● Extensive examples illustrating Power BI and data modeling concepts. ● Includes graphical images and explanations of using Power BI. ● Numerous hands-on practical examples are teaching best practices in predictive modeling. DESCRIPTION Creating data models has never been straightforward. This book demonstrates how to formulate a complete business analytics model that combines several data sources, executes numerous computations, and scales across hundreds of BI users. To begin, you'll learn about the Microsoft Power BI ecosystem by downloading the Power BI desktop and exploring all of its features and capabilities. Through examples, you'll learn how to connect to databases of Excel; and SQL Server, shaping the data with Power Query, and then transforming the data into actionable information. You will gain knowledge of the DAX language by exploring it, writing DAX functions, and creating hierarchies. You will be trained to develop effective business intelligence models by studying numerous data modeling topics. You get to put professionals' best practices to the test when handling large data scenarios and executing analytics on top of them. Additionally, the book discusses how to scale Power BI while considering its storage, memory, and security requirements. You'll see that several new topics have been included, including performance tuning, DAX Studio, sharing Power BI reports, and publishing reports to Sharepoint online. WHAT YOU WILL LEARN ● Conduct profiling, cleansing, and transformation of data. ● Build data models, aggregate data, and create hierarchies. ● Practice DAX language, write calculations, and execute them. ● Utilize advanced features including AI visualizations and performance analyzer. ● Examine various connection types and connect data from different sources. ● Enhance performance by boosting storage and memory. WHO THIS BOOK IS FOR This book is intended for data analysts, business analysts, and any other business user who are interested in learning how to develop data models using Power BI from beginning to end. To follow this book and master Power BI, a basic understanding of data visualization would be sufficient. TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction to Microsoft Power BI 2. Microsoft Power BI Eco-system 3. Getting Started with Power BI and Connect with Data 4. My first Power BI Report 5. Intro to BI Building Blocks & Dimensional Mod Concepts 6. Get Data from Relational Databases 7. Cleansing, Blending and Transform Data using Power Query 8. Build Relationships 9. Introduction to DAX and Calculated Columns, Cal Measures & Hierarchies 10. Create Insightful Visuals 11. Row-level Security 12. Calculation Groups in Power BI 13. Self-service AI in Power BI 14. Incremental Refresh for Scalable Models 15. Composite Models & Implement Aggregations to Improve query performance 16. Self-service Data Prep for Any Data 17. Optimize DAX 18. Collaborate Your Power BI Workload 19. Performance Tuning via optimizing Storage and Memory




Pro Power BI Desktop


Book Description

Deliver eye-catching Business Intelligence with Microsoft Power BI Desktop. This new edition has been updated to cover all the latest features, including combo charts, Cartesian charts, trend lines, use of gauges, and more. Also covered are Top-N features, the ability to bin data into groupings and chart the groupings, and new techniques for detecting and handling outlier data points. You can take data from virtually any source and use it to produce stunning dashboards and compelling reports that will seize your audience’s attention. Slice and dice the data with remarkable ease and then add metrics and KPIs to project the insights that create your competitive advantage. Make raw data into clear, accurate, and interactive information with Microsoft’s free self-service business intelligence tool. Pro Power BI Desktop shows you how to choose from a wide range of built-in and third-party visualization types so that your message is always enhanced. You’ll be able to deliver those results on the PC, tablets, and smartphones, as well as share results via the cloud. This book helps you save time by preparing the underlying data correctly without needing an IT department to prepare it for you. What You'll Learn Deliver attention-grabbing information, turning data into insight Mash up data from multiple sources into a cleansed and coherent data model Create dashboards that help in monitoring key performance indicators of your business Build interdependent charts, maps, and tables to deliver visually stunning information Share business intelligence in the cloud without involving IT Deliver visually stunning and interactive charts, maps, and tables Find new insights as you chop and tweak your data as never before Adapt delivery to mobile devices such as phones and tablets Who This Book Is For Everyone from CEOs and Business Intelligence developers to power users and IT managers




Pro Power BI Desktop


Book Description

Deliver eye-catching and insightful business intelligence with Microsoft Power BI Desktop. This new edition has been updated to cover all the latest features of Microsoft’s continually evolving visualization product. New in this edition is help with storytelling—adapted to PCs, tablets, and smartphones—and the building of a data narrative. You will find coverage of templates and JSON style sheets, data model annotations, and the use of composite data sources. Also provided is an introduction to incorporating Python visuals and the much awaited Decomposition Tree visual. Pro Power BI Desktop shows you how to use source data to produce stunning dashboards and compelling reports that you mold into a data narrative to seize your audience’s attention. Slice and dice the data with remarkable ease and then add metrics and KPIs to project the insights that create your competitive advantage. Convert raw data into clear, accurate, and interactive information with Microsoft’s free self-service BI tool. This book shows you how to choose from a wide range of built-in and third-party visualization types so that your message is always enhanced. You will be able to deliver those results on PCs, tablets, and smartphones, as well as share results via the cloud. The book helps you save time by preparing the underlying data correctly without needing an IT department to prepare it for you. What You Will LearnDeliver attention-grabbing information, turning data into insightFind new insights as you chop and tweak your data as never beforeBuild a data narrative through interactive reports with drill-through and cross-page slicingMash up data from multiple sources into a cleansed and coherent data modelBuild interdependent charts, maps, and tables to deliver visually stunning informationCreate dashboards that help in monitoring key performance indicators of your businessAdapt delivery to mobile devices such as phones and tablets Who This Book Is For Power users who are ready to step up to the big leagues by going beyond what Microsoft Excel by itself can offer. The book also is for line-of-business managers who are starved for actionable data needed to make decisions about their business. And the book is for BI analysts looking for an easy-to-use tool to analyze data and share results with C-suite colleagues they support.