How to Create a Simple Dashboard Using PowerBI
No worries its beginner friendly
Where do I start…
After a long break I would love to share another article with all of you ! Now I want to write about Microsoft Power BI, and I’m excited to share my beginner-friendly, simple reporting dashboard. Hopefully with this article, we all can elevate ourselves and be a grrreat insights-hunter.
“Insight is the first condition of Art.” — George Henry Lewes
What is Microsoft PowerBI ?
Microsoft Power BI is a business analytics tool developed by Microsoft. It provides interactive visualizations and business intelligence capabilities with an interface simple enough for end users to create their own reports and dashboards. Power BI is designed to connect to a wide range of data sources, transform raw data into meaningful insights, and present them in visually appealing formats.
For this project, I’m using a simple dataset generated by ChatGPT. Copy and paste this to your PowerBI, for practice ! Click here for the file.
Data Explanation:
- Transaction ID: Unique identifier for each transaction.
- Date: Date of the transaction. (yyyy-mm-dd)
- Product: Name of the product sold.
- Units Sold: Quantity of units sold for each product.
- Unit Price: Price per unit of the product.
- Cost per Unit: Cost incurred per unit.
- Revenue: Total revenue generated from the transaction (Units Sold * Unit Price).
Let’s get started !
STEP 1 | Gather your data
Before we start examining, analyzing or even charting, we need to ensure that our data is clean and appropriate for analysis. Is common to clean and/or manipulate the data before we put it on the dashboard, to minimize the possibilities of extracting wrong insights ! (No, no, me no likey!)
But, because our data is basically a ‘practice data’, and it already ‘cleaned’, we can proceed through next step without the need to clean or manipulate it. Perhaps we can exercise cleaning and manipulating in other time.
STEP 2 | Load Data into Power BI
Open PowerBI, and then select Get Data under Home menu, and select the data source, our data source (e.g. Excel, or Text/CSV). Follow the prompt and then don’t forget to connect and load our data to PowerBI.
After succesfully load the data, we can transform it inside PowerBI, using Power Query Editor. We able to perform data transformation (renaming columns, and changing the data type).
For this case, we need to add Profit Column. How to add it?
Click Add Column - Custom Column, and then write the formula :
Click OK, and voila! We now have Profit Column !
STEP 3 | Create Measures and Calculations
Using modeling, we can create a new measure. A measure is a calculation used to analyze data within our dataset. Measures are created using DAX (Data Analysis Expressions) formulas and are often used to perform dynamic calculations on data that change based on the context of the report visualizations, such as the filters applied or the data selection.
Where to find it?
Click on Modeling and then choose New Measures.
Here are some example :
Above, we try to calculate Total Sales by summing up the Revenue Column from Train’s Table.
Above, we try to calculate Profit by substracting total Revenue, from Revenue Column, with total Cost, from Cost per Unit Column, from Train’s Table.
Easy huh ! Just like playing with excel but in different universe !
STEP 4 | Build Visualization — FINALLY
In Microsoft PowerBI we can just click any visualization we want to put inside our reporting dashboard. There are various types of visualization we can use for our reporting dashboard.
But remember! Not all chart can be used for all types of data. There are some data that works like magic with line chart, but not with pie chart. So, we need to understand clearly what type of visualization we can use for our data, to deliver an impeccable insights to our dashboard lover.
Revenue and Profit
First of all, we want to show total revenue and profit from our products. Because it is basically just a number, we can use CARD.
Choose card from Visualization Pane, and drag Revenue from Data Pane to Values field, below Visualization Options.
Repeat the step for profit card, until we have this appears on our dashboard.
Unappealing right? I know, but we just getting started, Let’s move on to the next visualization. We can beautify our dashboard later !
Total Unit Sold
Next, we want to display the quantity of each product sold. Here we will use bar chart. Why? A bar chart is effective for comparing discrete categories, such as different products. We can quickly identify which products are top sellers.
Try repeating the same step as revenue and profit card, but using bar chart. Don’t forget to add Product in the X-Axis, because we want to see total sales from each product, not overall.
Fun Fact : PowerBI can suggest automatically what type of chart you can use for visualize certain dataset. Just thick the box of column name, and PowerBI will generate the best chart based on your data.
Revenue Over Time
Okay, we need to know the revenue over time, not just total revenue like we just generate using card. We will be using Line Chart.
Why again ? A line chart is ideal for showing trends and changes over time across different time periods (days, months, years).
Repeat the same step, but now using Line Chart. Fill the X-Axis with date, and Y-Axis with Revenue. We can choose what type of date we want to use. Full format, or just monthly view or daily view.
What a sale…
Profit by Product
Okay, now we want to see how much profit made for each product, and compare it. We will use Pie Chart or Donut Chart.
Let me hear why ?
A pie chart is useful for showing proportions and percentages of a whole. We can easily compare the contribution of each product to the overall profit, identify which products are more profitable, or see the share of profit each product contributes.
Repeat the same step, but now using Pie or Donut Chart. I prefer Donut Chart than Pie Chart, because it looks more cute? hehe. Fill the X-Axis with Product, and Y-Axis with Profit.
I think we have all the visualizations we need ! Let’s beautify our dashboard.
STEP 5 | Customize
We can format our charts, from colors, labels, and titles. For color, Microsoft PowerBI have various built-in theme, that automatically change the whole design of your dashboard, just one click away.
Click View - Themes, there we can find many options provided by Microsoft PowerBI.
Choose one, and it will automatically change our dashboard ! No hassle !
We can change the titles, labels, and many more from Format visual menu, inside the Visualization Pane. Explore all the options, be creative !
Here is my dashboard, I added the dashboard title, another Card that showed Total Unit Sold, and slicer to filter my dashboard either from date or product. Annd, as we can see, it’s a dark theme !
STEP 6 | Finalize it !
We can finalize it by saving our report. Yay us !
We can save it either locally or publicly share our report so the world able to see it. I usually save my dashboard locally, and create a github repository specifically for my dashboard projects.
You can visit my repository here, it’s not much but I thrive to always learn and improving myself! There are always room to improve and growth, right?
Well, we reached the end of the line. Hopefully this article can be the starting line for you to design an insightful reporting dashboard !
Just small tips, when customizing the dashboard, make sure you don’t use different type of font, and format for each chart. Neatness is one of the key aspect to deliver a perfect message or insights from our dashboard. Maintain a consistent naming convention across our dashboard to ensure clarity and coherence.
Not everyone is coming from the same field as we are, so we need to create a dashboard that is insightful and user friendly for anyone who want to use it. And thankfully, Microsoft PowerBI is so helpful. There are still many other features that we haven’t discussed yet, but I think we already manage the first small step, building a reporting dashboard using PowerBI.
So what are you waiting for? Share your dashboard to me, I would LOVEE to see it. I eagerly wait for any input or opinion regarding this article, don’t hesitate to contact me via email | amalia.wulandiari@gmail.com, or just visit my LinkedIn profile!
Who know? You can design it better than I do !
CHEEERS !