Power BI Getting Started with Reports and Dashboards
Data without visualization is just noise. A spreadsheet with 50,000 rows tells you nothing at a glance. A well-designed Power BI dashboard tells you everything in ten seconds. Power BI transforms raw data from any source into interactive charts, graphs, and reports that executives read on their phones, analysts drill into on their computers, and operations teams monitor on wall-mounted screens. This topic walks you from zero to a working Power BI report connected to real data.
The Two Power BI Environments
Power BI has two distinct environments that work together. Power BI Desktop is a free Windows application where you connect to data, clean it, model it, and design reports. The Power BI Service (app.powerbi.com) is the cloud web portal where you publish reports, build dashboards, share with colleagues, and set up automatic data refresh. Most users build in Desktop and consume in the Service.
POWER BI WORKFLOW
Data Sources Power BI Desktop Power BI Service
(Excel, SQL, Dataverse, (Windows App) (web.powerbi.com)
SharePoint, APIs...) │ │
│ │ Build & │ Share &
│ Connect │ Design │ Consume
▼ ▼ ▼
Raw Data → Clean → Model → Visualize → Publish → Dashboard
(messy, many Reports
tables) Apps
Alerts
Installing and Opening Power BI Desktop
Download Power BI Desktop free from powerbi.microsoft.com/desktop or from the Microsoft Store. Install it on a Windows computer. Open it and sign in with your Microsoft account. The welcome screen shows recent files, sample reports, and quick-start options. Close the welcome screen and you see the main interface: an empty report canvas on the right, a Fields panel showing available data columns on the right, a Visualizations panel for chart types on the right, and a page tabs bar at the bottom.
Connecting to Data
Every Power BI report starts with a data connection. Click Get data on the Home ribbon. A dialog shows over 100 data source connectors organized in categories.
Common Data Sources
GET DATA SOURCES (most used) File sources: Excel Workbook → Browse to .xlsx file on your computer or network CSV / Text file → Comma-separated data files PDF → Extract tables from PDF pages SharePoint Folder → Load all Excel files in a folder at once Database sources: SQL Server → On-premises or Azure SQL database Dataverse → All your Power Platform tables Azure SQL Database → Cloud SQL MySQL / PostgreSQL → Open-source databases Online services: SharePoint Online List → Read a SharePoint list Dynamics 365 → CRM and ERP data Google Analytics → Web traffic data Salesforce → Sales CRM data Other: Web → Scrape a table from any public webpage Blank query → Write custom M queries manually OData feed → REST-based data feed URL
Connecting to Excel (Step by Step)
Click Get data → Excel Workbook. Browse to your Excel file. Power BI shows a Navigator panel listing all sheets and named tables in the file. Select the ones you need (tick the checkboxes). Click Transform Data to open Power Query Editor and clean the data first, or click Load to import it directly. Start with Transform Data to verify the data looks correct before loading.
Power Query Editor: Cleaning Your Data
Raw data is rarely perfectly formatted. Column headers appear in row 1 instead of being detected automatically, date columns are stored as text, blank rows exist, columns have inconsistent names. Power Query Editor is where you fix all of this before the data enters your report.
POWER QUERY EDITOR LAYOUT ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ Home Transform Add Column View [Close&Load]│ ├──────────────────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ QUERIES PANEL │ DATA PREVIEW │ │ │ OrderID │ Customer │ Amount │ Date │ │ Sales Data │ ORD-001 │ Priya │ 25000 │ 2025-01-15 │ │ Products │ ORD-002 │ James │ 8500 │ 2025-01-16 │ │ Customers │ ORD-003 │ null │ 12000 │ 2025-01-16 │ │ │ ORD-004 │ Liu │ 45000 │ 2025-01-17 │ ├──────────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ APPLIED STEPS (right panel) │ │ Source → Promoted Headers → Changed Type → Removed Blank Rows │ └──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Common Transformations
Promote headers converts the first row of data into column headers — use this when your Excel file has headers in row 1 that Power BI treated as data. Change type sets the correct data type for each column — dates as Date, amounts as Decimal Number, IDs as Text. Remove rows eliminates blank rows, error rows, or rows that match a specific condition. Fill down copies a value downward to fill merged or blank cells. Split column divides one column into two based on a delimiter (splitting "FirstName LastName" into two separate columns). Merge queries combines two queries like a database JOIN — bringing columns from one table into another based on a common key.
The Report Canvas: Building Visuals
After loading data, the Fields panel on the right shows all your tables and columns. The Visualizations panel shows chart type icons. Building a chart takes three steps: click a visualization type, drag fields from the Fields panel into the chart's properties (X axis, Y axis, Legend, Values), and format the result.
Core Visualization Types
POWER BI VISUALIZATION GUIDE ┌──────────────┬────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ Visual Type │ Use It When │ ├──────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Bar Chart │ Comparing categories (Sales by Region) │ │ Column Chart │ Same as bar, vertical orientation │ │ Line Chart │ Showing trend over time (Revenue per Month) │ │ Pie Chart │ Part-to-whole with few categories (max 5) │ │ Donut Chart │ Same as pie, with center space for KPI number │ │ Card │ Showing one key number prominently │ │ Table │ Showing raw data with multiple columns │ │ Matrix │ Like a pivot table — rows, columns, values │ │ Map │ Geographic distribution by location field │ │ Scatter Plot │ Correlating two numeric measures │ │ KPI │ Showing progress toward a target with trend │ │ Slicer │ Filter control for the report user to interact │ │ Waterfall │ Showing cumulative change (gain/loss breakdown)│ └──────────────┴────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Building Your First Chart
Click on the Bar chart icon in the Visualizations panel. An empty chart placeholder appears on the canvas. From the Fields panel, drag "Region" to the Y-axis well and "Sales Amount" to the X-axis well. Power BI draws a bar chart showing total sales by region instantly. Drag "Product Category" to the Legend well — the bars split into colored segments by category. Click and drag the chart's corners to resize it. Double-click the chart title to rename it.
Slicers: Interactive Filters for Report Users
A slicer is a filter control that report readers interact with — clicking a button or selecting from a dropdown changes all other visuals on the page simultaneously. Add a slicer by clicking the Slicer icon in Visualizations. Drag "Year" or "Month" to the Field well. The slicer appears as a list or dropdown. When a reader clicks "2025" in the slicer, every other chart on the page updates to show only 2025 data. Slicers make static reports interactive without any DAX formulas.
Pages, Themes, and Formatting
Report Pages
A Power BI report can have multiple pages — like tabs in a workbook. Right-click the page tab at the bottom and click Add page. Organize pages by audience or topic: Executive Summary (KPI cards), Sales Detail (charts and tables), Regional Breakdown (map and slicers), and so on. Use Ctrl+click to duplicate a page and adjust it rather than rebuilding from scratch.
Themes
Themes apply a consistent color palette, font set, and visual style to all visuals in the report at once. Click the View ribbon and choose Themes. Power BI includes built-in themes (Classic, City Park, Circuit) and lets you import custom JSON theme files that match your company's brand colors and fonts. Apply a theme before building visuals — adding it after requires re-formatting existing charts.
Formatting Individual Visuals
With a visual selected, click the paintbrush icon in the Visualizations panel. The Format section shows every configurable property: background, border, title, data labels, axis formatting, legend position, color settings. Data colors lets you set specific colors per category — for example, always show "High Priority" in red and "Low Priority" in green across all charts.
Publishing to Power BI Service
When your report is ready, click Publish on the Home ribbon. Sign in if prompted. Choose the workspace where the report should live (My Workspace for personal reports, or a shared workspace for team reports). Power BI Desktop uploads the report and its data to the cloud. A link appears — click it to open the report in the browser.
PUBLISHING FLOW
Power BI Desktop Power BI Service
│ │
│ [Publish] button │
│ │
└──── uploads .pbix ──────────▶│
│ Report appears in Workspace
│ Dataset created automatically
│ Report URL generated
│
▼
Share with colleagues
Pin visuals to Dashboard
Set up scheduled refresh
Dashboards vs. Reports
In Power BI Service, Reports and Dashboards are different things that serve different purposes.
REPORTS vs. DASHBOARDS REPORT: DASHBOARD: Multiple pages Single page (no scrolling) Built in Desktop or Service Built in Service (pin visuals here) Deep analysis, drill-through High-level summary, KPIs Interactive (slicers, filters) Limited interaction (click to report) One data source (one .pbix) Can combine visuals from many reports Readers can explore Readers just monitor
Build dashboards by opening a report in Power BI Service, hovering over any visual, and clicking the pin icon. Choose which dashboard to pin it to. A dashboard shows the current state of key metrics at a glance — executives check it every morning the way they check email.
Scheduled Refresh: Keeping Data Current
Reports published from Power BI Desktop use a snapshot of data taken at publish time. To keep data current, configure a scheduled refresh in Power BI Service. Open the workspace, click the three-dot menu on the dataset, and choose Settings. Under Scheduled refresh, turn it on and set the frequency — up to 8 times per day on Pro, up to 48 times on Premium. Power BI automatically re-queries your data source and updates the report at each scheduled time.
For on-premises data sources (SQL Server, SharePoint on-prem), you must install the On-premises Data Gateway on a local server. The gateway acts as the intermediary between Power BI Service in the cloud and your internal data — exactly the same concept as the Power Apps gateway you learned about in Topic 7.
Key Points
- Power BI Desktop (free Windows app) is for building; Power BI Service (app.powerbi.com) is for sharing, dashboards, and refresh.
- Connect to over 100 data sources through Get data. Power Query Editor cleans and transforms raw data before it enters your report.
- Build charts by clicking a visual type, then dragging fields into the axis, legend, and values wells.
- Slicers are interactive filter controls — clicking them updates all other visuals on the page simultaneously.
- Publish reports to Power BI Service with one click. Choose the right workspace so the right people can access it.
- Reports have multiple pages and support deep exploration. Dashboards are single-page, high-level summaries built by pinning visuals from reports.
- Scheduled refresh keeps your data current automatically — up to 48 times per day on Premium, 8 times per day on Pro.