1. Reports vs. dashboards
Welcome to this course on building reports in Power BI.
My name is Kevin Feasel, and I will be guiding you through this part of the course.
2. Course pre-requisites
Before we jump into this course, we want to ensure that you are fully prepared for the exercises that follow.
In this course, you will build upon all that you have learned in prior DataCamp courses. For this course, we recommend taking our Data Visualization in Power BI and Intermediate DAX in Power BI courses before continuing.
3. Dashboards versus reports
In this video, we will compare dashboards versus reports, making a clear distinction between the two.
Dashboards let us see and act upon a critical business or operational metric, possibly even in real time.
By contrast, Power BI reports give you more detailed information that won't fit on a dashboard. The kinds of reports we will build will feel more like applications than dashboards.
Another key difference is that reports can be embedded with slicers and filters. Therefore a summary table that shows only monthly sales can be filtered into a category to see how each category performs across different months.
Dashboards may not have this interactivity. We may see monthly and category-wise sales values in different tables or visuals. Users need to look at two different tables and find the differences.
One key difference is dashboards provide a single view where everything is available without manipulating the dashboard. By contrast, Power BI reports can contain multiple pages where we can interact heavily with them.
Reports will be the focus of this course.
4. Choosing between dashboards and reports
Let's clarify when we might build a dashboard versus creating a full report.
Dashboards are intended for rapid analysis of the current situation. Your users need to see the current status of some systems and act upon that information. By contrast, reports are intended for detailed analysis.
Dashboards cater to a wide variety of users, including cases where the dashboard is shown on a television or monitor to track current status. By contrast, with reports, we expect a user to be at a PC with a keyboard, mouse, and large enough screen.
5. Paginated reports
Before we look at the goals for this course, let's not forget about paginated reports.
So what are paginated reports? First, it's important to understand that Power BI is a screen-centric medium, meaning that we use the product on screens. But what about times when we need to print something out?
This is where paginated reports come in. These are "pixel-perfect" reports, meaning that the printed copy of a report looks just like what you see on the screen.
You can create these in the Power BI Report Builder tool, a separate download and installation from Power BI Desktop.
To learn more about paginated reports, we'd recommend taking our course: User Oriented Design in Power BI.
6. The end goal
By the end of this course, we will work towards building a complete report.
We will focus on creating a report with multiple pages and different methods for navigating between sections. We'll then add an extra layer of interactive design, giving users a feel for what they've selected.
Finally, we'll take advantage of the Q&A visual and let users tell their stories.
7. Wake County watchdog data
After completing this course, we recommend taking Report Design in Power BI, which will focus on the overall design, custom themes, and mobile design.
The exercises will use Wake County, North Carolina budget watchdog data, and the videos will use food inspection data.
Wake County, North Carolina is the home of the state's capital, Raleigh. This county has made available a broad array of data, including the budget watchdog dataset we will use.
This dataset tracks every purchase the county makes over the course of a year, covering everything from salaries and benefits to bus tickets and meal reimbursements. The county also plans how much they have to spend as a budget.
The data we will use covers fiscal years 2017 through 2019. The fiscal year for Wake County begins on July 1st of the prior year and ends June 30th, so fiscal year 2019 started on July 1st, 2018 and went through June 30th, 2019.
8. Let's practice!
Now that we've walked through the expectations for this course, let's dive into the data!