Frequently Asked Questions
These questions will be answered below:
Time-Consuming Manual Data Compilation: Combining data from various sources is slow, limiting report creation to once a month.
Inconsistent Data Formats: Data is only available in an unsuitable format, requiring manual conversion before it’s ready for visualization.
Multiple Department-Specific Reports: Creating separate reports for each department consumes time and effort.
Financial Year vs. Calendar Year Discrepancy: Data export limitations make it difficult to align reports with the financial year.
Managing Confidential and Non-Confidential Data: Both confidential and less confidential data need to be handled in separate reports for different recipients.
Slow Report Preparation: Report preparation takes too long, resulting in longer intervals between report deliveries.
Limited Access to Reports on the Go: Reports are not accessible in a mobile-friendly format, hindering on-the-go access.
Lack of Historical Data for Analysis: Unable to track changes in stock levels or other data points over time.
Static Reports with No Interaction: Reports are static, making it difficult to analyze data and compare figures.
Difficult to Focus on Key Data Points: Reports are filled with data, but it’s hard to pinpoint where to focus attention.
Manual ERP Data Checks: Constantly checking the ERP system for additional data takes up too much time.
Too Many Similar Reports: A large number of reports show slightly different key figures, creating redundancy.
Time-Consuming KPI Comparisons: Comparing KPIs across categories is labor-intensive and inefficient.
Your challenge:
In order to compile my business-critical information, data from various sources must be combined. This is a time-consuming, manual process that only allows reports to be created once a month.
Answer:
For existing reports whose data content is known, the improvement is only in the technical processing. The key fields that link the information sources are known and only need to be used to automatically link the data.
It may be necessary to clean up (duplicate) data, but this measure promises rapid success.
Your challenge:
Unfortunately, I can only access my important data in an unsuitable format. I have to manually convert them into the correct form each time before they are suitable for graphical display.
Answer:
Help is available: Changing the format alone is a very simple way to simplify your report creation considerably. By cleverly sequencing the conversion steps, many conversions can be automated.
Your challenge:
I have to create a separate report for each department.
Answer:
The most powerful security feature in Power BI Service is the “Row-level security” (RLS). It enables admins to control what data users can see in reports based on their roles. With RLS, you can apply security filters to data models, ensuring that each user only sees the relevant data that they are authorized to access.
Dynamic RLS: With dynamic RLS, security is defined through a DAX expression that filters data based on user attributes (like department, region, or other criteria). This approach allows for dynamic and personalized access control.
Static RLS: In static RLS, users are manually assigned security roles tied to specific data filters. For example, a user might only have access to data for their department or region.
RLS is especially useful when sharing reports with a large audience, ensuring each user sees only the data relevant to them without exposing sensitive information to unauthorized users.
Your challenge:
I am having problems preparing my data for my financial year because my leading system only exports for the calendar year.
Answer:
The central point of a Power BI report is the date table. Through clever design, many date-based categories can be calculated there and made available for report creation. This includes all the categories for the fiscal year and it is possible to switch between the calendar and fiscal year at the click of a mouse.
Your challenge:
I have confidential and less confidential data in my (monthly) report. I always have to include them in different but similar reports for the different recipients.
Answer:
The most powerful security feature in Power BI Service is the “Row-level security” (RLS). It enables admins to control what data users can see in reports based on their roles. With RLS, you can apply security filters to data models, ensuring that each user only sees the relevant data that they are authorized to access.
Dynamic RLS: With dynamic RLS, security is defined through a DAX expression that filters data based on user attributes (like department, region, or other criteria). This approach allows for dynamic and personalized access control.
Static RLS: In static RLS, users are manually assigned security roles tied to specific data filters. For example, a user might only have access to data for their department or region.
RLS is especially useful when sharing reports with a large audience, ensuring each user sees only the data relevant to them without exposing sensitive information to unauthorized users.
Your challenge:
The preparation of my reports takes so long that it can only be done in longer intervals.
Answer:
Here it is necessary to examine which are the time-consuming steps in the report creation process. Is it the conversion, is it the cleansing or is it other steps in report creation. If the report creator needs to have a great deal of in-depth knowledge, this could be defined through structuring and reference tables, thereby enabling automation.
Your challenge:
I would also like to be able to access my reports on the move. Unfortunately, the format is not suitable for this.
Answer:
1. Power BI Mobile App
The Power BI Mobile App is available for iOS and Android devices. It provides users with access to the full range of reports, dashboards, and datasets that they can view and interact with, just like on the desktop version of Power BI.
Installation: Users can download the app from the App Store (iOS) or Google Play (Android).
Sign-In: After installation, users sign in with their Power BI credentials (usually tied to their organization’s Azure Active Directory) to access their reports and dashboards.
2. Consuming Reports and Dashboards
Interactive Reports: Power BI reports can be fully interactive on mobile devices. Users can tap, filter, drill down, and explore data in the same way as on the desktop version.
Mobile-Optimized Reports: Reports can be specifically designed and optimized for mobile viewing. Power BI allows report creators to adjust layouts, visuals, and design to provide the best user experience on smaller screens.
Live Data: Mobile users can access live, real-time data from Power BI reports. Any updates to the reports or data sources will automatically reflect in the mobile app, ensuring users always have the most up-to-date information.
3. Dashboards and Tiles
Dashboard View: In addition to detailed reports, users can view interactive dashboards on their mobile devices. Dashboards are typically designed with key metrics and KPIs, offering a quick overview of the most important data.
Tiles: Dashboards are made up of individual tiles (visualizations). These tiles are optimized for mobile use, so users can quickly navigate through them by tapping on different visual elements for more details.
4. Push Notifications and Alerts
Data-Driven Alerts: Power BI allows users to set up data-driven alerts on mobile. If a metric or KPI exceeds or falls below a specified threshold, users can receive push notifications on their mobile device.
Real-Time Alerts: These alerts keep users informed about important changes in their data, ensuring they can act quickly and make informed decisions even when they’re on the move.
5. Share and Collaborate on Mobile
Sharing Reports: Users can share reports or dashboards with colleagues directly from the mobile app. Power BI supports collaboration through sharing links to content, making it easy to distribute important insights.
Annotations: Users can add annotations (notes or comments) on mobile reports and share them with team members to provide context or insights on specific data points.
6. Mobile Navigation Features
Search: Mobile users can search for specific reports, datasets, or dashboards directly within the app, making it easy to find the information they need.
Bookmarking: Users can save their favorite or frequently used reports and dashboards as bookmarks for quick access later.
7. Security and Access Control
Authentication: Access to reports and data on mobile devices is protected through Azure Active Directory (AAD), which supports single sign-on (SSO) and multi-factor authentication (MFA), ensuring secure access to corporate data.
Row-Level Security (RLS): Mobile users are subject to the same Row-Level Security (RLS) as desktop users. This means that users will only see the data they are authorized to view, ensuring data privacy and compliance.
8. Offline Access
Offline Mode: Power BI also allows users to access certain reports offline. Users can cache reports and dashboards on their mobile device, allowing them to view critical data even when they don’t have internet connectivity. However, interactions and updates will be limited in offline mode.
Your challenge:
I would also like to have a history for certain data. For example, I would like to be able to see how the stock levels for certain articles or article groups have changed daily in terms of quantity and value.
Answer:
If your system does not provide this data, it can be created in many different ways. For example, scheduled scripted exports are possible, which continuously update and append to a file. The data generated in this way can be read in automatically and processed into timeline data. This enables a chronological display of many key figures.
Your challenge:
My reports are very static. I can read the data but I can’t analyse them. I have to compare different figures in memory. I can’t interact with my report.
Answer:
Power BI Reports erlauben ein Interagieren mit den Darstellungen und Berichtselementen. Durch das Klicken auf Slicer oder die graphischen Darstellungen, passen sich die anderen Berichtsinformationen automatisch an.
Um Kennzahlen in einem passenden Kontext zu analysieren, bietet sich der sogenannte „Decomposition Tree“ an.
A Power BI Decomposition Tree is an interactive visualization that allows users to break down a metric or key performance indicator (KPI) into its contributing factors. It helps in understanding the relationships and causes behind a particular value, making it easy to explore and analyze data hierarchically.
Key Features of the Decomposition Tree:
Hierarchical Exploration: The tree enables users to drill down into data by adding multiple levels of breakdown. For example, you can decompose sales data by region, product, or time period to identify what’s driving changes in the data.
Interactive: Users can click on any node (factor) in the tree to expand or collapse it and explore how different factors impact the selected measure.
Customizable: You can select any metric as the primary value (e.g., sales, profit) and choose how to break it down by different categories or dimensions (e.g., product, region, customer).
Use Cases:
Data Analysis: It’s particularly useful for identifying trends and outliers, like understanding why sales dropped in a specific region or which products contributed the most to revenue growth.
Exploratory Analysis: Users can visually navigate through different dimensions of data to discover insights without needing to write complex queries.
The Decomposition Tree is an intuitive tool for anyone looking to quickly and interactively analyze the components behind a key metric in Power BI.
Your challenge:
My reports contain a lot of figures and it takes me a lot of time to figure out, where to focus on.
Answer:
The Power BI Narrative feature, known as "Narrative Insights", automatically generates written explanations and insights about your data. It uses natural language generation (NLG) to convert complex data points into easy-to-understand text, helping users interpret and communicate findings more effectively.
Key Features:
Automatic Insights: Power BI analyzes your data and generates natural language summaries that explain key trends, changes, or anomalies, such as "Sales in Region X increased by 15% compared to the previous quarter."
Contextual Descriptions: The narrative is dynamic, meaning it changes as the data filters or visuals are updated, providing real-time, relevant explanations.
Customizable: You can add or edit the generated text, tailoring it to fit your specific reporting needs or audience.
Use Cases:
Data Storytelling: Helps create reports that are not just about charts but also offer a textual narrative to describe the data’s story.
Improved Understanding: Aids in understanding complex data by automatically providing context, reducing the need for manual data interpretation.
Narrative Insights in Power BI enhance reports by providing clear, human-readable text alongside visualizations, making it easier for users to understand their data and share insights.
Your challenge:
I would like to have more information on certain data. Unfortunately, I have to check my ERP system manually every time, which takes a lot of time.
Answer:
If the type of data required more frequently is known, this can be provided using drill-down or drill-through functionality. This means that a right-click then branches to the new detail view with the currently selected context and then jumps back to the original point.
It is also possible to display self-defined values in the context as a “mouse-over”.
Your challenge:
I have a lot of different reports that show only slightly different key figures in a very similar way.
Answer:
By defining so-called parameter fields, different KPIs can be displayed in the same visual context and you can also switch between them using corresponding slicers.
Your challenge:
I would like to compare different categories for certain KPIs. However, this seems to be very time-consuming.
Answer:
The Power BI "Small Multiples" feature allows users to display multiple smaller versions of a single chart or visualization, each representing a different subset of the data. This feature helps compare data across multiple categories or dimensions in a compact, easy-to-read format.
Key Features:
Multiple Charts in One: Small multiples create several smaller charts (e.g., bar charts, line charts, or scatter plots) that share the same axes, making it easy to compare different groups or categories side by side.
Dynamic and Interactive: Each small chart updates dynamically when filters are applied, providing a consistent view across categories.
Visual Consistency: The charts are uniform in design, ensuring consistent comparison across categories or time periods.
In summary, the Small Multiples feature in Power BI enables efficient, side-by-side comparisons of data across different categories, providing a clear and concise visual representation for analysis.