Power BI Makeover (Column Chart Edition)
Note: If you’re not interested in these emails, hit the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of this email. I don’t want to annoy you (or be annoying).
It’s been a couple months since I last emailed you, so I’m giving you some updates… as always… let me know how you are doing with Power BI and ask me questions. I’ve heard from a bunch of you that you’ve been creating some awesome reports with Power BI in the time since AEA.
Speaking of AEA…
I just received word that AEA wants my Power BI workshop again, so I’ll be holding it in Portland at the conference this October. Fun!
If you have a friend/colleague that may be at the conference and needs to learn Power BI, please let them know to look for the workshop.
Giving Microsoft a Makeover
Last month, I posted the first in what will be a series of Makeover posts on People-Friendly Power BI. I write a lot about how dashboards should be designed and I thought it would be perfect to have some posts that take charts and visuals that Microsoft uses as a “Power BI showcase” and re-design them so they are actually useful.
I started with a Column Chart example (column charts aren’t bad, but Microsoft had used a bad one) and re-designed it THREE ways that each catered to communicating different insights.
The System that keeps Power BI visuals from being great (and how to beat it)
I’ve also posted about WHY Power BI’s default visuals are so bad and user-unfriendly. It turns out there is a “system” that Microsoft uses to dictate what charts should look like. The problem is the system doesn’t think about the real live human beings who need to look at visuals and interpret them quickly and easily.
Here’s the post about the system, because if you know how a system works, it’s easier to beat it:
New Posts on How To Use Power BI
I’m continuing to build posts on How To Use Power BI (which is free) to help everyone (and anyone) get started with Power BI via quick and easy posts about specific topics.
I won’t link them all here (there’s like already 50+) but here are some you may find useful for starting out with:
How to make a Line Chart (or a Bar Chart, or a Pie Chart)
How to format a Line Chart (or a Bar Chart, or a Pie Chart)
An introduction to Power Query Editor
Building Data Relationships
There are a ton more… you can check them all out here.
And you can subscribe and get a weekly email about what’s new:
Take care everyone,
Joe.
Contact Joe | TraversData.com | People-Friendly Power BI | LinkedIn