T-SQL Tuesday #75 Invitation: Jump into Power BI!

Hello everyone and welcome to this month’s T-SQL Tuesday. This month’s topic is all about Power BI! If you’re reading this and thinking “crap, I’m not a BI person!”, don’t you fret. My intention is to make folks who normally don’t use BI on a day to day basis try their hand at creating cool new visualizations and reports with Power BI and seeing how the other side lives. Maybe it can spark some ideas on how you can make use of it in your operational day-to-day. For the BI folks, let’s see your creative side! What cool things can you show us with Power BI?

Your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to create and publish your very own Power BI report! Great news, one of the latest features of Power BI to come out is the ability to publish your report to the web so when you create and publish your report, embed it in your T-SQL Tuesday post! Here’s a couple of great examples of this feature in action:

• Elizabeth Glazer Pediatric AIDS Foundation
• Civic Innovation Project
• Jen Underwood: Public Data Storytelling

How Do I Get Started?

If you’ve never used Power BI before it’s REALLY easy to get started. Simply head over to PowerBI.com and click on the ‘Get Started Free’ button. Download and install Power BI Desktop tool. It’s a free download and this is what you’ll use as your authoring tool. Click ‘Sign Up’ button. You’ll need to sign in with an organizational account (e.g. you can’t use personal email such as @gmail,com @live.com, @Hotmail.com, etc.). If you have a custom domain (e.g. SQLChicken.com), you can use your custom domain email address, otherwise you’ll have to use an organization/work email.

Once you’re up an running, check out the Power BI documentation page to help you get started. For this post, feel free to connect and use any data set you want that can be shared without issue.  For example don’t publish your company’s data, customer data, etc. There’s a ton of data out there to use that is safe. In fact, the tutorial from the above link lets you download a sample CSV file if you can’t find a proper dataset. Also, Jen Underwood (Blog|@idigdata) actually posted a great list of public data sources you can take advantage of. Want more great Power BI information? Make sure to check out Adam Saxton’s (Blog | @guyinacube) Guy in a Cube YouTube channel and subscribe for awesome bi-weekly, content.

Want some inspiration on what you can do? Check out the Power BI Best Report contest that’s currently going on. Be sure to vote for your favorite report before voting closes on February 14th, 2016.

What is T-SQL Tuesday?

T-SQL Tuesday is a monthly blog party hosted by a different blogger each month. This blog party was founded by Adam Machanic (blog|@AdamMachanic). You can take part by posting your own participating post that fits the topic of the month and follows the requirements below. Additionally, if you are interested in hosting a future T-SQL Tuesday, contact Adam Machanic.

How to Participate

• Your post must be published between 00:00 GMT Tuesday, February 16^h, 2016, and 00:00 GMT Wednesday February 17^th, 2016.
• Your post must contain the T-SQL Tuesday logo from above and the image should link back to this blog post.
• Don’t rely on trackbacks. Please link to your post in the comments section below so everyone can see your work.
• Optional: Tweet about your post using the hash tag #TSQL2sDay.

I look forward to seeing everyone’s reports!