2. Installing Power BI Desktop

To follow instructions in this tutorial, you should install Power BI desktop

System Requirements

The following System requirements are needed for successful installation of Power BI desktop.

• Operating System:

Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2

• RAM: At least 1 GB
• Browser: Internet Explorer version 10 or greater
• Microsoft Power BI Desktop is available for 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (x64) platforms. Check your operating system configuration before installing.

Installing Power BI desktop

Please follow the installation steps below to install Power BI desktop:

1. To install Power BI desktop, follow the link below,

https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/downloads/

• You will see several options, select the one show below and hit DOWNLOAD.

• In the next screen, select Open Microsoft Store.

• On the next screen hit Install

It will prompt you to sign in. If you don’t have an account with Microsoft, you can create one.

• Once you are signed in, Microsoft Power BI desktop will download and run on your machine. 

Once the download will complete, it will ask if you want to launch the application. Click on launch.

• The Power BI welcome screen will be displayed. On this screen you will see What’s new on Power BI, blogs and tutorial

If you want to try the Power BI Pro, you can sign in or else just close this welcome screen by hitting X on the right most corner.

  Power BI Welcome screen

Understanding of Power BI Desktop Interface

Power BI desktop provides range of functionalities to connect to data, edit query, create relationships and build reports. The following picture explains the Power BI desktop interface:

Depicted by the numbers, the different options available are as follows,

• 1. The menu or ribbon. The ribbon on Power BI desktop is contextual. We will see different options depending on which view you select from the left – Report, Data and Model. These views are explained in #2. Typically, it has four tabs – Home, Insert, Modeling and Help.
  • Home provides data related options such as connecting to data, edit query, creating new Measure and column. It also gives you the option to publish and share your visualizations.
  • Insert option is contextual and shows up when you have selected a Report View. It provides options for laying out your visualization such as showing gridlines, locking objects etc.  
  • Modeling helps in creating complex data model, New Measure, roles etc..
  • Help provides help related to Power BI such as blogs and community.
• 2. These are 3 views – the first one is the Report view and selected by default when you launch Power BI desktop., second is Data and third is Relationship view. Hover and click on each to see what they display.
  • Report view displays visualization created using the available charts and fields on the right.

Example of a visualization created in Power BI desktop

• Data view, displays the data of the loaded queries/tables. You can select this table from the right under Fields.

• Relationship view displays the relationship between the queries.

• 3. Fields. Display the queries or tables you have loaded in your application. It will display all the available tables and fields.
• 4. Visualizations. Power BI provide a wide range of Charts and Tables to display data. These visualizations show up when Report view (mentioned in 2) is selected from the left. To create a chart, click on a chart, it will show up on the canvas area. To display data on the chart, and select one or more Fields.
• 5. Thisis acanvas area, the charts, tables and other visualizations will be displayed in this section.   
• 6. You can apply one or more filters to your visualizations.
• 7. Power BI allows you to create multipage reports. Reports are made up of one or more visualizations. You can create a new page by clicking on the + sign.