5: Enhancing the experience in the Power BI Service
5.1 Publish to my workspace
5: Enhancing the experience in the Power BI Service
5.1 Publish to my workspace - Video Tutorials & Practice Problems
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Video transcript
<v Narrator>In this sub lesson,</v> we're gonna review the Power BI high level architecture. We'll talk about what my workspace is and then we're gonna demo publishing to my workspace. Okay, so first the Power BI high level architecture. So one of the first things we did on the Power BI desktop, was to first connect into sources. So we pulled some data from Excel spreadsheets and text files that were on our machine. They were considered on premise. And then we actually pulled some data from a website which contained population data. So into Power BI, we both ingested cloud sources and on premise data sources. Next, what we did from there was we took that data, cleansed it up and put it into a data model. We then enhanced that data model so that we can start building reporting on top of that data. And then in the previous lesson, we took all that data and built a series of visualizations and told a story on the subject matter that we want to tell story on. So what we do next, is once all that is complete on premise, we actually want to go ahead and share it. So we will then publish that work into the Power BI Service so that we can view that information through a web browser. Once it's published in the Power BI Service, almost instantaneously it's available for the Power BI mobile device as well if you have the app installed on your phone. Next, what we want to talk about here is a piece that we're actually not building in this particular course here, because it's beyond the scope of it is the data gateway. And what the data gateway allows you to do is build a connection between your on-premise sources and the Power BI Service so that the Power BI Service can retrieve data on whatever schedule basis you set up in the Power BI Service and keep the information fresh. So if you choose to operate a refresh schedule of once a day, maybe first thing in the morning you can have the Power BI Service connect across the gateway downtown premise services and bring that data in, cleanse it and put it into the actual data model so that you have the next days refresh data. With cloud sources, you don't need to get that data gateway sub it just makes that connection into the source in cloud. And finally, for completeness sake we can actually take your sources if you have the Power BI report server ingest into the power BI report server using the report server desktop build visualizations and publish that work within the Power BI report server and everything stays on premise. Okay. So next, what we're going to do here is we're actually going to go through the motions of showing what the publish process looks like. So keep in mind, we've been working with a SalesDataMart.pbix, and it a dataset and a report contained within the PBIX file. And the data set and report are both going to get the name of the PBIX file. So in this case they're both going to be called SalesDataMart. So from the power BI desktop, which we're going to do here at the end of this sub lesson here is we're going to invoke the publish process. And we're going to connect into my workspace and the data set and report are going to work their way into my workspace. We will then build a dashboard. We're going to build a second report so we can put its visualizations on the dashboard. And just for completeness sake, we're going to show a additional data set being added into the Power BI Service called finance, where you could build a report on top of that data set and then take visualizations from that report and publish them into a dashboard. Okay. So I just want to explain this diagram just a little further here. So the significance of the dashboard on the right hand side is the topic at hand here. So keeping in mind, one of the rules inside of Power BI is that a report can pull data from one and only one dataset. So back in the Power BI desktop we had a report which had multiple pages on it and it all pulled from the SalesDataMart data set. Now you didn't have to indicate what it was pulling from. All of it was contained within the PBIX file. So the report was able just to pull from the data set you had contained within. In the Power BI Service once we actually get our work in there we can actually build a second report on top of the dataset and then we can actually bring additional datasets into our Power BI Service and build additional reports. And the reason this becomes important is occasionally or often we want to have dashboards for our executive teams that have data that comes across multiple different subject areas. So we may have a dashboard that contains some information from sales, finance, operations, safety, HR and the list goes on. And the only way to actually pull visualizations onto a single page across those multiple subject areas is to actually surface them through a dashboard 'cause keeping in mind the rule of a report being able to pull from one and only one data set. So a lot really depends on how you construct your dataset and how wide the topics are within an individual dataset. But for now let's keep this illustration nice and simple and have two data sets that have multiple reports and then we use the dashboard to surface that information in one place. Okay. So next what we're going to do here is actually get ourselves into the Power BI desktop and set ourselves up for our publish. So per normal I'm going to go into the file that supports this particular sub lesson. So L0501* I'm just going to double click on that and wait a minute where the desktop actually opens. Okay. So we have our desktop file open. So let's just quickly take a look at the desktop file here and compare it to what we're just showing in the PowerPoint presentation. So at the very bottom of the page here we can see that we have two pages in this one reports we have an overview page and a product information page. So our single report which is called SalesDataMart - L05_01* in this particular instance contains two pages. Over here on the right hand side in the fields, this is the actual dataset. So once we actually take this work and publish in Power BI Service this will become the data set for us. Okay. So the next area that we're going to focus in on here is from the home tab there is a group here called share and this is where we're actually not going to invoke the published process from the Power BI desktop into the Power BI Service. The first thing we're going to have to do here though is actually get signed in. So at the very top of the screen I'm already signed in, but if you're not you're going to see a link here that says, sign in. And the reason we need to do that is we need to tell Power BI what tenant we're going to connect into. And then once we get connected into a tenant and for example, my tenant is called iteration insights.com. So that's where my Microsoft office 365 is surfaced. So I will go ahead and publish my work into my individual tenant. And then the next question that is going to be asked is what workspace do you actually want to publish those work into? Now in this particular course here, we're going to publish into what is called my workspace. So every individual that has Power BI access has an account or a workspace called my workspace. So it's your personal sandbox for putting work in so that you can build things up and try things out on your own and then ultimately go ahead and share things if you should choose. And that's what we're going to work on through the rest of this particular lesson. Okay. So what I'm going to show you here next is, I'm just going to get my Power BI Service account open. So I'm going to open up a web browser and log into powerbi.com and get myself to my homepage. So I'm just going to go ahead and get that's set up. Okay. So on the screen, we can see that I am logged into my iteration insights tenant, and I am on my homepage. So what we're going to do here is this area on the right hand side, right here this is what's referred to as the navigation pane. So if I just highlight all that here this is the navigation pane. And if we take a look a little further down the navigation pane, so down here we're going to see this item here called workspaces. So I'll just go ahead and click on that. These are all the workspaces in which I can actually publish work into. The one we're going to focus in on here is the one called my workspace at the top. Now, if you have notice on the navigation pane I'm actually already in my workspace but I'm just going to go ahead and click that. Okay. So we can see that my workspace is actually empty but just to show you down the left-hand side here is if I look in my workspace there's a number of different places where items can be put. So we can see we've got a section called dashboards, reports, workbooks, and datasets. So when we actually go through and do this published process momentarily we're going to end up with a data set in here called SalesDataMart. And we are also then going to end up with a report called SalesDataMart as well. At this point in time, we're going to have no dashboards because we're not going to have actually have to build that in the Power BI Service itself. Okay. So what I'm going to do next here is in the GitHub files that we have provided, I actually now have a PBIX phone here that is just called SalesDataMart. So I want to get rid of the lesson and sub-lesson and extensions off this file because this rate here is going to end up turning into the report name and the dataset name. So what we're going to do here now is actually get back down into the Power BI desktop. So I'm just going to get my desktop, open here again and I'm actually going to close the one off that we started up with. So I'm going to close that then I'm going to double click on the SalesDataMart one and get it open and we'll wait a moment. Okay. So now I have the PBF file open and you're gonna notice it's exactly the same content. So all I did was just rename the file to SalesDataMart and just got rid of that extension we had on the end of it just to keep it nice and clean once we got into the actual Power BI Service. Okay. So what we're going to do here once again you're going to need to get logged in but the published process is actually going to force you to do this anyhow. So what I'm going to do here is click the publish button which we showed you momentarily. And what's going to happen here now is Power BI is going out single (indistinct) connected into this particular tenant. What workspaces can I actually publish work into? Or what do you actually have permissions to? So after you've gone through the login process and you've saved your work as it'll actually ask you to save your work as well then what we're going to do is actually choose a workspace. So I'm going to go in here and type my workspace. So choose the, my workspace one. What I'm going to do here next is click select. And now what is happening is the publish process is being invoked. So this PBIX file is being broken apart into a data set and a report and it's actually being pushed into the Power BI Service. Okay. So there's a couple of different ways that I can get into my work in the service now. I can actually click this link right here called Open SalesDataMark.pbix. That's should go ahead and just do that. So I'm going to click that and we're going to notice that a new browser window is gonna pop up. And now I'm working directly into the actual Power BI Service and into my workspace where the work was published. Okay. So if we take a look on the right, oh sorry, the left-hand side on the navigation pane I can see that I'm in my workspace. If I just click this little expand button here, now, what we're going to see is we have a report called SalesDataMart which got its name from the PBIX file. And if I scroll down a little further we can also see the SalesDataMart here. So that's one way to see the contents of the workspace. I find a nicer way to see it. If you just want to see what's in it is click on the, my workspace here go to the very top of this and click my workspace. And you're going to get a little nicer listing of what is actually in my workspace. So as we start building objects up they're going to show up in here and we can see that I've got right now, a report and a dataset. Each of them is called SalesDataMart. Once again, borrowing from that PBIX files name. And then when the data was last refreshed I don't have any refresh cycles set up on this yet. So there is no any extra refresh but this is a summary of what is in my workspace. Okay. So now that we actually have our work in the Power BI Service we will end this particular sub lesson and then move into the next one which is going to give us a tour of the Power BI Service.