How does Power BI Desktop work?

Power BI Desktop, as a free BI tool, is extremely accessible for every user. Still, it's understandable that as a beginning user you don't immediately know where to start. That's why in this blog we explain how Power BI Desktop works and give you a number of handy tips and links.

The difference between Power BI Desktop and Power BI service

Before we explain how to get started with Power BI Desktop, it's good to first identify the differences between Power BI Desktop and Power BI service. As you can see in the image below, the two services have a number of similarities but also a number of differences.

The biggest difference between the two is that Power BI Desktop is a full program that you install on your computer. Power BI service, on the other hand, is a cloud-based service that you open from your browser. In addition, Power BI Desktop has a Query editor, and Power BI service does not, which means you can connect to more data sources with Power BI Desktop than with Power BI service. You can also then model this data with Power BI Desktop, whereas you cannot with Power BI service. Power BI Desktop is therefore often used to create the reports so that they can subsequently be distributed and shared via Power BI service. That said, it is possible to edit reports in both Power BI Desktop and Power BI service.

For more information about the differences between Power BI Desktop and Power BI Service, check out the Microsoft page.

#1 Getting started with Power BI Desktop

When you start Power BI Desktop for the first time, a welcome screen opens first. From this window it's possible to directly get your data, view recent sources, open recent reports, open other reports, and select other connections.

Once Power BI Desktop has started, you'll see the screen below. Here, on the left, you can choose from three views: Report, Data, and Relationships. The current view is indicated by a yellow bar on the left. By default, this view is always set to Report. In addition, Power BI also includes the Power Query editor, which opens in a separate window. This lets you create queries and transform data.

#2 Connecting to data

Now that you've installed Power BI Desktop, you can start connecting to your data. To get an overview of all the data sources available within Power BI Desktop, go to Get Data > More via the Home tab in Power BI Desktop. In the Get Data window, you can then browse through all the data sources. Below, we show you step by step how to connect to various web data sources.

Once you've followed these steps, Power BI's query functionality gets to work and connects to the web resource. Then, in the Navigator window, it shows exactly what was found on the web page. In this case, that's a table called 'Ranking of best and worst states or retirement' and a document. The table is the most interesting here, so you select it to see a preview. You can now choose Load to load the table, or Transform Data to make changes to the table before loading it.

When you then select Transform Data, the Power Query editor starts, showing you a representative view of the table. On the right is the Query Settings pane.

#3 Creating reports

Once you're done loading your data, it's time to turn it into a report. You do this via the Report view. From this window you can create visualizations and reports. The Report view contains six main areas:

1. The ribbon at the top, showing general tasks related to reports and visualizations
2. The canvas area in the middle, where you create and arrange the visualizations
3. The Pages tab at the bottom, where you can select or add report pages
4. The Filters pane, where you can filter data visualizations
5. The Visualizations pane, where you can add, change, or adjust visualizations. You can also apply drillthrough from this window
6. The Fields pane, which shows the fields available in your queries. You can drag these fields onto the canvas, into the Filters pane, or into the Visualizations pane to create or change visualizations.

If you want to expand (or collapse) the Filters, Visualizations, and Fields panes, you can do so by selecting the arrows at the top of the panes.

If you want to quickly and easily create a visualization, select any field in the field list and drag it from the Fields list onto the canvas. Power BI then automatically recognizes the data and adds a matching visual. In the case of the image below, this concerned geolocation data. In the Visualizations pane, you can view the information about the visualization and also change it there. Below, we go through the various options with you.

1. Here you see the various visualizations available; clicking a different icon changes the visualization. You can also create a new visualization from this window by selecting an icon without an existing visualization already selected.
2. With the Fields option in the Visualization pane, you can drag data fields onto Legend and other field wells in the pane
3. With the Format option, you can apply formatting and other controls to the visualizations

#4 Sharing your work

Once you're done creating your first Power BI Desktop report, you'll of course want to share it with your colleagues. There are a number of ways to do this. First of all, you can share the .pbix file with your colleagues in any way you like. You can upload the .pbix file to the Power BI service, or you can publish it directly from Power BI Desktop to the Power BI service. To publish or upload your reports to the Power BI service, you do need a Power BI account.

When you want to publish from Power BI Desktop to the Power BI service, select Publish on the Home tab of the ribbon.

There's a chance you'll now be asked to log in with your Power BI account or to select the destination. Once publishing is successful, you'll see the screen below. From this screen you can also go directly to your report by clicking the link. You can also find your work on the Power BI service (app.powerbi.com) under My workspace > Reports.

Want to learn more about Power BI?

In this blog, we've explained the basics of Power BI Desktop. Want to experience it in practice? Then sign up for our free Power BI Basics training for end users. In 2.5 hours, one of our trainers will explain the basics of Power BI to you. If you want to learn more about the technical side, we also have a Power BI Tutorial available. In it, you'll discover step by step how to create a Power BI report yourself.

Power BI TutorialPower BI Basics training

The content of this blog was inspired by a Microsoft web page; for more information visit the page.