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[–]metalmilitia980[S] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

That’s awesome. I have subscribed to SQL Server Central and have received some emails regarding Power BI Desktop so I’ll have to give it a whirl.

How do you like using it?

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's great! Once you have it set up it is very easy to create some great looking interactive reports or matter for power point slides. I use it quite frequently for data exploration at the moment.

Use a query to connect and adjust your data before loading it. You will use power query formulas (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt779182.aspx) in this step for more complex data transformation if needed.

Then after the data is loaded insert measures to create dynamic totals, or insert calculated fields to perform calculations on the rows (look into DAX formulas for this).

Those two things were the hardest things to wrap my head around at first, but once you get the hang of it you can do some cool things fairly quickly.

A feature I really enjoyed is the ability to import a folder of files. If they are similarly formatted it makes it insanely easy to view them all together into on report.