In the first part of this series, I introduced you to the new and awesome Office 365 Power BI. You didn’t read it? Shame on you! Click here.
In this post I want to focus on working with Excel sheets in the browser. This option is available from the home menu:
Let’s skip the Olympics sample, I covered it in the previous post, and go for the Retail example:
The sales results, per category, are displayed. The right side of the screen contains an easy to use filter menu. Let’s narrow the results to the year 2010:
Immediately the 2010 sales results are displayed, cool! Let’s say I want to see more information about beer sales. The Excel sheet has a tab called Sales by Item:
I want to see the sales on Domestic beers, between 2010 and 2012 on Saturdays. How do I do this? Again, this is really easy by using the filter:
We are now able to see the result:
Isn’t this amazing? I am so excited about Power BI because its so easy to use! Every end-user, even the not very technical ones, can use the filters (or the ask feature) to find the information they are looking for. Before I finish this post, I am curious about one more scenario:
“What is the most popular mixed drink from the last three years sold on the weekend?”
To find the answer to this question literally takes me 30 seconds:
Long Island – Free Pour is the clear winner with 2764 items. That’s not to bad at all but wait a minute, who is our best bartender? Selling the most Long Island drinks? Under Item Name I select Long Island – Free Pour and the clear winner is Jerome:
Power BI enables your employees to quickly analyze data, resulting in positive business decisions and strategies to let your business strive. Next week I will release the final post where I will show you the Windows 8 Power BI app.
I also created a post with helpful Office 365 resources. Just click here.