Business Analytics and Visualization

-
Image
It has been a while since I posted a blog article.  Things have been busy and unfortunately my blog has suffered.  Not only have I been busy working in the Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform arena, but I have also been teaching at a local university.  This past semester I taught Business Analytics and Visualization.  It was a fun course to teach and I was able to introduce business students to the power of analytics using both Power BI and Tableau.  The text for the course was Introduction to Business Analytics, 1 st Edition by Vernon Richardson & Marci Watson.  The text did a great job of covering the types of analytics and the mindset and approach you should follow as a business analyst.  I recently used some of this material in a presentation at an FPnA conference, and it was well received, so I thought I would put the thoughts together here for everyone to read. In today's data-driven world, the ability to transform raw data into meanin...
Post a Comment

Covid Dashboard - Article 6 - Creating a group for a slicer

-
I will continue to build on my earlier posts about my COVID19 Dashboard.  In this series, I have written a few different blog articles describing not only how I built it, but some things I learned in the process.
The current list of topics include:
Today I am going to look at a question one person asked me.  When they were using the dashboard, they wanted to be able to filter the global results by countries of similar size.

After thinking about this for a while, I decided on the following approach.  There are probably different approaches that can be used, and that is one of the things I really like about Power BI.  In this case, I tried to take a very simple approach.

Step 1 - I had to decide how I wanted to group the countries.  

I took a look at the data, and decided it would be best to group the countries together in five groups.
  • > 100 million
  • 50 - 100 million
  • 10 - 50 million
  • 1 - 10 million
  • < 1 million
Step 2 - Add a new column to the country population table.

I decided to use a conditional column to add the group for each country in the population table.

Population Group = if('Country Population'[Population] > 100000000,"> 100 Million",
if('Country Population'[Population] > 50000000,"50 - 100 Million",
if('Country Population'[Population] > 10000000,"10 - 50 Million",
if('Country Population'[Population] > 1000000, "1 - 10 Million", "< 1 Million"))))

This is simply a combined if - then - else formula.  I started with the largest option first and worked down to the smallest option.

Step 3 - Add a slicer to the report

Once this column was created, I simply added it to the report as a slicer.



You will notice the drop down list for the slicer is not in the correct order.  I would like to have the largest group "> 100 Million" listed last.  This is because the field is sorted alphabetically and numerically, the symbols come before the numbers.

Step 4 - Create a sorting column

In order to fix the sorting of the slicer, I created another column where I replaced the text names of the groups with numbers.


Population Group # = if('Country Population'[Population] > 100000000,"5",
if('Country Population'[Population] > 50000000,"4",
if('Country Population'[Population] > 10000000,"3",
if('Country Population'[Population] > 1000000, "2", "1"))))

I was able to use the Population Group # as the "Sort by column" for the Population Group.  Sort by column can be found on the Column tools menu on the ribbon bar.










With these two columns, I was able to quickly provide the additional information the user was looking for in a very easy, straightforward approach.

If you have any questions about my Covid 19 dashboard or about other Power BI topics, please do not hesitate to leave a comment. 



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

RPA with Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain

-
Image
Are you looking for ways to automate some of your routine accounting functions, like reconciling sub ledgers to the general ledger?   Microsoft has recently created some examples using Power Automate Desktop (think of it like Task Recording on steroids). It can not only automate steps through Dynamics 365, but it can also automate Excel and other applications. In one example from Microsoft they automate the AR to GL reconciliation: Automatic running of the AR aging and the customer/ledger reconciliation reports. Power Automate then extracts data from both reports in Excel and compares the balances. Power Automate then posts a Team message letting you know the subledger is in balance. Power Automate saves the reports with the date in the file name, so there is backup. Microsoft Directions & Example   I working with the example, I needed to make a couple of adjustments to the sample flow that was provided but I was able to get it to work. Here is a video of the flow r...
Read more

Using Full Page Apps in Dynamics 365 Finance

-
Image
Have you ever wanted to put a website or a model-driven Power App in one of your existing Dynamics 365 Finance workspaces or forms?  You might already know you can create a new workspace with a website, but did you know you can add the website to an existing workspace? Here is an example of the Vendor invoice entry workspace with the Invoice Capture Power App embedded. Prior to using this feature, you need to turn on "Saved views support for workspaces" in feature management. Once this feature is enabled you can follow the following steps to add the Invoice Capture app or any model-driven Power App or website to an existing workspace. Open the vendor invoice entry workspace From Options - choose Personalize this page From personalize menu - select the 3 dots - and then Add an app Once that is selected (the screen goes gray) - click on the section header where you want to add the app (in my example I put it in Links) On the Add an app menu - choose Website Give it a name (my e...
Read more

Copilot Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply

-
Image
Microsoft has recently released two Copilot applications to work with Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain. These solutions are still in preview, so it should only be uses in sandbox environments to evaluate and learn how they will work with your organization. Prior to installing it is important to make sure your environment meets the requirements. Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain requires the latest hotfix on Dynamics 365 Finance version 10.0.34 (10.0.1591.107) and version 10.0.35 (10.0.1627.70) and later. In addition, the solutions rely on the Power Platform and Dataverse, so it is important to have the environments connected and user security set appropriately. For more details on the prerequisites and the installation instructions you can follow the Microsoft installation documents. Copilot in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance Copilot in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Let's look at what these two copilots provide to users Copilot in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance C...
Read more