This chapter is for those who are opening the Power BI Desktop application for the first time. You’ll soon realize it’s quite similar to other applications you know, like Microsoft Office Excel and PowerPoint. But there are some features that work a bit differently.
As of the time this book was written, the Power BI Desktop is available for Windows but not for macOS. If you’re using macOS, you can use a virtual machine (VM) for Power BI Desktop on the Mac. The Power BI service is not really a like-for-like. The visualization side may be the same, but the queries, modeling, DAX, etc. are nothing like the same.
You can download the practice dataset and make first steps in Power BI. This dataset is utilized for all the chapters in Part I, allowing you to build the final dashboard.
Power BI Key Elements
Let’s go through the basic elements of the Power BI Desktop interface. When you launch the app, you’ll see a screen that looks like Figure 1-1.
Figure 1-1. Key elements of the Power BI Desktop interface
The key elements of the Power BI interface are as follows:
The ribbon (top menu bar)
Workspace canvas
View mode selector
Visualizations pane for creating and editing visuals
Data pane, where loaded data is displayed
Top Menu Bar
The top part of the program looks like a ribbon, which is a common layout for Microsoft software. ...
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