Why I used to hate Power BI and how that has made me a better teacher.
(NOTE: This post was originally written in November 2022)
Hey there,
I’m in New Orleans this week at the American Evaluation Society conference. I’m mainly here to teach a Power BI Crash Course workshop to Evaluation professionals who have never used it before. I named it “Paradise by the Dashboard Light”, because I strive to make (and teach) dashboards that are fantastic and easy for users, and also because it’s an awesome name.
I forgot to take a photo of the crowd of 53 people in my workshop (It went very well and I forgot to take a photo – I think everyone had a great time and learned a lot), but here’s a photo I took yesterday when I was snooping around to check out my workshop room.
(they actually moved us to a new room twice the size of this one to fit us all. We would have been on top of one another in this small room shown below.)
All 53 people in this workshop were brand new to Power BI. They were all trying something new.
I LOVE people who are up to trying something new. LOVE them.
And, I’m here for them. Every Single One of them. I am here to make every single one of them not only love what Power BI can do, but give them the knowledge and techniques to make useful and easy dashboards using it.
I used to work in an Evaluation and Research department. Evaluators are awesome. They are the professionals that measure when and if programs, projects, and actions have merit, value, and significance. Basically, they answer the question of “Is this thing worth doing?”
So, they are not technology experts… they may have some data skills, but it’s not the main purpose of their job… they are brand new to Power BI and it has to be easy for them to GET how to use it.
That brings me to the main point of this post:
I used to HATE Power BI
… and that hate has MADE me a BETTER teacher.
When I started using Power BI, I was busy with a thousand different things (as we all are at all stages of our lives) in addition to learning Power BI.
I didn’t have the time or the energy to devote 100% of myself to learning the nitty-gritty technical details and data geekiness that Power BI “experts” know. I needed to make charts and dashboards, and fast.
Learn how to make Power BI People-Friendly. In your email. Once a month. Easy-peasy.
I couldn’t make it work. I’d throw data into Power BI and try to visualize it and I’d get mysterious jargony error messages that had no relation to the english language. If my data was formatted incorrectly did I get an error message that said that? NO. If I put a continuous data variable in a place that should have a categorical one, was there any error message at all? NO.
Things just didn’t work and there was no explanation. I hated it.
Additionally, every online resource by Microsoft (and others), and every how-to YouTube video on Power BI was basically equally inaccessible. Every one of them assumed that their viewers had used Power BI at least a bit and understood the basic nuts and bolts. I hated those too.
I eventually muddled through, and now not only make dashboards that are loved by users, but have started hacking functionality in Power BI that no one else has figured out yet.
BUT, I have not forgotten how much I hated Power BI when I started using it.
It wasn’t totally Power BI’s fault… it was the fault of the documentation and the Power BI lessons out there. They were not accessible. They were not easy. They were not user-friendly.
Power BI doesn’t have to be hard or scary or frustrating or &#!%$*!! It CAN be EASY…
My responsibility as a teacher of people new to Power BI is to make it easy.
Very few people have the time and energy to devote 100% of themselves to learning a new piece of software, and more importantly, they should NOT have to.
When I teach, I teach for my audience. If you’re brand new to Power BI, I make it make sense for you. If you already have some experience with it, I teach you some more advanced things, using what you already know as a starting point.
This is why I get amazing feedback from students when I teach. Feedback like “Joe’s expertise, patience, kindness, and attention were instrumental to my development”.
I get this feedback because I won’t let myself forget how much I hated Power BI when I started using it. That hate has made me better.
So, whether you need to learn Power BI or Excel or some other piece of software (or anything, really), look for the teachers that make it accessible. Look at their testimonials. Talk to their formal students. Make sure they haven’t forgotten what it’s like to be a complete newbie.
If you’re a teacher, do what I do. Think about your students’ perspective. It’s just like thinking about your end-user if you’re creating a dashboard, or one chart, or a report, or a memo, or ANYTHING. Think about your user.
Some teachers think that teaching is about showing how smart they are. It isn’t. It’s about their students.
Remember that, and you can’t go wrong.
Need to know more about how I teach Power BI? How I totally customize Power BI training for every group I teach? Why I get so many glowing testimonials?
Get in touch with me. I love to teach people new things.
You can reply to this email (or comment below if you’re not reading this in your email.)
Email me at joe@traversdata.com
Follow me on Instagram @travers.data
Connect with me on LinkedIn @traversdata
Dashboards: Hot, Desirable, and a Useless Mess?
Hey there!
What do you think of when I say the phrase “data dashboard” to you?
You probably think of either a dashboard you use regularly, or one that you’ve seen that made an impression on you. Either of them (or both) were probably jam-packed full of data and visuals and tables, right? Some pie graphs… some line charts. Tons of stuff.
Data dashboards are great for that, right? Just being able to have a ton of information right there for anyone to sift through and explore. THROW ALL THE DATA IN THERE!!!
This is the big draw of dashboards. This is why everyone wants them.
It’s also the #1 reason why most dashboards are TERRIBLE.
They are a HOT MESS.
Think of a dashboard again… FILLED with data.
Now, imagine that you are trying to find one bit of insight from one of these complicated dashboards. The insight isn’t immediately evident because there’s so much data being shown. You probably have to filter something, and then filter another thing, and then filter yet something else to find a key number or insight you are looking for. Like, how many widgets were sold in a certain area in a certain time period, by a certain salesperson.
It’s a Hot Mess. It may look impressive, but it’s a functional mess. Hard to use, hard to find key bits of data, hard to love.
Your users will end up either ignoring your report completely or if they can’t ignore it, they just hate using it.
Most dashboards try to be a jack of all trades, and become a king or queen of NONE.
They do an okaaaay job at a bunch of things, but you don’t want to make something that someone describes as “okaaaaaaay…” You want to make something that knocks their socks off with awesomeness. Like, knock their socks into the next county with ease and speed.
Make your dashboards easy to read, and easy to use. You don’t *need* everything in one view. A dashboard can have a ton of data coming into it without hitting the viewer over the head with it.
Make that dashboard quick to use and easy to use.
People want quick. People LOVE easy.
Want to know how to make easy and quick dashboards that drive right to the point for your viewers?
Get in touch with me. I love to teach people new things.
You can reply to this email (or comment below if you’re not reading this in your email.)
Email me at joe@traversdata.com
Follow me on Instagram @travers.data
Connect with me on LinkedIn @traversdata
Dealing with a Data Source Dilemma
When to use Direct Query and when to use Import (and scheduled refresh)
Hey Power people,
We’re gonna start off this newsletter real nice and easy and talk about a basic Data Source dilemma. I recently solved some report loading issues on a large report (which was not originally built by me) with a simple data source change and making the data model more efficient.
In fact, most editions of this newsletter will deal with real world challenges in making Power BI easier for people who use it. I’m not talking about those of us who make Power BI reports… I’m talking about the regular folks who may interact with a Power BI report once a day to help them do their jobs.
People-friendly Power BI is all about putting our users first so they LOVE the reports we make for them.
This week (our first edition!), let’s start where our Power BI reports start – the data source for your report.
Specifically, let’s discuss if you should use Direct Query (where your report connects directly to your data source) or Import (where it imports a copy of your data source).
Using Direct Query has advantages – if your data source is constantly updating, your report will also constantly update. That’s awesome, right? Yes. However, having this awesomeness comes with a tradeoff. Having your Power BI report directly connected with your data means it has to interact and do calculations with it any time your users load your report, filter your report, basically do anything with your report.
This takes tiiiiiiime.
The more data your report is connecting directly with (even if you don’t use all the data in your report – a subject for another issue of this newsletter), the more it is going to slooooow down. It has to possibly connect and filter and calculate with tons of columns, and thousands (or millions) of rows of data.
Guess what? Your dashboard users will hate this. They. Will. Hate. It.
A data dashboard that takes 5, 6, 7 seconds (or longer!) to change and update EVERY time something is clicked? Each slicer? Each table row you want to expand?
They. Will. Hate. It, and YOU will hear about it.
What do you do, hotshot? What do you do?
Well, knowing what your users need is your secret weapon here. If your users don’t need up-to-the-second data in your report, you can use the Import option to connect to your data source, and then set up auto-refreshes throughout the day, where your report will check the data and bring in any updates (you can set these up for every hour between 9am-5pm, for instance).
This way, your users still see updated data, and they’ll know that it’ll update every hour (be sure and tell them!) and most importantly, their report will be FAST.
They will LOVE you.
Have a question or a comment? Leave one by clicking this here button.
You can also find me at traversdata.com and @josephtravers on Twitter and on LinkedIn.
Have a great one. Talk to you soon!
Best,
Joe.
Travers Data
Data communicated well is used well.
traversdata.com
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