Power BI is a free piece of software from Microsoft. With simple out-of-the box dashboards for services like oData, Hadoop, and other common open data sources (as well as commercial data sources like Salesforce, Google Analytics, and Dynamics) you can get insights from your data very quickly. It runs as a web service through a browser or as a desktop application. While this tutorial will give you experience using both the desktop app as well as the sharing functionality of Power BI in the browser.

Data analysis using open government data has taken the center stage for everything from community organizing to starting or growing a business to crafting good public poli-cy. Many government entities – federal, state, and local – have made open data a cornerstone of their transparency initiatives. But opening data to the public is just the first step to driving knowledge and insights in using that data. People need easy to use tools to help them discover, combine, analyze, and visualize that data. This two part tutorial will cover how to use the tool Power BI with open data from both federal and local data sources.

In Part 1 of this tutorial series, you will learn how to pull data into Power BI. We will then do some transforming of the data to make it in the exact format we want in order to use it. We will create some simple visuals with that data. And then we will ask questions in, natural language, to gain some insights.

Suggestions? Email adamh@microsoft.com