Trouble getting past the sales jargon and actually creating charts

[Daviator00]

I have watched countless "getting started" and "how to" videos for Power BI and I fully understand the concept of Power BI and have no trouble either importing data from various sources or even connecting to SQL databases. 

But every time I try to create a simple report I get nowhere. 

First, if Power BI sees a number in a field it automatically tries to auto sum it. This drives me bananas. What if it's a record ID? Also, I would expect that I could simply right click on the field (or click on the three dots) and make changes there.  But no, it doesn't work that way. 

Next, I have a simple table of unique IDs then 4-5 True/False fields for each ID. So a record might appears as the following:

1234   True   False    False   True   False 

I want to create a chart that shows the total count of IDs and the ability to filter to show each of the other fields as a ratio to the total. I have no preference at this point as to the chart type just as long as it's visual and can handle none, some or all of the fields. 

I.e. Let's say we have 100 people, of them X many are male, X many are over 50, X many are retired, etc.  This should be simple but all I get it is a couple of bars the same color or a wedge. 

Are there any tutorials that go beyond the jargon and sales pitchy vernacular to explain the best way to actually use the tool with data other than fields full of numbers?

Thanks!

[stretcharm]

PowerBI has lots and lots of features so it can sometimes be a bit trickly, but you can do most things. It will become easier once you've got used to a few more of the features.

There are lots of great blogs and videos to help. (I've added some links below).

1) auto sum

You can change the summarisation in the modeling tab. Select the column and Set to Don't Summarize or Count.

2) try unpivoting to turn

RecordID  A B C D E

1234   True   False    False   True   False 

into

RecordID Attribute value

1234   A True

1234   B False

etc.

in the query editor (M Language) select the RecordID and then right mouse unpivot other columns

screen and help here.

http://radacad.com/pivot-and-unpivot-with-power-bi

This can make it easier to chart and filter data like this as the columns are now attributes,

Ratios

DAX can allow you to create simple to very advanced calcs so you can create a ratio to meet your needs. Remember that Computed columns work on a row level, but measures are work at different aggreation levels.

Take a look at the Dax section in the guided learning.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/guided-learning/

Here is my collection of powerbi links for tutorials and useful info,

https://wakelet.com/wake/f29b20c2-055f-4faa-9b7a-b79685e51dd8

Hope this helps you get a bit further.

[Daviator00]

Thanks stretcharm! This got me a little further.

What I'm finding is many of tutorials and examples are geared towards sales results and not other types of data analysis, which is a shame. I still see many tutorials that start off with "Power BI has many powerful features..." but then launch into jargon laden very broad overviews.

I also pulled down a trial of Tableau Desktop and found it to be far more intuitive than Power BI. It just makes more sense to me and doesn't bury a lot of the simple changes/features one might use. 

Thanks again.