Power BI Dashboard - liferesearchapp/life-research-members-portal GitHub Wiki

Overview

Instructions for Users

The Power BI dashboard for LRI was first introduced in Winter 2024. There are 6 pages in total, showing the information of LRI's Members, Organizations, Products, Grants, Supervisions and Events.

On the left of the dashboard is a navigation bar. By simply clicking on the icons, the user will be able to navigate to the page easily.

There is a series of introduction videos created for users to explore the data. To get the link to the videos, please contact Professor Daniel Amyot [email protected].

Dashboard Pages

The screenshots below are from the sandbox database, thus not reflecting the real data.

  • Members
  • Organizations
  • Products
  • Grants
  • Supervisions
  • Events

Share the Dashboard with Others

To share the dashboard with others, please open the dashboard and refer to the section below: Share the Dashboard

Refresh the Dashboard

To get the dashboard with refreshed data, please contact the developer to publish a refreshed version for you with the same file name.

Instructions for Maintainers/Developers

To get yourself on track smoothly, you are very recommended to read the Instructions for users together with the instruction videos before developing.

Get Data from Azure

To get data from Azure, please refer to this section under database: Connect with Power BI

Please develop with the Vercel database first. You can re-connect the dashboard to LRI's working database once your updates get approved.

  • Server: life-app-server.database.windows.net:1433
  • Database (Vercel): lri-database
  • Database (Working): life-database
  • Username: liferesearchapp@life-app-server
  • Password: [for security concerns, please contact [email protected] or [email protected]]

Switch Databases in Power BI File

It is straightforward to switch databases in a Power BI file when the databases share the same schemas and table names.

For example, when you want to change the connection from lri-database to life-database, just go to Data Source Settings -> Change Source..., then change the database name to life-database. Click on OK -> Close to save your changes and refresh the data, you should be all set.

Table Relationships

Please note that not all relationships described in the database schema are active in Power BI. This is due to the limitation of Power BI on handling multiple many-to-many relationships.

To view/modify all active relationships, click on Table View -> Manage Relationships.

New Tables Created in Power BI

To enable several features, we have created three duplicated member tables for the Supervisions page.

Please do not worry about the maintenance of those tables. Although not defined in the database schema, they will update themselves when the "Members" table gets updated. Please see an example of the PowerQuery of those tables below:

Customize Dashboard Theme

To customize the current theme of the dashboard, go to Report View -> View -> Customize Current Theme.

Then, you will be able to change the color plan for the dashboard. The theme colors currently used for the navigation pane are colors # 1, 2 and 6.

Publish the Dashboard

Please make sure you publish the dashboard under a Microsoft account that has a Power BI Pro license.

Click on File -> Publish -> Publish to Power BI to publish the report.

After publishing, click on the first link to access the dashboard online. You can also find the dashboard in your OneDrive portal.

Share the Dashboard

You can share the Dashboard once you completed publishing. Configure the sharing options to make sure you are not granting too many rights to the people you share with.

Refresh the Data

To refresh the data, simply click on Home -> Refresh in your local .pbi file, and Publish the Dashboard again (to replace the previous dashboard) with the same file name.

Future Enhancement

Here are several ideas for potential future enhancement:

  • More Visuals

Currently, there are only 3 visuals on the Organizations page. We can create more visuals to help users to explore more insights.

  • Accommodate the new database schema & more institutes

The schema for the LRI database will be modified very soon to adapt to more institutes, e.g. DLRI. It's important to adjust the filter conditions to ensure only one institute's data is included in its dashboard. Also, it would be great to apply the current dashboard structure for future institutes like DLRI, and customize the dashboard theme according to the institute's marketing handbook.

  • Schedule Refresh

Currently, we have to refresh the data manually. It would be great if we could set up the Schedule Refresh in the Power BI portal, so the dashboard will refresh itself automatically. This would require the maintainer to set up a personal data gateway. For more information, please refer to Microsoft's official documentation: Configure scheduled refresh