DataDiscoveryWithPowerQuery.pptx

1. 02 | Drilldown on Data Discovery using
Power Query
Matt Masson| Senior Program Manager

2. What You Will Learn
• Introducing Power Query
• Working with Power Query
• Partner Opportunities
• Resources

3. Introducing Power Query
• Power Query is a new add-in for Excel to discover, transform and
consume data
• Allows defining queries which run a sequence of steps to import and
reshape data from one or more data sources
- Query steps are defined by using Power Query Formula Language (informally known as
"M“)
 Simple query step logic does not require writing formulas
 Advanced query step logic can be written to leverage the full power of the language
• Supports a large collection of data source types
• Query results can be loaded into an Excel table or the workbook data
model

4. Business Analysts
• Create queries
• Publish queries
IT Professionals
• Configure data services
• Create and publish
advanced queries
Users
• Search for, and consume,
published queries
Introducing Power Query
PowerQueryAudiences

5. Introducing Power Query
System Requirements
• Supported Operating Systems:
- Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2008
• Office versions:
- Office 2010 SP1
- Office 2013
- Office Professional Plus and Office 365 Professional Plus editions only
• Internet Explorer 9, or greater
• Available for 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (x64) platforms
- The selection must match the architecture of the installed version of Office

6. Introducing Power Query
Power Query Ribbon
• Preserves familiarity with the Excel Data tab
• Includes functionality to:
- Search for published queries and load their data
- Source external or workbook data to create a new query
- Combine queries to create a new query
- Manage workbook and machine settings

7. Working with Power Query
• Online Search
• Creating Queries
• Combining Queries
• Managing Queries
• Advanced Scenarios

8. Working with Power Query
Online Search
• Power Query can be used to preview and import data from a large
collection of public queries, for example:
- Wikipedia tables
- A subset of Windows Azure Marketplace and data.gov
• Filters can be applied to limit the scope of a search:
- My Shared
- Organization
- All
• Filters can further refine searches by name, description, data source, data
range and column name

9. Working with Power Query
Creating Queries
• A query is typically created by sourcing external data
• Data can be sourced from:
- Web (an HTML page)
- File
- Database
- Other sources

10. Working with Power Query
Creating Queries – External Data Sources

11. Working with Power Query
Creating Queries – Query
• Queries are defined in the Query Editor window
• Once a data source is defined, the query can be named, and steps created
• Steps can filter and shape data into a desired result
- Steps can easily be produced by applying column filters, and by using the commands
available from the ribbon, or the query and column context menus
- It is possible to select a step and preview the data at that step
- It is also possible to remove steps – but take care not to remove a step that downstream
steps depend on
- Step formulas can be viewed or edited in the formula bar

12. Working with Power Query
Creating Queries – Query Editor
Import the latest data
(run query steps)

13. Working with Power Query
Creating Queries – Query Editor Context Menus

14. Working with Power Query
Combining Queries
• New queries can be created to:
- Merge two queries (joining on a common column)
- Append two queries (union)

15. Working with Power Query
Managing Queries
• Each query is added as a workbook
connection, and can be refreshed like
standard data connections
• Queries are managed in the Workbook
Queries pane
• Hovering over the query will produce a
preview of the data, and provide commands
• Queries can be edited, duplicated, referenced,
deleted, merged, appended or shared

16. Working with Power Query
Advanced Scenarios
• The Power Query options allow enabling advanced query editing
• When enabled, a query can be edited as a script, and new queries
can be scripted from scratch
• Customized logic can be developed by implementing functionality
not exposed by the context menus, by using looping constructs, and
parameterizing queries to create functions to be invoked by other
queries

17. Working with Power Query
Advanced Scenarios – Example

18. Partner Opportunities
• Replace legacy Excel data retrieval logic with Power Query queries
- Create refreshable queries to source, filter and shape data
- Eliminate the requirement to manually prepare and load data
- Eliminate complex transformational logic in worksheets and macros
- Load data directly into workbook data models
• Leverage new data source types:
- OData data feeds, Hadoop, Facebook, etc.
• Publish libraries of queries for discovery and reuse within the
organization

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