Because our goal is to help you get started with Power BI and get you to work independent ASAP. Our methodology will help you train your Power BI users and setup the governance needed to maintain a healthy reporting solution within weeks.
Power BI software can be downloaded from the Microsoft site for free.
The link to download the software can be found on the following page.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/fundamentals/desktop-get-the-desktop
You can also directly go to the download center page (Download Microsoft Power BI Desktop from Official Microsoft Download Center) select 'English' as language and press on the 'Download' button next to the language.
Then on the next page select the 'PBIDesktopSetup_x64.exe' option and press on the 'Next' button. This will trigger the download of the Power BI desktop file.
The free license is for learning and test purposes only. When you want to start sharing dashboards and reports, then you will need a licensed version.
Microsoft has created a huge Power BI knowledge database that can be found under:
Power BI documentation - Power BI | Microsoft Docs
The Power BI community is an amazing source of information.
The link that can be found right below will help you to effectively acquire the answers you need.
https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Desktop/How-to-Get-Your-Question-Answered-Quickly/td-p/1447523
Check the name of the tables and make sure they follow the naming convention of SAPTABLE_001, SAPTABLE_002, ... .
Do not forget that every data file has at least _001 behind it, even if there is just one file.
Open the file and make sure the field name for the missing column matches the field names we have provided that are required.
In some of our reports and lists we use filters to only display the data that is relevant, according to us.
Please check these filters first.
In very rare cases we have seen that the dynamic selection screen of out SAP download program did not build up adequately.
In all of these cases it was sufficient to go into change mode in table ZKPI_SCEN_FIELDS, to change whatever checkbox, save it,change the checkbox again and save it once more.
We have developed a SAP download program since manually downloading table contents via transaction SE16N in SAP often causes runtime errors. When trying to download big datasets of e.g. sales order items (VBAP) the system will frequently dump because the download takes too long. Our SAP download program does not dump, and additionally the user can specify that he/she wants the downloaded sales order items to be split up in files of maximum 300.000 records e.g. Our SAP download program will then create the files VBAP_001.csv, VBAP_002.csv, … VBAP_098.csv automatically.
The SAP download program was also developed in a way that ensures a consistent dataset. The data that is being downloaded is consistent across the different tables. The user does not have to think about the selections he/she makes for each of the tables in order to keep the data consistent.
Next to downloading the data in files on your laptop, our SAP download program offers the possibility to download the data on your SAP directories (transaction AL11). Power BI can be connected to AL11 to retrieve the data. We prefer the download of files to your laptop, to shared folders or to the SAP directories over the connection of our Power BI solution to your SAP databases. The latter is also possible but might have very negative performance effects when the reports are launched during the operational timeframe.
Our SAP download program allows the user to define the tables and the fields he/she wants to download. If the user extends our data model with additional fields our SAP download program is able to download these additionally fields by defining additional entries in the steering tables. No additional development will thus be needed.
Our SAP download program is both SAP and SAP S/4HANA compliant.
It is running at customers working in both SAP environments.
.csv (comma delimited) and .txt (text) files are plain text files that are easier to import than .xls or .xlsx (Excel) files.
If you save a workbook as a .csv or a .txt file, the only thing that is saved are the values. All formulas, formatting, data validation, macros, etc. will be lost.
Since all these functionalities are oppressed in .csv and .txt files, .csv or .txt files are smaller in size than .xls or .xlsx files, making it more performant to upload .csv or .txt files than .xls or .xlsx files.
.csv and .txt files can’t contain several tab sheets, so it is more clear what data will be uploaded.
Via our download program your SAP data gets downloaded in csv or txt files.
In these downloaded files, the different downloaded fields are separated by the ; sign (default, but can be changed).
When you then also use ; in e.g. text items you download to your reporting solution, then the text will be considered as several fields and the exported SAP files will contain incorrect fields value as the columns will start to shif.
Therefore we advise you to never use the separators in fields exported to and used in your Power BI solutions?
The downloading and uploading of giant datasets always takes time.
In our download program we have foreseen that large tables are split up in files of e.g. 500.000 records each.
In the selection screen we have predefined the selection fields we assume are the most relevant ones, but in the ZKPI_SCEN_FIELDS table you can freely define which other fields you want to take up in the selection screen.
Our SAP download program does not delete the previously downloaded files before it downloads the new ones, since your files will normally only increase in size and/or number.
When your download selection was changed to a more limited dataset, it is advisable to first delete the previously downloaded files on your laptop or on the SAP directories.