How to Create a Simple Power BI Report

This article will guide you through creating a simple Power BI report using data exported from Primavera P6. Combining the scheduling power of Primavera P6 with the dynamic visualization capabilities of Power BI enables project teams to better analyze and communicate project progress. This step-by-step guide will focus on exporting data, preparing it, and building meaningful visualizations.

Power BI is the next level of data analytics and visualization

Manual Data Preparation

Primavera P6 does not have a direct integration with Power BI. Therefore, data preparation is a necessary step to ensure compatibility. This article assumes that the required project data has been exported from Primavera P6 into an Excel file.

This is the Full Guide if you want to know How to connect Primavera P6 to Power BI.

This is the simple Report we are going to create through this article. 

Step 1: Export Data from Primavera P6

To start, Copy the relevant project data:

1. Open Primavera P6 and navigate to the project you want to report on.
2. Copy the appropriate Columns and specify the data you want to include:
   • Activity IDs
   • Activity Names
   • Start/Finish Dates
   • Budgeted Costs
   • Budgeted Labor units

3. Save the Excel file to your computer.

Note: Ensure the data includes all fields you need for your Power BI report.

Step 2: Prepare the Data

Once the data is copied, prepare it for Power BI:

1. Open the file in Excel
2. Clean the data by removing unnecessary columns and fixing inconsistencies, such as:
   • Standardizing date formats.
   • Ensuring costs are in a single currency.
   • Checking for missing or incorrect data.
3. Add separate sheets for the codes to define the activities, such as:

Make sure that these sheets have a proper name, and all the data should be in the table.

o   Project name if you want to add more than one project

o   Work nature

o   Type of work

o   Level or Location

o   Division of work

4. Assign the codes from the separate sheets to define the activities, as follows:

5. Save the file after assigning the related codes to the project activities

Step 3: Import Data into Power BI

Note: This Excel sheet will be included

1. Open Power BI Desktop and select Get Data from the Home ribbon.
2. Choose the file format (Excel) and locate your prepared file.

3. Load the data into Power BI and confirm that the fields are imported correctly. Power BI will ask you, which tables in your Excel sheet you want to import in this report. We will choose the set of tables in the picture and click “Load”

Power BI will take moments to load your data. The loading time depends on the volume of your data and the processor speed of your PC.

Step 4: Build Your Power BI Report

Now it’s time to create visualizations in Power BI:

After loading your data you have to revise your data and check the relations first, so navigate to the data table view, and have a quick look to make sure that all data has been imported.

You can change the data format and sort or filter your data according to your preferences. We need the date to have another format like “31-12-2024”, Once you click on the column the Column tools appear, From “Format” Change the date format.

After choosing the right format for the dates in the start and finish columns.

From “Model View”, Check the relationship created by Primavera between the tables, Power BI creates smart relationships between data based on the header names and sheet names, and the data formatting. You shouldn’t trust these relations and just take them as a starting point and review every relation carefully as these relations control your dashboard.

Hover over the line between different tables and the line color will turn into green to see which data is connected between these two tables. If this relation is logical and correct, leave it. If you think that this relation is wrong or not logical select it and delete it.

We will go back to report View.

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To add a new visual, From the visualizations menu choose the visual you want to show in your report.

Click on the Table visual and you will see the visual in the report immediately. You can resize the visual by dragging it from the borders, The visual is empty, and we will fill it with data

Once you click on the visual to display it, drag the columns and put in the Columns with this arrangement order

1.       Activity ID

2.       Activity Name

3.       Start

4.       Finish

5.       Budgeted Total Cost

Power BI formats the dates in a hierarchy format by default. You can change it to the common date format as follows.

Click on the small arrow at the data label and then click on Finish to change the date format to its default format that you chose before at the data view.

We will add a new visual Pie Chart

One of the most used visuals in any report is the Pie chart.

Drag the Visual and drop it in the Report and at first the visual will be empty until you fill it with data.

This is the shape of the empty Visual, We want to show the percentage of every type of work and its budgeted cost in a pie chart format, and we are going to add the description in ”Legend” and the Budgeted Total Cost in “Values”. Start with adding the budgeted total cost by dragging and dropping it into the values field.

You can see that the pie chart shows the total budgeted cost of the project. That’s because we have to add the parameters that will divide the pie chart to the legend field.

This is the final shape of the visual, we are going to resize the visual and put it in the right place in the report.

Now we want to make the report more dynamic with filters.

To add filters, click on the slicer visual from the visualization menu.

We will filter the report data using the division of work.

This is the empty Slicer we will drag the division of work and drop it into values.

This is the Slicer we added, we are going to resize the slicer to fit properly in the Report.

But what if we need to change the style of the Slicer?

Click Format your visual to edit how the visual will be shown in the Report.

Format your visual. Choose the Slicer Settings, From Styles, choose Tile.

This is the Tile format of the slicer.

This is the design of the report till now after resizing the Vvisuals in the right place and you can rearrange them accordingly.

Now have a quick overview look of your report and think what other data may be useful if added.

Let’s add a Visual to fit into the free area above the pie chart.

Note: When you insert a new visual, Power BI will fit it automatically in the empty space in your report.

We will add a Card Visual, after adding the card visual you have to add the data you want to see on the card. Here we will drag and drop the budgeted total cost to the field.

Drag the Budgeted Total Cost to the Fields of the Card

This is the final report, and you can filter whatever you want in a dynamic way. 

If you click on Division 07 – THERMAL & MOISTURE

You can find all the activities in this division, the budgeted total cost, and the two types of work that have thermal and moisture.

You can also choose more than one division or more than one filter at the same time as follows.

We filter Division 07 and Division 10, and you can see the sum of the budgeted total cost of the two divisions and which Type of work these two divisions belong.

You can find all the article resources in our POWER BI Course Library.

Conclusion

Creating a Power BI report from Primavera P6 data is a straightforward process that involves exporting, preparing, and visualizing the data. While Primavera P6 lacks direct integration with Power BI, manual preparation ensures compatibility and accurate reporting. By following this guide, project teams can unlock the power of dynamic dashboards to better analyze and communicate project performance.

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