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    • cmcarthur
      Keymaster
      March 10, 2026 at 1:01 pm
      Post count: 107
      #5063
      When people talk about Power BI, they often focus on building polished reports and dashboards meant for a wide audience. But for me, Power BI is just as valuable as a personal data‑exploration tool. Many of the reports I create are never published, and that’s perfectly fine. Power BI is not only great for producing beautiful visuals; it’s also incredibly powerful for digging into data and answering questions quickly.
      Recently, while preparing for a pilot project involving a new application in Archibus, I wanted to identify which users submitted the highest number of maintenance requests, specifically, users outside Facilities Management. I could have sifted through the data directly in Archibus, but exporting the request data into Power BI gave me far more flexibility.
      Using Power BI’s Top N filter, I quickly surfaced the most frequent requestors. From there, it was easy to deselect internal Facilities Management employees, leaving me with a clean list of external requestors sorted by volume. This approach was fast, clear, and required no complicated calculations — just visual filtering and exploration.
      Power BI may be known for dashboards, but it’s also a fantastic tool for analyzing data on your own and discovering insights you might otherwise miss.
      • This topic was modified 6 months, 3 weeks ago by cmcarthur.
    • cmcarthur
      Keymaster
      March 10, 2026 at 2:21 pm
      Post count: 107
      #5065

      Thanks for sharing Colleen.  Any surprises with the results?  I’ve always related to the term ‘data discovery’.

      Perhaps you can share the steps on how you extracted the raw data and turned it into the cool bar chart.

    • cmcarthur
      Keymaster
      March 20, 2026 at 9:31 am
      Post count: 107
      #5075

      Hi Rich, I was surprised how many requests were submitted by our own department! To create the bar visual from a spreadsheet view, I did the following:

      1. Using Archibus Smart Client, I exported the work request(wr) table data into an excel spreadsheet,
      2. Imported the data into Power BI,
      3. Applied a date filter to view data from the last 2 years,
      4. Selected the spreadsheet visual and selected the Requested by and Count of Work request code, then selected the bar chart visual.

      Here’s a 35 second video that illustrates the last few steps in the process. https://ocas.sharepoint.com/:v:/r/sites/co-ocappa/Shared%20Documents/Resources/Recordings/35%20seconds%20of%20Power%20BI.mp4?csf=1&web=1&e=mfG9cW&nav=eyJyZWZlcnJhbEluZm8iOnsicmVmZXJyYWxBcHAiOiJTdHJlYW1XZWJBcHAiLCJyZWZlcnJhbE1vZGUiOiJtaXMiLCJyZWZlcnJhbFZpZXciOiJwb3N0cm9sbC1jb3B5bGluayIsInJlZmVycmFsUGxheWJhY2tTZXNzaW9uSWQiOiI4MjlmYmYyZC1mZjhjLTRmYTMtOTIwYy00M2FmZDczOWJkOGUifX0%3D

      • This reply was modified 6 months, 1 week ago by cmcarthur.
      • This reply was modified 6 months, 1 week ago by cmcarthur.
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