2 minute read

As you all probably know by now, I’m a big fan of Power BI as it’s really a powerfull solution to analyze and visualize your data. I’m also a Twitter fan, so when I discovered there is a Power BI solution that will track and analyze all of my unstructured Twitter data with a scalable dashboard solution, I just had to try this!

Requirements

You will need the following components:

  • Power BI desktop
  • Azure subscription
  • Power BI Twitter solution

Installation

The installation is pretty straight forward: Go to https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/solution-templates/brand-management-twitter/ and click on Install now

2016-10-14_11-15-35

This brings up the next page where you can see how this solution works and what will be deployed in Azure:

  • A new Azure resource group
  • A Logical application that will connect to Twitter on a pre-defined schedule and launch a twitter search query. The output of this query will then be passed on to the next step
  • Azure Function that will use as input the twitter search query from our logicall application and store that data in a SQL database
  • A SQL database to store all of our twitter data
  • Power BI desktop file to visualize the Twitter data

2016-10-14_11-16-06

On the next page, you need to connect to Azure. If you wish you can click Advanced to change the resource group

2016-10-14_11-19-18

You can either create a new Azure SQL server or use an existing one.

2016-10-14_11-23-30

Click next,  where you will have to provide your Twitter credentials and authorize Azure AppService Logic Apps to connect to twitter:

2016-10-14_11-29-19

Click next. Now you will have to define the search terms that you are interested in. So I’m interested in Azure, OMS and Power Bi related hashtags so I would put in:

#Azure OR #MSPOWERBI OR #MSOMS

You can find more about Twitter search queries here.

2016-10-14_11-32-39

You can enrich the dashboard with the tweet direction for a specific Twitter handle (like your own). So you can track inbound and outbound tweets.

2016-10-14_11-33-59

Lastly, you can verify if all the parameters are correct and click Run.

2016-10-14_11-34-19

The deployment will take about 15 minutes to complete, make sure you don’t close your browser until all the steps are completed.

2016-10-14_11-35-07

Once completed, all you have to do is download the PBIX  file, which will open Power Bi desktop.

2016-10-14_11-44-49

We are almost there, just one last step 😀.

Once Power Bi desktop is open you will have to enter the SQL credentials before you can start exploring your data. Please select Edit Queries in the top ribbon, under the Home tab.

You should see an Edit Credentials message in the yellow bar. Select it and make sure you are in the Database tab (as opposed to the Windows tab).

cred

Enter the credentials to connect to your Azure SQL database and click Connect

2016-10-14_11-49-36

Data should now start coming into your Power BI file! It can take a few minutes for the first tweets to appear.

dashboard1
Pretty awesome he! 🙂

Go to the Azure Portal if you would like to change the polling interval or the Twitter hashtags, and open the Logical app and click the Logical App designer. In here you will be able to change the hash tags if required as shown below

2016-10-14_12-18-49

That’s it!

As you can see it was relatively easy to install and start analyzing my Twitter feeds. I also made a short video of the solution here:

You can also test the dashboard here.

The more time I spend in Power BI, the more I’m impressed by its capabilities!

What kind of data would you like to visualize with Power BI?

Thanks,

Alexandre

 

 

Leave a comment

You may also enjoy