Assignment A03 — Six Files, One Truth

Skills assessed. Append across files · Left Outer merge with selective expansion · unpivoting a crosstab · row-count verification at every stage.

Submit: A03_LastFirst.pbix. Worth 20 points. The grader inspects the loaded tables' state and the report visuals.

Scenario

Half-year review time. Operations wants one clean sales table covering January through June 2026 with product categories attached, and finance's budget grid made joinable for a targets-versus-actuals page later in the course. Everything arrives the way it really arrives: six monthly files and a crosstab.

Requirements

Append the six files sales_export_2026-01.csv through -06.csv into one query named Sales H1. Verify: 26,139 rows. If you see 22,236, you lost January — find it.
Merge products.csv into Sales H1 on ProductID — Left Outer — and expand only the Category column. Verify: still 26,139 rows. More means duplicate keys; fewer means the wrong join kind.
Unpivot budget_crosstab_2026.csv into a query named Targets: Region and Category stay as identity columns ("Unpivot Other Columns"), the freed columns renamed Month and Target, Target typed as a decimal number. Verify: 360 rows.
On the report page, build:
- a card — distinct count of OrderID from Sales H1 (reads 13,470)
- a bar chart — sum of Quantity by Category, sorted descending (Outdoor leads at 9,439 units — the outdoor season is inside this window)

Named contract Query names matter this time — Sales H1 and Targets — because later lessons build on this file and the grader finds tables by name. Row counts are the audit trail: 26,139 → 26,139 → 360. Write them down as you hit them.

Checklist (what the grader checks)

#	Check	Points
1	Query Sales H1 exists with 26,139 rows spanning Jan–Jun 2026	4
2	Category column present on Sales H1; row count still 26,139 (Left Outer, unique keys)	4
3	Only Category expanded from the product merge (no other product columns)	2
4	Query Targets: 360 rows with columns Region, Category, Month, Target	4
5	Target column typed as decimal number	1
6	Card: distinct OrderID = 13,470	2
7	Bar chart: Quantity by Category, descending, Outdoor on top	2
8	File named `A03_LastFirst.pbix`	1

Before you submit

Read your three row counts against the targets: 26,139 / 26,139 / 360. Any drift has a cause — the lesson taught you what each wrong number means.
Check the bar chart's leader. If Furniture is on top, you summed Revenue-ish intuition instead of Quantity — H1's unit leader is Outdoor.
Save, close, reopen, verify. The ritual stands.