Microsoft Power BI Data Analyst

Discover data analysis

Would you like to explore the journey of a data analyst and learn how a data analyst tells a story with data? In this module, you explore the different roles in data and learn the different tasks of a data analyst.

• Overview of data analysis
• Roles in data
• Tasks of a data analyst
• Check your knowledge
• Summary

Get started building with Power BI

Power BI is a collection of software services and applications that let you connect to all sorts of data sources and create compelling visuals and reports. You can benefit from receiving those reports, or you can share them with others inside or outside your organization. Learn the basics of Power BI, how its services and applications work together, and how they can be used to create or experience compelling visuals and analytics based on your data.

• Use Power BI
• Building blocks of Power BI
• Tour and use the Power BI service

Get data in Power BI

You'll learn how to retrieve data from a variety of data sources, including Microsoft Excel, relational databases, and NoSQL data stores. You'll also learn how to improve performance while retrieving data.

• Get data from files
• Get data from relational data sources
• Get data from a NoSQL database
• Get data from online services
• Select a storage mode
• Get data from Azure Analysis Services
• Fix performance issues
• Resolve data import errors
• Exercise - Prepare data in Power BI Desktop
• Check your knowledge

Clean, transform, and load data in Power BI

Power Query has an incredible amount of features that are dedicated to helping you clean and prepare your data for analysis. You will learn how to simplify a complicated model, change data types, rename objects, and pivot data. You will also learn how to profile columns so that you know which columns have the valuable data that you’re seeking for deeper analytics.

• Shape the initial data
• Simplify the data structure
• Evaluate and change column data types
• Combine multiple tables into a single table
• Profile data in Power BI
• Use Advanced Editor to modify M code
• Exercise - Load data in Power BI Desktop
• Check your knowledge

Design a data model in Power BI

The process of creating a complicated data model in Power BI is straightforward. If your data is coming in from more than one transactional system, before you know it, you can have dozens of tables that you have to work with. Building a great data model is about simplifying the disarray. A star schema is one way to simplify a data model, and you learn about the terminology and implementation of them in this module. You will also learn about why choosing the correct data granularity is important for performance and usability of your Power BI reports. Finally, you learn about improving performance with your Power BI data models.

• Work with tables
• Create a date table
• Work with dimensions
• Define data granularity
• Work with relationships and cardinality
• Resolve modeling challenges
• Exercise - Model data in Power BI Desktop
• Check your knowledge

Introduction to creating measures using DAX in Power BI

Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) is a programming language that is used throughout Microsoft Power BI for creating calculated columns, measures, and custom tables. It is a collection of functions, operators, and constants that can be used in a formula, or expression, to calculate and return one or more values. You can use DAX to solve a number of calculations and data analysis problems, which can help you create new information from data that is already in your model.

• Introduction to DAX
• Understand context
• Use the Calculate function
• Use relationships effectively
• Create semi-additive measures
• Exercise - Introduction to DAX in Power BI Desktop
• Work with time intelligence
• Exercise - Time intelligence and measures in DAX
• Check your knowledge

Optimize a model for performance in Power BI

Performance optimization, also known as performance tuning, involves making changes to the current state of the data model so that it runs more efficiently. Essentially, when your data model is optimized, it performs better.

• Introduction to performance optimization
• Review performance of measures, relationships, and visuals
• Use variables to improve performance and troubleshooting
• Reduce cardinality
• Optimize DirectQuery models with table level storage
• Create and manage aggregations
• Check your knowledge

Work with Power BI visuals

Learn which Power BI visuals are right for your report to make it interactive and insightful. Format visuals, import custom visuals, or use R and Python for additional analysis in visuals.

• Introduction to work with Power BI visuals
• Add visualization items to reports
• Choose an effective visualization
• Format and configure visualizations
• Import a custom visual
• Add an R or Python visual
• Work with key performance indicators
• Exercise - Design a report in Power BI desktop
• Check your knowledge

Create a data-driven story with Power BI reports

Power BI helps you create vibrant, highly useful reports that form a cohesive, data-driven story. You’ll learn how to use buttons, bookmarks, and other navigation techniques. Additionally, you’ll learn how to integrate Power BI reports with other applications. Power BI visuals can interact with each other, letting the user see exactly which data is appealing to them. You’ll also explore Power BI report themes to create a unified reporting experience across all reports.

• Introduction to create a data-driven story with Power BI reports
• Design a report layout
• Add buttons, bookmarks, and selections
• Design report navigation
• Use basic interactions
• Use advanced interactions and drill through
• Configure conditional formatting
• Apply slicing, filtering, and sorting
• Publish and export reports
• Comment on reports
• Tune report performance
• Optimize reports for mobile use
• Exercise - Enhance Power BI reports with slicers, interaction, and formatting
• Check your knowledge

Create dashboards in Power BI

Microsoft Power BI dashboards are different than Power BI reports. Dashboards allow report consumers to create a single artifact of directed data that is personalized just for them. Dashboards can be composed of pinned visuals that are taken from different reports. Where a Power BI report uses data from a single dataset, a Power BI dashboard can contain visuals from different datasets.

• Introduction to dashboards
• Configure data alerts
• Explore data by asking questions
• Add a dashboard theme
• Pin a live report page to a dashboard
• Configure a real-time dashboard
• Configure data classification
• Set mobile view
• Exercise - Create a Power BI dashboard
• Check your knowledge

Perform analytics in Power BI 

You will learn how to use Power BI to perform data analytical functions, how to identify outliers in your data, how to group data together, and how to bin data for analysis. You will also learn how to perform time series analysis. Finally, you will work with advanced analytic features of Power BI, such as Quick Insights, AI Insights, and the Analyze feature.

• Introduction to analytics
• Explore statistical summary
• Identify outliers with Power BI visuals
• Group and bin data for analysis
• Apply clustering techniques
• Conduct time series analysis
• Use the Analyze feature
• Use advanced analytics custom visuals
• Review Quick insights
• Apply AI Insights
• Check your knowledge

Work with AI visuals in Power BI

This module describes the AI capabilities of Power BI.

• Introduction to working with AI visuals
• Use the Q&A visual
• Find important factors with the Key influencers visual
• Use the Decomposition Tree visual to break down a measure
• Exercise - Analyze data with AI visuals
• Check your knowledge

Create and manage workspaces in Power BI

This module explains how you can share reports and datasets with your users and how to create a deployment strategy that makes sense for you and your organization. Furthermore, you'll learn about data lineage in Microsoft Power BI.

• Distribute a report or dashboard
• Monitor usage and performance
• Recommend a development life cycle strategy
• Troubleshoot data by viewing its lineage
• Configure data protection
• Check your knowledge

Manage datasets in Power BI

• Create dynamic reports with parameters
• Create what-if parameters
• Use a Power BI gateway to connect to on-premises data sources
• Configure a dataset scheduled refresh
• Configure incremental refresh settings
• Manage and promote datasets
• Troubleshoot service connectivity
• Boost performance with query caching (Premium)
• Check your knowledge

Implement row-level security

Row-level security (RLS) allows you to create a single or a set of reports that targets data for a specific user. In this module, you will learn how to implement RLS by using either a static or dynamic method and how Microsoft Power BI simplifies testing RLS in Power BI Desktop and Power BI service.

• Configure row-level security with the static method
• Configure row-level security with the dynamic method
• Check your knowledge