Overview
Provide business insights at the right time to the right people with Power BI, an interactive data visualisation software product developed by Microsoft with a primary focus on business intelligence. Power BI is part of the Microsoft Power Platform and comprises a collection of software services, apps, and connectors that work together to turn your data into coherent, visually immersive, and interactive insights.
With Power BI Desktop, you will learn how to connect and query data from different sources. Then, using the Power Query Editor, you will clean, shape, and transform this data to produce impactful visuals in reports. You will then explore how reports are published to the Power BI service where your team can access them through intuitive dashboards.
This introductory course is perfect for users who are looking to make a bigger impact with the way they report on data through visualisations. The course will be of particular benefit to team leaders, management at all levels, or anyone who needs to commission the production of reports or dashboards.
Please note that this course does not cover PowerBI Pro, PowerBI accessed via Microsoft 365 or SharePoint Services.
By actively participating in this course, you will learn about the following:
Identify Power BI Desktop concepts and features.
Use data sources that are compatible with Power BI Desktop.
Connect to and manipulate data using the Power Query Editor.
Apply common query tasks to shape data in Power BI Desktop.
Explore data visualisations.
Create and publish reports to the Power BI service.
We recommend that delegates have existing experience with Excel or Databases and should understand basic data concepts. Delegates should also know how to create and format chart outputs and should have a basic understanding of Functions (ideally Aggregate Functions).
Software Requirements for Virtual Classroom
If you are attending our Virtual Classroom training, you will need a laptop or PC with a working microphone and two screens. A webcam is also recommended for the best experience! You will also need to have both Power BI Desktop and Power BI Service (part of Microsoft 365 Apps), available on your device.
Power BI Service is what Microsoft call the version of Power BI found in their M365 subscription list of apps. It won’t be there as a default and is something your Microsoft 365 administrator would have to enable. It is free of charge and literally just a tick box. They will need access to this as this is where reports are published to and the only place where Dashboards can be created. Plus, all of the sharing and collaboration options are to be found here.
We strongly recommend that delegates also check that their PC meets the Minimum Requirements as outlined on the Microsoft Website and ensure that they are running the latest version of the software so that they can successfully access all student files.
This course is not suitable for MAC users.
Getting Started with Power BI
Concepts and overview
Introduction to main features
Connect to a Data Source
Data sources Power BI will connect to
Methods of connecting to data
Get data and query using Power Query Editor
Shape, clean and transform data
Combining data sources
Working with Relationship View
Understanding relationships
Create using AutoDetect
Create relationships manually
Cross Filter
Join Types
Visualisations
What is available?
Create a quick visualisation
Table and matrix visualisation
Conditional formatting
KPI visualisation
Slicers
Drill visualisation to see underlying data
Clustering
GEO-data and Maps
Publishing
Using Power BI Service
Pin visuals to Dashboards
Export visuals to other platforms
Get insights