Overview
Learn how to visualise complex data with high performance, secure professional reports and dashboards.
This course builds on our Creating Power BI Reports (Intermediate) course. By the end of this course, attendees will have encountered a range of advanced Power BI features.
Along the way, they’ll face challenging real-world datasets, with a host of issues to resolve. They’ll build complex data models and investigate the performance impacts of their design choices. There’ll be data quality issues to identify and overcome, and statistical analysis to perform using DAX.
Attendees will take security into consideration and will design reports that respond differently to different users. They’ll use advanced Power BI and Microsoft Fabric features and will build reports that harness the power of Azure.
What you’ll need
- Laptop and headphones and microphone
- Microsoft Office (Word, PowerPoint, Excel)
- Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge
- Visual Studio Code
- Power BI Desktop; Power BI Pro or Premium Per User (PPU) licence
- Contributor access to a Fabric-capacity workspace (or active Fabric trial)
Learning outcomes
Attendees will be able to:
- Overcome a range of data quality issues
- Design a Data Model with good performance in mind
- Build advanced queries that utilise “M”
- Use a wide range of DAX functions
- Analyse and resolve performance issues in DAX queries
- Implement Row and Object level security
- Utilise advanced features from the cloud such as DataFlows and Machine Learning
- Perform detailed analysis of complex datasets and present their findings
Course topics
GENERAL
- Understanding and Analysing Data for Business Intelligence
- Overview of Power BI Report Server (on-premises)
- An introduction to Machine Learning for Power BI
- Understanding how Power BI and Azure intersect
DATA & MODEL LAYERS
- Designing Complex Data Models in Power BI
- Understanding common database schemas, e.g. Star and Snowflake
- Understanding how Data Modelling can impact performance
- Advanced Data Wrangling with “M” and the Query Builder (i.e. shaping data and transforming tables in preparation for analysis)
- Analysing and resolving data quality issues
- Using Parameters
- Working with Dates, ISO8601, using Date Tables, and performing Time Series Analysis
- DAX and DAX Studio
- Recap of Basic DAX Functions
- Handling Errors
- Aggregators and Iterators
- Basic Table Functions, e.g. EVALUATE, FILTER, VALUES etc.
- Variables
- Time Intelligence Calculations
- Calculation Groups
- Hierarchies
- Manipulating Tables
- Advanced DAX concepts and Statistical Analysis using DAX
- Debugging and optimising reports with Performance Analyzer and DAX Studio
- An introduction to the Dataverse
SECURITY
- Row and Object Level Security
- Managing Security Roles
- Applying Sensitivity Labels
VISUALISATION LAYER
- Shaping Reports according to the needs of multiple audiences
- Fabric Apps vs integrating a Microsoft Power App into a Report
- Creating a custom visualisation (with R or Python)
- Allowing users to personalise visualisations
POWER BI SERVICE AND MICROSOFT FABRIC
- Scheduling Data Refreshes
- Creating a Data Flow
- Connect to the data flow and discuss the merits of a data flow
- Notebooks and Machine Learning in Fabric
- Fabric features are too numerous to list, ask if there are particular features you’d like covered.