Overview
Learn how to visualise data with interactive reports and dashboards.
This course takes an attendee from never having seen Power BI, to being competent in building simple Reports and Apps using Power BI.
At this level, the datasets have few issues, and almost everything can be achieved with a point-and-click; no coding ability is required.
In the final half-day, attendees will build a report, present it to their peers, and explain what they found in the underlying data. For those who progress to the next level of Power BI training, this will provide a good baseline for reflection.
What you’ll need
- Laptop and headphones and microphone
- Microsoft Office (Word, PowerPoint, Excel)
- Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge
- Power BI Desktop; Pro or PPU licence; workspace publishing access
Learning outcomes
Attendees will be able to:
- Connect to, extract and load data into Power BI
- Create a data model
- Perform simple data transformations
- Visualise data using a range of charts and visuals
- Publish a report to the Power BI service and share it with others
- Perform analysis on datasets and communicate their findings effectively
Course topics
GENERAL
- What is Power BI?
- Power BI Versions (e.g. desktop, Power BI service, mobile app)
- Power BI Licensing and Sharing Reports
DATA & MODEL LAYERS
- Importing data (connecting to data, extracting and loading the data into the data model).
- Changing Data Source settings
- Introduction to Data Modelling
- Setting Data Types and formatting columns
- Working with simple relational data in Power BI
- Performing simple tasks using the Power Query Editor
- Building Hierarchies (optional)
VISUALISATION LAYER
- Using common Chart types
- Line
- Column / Bar
- Scatter
- Ribbon
- Discouraging pie chart
- Conditional Formatting
- Non-Chart types
- Cards
- Tables
- Matrix
- Visualising geographical data with maps (the basic map)
- Formatting Charts
- Choosing a Theme
- Creating a Theme with your company’s colours
- Using Shapes, Text and Buttons to enhance your reports
- Drilling down into your data
- Filtering and Slicing
- Good Practice for Designing Reports (with interactivity in mind)
POWER BI SERVICE
(The Power BI service is the web portal at https://app.powerbi.com)
- Publishing a Report to the Power BI service
- Understanding Workspaces
- Modifying a Report on the Power BI service
- Building a Workspace App
- Sharing reports
- Setting permissions on a Workspace Application is the preferred way to share
ASSIGNMENT
- Presentation of a Power BI dashboard to peers (final session)