ABOUT THE POWER BI COURSES
 

In this Video, Clive gives an overview of how to sort fields in Power BI... The content is taken from our Microsoft Power BI Introduction training course

 Creating a Percentage of Total by Year using DAX - part of our  Microsoft Power BI Beyond the Basics training course

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Which Power BI course is right for you?

Our Power BI introduction training course is for people new to Power BI.

It is designed for people who will be:

1. Using complex dashboards and reports which have been prepared by other analysts
2. Creating simple data visualisations from scratch.
3. Going on to attend our Power BI Advanced course and need to master the basics.

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

1. Connect to a range of data sources using Power BI
2. Prepare and transform your data.
3. Create data visualisations like KPIs and charts.
4. Publish reports that you have crated via the web or PDF.

This course gives you a high-level overview of Power BI and introduces basic best practices and its drag and drop functionality.

Our advanced training course is for people who are already Power BI users and want to develop their skills further.

It is designed for people who will be creating complex dashboards and reports from scratch.

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

1. Customise a report.
2. Use the query editor to interrogate the data in a data model, data relationships and hierarchies.
3. Build interactive reports like drill-through reports and relative date reports.
4. Creating a wide variety of compelling visualizations including maps, bullet and scatter charts.
5. Set security and data permissions, and control when your data is updated.
    

What is Power BI

Power BI is Microsoft’s data analytics and business intelligence platform.

It was launched in 2014 and its main competitors are Tableau, Google Data Studio and Qlik.

It comes in a range of versions from Power BI Desktop which is free through to Power BI Premium which is a full enterprise business intelligence solution hosted in the cloud.

What's the difference between Power BI Desktop and Service

Power BI Desktop:

Power BI Desktop (free) gives you access to Power BI’s basic features and is where you create data models and carry out data cleansing and analysis. It is also how you access the full cloud-based version of Power BI – Power BI Service – if you are a subscriber.

Power BI Pro:

Power BI is the full version of Power BI. It includes the ability to build and share dashboards and reports that you have built which you can’t with BI Desktop.

Power BI Service or Premium:

Power BI Service is designed for large organisations. It gives your company access to its own dedicated capacity and allows for analysis of very large scale datasets.

Why learn Power BI?

A Microsoft Power BI training course is ideal for professionals, such as business analysts, accountants, sales executives, marketers, and those in managerial roles.

Adding it to your CV will improve your career prospects.

Our courses show you how to transform data to generate insights and make intelligent decisions from your datasets.

Why Power BI vs Excel?

Power BI is a different tool to Excel.

They are both great so long as they are used for the right job.

Excel is great for quick, simple ad-hoc analysis. It is very widely used and understood. Sharing your analysis can be a little fiddley, however.

Power BI is a business analytics and data analysis tool, designed to work with large amounts of data.

It was designed with collaboration in mind and makes sharing your work to mobile apps or over the internet straightforward.

What is DAX and why use it?

Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) is the native language for PowerPivot, Power BI Desktop and SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS).

It is quick and simple to use and includes some of the functions that Excel uses to work with relational data.

You can find our more about how to learn DAX here:  on the Beyond the Basics training course

What's the difference between Power Query Power Pivot and Power BI

Power Query allows you to retrieve, extract, and transform (ETL) data prior to bringing it into Excel (and/or into a Power Pivot data model). It allows you to insert & remove columns, filter and sort tables, and change data types.

It runs on the M  Language (short for Mashup) and is labelled as “Get and Transform,” in the “Data” Ribbon in Excel, and is an optional tool. When importing data into Power Pivot can import it directly into Power Pivot, or you can channel it first through Power Query if your data is noisy.

Also known as the DAX Engine (Data Analysis Expression), Power Pivot is an Excel feature that allows you to build a data model with relationships, create calculated columns and measures.

Power Pivot allows Excel to import larger data sets from a variety of sources and create more sophisticated data models using DAX.

Power Pivot allows you to create visualizations using Power View and Power Map. Power Maps is a geographic visualization tool, while Power View allows you to present data in interactive dashboards.

Power Pivot is a free add-on for Excel 2010 and Excel 2013. From Office 2016 onwards, it can be found in Excel.

Power BI works on top of the Power Pivot and Power Query engines. You can shape and analyse your data, either using Get Data in Power Query or Data Model in Power Pivot. You can then Power BI reports and interactive dashboards using Power BI’s wide variety of data visualisations.

What is Business Intelligence?

Business intelligence (BI for short) refers to the collection of technologies involved in collecting and analysing data and then presenting the information generated in dashboards and Power BI reports.

The aim of business intelligence is to make sense of the vast amounts of data that organisations hold. It allows the data to be analysed to guide business decision-making and management.

For example, many retail businesses use Power BI to sort and report their POS data, especially when that data is held in Azure Cloud. As another Microsoft product, they interface very simply with each other.

What is Power Pivot?

Power Pivot is an Excel add-in and part of Power BI.

It is used to create data models. It allows you to combine large amounts of data from a variety of data sources, and create reports and dashboards with custom visuals.

A data model is a collection of tables with relationships. A data model that you can see in Excel is available in Power Pivot and vice versa.

How hard is Power BI to learn?

Learning Power BI is no more difficult than other data analysis software.

It is very powerful software that can combine data from a number of data sources. That data can then be used for business analytics, to produce reports and dashboards.

As with other big data software, learning Power BI for straightforward analysis of simple datasets is not difficult.

Learning to use the full suite of big data tools that Power BI contains for more complex data analysis is obviously more complex and time-consuming.