Module 1: An Introduction to Power BI
In this module we will give a brief overview of what Business Intelligence is
and what Power BI is. Power BI consists of multiple tools, which we will explore
the purpose of and their core features. We will also make you aware of some
essential resources for user learning about Power BI.
Lessons:
- What is business intelligence
- Introducing Power BI
- Power BI tools and services
- Power BI Report Server
- Power BI (Online)
- Power BI Desktop
- Case studies
- Support and information
Module 2: Requirements Gathering
Typically, a business intelligence project focuses on a variety of themes and
understanding them will help you take your first steps towards successfully
completing a BI project. To start a project, this module will help you
understand grain statements, a way of understanding what objectives your project
is expected to achieve. This will evolve to understanding the full path of a
project including discovering, refining and modelling your data to producing
reports and dashboards. This may require you to use just the Power BI web
service or the Power BI desktop application based on the needs of your project.
You will also learn about workspaces and see how to use your personal workspace
to take your first steps using the Power BI web service to create a report.
Throughout this course, we will be basing our discussions around a fictitious
company called House Rules Board Games to bring the training to life.
Lessons:
- Welcome to House Rules Board Games
- Beginning a BI project
- Grain statements
- Data discovery
- Refining information
- Modelling data
- Building reports
- Roles
- Publishing
- Creating dashboards
- Choosing workspaces
- Create and share a report in Power BI
Module 3: Extract, transform and load data
The Power BI web service is a quick took for creating reports, but it lacks
the depth to truly configure your data. In this module we will introduce Power
BI desktop, an application that data analysts can use to work on Power BI
projects. We will use the application to perform more enhanced data discovery
and with that we can refine and format the data. In this module, it is not
always likely that our data will be a palatable format, therefore learning how
to extract, transform and load data as part of a query is essential.
Lessons:
- Creating a project with Power BI desktop
- Pinning an active project
- What is in a PBIX file
- Connecting to data sources
- Managing data connections
- Refine data with Power Query
- Applied steps
- M code language
- Designing your query
- Choose columns
- Rename columns
- Moving columns
- Formatting columns
- Replacing values
- Expanding related columns
- Star schemas
- Merge columns
- Split columns
- Custom and conditional columns
Module 4: Creating a data model
A data model is the data found in one or more tables, from one or more
sources. These tables can be, and often are, related. Understanding and
maintaining these relationships between the tables is essential for optimizing
your data model so that if performs well for your report views. In addition, it
is often the case that although you have connected to all the relevant data
sources, it may not provide you will all of the information you require for your
report. In this module we will show how to generate more data using Data
Analysis eXpression language which is like formulas in Microsoft Excel. You can
use this language to create new columns and measures which can provide you with
even more data to report on. We will also look at how to structure related data
into hierarchies, work with geographical data and introduce row level security
which can later be combined with roles.
Lessons:
- Understanding relationships
- Cardinality
- Cross filter direction
- Hiding tables and columns
- Formatting columns
- Introducing DAX
- Designing calculated columns
- Creating measures
- Adding lookup tables
- Structuring data with dimensional hierarchies
- Roles and row level security
Module 5: Designing Reports
Often the part of the project that is seen by most is the report. The report
uses information refined and calculated in your data model to create a visual
experience that is interactive and tells a clear narrative. To do this, the
report utilizes a wide selection of visuals which we will focus on in this
module. Visuals range from bar charts to maps. This extensive range can be
enhanced by accessing the store, which is rich with custom visuals. You can use
slicers and filters to help users drill down through your data and navigational
buttons to help users move between your report pages.
Lessons:
- Adding pages and navigation buttons
- Using shapes, text and images
- Creating a theme
- Adding visualizations
- Using filters and slicers
- Controlling filters
- Adding drill throughs
- Adding custom visualizations
- Configure phone layouts
- Report tips
Module 6: Using workspaces and dashboards
Once you have finalized your report, it is ready to be published. In this
module we will cover the last stages of producing a report which covers
publishing and configuring a published project. Your ability to publish a
project, and to what type of workspace depends on your license, so this module
will outline the types of license and workspaces you may encounter. We will also
cover dashboards, which are ways that you can share your content and as well as
ways you can restrict your content.
Lessons:
- Power BI licensing
- My workspaces
- App workspaces
- Premium capacity workspaces
- Creating a new workspace
- Publishing a project
- Parallels with Microsoft Excel
- Publishers and viewers
- Reconnecting with data sources
- Introducing the on-premises data gateway
- Scheduling the data refresh frequency
- Assigning security roles
- Creating and populating dashboards
- Customizing dashboard tiles
- Creating tiles using Q&A and quick insights
- Creating a mobile dashboard
- Sharing reports and dashboards
- Publishing apps in a workspace
- Publishing content to websites
