Power BI Masterclass: Zero to Hero

Welcome to the Power BI Tutorial.

Power BI is a business intelligence tool that gets data from different sources, such as Excel, JSON, PDF, etc., and can be analyzed and converted to meaningful reports, dashboards, charts, etc. This assists in making business decisions by tracking performance.

Microsoft developed Power BI in 2011 to analyze and visualize large amounts of data and generate meaningful insights helpful for organizations in scaling. The Power BI Desktop version is freely available, and in this tutorial, we will understand it thoroughly with examples.

Data Analysts are hired mostly to work on such BI tools. Therefore, let us first understand the role of a data analyst in an organization.

Tasks of a Data Analyst

The role of a Data Analyst is quite crucial for any organization. The Data Analyst understands the data and gets valuable insights from it that help track the performance and scale the organization. The data analysis process includes:

• Data Preparation: The first step is to prepare the data. It includes profiling, cleaning, and transforming the data. This makes the data ready. Data preparation takes the raw data and converts it into useful, easy-to-understand information. This process fixes the inaccurate data, identifies missing data, corrects the wrong data, etc.
• Model: The data gets ready to be modelled after the preparation step. This determines how the tables are related to each other by defining and creating relationships between them.
• Visualize: The graphics are easier to understand than the textual data, correct? The visualization steps bring data to life and represent it in the form of reports. This makes it quite easier to understand and make better decisions. This step designs and creates reports for accessibility.
• Analyse: Analysing the data helps in finding insights, identifying patterns, and predicting outcomes. Interpret the information displayed in the report with the analysis step. With advanced analytics, business decisions become easier with meaningful results.
• Management: If you are the Data Analyst of an organization, then you need to manage the reports, dashboards, semantic models, etc. of the Power BI. You need to supervise the sharing the distribution of reports and dashboards.

What is BI

Business intelligence, as the name suggests is to analyze the data and display it in a way it speaks i.e., in the form of dashboards, charts, reports, etc. Such a form of data that is easy to understand helps the founders to track performance, remove any issues, and prepare themselves for market changes.

What is Power BI

Power BI is a tool that helps people understand a large amount of data and build reports. PowerBI is a collection of components:

• Power Query (ETL tool to extract transform, and load the data i.e., clean the data from null values, empty records, and unclean data for visualization)
• Power Pivot (Data Modelling – connect data from multiple data sources and create relationships)
• Power Views (Create 200+ charts i.e. visualization)
• PowerBI Service (allows users to communicate with reports)

Features of Power BI

• Data Visualization: Create interactive reports and dashboards with various visualizations.
• Data Connectivity: Connect to various data sources like Excel, databases, and cloud services3.
• AI-Driven Analytics: Use AI to uncover patterns and insights in your data.
• Custom Visualizations: Create custom visualizations using R and Python.
• Power Query: Easily source and transform data.
• Data Refresh: Automatically refresh data to keep reports up-to-date.
• Mobile App: Access reports and dashboards on the go with the Power BI mobile app.
• Integration with Microsoft Products: Seamlessly integrate with other Microsoft products like Excel, SharePoint, and Azure.
• Collaboration: Share reports and collaborate with others in real-time.
• Security: Robust security features to ensure data protection and compliance.

Note: In this course, we will work on the free plan.

The following lessons are covered in the Power BI tutorial:

Course Lessons

Power BI – Overview & Setup

• Power BI – Introduction & Features
• Power BI – Types and Components
• Power BI vs Tableau vs Excel
• Power BI vs Power BI Pro vs Power BI Premium
• Install Power BI on Windows 10
• Install Power BI on Windows 11

Power BI – Get Data

• Get Data from Excel

Power BI – Visualizations

• Create a Gauge Chart
• Create a Column Chart

Power BI – Cards

• Create a card
• Format the cards
• Update the cards

Power BI – Tables

• Create a Table
• Format the table
• Table Conditional Formatting

Power BI – Filters

• Create a Filter

Power BI – Slicer

• Create a slicer
• Select multiple values from a slicer
• Set a chart with a slicer

Power BI – Data Transformation

• What is Data Transformation
• Group rows
• Pivot columns
• Create custom columns

Power BI – DAX

• What is DAX
• DAX Calculated Tables
• DAX Calculated Columns
• DAX Measures

Power BI – Reports and Dashboards

• What is a Report in Power BI
• Create a Report and Publish in Power BI Service Account
• Create a Dashboard from Report in Power BI Service
• Subscribe to Report

Power BI – Update to a newer version

• Update Power BI

Let us begin!