Power BI (Part I): Building Interactive Dashboards

Part I: Introduction to Power BI

• Overview: A brief introduction to Power BI, the installation process, and a comparison with Excel charts and other BI tools.

• Power BI vs. Excel:

  • More visual options and interactive charts in Power BI.
  • Power BI's Q&A feature allows users to ask questions and get answers instantly in chart form, which is not available in Excel.
  • Power BI charts can act as slicers for data filtering.

• Power BI vs. Other BI Tools:

  • Ranked No. 1 in the Gartner Magic Quadrant (2020).
  • Connects to over 130 data sources, with more being added regularly.
  • Monthly updates, unlike others which update annually or quarterly.

Part II: Power Query & Power Pivot Review

• Power Query:

  • Advanced query editor.
  • Add a column from an example.
  • Unpivot data for analysis.

• Power Pivot:

  • Managing relationships between tables.
  • Introduction to DAX formulas and measures.
  • Working with fact and dimension tables.

• New DAX Measure:

  • Introduction to the FORMAT() function for generating commentaries.

Part III: Building a Dashboard in Power BI

• Learn how to build a dashboard using visuals based on data warehouse sources:
  • Table
  • Card
  • Slicer (with cross-filtering capabilities)
  • Map
  • Play Axis
  • Commentaries
  • Q&A feature

Part IV: Best Practices & Conclusion

• Dashboard Best Practices:
  • Guidelines for effective dashboard design and usability.
• Segue to Power BI Part II:
  • Introduction to sharing "On-Demand" dashboards for collaboration and reporting.