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.

Power BI was developed by Microsoft in 2011 to analyze and visualize a large amount of data and generate meaningful insights helpful for organizations in scaling. 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 modeled 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 a wide range of 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

1. Power BI : Introduction & Features
2. Power BI : Types and Components
3. PowerBI vs Tableau vs Excel
4. Power BI vs Power BI Pro vs Power BI Premium
5. Install Power BI on Windows 10
6. Install Power BI on Windows 11

Power BI : Get Data

7. Get Data from Excel

Power BI : Visualizations

8. Create a Gauge Chart
9. Create a Column Chart

Power BI : Cards

10. Create a card
11. Format the cards
12. Update the cards

Power BI : Tables

13. Create a Table
14. Format the table
15. Table Conditional Formatting

Power BI : Filters

16. Create a Filter

Power BI : Slicer

17. Create a slicer
18. Select multiple values from a slicer
19. Set a chart with slicer

Power BI : Data Transformation

20. What is Data Transformation
21. Group rows
22. Pivot columns
23. Create custom columns

Power BI : DAX

24. What is DAX
25. DAX Calculated Tables
26. DAX Calculated Columns
27. DAX Measures

Power BI : Reports and Dashboards

28. What is a Report in Power BI
29. Create a Report and Publish in Power BI Service Account
30. Create a Dashboard from Report in Power BI Service
31. Subscribe to Report

Power BI : Update to a newer version

32. Update Power BI

Let us begin