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Power BI

Power BI Bootcamp

Published by O'Reilly Media, Inc.

Beginner to intermediate content levelBeginner to intermediate

Many people think that Power BI is just a visualization tool. Although it can be used for visualizing data, this business intelligence platform is a much more powerful tool, empowering nontechnical users and allowing them to build and automate their own reports.

Join experts Maria Florencia Hourcouripé and Nicolás Lagreste Zucchini to discover the benefits of Power BI. You’ll learn how to work with real end-to-end projects using real-life data, and put the tool into practice with hands-on exercises. You’ll leave with the skills and know-how that will help you to take full control of your data in your daily work.

Week 1: Introduction to Business Intelligence, Power BI, and Power Query

After an introduction to Power BI, you’ll begin an end-to-end project that starts with a connection to Excel’s data sources, cleaning transformations of data with Power Query, and a basic “star schema model.” By the end of Week 1, you’ll have created a visual report in Power BI.

Week 2: Advanced and Interactive Visuals

Week 2 will focus on “reports with impact.” You’ll learn many different functionalities for designing professional reports: tooltips and buttons, how to design and change the theme and the format of visuals, and how to create a stunning background.

Week 3: Calculated Measures, Columns, and Custom Tables with Power BI Programming Language (DAX)

In Week 3, you’ll dive deeper into DAX, the language that allows you to perform powerful KPIs to clearly understand your data. You’ll explore “evaluation context” and use some basic formulas like SUM, AVERAGE, DIVIDE, SWITCH and CALCULATE.

Week 4: Ways to collaborate and share in Power BI

In the final session, you’ll share your project with colleagues through Power BI service and explore its other capabilities such as exporting to a PDF or PowerPoint, building new reports from the same model, and connecting Power BI with data in SharePoint. And you’ll see how a scheduled update works.

NOTE: With today’s registration, you’ll be signed up for all four sessions. Although you can attend any of the sessions individually, we recommend participating in all four weeks.

What you’ll learn and how you can apply it

By the end of this live, hands-on, four-part series, you’ll understand:

Week 1: Introduction to Business Intelligence, Power BI, and Power Query

  • What business intelligence and Power BI are
  • What an ETL is and how to build a powerful ETL solution with no code
  • How to define and create a star schema model, and translate all this into visual graphics
  • The difference between Power BI Desktop and service
  • The main features of each tool or service

Week 2: Advanced and Interactive Visuals

  • How to identify common types of data visualization and their uses
  • How to create an interactive report with Power BI Desktop
  • How to customize visuals to meet your organization's requirements
  • How to use key performance indicators (KPIs)
  • How to use buttons and other navigation techniques

Week 3: Calculated Measures, Columns, and Custom Tables with Power BI Programming Language (DAX)

  • How to solve several basic calculation and data analysis problems
  • How to enhance data models with calculations
  • How to filter context and row context
  • How DAX formulas are written and the types of model calculations, including calculated tables, columns, and measures
  • How to write DAX expressions using temporal intelligence functions and iterator functions

Week 4: Ways to Collaborate and Share in Power BI

  • How to share your reports or dashboard in Power BI service
  • How to collaborate with coworkers in workspaces
  • How to collaborate in Microsoft Teams
  • How to print reports
  • How to publish to the web

And you’ll be able to:

Week 1: Introduction to Business Intelligence, Power BI, and Power Query

  • Connect to different sources of data
  • Automate the transformation of your data
  • Build a simple model in Power BI
  • Create measures and calculated columns in DAX
  • Design a report in Power BI Desktop
  • Publish and share your reports in Power BI service

Week 2: Advanced and Interactive Visuals

  • Add visualization items to reports
  • Choose an effective visualization
  • Format and configure visualization
  • Design a report layout
  • Add buttons and selections
  • Design report navigation
  • Use basic interactions
  • Apply slicing, filtering, and sorting

Week 3: Calculated Measures, Columns, and Custom Tables with Power BI Programming Language (DAX)

  • Create calculated columns to add value to the model
  • Categorize attributes using DAX
  • Create measures to make reporting more efficient and reusable
  • Understand when to use a calculated measure instead of a column
  • Use more advanced DAX functions to solve real business problems

Week 4: Ways to Collaborate and Share in Power BI

  • Deliver reports and dashboards to other users
  • Collaborate with your team
  • Visualize the reports created in Power BI service using only a browser
  • Connect to SharePoint to extract corporate data

This live event is for you because...

  • You work with Excel and are looking for a better alternative.
  • You want to become a data analyst.
  • You want to work as a consultant in Power BI.
  • You’re a manager or student without technical or programming skills who is interested in acquiring practical knowledge of business intelligence.

Prerequisites

Schedule

The time frames are only estimates and may vary according to how the class is progressing.

Week 1: Introduction to Business Intelligence, Power BI, and Power Query

Introduction to business intelligence and Power BI (20 minutes)

  • Presentation: Introduction to business intelligence and Power BI Platform; maturity cycle of business intelligence and data science; working with Power BI projects step-by-step—full architecture
  • Hands-on exercise: Set up Power BI Desktop
  • Q&A

Basic transformation in Power Query (40 minutes)

  • Presentation and demo: Connecting to Excel sheets and doing basic transformation in Power Query (delete columns, filter rows, change names, add calculated columns, change data types); loading transform data to Power BI
  • Hands-on exercise: Explore basic transformation in Power Query
  • Q&A
  • Break

Why build star schema models in Power BI? (10 minutes)

  • Presentation: What is a star schema model?; facts and dimensions of star schema models; relationships between tables

Building the model (40 minutes)

  • Presentation and demo: Parts of Power BI (report, data, relations); creating relations between three tables (products, sales, and calendar) and drawing a table in Power BI; the difference between number, text, and date columns
  • Hands-on exercise: Build a model
  • Q&A
  • Break

Designing and changing the format of visuals (70 minutes)

  • Demo: How to change the format of fields; designing and changing the format of visuals; designing pages with maps, bar charts, line charts, slicers, and pie charts
  • Hands-on exercise: Design and change the format of visuals
  • Q&A

Week 2: Advanced and Interactive Visuals

Intro and review (15 minutes)

  • Presentation: Review of Week 1
  • Hands-on exercises: Change data in Excel; refresh Power BI

Designing and personalizing tooltips (60 minutes)

  • Demo: Adding a visual to Power BI; designing a tooltip and a personalized tooltip
  • Hands-on exercise: Design and personalize tooltips
  • Q&A
  • Break

Adding backgrounds and navigating reports (40 minutes)

  • Demo: Adding a background to the report; creating buttons to navigate the report
  • Hands-on exercises: Add backgrounds; navigate reports
  • Q&A

Change the theme of your report (25 minutes)

  • Demo: Editing the current theme; exporting or importing a new one
  • Hands-on exercise: Change themes
  • Break

Practice with filter pane, sync slicers, and edit interactions (40 minutes)

  • Presentation and demos: Filtering information; filtering between visuals
  • Hands-on exercises: Practice with filter pane, sync slicers, and edit interactions
  • Q&A

Week 3: Calculated Measures, Columns, and Custom Tables with Power BI Programming Language

Introduction to filter context and row context (20 minutes)

  • Presentation: Review of Week 2; review of the filter pane, sync slicers, and edit interactions exercise; introduction and examples related to DAX

Creating a calculate column and using it in a report (25 minutes)

  • Demos: Creating columns to see their functionality; using columns in visuals
  • Hands-on exercise: Create a calculate column and use it in a report
  • Q&A

Creating basic measures (30 minutes)

  • Demos: Creating basic measures (SUM and AVERAGE) and using them in the report; Power BI's native aggregated domain functions
  • Hands-on exercise: Create basic measures
  • Q&A
  • Break

Adding other calculated columns (30 minutes)

  • Demos: Adding calculated columns using SWITCH, &&, and ||
  • Hands-on exercise: Add other calculated columns
  • Q&A

Creating more complex measures using DIVIDE (35 minutes)

  • Demo: Delving deeper into the DAX language by creating a measure; changing the data type to view as a percentage
  • Hands-on exercise: Use Divide
  • Q&A
  • Break

Introduction to CALCULATE and TIME INTELLIGENCE (40 minutes)

  • Demo: The calculate function as orchestrator of other functions and modifier of context filters
  • Hands-on exercises: Use CALCULATE and TIME INTELLIGENCE
  • Q&A

Week 4: Ways to Collaborate and Share in Power BI

Introduction to Power BI service (40 minutes)

  • Presentation and demos: Review of Week 3; review of CALCULATE and TIME INTELLIGENCE exercise; introduction to Power BI service; logging in and publishing the report
  • Hands-on exercise: Explore Power BI services
  • Q&A

Sharing reports (25 minutes)

  • Demo: How to share reports (workspaces, apps, types of members and access)
  • Break

Full capabilities of Power BI service (50 minutes)

  • Demos: Exploring the capabilities of Power BI service; the difference between a report and a dataset; dashboards; exporting data to PDFs and PowerPoint; connecting to the model from Excel; republishing a PBIX file
  • Break

Full practice with a connection to SharePoint (45 minutes)

  • Demos: Full practice connecting to SharePoint from Power BI Desktop; publishing in service of Power BI; configuring the automatic refresh of the report

Wrap-up and Q&A (20 minutes)

Your Instructors

  • Florencia Hourcouripé

    Florencia Hourcouripé works for Analytic Mood as an instructor and consultant specializing in Microsoft Power BI. After working as a business consultant in Argentina, she moved to Barcelona in 2017 and obtained her master’s degree in business intelligence and innovación tecnológica from the EAE Business School. She has worked to implement Power BI in several companies such as Louis Vuitton, Manpower, Ironhack, and Prosegur EEUU. Florencia is an active participant in the Power BI community and was a speaker at the 2022 Power BI Summit.

  • Nicolás Lagreste Zucchini

    Nicolás Lagreste Zucchini has served as a data expert and business analyst at NTT Data, Kabel Systems, Grupo Solutio and Analytic Mood, where he has been recognized for developing innovative solutions and deploying software and dashboards. He is responsible for Microsoft Power BI training and full lifecycle development of next-generation software, from initial requirement gathering to design, coding, testing, documentation, and implementation. His technical expertise includes cross-platform proficiency in different scripting/programming languages, including VB and SQL, and advanced knowledge of developer applications, tools, methodologies, and best practices including CI/CD, client/server architecture, design pattern, and quality assurance. Nicolas is an active participant in the Power BI community and spoke at the 2022 Power BI Summit. He graduated with distinction in business management and systems in 2015 at the Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires. He has lately turned his focus to improving his knowledge in the field of programming and application development.