Learn Power BI: A beginner's guide to developing interactive business intelligence solutions using Microsoft Power BI

Solve business challenges with Microsoft Power BI's advanced visualization and data analysis techniques

Key Features

• Create effective storytelling reports by implementing simple-to-intermediate Power BI features
• Develop powerful analytical models to extract key insights for changing business needs
• Build, publish, and share impressive dashboards for your organization

Book Description

To succeed in today's transforming business world, organizations need business intelligence capabilities to make smarter decisions faster than ever before. This Power BI book is an entry-level guide that will get you up and running with data modeling, visualization, and analytical techniques from scratch.

You'll find this book handy if you want to get well-versed with the extensive Power BI ecosystem. You'll start by covering the basics of business intelligence and installing Power BI. You'll then learn the wide range of Power BI features to unlock business insights. As you progress, the book will take you through how to use Power Query to ingest, cleanse, and shape your data, and use Power BI DAX to create simple to complex calculations. You'll also be able to add a variety of interactive visualizations to your reports to bring your data to life. Finally, you'll gain hands-on experience in creating visually stunning reports that speak to business decision makers, and see how you can securely share these reports and collaborate with others.

By the end of this book, you'll be ready to create simple, yet effective, BI reports and dashboards using the latest features of Power BI.

What you will learn

• Explore the different features of Power BI to create interactive dashboards
• Use the Query Editor to import and transform data
• Perform simple and complex DAX calculations to enhance analysis
• Discover business insights and tell a story with your data using Power BI
• Explore data and learn to manage datasets, dataflows, and data gateways
• Use workspaces to collaborate with others and publish your reports

Who this book is for

If you're an IT manager, data analyst, or BI user new to using Power BI for solving business intelligence problems, this book is for you. You'll also find this book useful if you want to migrate from other BI tools to create powerful and interactive dashboards. No experience of working with Power BI is expected.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction to Business Intelligence and Power BI
2. Up and Running with Power BI Desktop
3. Connecting and Shaping Data
4. Creating Data Models and Calculations
5. Unlocking Insights
6. Creating the Final Report
7. Publishing and Sharing
8. Using Reports in the Service
9. Understanding Dashboards, Apps and Security
10. Data Gateways and Refreshing Datasets

Greg Deckler is Vice President of Cloud Services at Fusion Alliance and has been a technology systems consultant for over 25 years. Internationally recognized as an expert in Power BI, Greg Deckler is a Microsoft MVP for Data Platform and an active member of the Power BI community, with over 100,000 messages read, more than 11,000 replies, over 2,200 answers, and more than 75 entries in the Quick Measures Gallery. Greg founded the Columbus Azure ML and Power BI User Group (CAMLPUG) and presents at numerous conferences and events, including SQL Saturday, DogFood, and Dynamic Communities' User Group/Power Platform Summit.