How to Learn Microsoft Power BI for Beginners the Right Way

Power BI is among the most popular Microsoft courses and interactive data visualization tools developed by Microsoft with a focus on business intelligence. 

Power BI is among the most popular Microsoft courses and interactive data visualization tools developed by Microsoft with a focus on business intelligence. 

Power BI is considered fairly easy to learn. However, there are some challenges with mastering the tool. It is easy to watch videos or read tutorials and assume that you have learned. But to pass the exam and get job-ready, you will need hands-on skills. The best way to build hands-on Power BI skills is to learn from an experienced tutor and create projects.

Let us dig deeper and understand more about learning the power BI correctly as a beginner.

What is Power BI?

Power BI is a software product that connects to various data sources, visualizes the data in report format and attractive dashboards, and then shares them.

Who is eligible to learn and use Power BI?

Power BI is used in various ways depending on the role of the individual, from reporting analysts, developers, managers, reporters, and business leaders.

1. If you are more fascinated by creating, generating, and presenting reports. 
2. If you are a fresher who wants to be in Information Technology but doesn’t want to be doing software coding or testing or administration roles.
3. If you are an experienced professional eager to switch your career from the traditional MIS or excel reporting method to advanced analytics.
4. If you are using the Tableau tool, finding it expensive and looking for something similar in functionality at a lesser cost.

How can we use Power BI?

Power BI can be used in variations as below:

1. As a Power BI Desktop – a free desktop application designed for building and writing reports.
2. As a Power BI Service – an online publishing service for viewing and sharing dashboards and reports.
3. As Power BI mobile app – used for viewing reports and dashboards on the go.

Prerequisites before learning Power BI:

If you are familiar with Microsoft Excel and data modeling and have some knowledge of the DAX language, it is easy to understand Power BI. Before diving into Power BI, you should know the meaning of a few concepts, as mentioned below.

What is Microsoft Excel?

Excel is the most commonly used spreadsheet application of Microsoft. It contains almost the same core functionality as Power BI but has limited visualization options. It cannot refresh, share, and view reports and dashboards online.

What is Business Intelligence?

Business Intelligence combines data mining, business analytics, data tools, data visualization, infrastructure, and best practices to assist organizations in making more data-driven decisions.

What should you know about DAX?

Calculations in Power BI are driven by formulas called DAX. It allows you to create new fields and tables in your report. 

DAX, a short term for Data Analysis Expressions, is a language that can be used in different visualization and BI tools. DAX also called a function language, is where the full code is kept inside a function. DAX programming formula is composed of two data types: Numeric and Other. 

What should you know about Data Modeling before Power BI?

Data modeling is a feature of analyzing and defining all the different data your business gathers and produces and the relationships between those data sets.

How to learn Power BI?

There are numerous platforms to learn Power BI. You can learn most Microsoft certification courses and get Microsoft certification training from affiliated institutes. You can learn the below Power BI Training online and offline courses with flexible time slots.

1. Introduction to Power BI.
2. Power BI Developer.
3. Preparing your data for Power BI.
4. Power BI Advance.
5. Microsoft Power BI Certification Courses Training.
6. Introduction to Power BI DAX.
7. Microsoft Power BI Desktop.
8. Power BI for the End user.
9. Analyzing Data in Excel and working with Power BI.

What makes Power BI different from other reporting tools?

1. It is inexpensive.
2. Easy to learn and adapt.
3. Systematic regular version updates and innovations.
4. Power BI connects with hundreds of data sources. Data can be drawn from one or more sources and stored for offline analysis.
5. Excel Integration: Its ability to save data to Excel.
6. Custom visualizations.

Conclusion

With the ever-growing automation in the IT field, the need to learn Power BI plays an important role and comes in handy for quick decision-making and data analysis.