Training » Course

Power BI for the Business User

This one-day course empowers business users to design, create, publish and share compelling Power BI reports and dashboards.

Attendees learn to:

  • Work productively with the Power BI service, including mobile delivery
  • Import and connect to simple data sources, including CSV files and Excel workbooks
  • Create rich, interactive reports to support analysis
  • Assemble dashboards to support monitoring
  • Effectively share, collaborate on, and distribute Power BI content

Duration

1 day

Products

This course is based on the current offering of Microsoft Power BI, with a focus on business user experiences with the Power BI service. The reporting topics are also relevant to Power BI Report Server.

This course uses Power BI Desktop as a report authoring tool, but it does not cover data modeling. It is a prerequisite for the two-day Power BI for the Business Analyst course, which covers import data modeling.

Prerequisites

Ideally, attendees have:

  • A general knowledge of data storage technologies and formats
  • Proficiency with Excel

Attendees are required to have their own computer that must meet minimum requirements:

  • A Windows computer, network-enabled for Internet access
  • A web browser supported by Power BI
  • The latest version of Power BI Desktop, 32- or 64-bit
  • Office Excel 2007, or later—either 32- or 64-bit
  • A PDF viewer (like Adobe Acrobat Reader, or a web browser)

All attendees will be provided with a trial Power BI account to complete the labs.

Delivery Format

A classroom delivery includes:

  • Instructor presentation and demonstrations
  • Course book
  • Labs and activities

Course Outline

  • A New Generation of BI
  • Introducing Power BI
  • Power BI Roles
  • Power BI Licensing
  • Power BI Architecture
  • Power BI Portal
  • Mobile Delivery
  • Signing Up for Power BI

Lab 02A – Setting Up Power BI

  • “Getting Data”
  • Importing Files
  • Connecting to Data
  • Refreshing Data with the Personal Gateway
  • Interpreting the Fields Pane
  • Working with Excel Workbooks
  • Recommended Practices

Lab 03A – Creating and Exploring Datasets

  • Introducing Reports
  • Developing Reports
  • Interacting with Reports
  • Designing Advanced Reports
  • Recommended Practices

Lab 04A – Developing and Exploring Reports
Lab 04B – Developing Advanced Reports

  • Introducing Dashboards
  • Developing Dashboards
  • Interacting with Dashboards
  • Keeping Dashboard Data Current
  • Pinning Visuals from Excel
  • Comparing Dashboards to Reports
  • Recommended Practices

Lab 05A – Developing and Exploring Dashboards

  • Power BI Sharing Overview
  • Sharing Reports and Dashboards
  • Collaborating with Workspaces
  • Distributing Content with Apps
  • Comparing Sharing Techniques
  • Recommended Practices

Lab 06A – Sharing Power BI Content

Certification

This course has not been designed to prepare attendees for Microsoft certification. However, the course content can serve as a useful resource for introducing theory, products, capabilities and recommended design practices that are assessed by Microsoft certification exams.

Cartoon depiction of a business user exploring deeper meaning within their data and acquiring knowledge by inspecting data visuals

Built on knowledge and ideas around data manipulation and possible ways to utilise the Power BI service to achieve outcomes.

Adrian

The course was easy to understand and follow along with. ?

Thomas

An excellent initial exposure to the Power BI workings.

Adam

Good foundations. Practical exercises. Take away resources. Catered to broad knowledge of attendees.

Suzanne

The following report is developed during the labs in this course. Feel free to interact with report by entering full screen mode, navigating to different pages, changing slicer selections, and highlighting visual elements. The report has been embedded by using the Publish to Web capability which is covered in this course.