Power BI is a business analytics tool which allows for interactive data visualization. These interactive dashboards can be customized to display data is a way that is most valuable to each user. Power BI is more robust than Excel or Access and does not require the same specialized technical support as an application specific dashboard. Each dashboard can be customized to display only the data that a user needs, so they do not get overwhelmed by a massive spreadsheet of information. Power BI allows for basic database-type connections including relationships between various tables. This allows more robust dashboards with no extraneous information.
The EdX Power BI training begins with a quick overview of Power BI, and then immediately moves into transforming data. The first step to this is how to connect to a database. Power BI can connect to many different kinds of databases, but probably the most useful for someone using Power BI for the first time is that is can import data and create relationships from robust Excel workbooks. The training then explains how to do basic transformations with the data including splitting columns, changing data types, working with dates, creating conditional columns, managing queries, and entering data. Power BI has many of the same functions as Excel, so if a user is familiar with Excel these functions are relatively intuitive. The training then has a lab over how to import data from an Access database, a folder with CSV files, and a less structured Excel file.
The next section of the training is modeling. This goes over how to manage data relationships, optimize the models for reporting, create calculated measures and tables, create and manage hierarchies, group/bind, and include/exclude. There is then a lab that practices these skills, which are slightly less intuitive than the previous set but still relatively simple to pick up for someone familiar with Excel or databases.
The third section of the training is based on visualizing data. It goes over all of the different types of visualization which include pie charts and treemaps, hierarchical Axis and Concatenating charts, Bar Charts with Lines, Clustering, Slicers, Map Visualizations, Tables, and Shapes, Textboxes, and Images to name a few. The training then goes over the page layout and formatting, the visual relationship, positioning, aligning and sorting visuals, and how to use custom hierarchies. The lab goes over how to create various different types of reports.
After creating reports, they can be uploaded to Power BI Service. A Dashboard can be configured and textboxes, and image widgets can be added. Dashboard settings can be changed, and dashboards can be filtered. The training also goes over notifications, alerts, how to download the dashboard and how to publish to the web. It also goes over how to view the dashboard on mobile devices and provides a Lab on how to complete these tasks.
The next few sections are over how to work with various types of databases, starting with Excel files which contain tables. The next section involves direct connectivity to SQL databases, and SSAS. The remainder of the training discusses the developer API and mobile setup. These portions of the training are less useful for a casual learner, although would be valuable to someone who utilized Power BI within a company.
Overall, I found the EdX training to be more valuable than the Linux Academy trainings. The videos were short and clear, and the Labs were more hands on. As someone who is not a video learner, I appreciated that the labs included typed instructions with links to various sources to assist with troubleshooting when necessary. Having previously worked at a company that had an entire team dedicated to supporting the Power BI infrastructure, it is disappointing that I am just now learning the value of this tool. There are many dashboards that would have been helpful to both me and my customers that I wish I had access to during my previous career.