Microsoft Power BI Quick Start Guide Second Edition

An accessible fast paced introduction to all aspects of Power BI for new or aspiring BI professionals, data analysts, and data visualizers

▶Book Description
This revised edition has been fully updated to reflect the latest enhancements to Power BI. It includes a new chapter dedicated to dataflow, and covers all the essential concepts such as installation, designing effective data models, as well as building basic dashboards and visualizations to help you and your organization make better business decisions.

You'll learn how to obtain data from a variety of sources and clean it using Power BI Query Editor. You'll then find out how you can design your data model to navigate and explore relationships within it and build DAX formulas to make your data easier to work with. Visualizing your data is a key element in this book, and you'll get to grips rapidly with data visualization styles and enhanced digital storytelling techniques.

In addition, you will acquire the skills to build your own dataflows, understand the Common Data Model, and automate data flow refreshes to eradicate data cleansing inefficiency.

This guide will help you understand how to administer your organization's Power BI environment so that deployment can be made seamless, data refreshes can run properly, and security can be fully implemented.

By the end of this Power BI book, you'll have a better understanding of how to get the most out of Power BI to perform effective business intelligence.

▶What You Will Learn
⦁Connect to data sources using import and DirectQuery options
⦁Use Query Editor for data transformation and data cleansing processes, including writing M and R scripts and dataflows to do the same in the cloud
⦁Design optimized data models by designing relationships and DAX calculations
⦁Design effective reports with built-in and custom visuals
⦁Adopt Power BI Desktop and Service to implement row-level security
⦁Administer a Power BI cloud tenant for your organization
⦁Use built-in AI capabilities to enhance Power BI data transformation techniques
⦁Deploy your Power BI desktop files into the Power BI Report Server

▶Key Features
⦁Updated with the latest features in Power BI including Dataflow, AI insights, visuals and row level security
⦁Get faster and more intuitive data insights using Microsoft Power BI and its business intelligence capabilities
⦁Build accurate analytical models, reports, and dashboards

▶Who This Book Is For
Aspiring business intelligence professionals who want to learn Power BI will find this book useful. If you have a basic understanding of BI concepts and want to learn how to apply them using Microsoft Power BI, this book is for you.

▶What this book covers
⦁ Chapter 1, Getting Started with Importing Data Options, begins by getting the audience oriented with the Power BI Desktop. Next, they will learn how to connect to various common data sources in Power BI. Once a data source is chosen, the options within will be explored, including the choice between data import, direct query, and live connection.

⦁ Chapter 2, Data Transformation Strategies, explores the capabilities of the Power Query Editor inside the Power BI Desktop. Using this Power BI Query Editor, the reader will first learn how to do basic transformations, and they will quickly learn more advanced data cleansing practices. By the end of this chapter, the audience will know how to combine queries, use parameters, and read and write basic M queries.

⦁ Chapter 3, Building the Data Model, discusses one of the most critical parts of building a successful Power BI solution—designing an effective data model. In this chapter, readers will learn that while designing a data model, they are really setting themselves up for success when it comes to building reports. Specifically, this chapter will teach the audience how to establish relationships between tables, how to deal with complex relationship designs, and how to implement usability enhancements for report consumers.

⦁ Chapter 4, Leveraging DAX, teaches that the DAX language within Power BI is critical to building data models that are valuable to data consumers. While DAX may be intimidating at first, readers will quickly learn that its roots come from the Excel formula engine. This can be helpful at first, but as you find the need to develop more and more complex calculations, readers will learn that having a background in Excel formulas will only take them so far. This chapter will start with an understanding of basic DAX concepts but quickly accelerate into more complex ideas, such as Time Intelligence and Filter Context.

⦁ Chapter 5, Visualizing Data, describes how to take a finely tuned data model and build reports that properly deliver a message that clearly and concisely tells a story about the data.

⦁ Chapter 6, Digital Storytelling with Power BI, covers the capability that Power BI has to be much more than just a simple drag-and-drop reporting tool. Using the storytelling features of Drillthrough, Bookmarks, and the Selection pane, you have the ability to design reports that not only display data but also tell engaging stories that make your users crave for more.

⦁ Chapter 7, Using a Cloud Deployment with the Power BI Service, examines deploying your solution to the Power BI service to share what you have developed with your organization. Once deployed, you can build dashboards, share them with others, and schedule data refreshes. This chapter will cover the essential skills a BI professional would need to know to top off a Power BI solution they have developed.

⦁ Chapter 8, Data Cleansing in the Cloud with Dataflows, focuses on building reusable data and transform ative logic. Using Power BI dataflows supports large data volumes to perform scalable operations.

⦁ Chapter 9, On-Premises Solutions with Power BI Report Server, explores how many organizations have decided that they are not yet ready to move to the cloud. Using the Power BI Report Server cloud, wary organizations get the benefit of Power BI reports without compromising their feelings about the cloud. This chapter will cover deploying to the Power BI Report Server cloud, sharing reports with others, and updating data.