Power BI Essentials Course for End Users

Data analysis and analytics. Uncover insights and transform your organisation.

COVID-19 update: arrangement of our courses

We are now delivering courses online and in-person. Please check the delivery format of each class before enrolling.

Please note that course materials (excluding prescribed texts) are shared electronically within 48 hours of course commencement. Printing is not available.

This one-day Power BI training course will provide you with the skills to navigate and retrieve the business intelligence within existing reports and datasets. Within your browser you will learn how to filter report pages to gain insights from key influencers. This short course will show you how to collaborate in the Power BI Service to query your team’s data and reveal informative stats and trends that you can pin to the team’s dashboards. Finally, we will show you how to extract and export the results of your analysis in a variety of secure formats.

Aims

We want to equip you with knowledge and skills to analyse, interpret and work with existing Power BI models, reports and dashboards. You will learn to navigate, filter and extract business intelligence from your team’s visuals and datasets. You will also learn how to collaborate with your colleagues and analysts to easily and efficiently produce new visuals within your team’s workspace.

Outcomes

By the end of this course, you should be able to:

• view and navigate the Power BI Service reports, datasets, dashboards and apps
• comprehend and interpret a variety of report visuals
• filter, focus and bookmark targeted insights and influencers
• drill down and drill through visual hierarchies
• extract and export queries and insights
• query your dashboards with efficient Q&A vocabulary
• share and collaborate on the results of your analysis.

Content

Get Started with the Power BI Service

• Opening and Navigating the Power BI Service
• Accessing and understanding Workspaces
  • Recognising Roles and Permissions
  • Viewing Reports
  • Viewing Datasets and Lineage
  • Viewing Dashboards
• Accessing and understanding Apps

Working with Reports and Dashboards

Navigating

• Resizing the Report on screen
• Navigating Pages
• Using Bookmarks
• Spotlight Visuals
• Reset the Report
• Refresh the Data

Interpreting Visuals and Insights

• Column, Bar and Line Charts
• Waterfall, Funnel and Scatter Charts
• Pie, Donut and Treemap Charts
• Gauge, KPI and Decomposition Visuals

Highlighting and Retrieving Data

• Understand and use Tooltips
• Best practices when selecting visuals
• Sort Tables and Chart Axis’
• Focus Mode
• Show as Table
• Get Insights
• Key Influencers
• Smart Narratives
• Pin Visuals and Pages to a Dashboard

Filtering

• Cross filtering between visuals
• Slicers, including synchronised slicers
• Page filters
• Basic, Advanced and Top N filtering 
• Drill Down and Drill Through

Collaborating, Sharing and Exporting

• Add Comments
• Subscribe 
• Chat in Teams
• Export Visual to CSV
• Save and/or download the Report
• Embed the Report in SharePoint and Teams
• Export Report to PowerPoint; static or live 
• Export to PDF
• Analyse in Excel and Pivot
• Generate QR Code

Effective use of Q&A to generate Business Intelligence

• Use Q&A Suggestions
• Ask questions using key words
• Filter and edit Q&A results 
• Pin visual results to a Dashboard

Editing

• Format existing Visuals and Pages
• Create and manage new Pages
• Add New Visuals
• Understand and apply prebuilt Measures to Visuals
• Apply prebuilt Hierarchies to Visuals; including Date Hierarchies
• Format new Visuals and Pages
• Add Custom Visuals
• Add Filters and Slicers
• Add Bookmarks
• Add Titles; including Page Titles
• Understand graphical excellence

Working with Datasets

• Create formatted Tables
  • Add Fields
  • Summarise Fields
  • Format the Tables
  • Save and Export
• Create New Reports
• Connect Power BI Desktop to Live Dataset

Intended audience

• Analysts and users who ‘consume’ data and reports (but are not necessarily modelling or building reports).
• Managers, Directors, Executives and Assistants
• Financial Forensic Specialists
• Social Media Analysts
• Sales and Marketing Professionals

Prerequisites

No prior knowledge of programming languages is required. However, it is recommended that you are comfortable with the learning outcomes equivalent to our Microsoft Excel Course: Level 1. 

Delivery style

Face-to-face classes (CCE, Newtown)

These classes run in a computer lab and you do not need to bring your own device.

Online classes

You will need your own device with a Windows operating system. Power BI desktop only runs on a Windows operating system. It does NOT operate on Mac.

Materials

A course workbook is distributed electronically.