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Microsoft Power BI Dashboards Step by Step
Your hands-on guide to building effective Power BI dashboards
Expand your expertise–and teach yourself how to create world-class Power BI business analysis dashboards that bring data to life for better decision-making. If you’re an experienced business intelligence professional or manager, you’ll get all the guidance, examples, and code you need to succeed–even if you’ve never used Power BI before.
Successfully design, architect, and implement Power BI in your organization Take full advantage of any Microsoft Power BI platform, including Power BI Premium Make upfront decisions that position your Power BI project for success Build rich, live dashboards to monitor crucial data from across your organization Aggregate data and data elements from numerous internal and external data sources Develop dynamic visualizations, including charts, maps, and graphs Bring data to life with stunning interactive reports Ensure dashboard security and compliance Drive user adoption through effective training
Expand your expertise–and teach yourself how to create world-class Power BI business analysis dashboards that bring data to life for better decision-making. If you’re an experienced business intelligence professional or manager, you’ll get all the guidance, examples, and code you need to succeed–even if you’ve never used Power BI before.
Successfully design, architect, and implement Power BI in your organization Take full advantage of any Microsoft Power BI platform, including Power BI Premium Make upfront decisions that position your Power BI project for success Build rich, live dashboards to monitor crucial data from across your organization Aggregate data and data elements from numerous internal and external data sources Develop dynamic visualizations, including charts, maps, and graphs Bring data to life with stunning interactive reports Ensure dashboard security and compliance Drive user adoption through effective training
296 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 5, 2018
About the author
Errin O'Connor
8 books4 followersErrin O'Connor: A Recognized Authority in AI, Cloud, SharePoint and Microsoft Technologies
Errin O'Connor is widely regarded as one of North America's foremost thought leaders in Artificial Intelligence (AI), AI Governance, cloud migrations, SharePoint, information security, and business intelligence. Recognized by global organizations including Microsoft and Gartner, Errin's influence extends across both the public and private sectors—from federal agencies such as the Department of Defense (DoD) and NASA to Fortune 100 giants like Nike, PepsiCo, United Airlines, Boeing, Sony, and Walmart.
With over 26 years of hands-on experience, Errin has served as the lead architect on some of the nation's most complex and high-profile cloud transformation initiatives. His work includes the design and deployment of secure, mission-critical systems for government and defense entities, including classified infrastructure within the DoD cloud.
As the Founder and Chief AI Architect of EPC Group, Errin has guided the firm through more than 10,000+ Microsoft technology implementations, covering Power BI, Microsoft 365, Azure, Teams, Exchange, SQL Server, Dynamics, Microsoft Intune, and enterprise-grade custom applications. EPC Group's solutions span industries and are deeply rooted in security, compliance, scalability, and innovation.
Errin is also a 4-time Microsoft Press best-selling author, having penned:
"Microsoft Power BI Dashboards Step by Step" – an industry-standard guide for building enterprise-grade analytics dashboards with today's most powerful data platforms.
"SharePoint 2013 Field Guide: Advice from the Consulting Trenches" – a comprehensive resource on SharePoint architecture, governance, mobility, compliance (PII/HIPAA), ECM, and records management.
"Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010: Inside Out" and "Windows SharePoint Services 3.0: Inside Out" – definitive Microsoft Press resources on SharePoint deployment and management.
As a respected keynote speaker and Microsoft event contributor, Errin has presented at over 450 industry conferences across the United States and Canada, helping thousands of IT leaders, CIOs, and decision-makers shape their digital transformation and AI adoption strategies.
Today, Errin is leading the charge in aligning AI with Microsoft technologies—guiding EPC Group's clients through the real-world application of tools such as OpenAI, Copilot, Google Gemini, xAI and all major AI solutions. In previous years, Errin was named the top SharePoint consultant in North America by Gartner.
Errin O'Connor is widely regarded as one of North America's foremost thought leaders in Artificial Intelligence (AI), AI Governance, cloud migrations, SharePoint, information security, and business intelligence. Recognized by global organizations including Microsoft and Gartner, Errin's influence extends across both the public and private sectors—from federal agencies such as the Department of Defense (DoD) and NASA to Fortune 100 giants like Nike, PepsiCo, United Airlines, Boeing, Sony, and Walmart.
With over 26 years of hands-on experience, Errin has served as the lead architect on some of the nation's most complex and high-profile cloud transformation initiatives. His work includes the design and deployment of secure, mission-critical systems for government and defense entities, including classified infrastructure within the DoD cloud.
As the Founder and Chief AI Architect of EPC Group, Errin has guided the firm through more than 10,000+ Microsoft technology implementations, covering Power BI, Microsoft 365, Azure, Teams, Exchange, SQL Server, Dynamics, Microsoft Intune, and enterprise-grade custom applications. EPC Group's solutions span industries and are deeply rooted in security, compliance, scalability, and innovation.
Errin is also a 4-time Microsoft Press best-selling author, having penned:
"Microsoft Power BI Dashboards Step by Step" – an industry-standard guide for building enterprise-grade analytics dashboards with today's most powerful data platforms.
"SharePoint 2013 Field Guide: Advice from the Consulting Trenches" – a comprehensive resource on SharePoint architecture, governance, mobility, compliance (PII/HIPAA), ECM, and records management.
"Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010: Inside Out" and "Windows SharePoint Services 3.0: Inside Out" – definitive Microsoft Press resources on SharePoint deployment and management.
As a respected keynote speaker and Microsoft event contributor, Errin has presented at over 450 industry conferences across the United States and Canada, helping thousands of IT leaders, CIOs, and decision-makers shape their digital transformation and AI adoption strategies.
Today, Errin is leading the charge in aligning AI with Microsoft technologies—guiding EPC Group's clients through the real-world application of tools such as OpenAI, Copilot, Google Gemini, xAI and all major AI solutions. In previous years, Errin was named the top SharePoint consultant in North America by Gartner.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 18, 2018
This is by far the best business intelligence book I have read and it does a great job covering Power BI in many different aspects.
It key that you download a trial version of Power BI Dashboards so that you can follow along with the steps and I found this very easy to not only read but follow.
I was able to start right off the bat using some examples and then able to put those into my "test" environment I setup on my machine and within 10 days or so I am was able to develop some really powerful Dashboards and reports. I enjoyed the case study summaries at the end of each chapter as he helped me thing of use cases in my work environment about how I could make things better in terms of reports and how I could offer the business some real "fresh" reports that would draw them to Using Power BI. I also got into some of the more advanced areas around DAX and have been practicing some predictive analytics type methods that I plan to use on a project that I am kicking off here at my company next week.
Really solid book and I enjoyed how the author tries to take a "real word type approach" that I found that so many other Microsoft books don't take and this was a huge plus for me here in this publication. Would highly recommend!
It key that you download a trial version of Power BI Dashboards so that you can follow along with the steps and I found this very easy to not only read but follow.
I was able to start right off the bat using some examples and then able to put those into my "test" environment I setup on my machine and within 10 days or so I am was able to develop some really powerful Dashboards and reports. I enjoyed the case study summaries at the end of each chapter as he helped me thing of use cases in my work environment about how I could make things better in terms of reports and how I could offer the business some real "fresh" reports that would draw them to Using Power BI. I also got into some of the more advanced areas around DAX and have been practicing some predictive analytics type methods that I plan to use on a project that I am kicking off here at my company next week.
Really solid book and I enjoyed how the author tries to take a "real word type approach" that I found that so many other Microsoft books don't take and this was a huge plus for me here in this publication. Would highly recommend!
March 12, 2025
This is a good overview if you already know Power BI, but may be confusing for the new learner. Some of the information may also be dated.
November 14, 2018
I am so disappointed. To name a few of the things I didn't like about the book:
1- The author assumes you know a lot of things about database in general.
2- You don't do any "step-by-step" work until you are halfway through the book.
3- The book is a good reference. I may use it in the future AFTER I learn Power Bi from another resource. But in its own, it is near impossible to learn Power bi from this book.
4- At the end of each chapter there is what is called "Case Study" which is, in my opinion, useless without practice files. Case study is a scenario-based question. Something along the lines of "Assume you are an employee in a big retail store and have a data set of all of the sales data. You need to assemble a report to find out the following information 1) 2) 3) etc. " That would have been amazing had practice files for these questions were provided with the book. However, this is not the case. This is merely a theoretical question. You just need to "imagine" the data and how you would analyze it if it existed. For a practical subject like this one, this doesn't make sense at all.
5- Chapter 5 about DAX is merely a reference of the language's orders. Am I supposed to memorize the orders without actually using them? Again, practice file to APPLY the material of this chapter would have been helpful.
6- Finally, if I purchased a book about a Microsoft product, there is a big chance I am a Microsoft user. There is no need to oversell your products all over the book. This is so annoying.
1- The author assumes you know a lot of things about database in general.
2- You don't do any "step-by-step" work until you are halfway through the book.
3- The book is a good reference. I may use it in the future AFTER I learn Power Bi from another resource. But in its own, it is near impossible to learn Power bi from this book.
4- At the end of each chapter there is what is called "Case Study" which is, in my opinion, useless without practice files. Case study is a scenario-based question. Something along the lines of "Assume you are an employee in a big retail store and have a data set of all of the sales data. You need to assemble a report to find out the following information 1) 2) 3) etc. " That would have been amazing had practice files for these questions were provided with the book. However, this is not the case. This is merely a theoretical question. You just need to "imagine" the data and how you would analyze it if it existed. For a practical subject like this one, this doesn't make sense at all.
5- Chapter 5 about DAX is merely a reference of the language's orders. Am I supposed to memorize the orders without actually using them? Again, practice file to APPLY the material of this chapter would have been helpful.
6- Finally, if I purchased a book about a Microsoft product, there is a big chance I am a Microsoft user. There is no need to oversell your products all over the book. This is so annoying.
December 18, 2018
This is by far the best business intelligence book I have read and it does a great job covering Power BI in many different aspects.
It key that you download a trial version of Power BI Dashboards so that you can follow along with the steps and I found this very easy to not only read but follow.
I was able to start right off the bat using some examples and then able to put those into my "test" environment I setup on my machine and within 10 days or so I am was able to develop some really powerful Dashboards and reports. I enjoyed the case study summaries at the end of each chapter as he helped me thing of use cases in my work environment about how I could make things better in terms of reports and how I could offer the business some real "fresh" reports that would draw them to Using Power BI. I also got into some of the more advanced areas around DAX and have been practicing some predictive analytics type methods that I plan to use on a project that I am kicking off here at my company next week.
Really solid book and I enjoyed how the author tries to take a "real word type approach" that I found that so many other Microsoft books don't take and this was a huge plus for me here in this publication. Would highly recommend!
It key that you download a trial version of Power BI Dashboards so that you can follow along with the steps and I found this very easy to not only read but follow.
I was able to start right off the bat using some examples and then able to put those into my "test" environment I setup on my machine and within 10 days or so I am was able to develop some really powerful Dashboards and reports. I enjoyed the case study summaries at the end of each chapter as he helped me thing of use cases in my work environment about how I could make things better in terms of reports and how I could offer the business some real "fresh" reports that would draw them to Using Power BI. I also got into some of the more advanced areas around DAX and have been practicing some predictive analytics type methods that I plan to use on a project that I am kicking off here at my company next week.
Really solid book and I enjoyed how the author tries to take a "real word type approach" that I found that so many other Microsoft books don't take and this was a huge plus for me here in this publication. Would highly recommend!
July 21, 2020
This was rough. I was so excited to check out this book, but it is definitely not well structured or helpful to newbies. I would argue you needed someone who was a humanities major to edit this, lol. For example, in one section the author tells you to enter the formula in DAX format, which assumes that you know DAX format. A few pages later, the author tells you what DAX format is. Would have been better to put that first! Also, this is not a step by step guide. You really have to be quote comfortable working with Powerbi already. The examples also don't tie to the names of the tables and columns in the practice files. I think if you take a Udemy course you would be better off. The only thing I took away from this was a very simplistic understanding of the difference between measures and calculated columns, and some DAX formatting.
January 27, 2019
Though quite informative about the different ways to create power BI Dashboards from various sources, this books is rather mediocre in terms of content and complexity. This is not a book about DAX (Data Analysis Expressions). I found the content dull and repetitive.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews