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Learn Power BI: A beginner's guide to developing interactive business intelligence solutions using Microsoft Power BI
Solve business challenges with Microsoft Power BI's advanced visualization and data analysis techniques
Key Features Create effective storytelling reports by implementing simple-to-intermediate Power BI features Develop powerful analytical models to extract key insights for changing business needs Build, publish, and share impressive dashboards for your organization Book DescriptionTo succeed in today's transforming business world, organizations need business intelligence capabilities to make smarter decisions faster than ever before. This Power BI book is an entry-level guide that will get you up and running with data modeling, visualization, and analytical techniques from scratch.
You'll find this book handy if you want to get well-versed with the extensive Power BI ecosystem. You'll start by covering the basics of business intelligence and installing Power BI. You'll then learn the wide range of Power BI features to unlock business insights. As you progress, the book will take you through how to use Power Query to ingest, cleanse, and shape your data, and use Power BI DAX to create simple to complex calculations. You'll also be able to add a variety of interactive visualizations to your reports to bring your data to life. Finally, you'll gain hands-on experience in creating visually stunning reports that speak to business decision makers, and see how you can securely share these reports and collaborate with others.
By the end of this book, you'll be ready to create simple, yet effective, BI reports and dashboards using the latest features of Power BI.
What you will learn Explore the different features of Power BI to create interactive dashboards Use the Query Editor to import and transform data Perform simple and complex DAX calculations to enhance analysis Discover business insights and tell a story with your data using Power BI Explore data and learn to manage datasets, dataflows, and data gateways Use workspaces to collaborate with others and publish your reports Who this book is forIf you’re an IT manager, data analyst, or BI user new to using Power BI for solving business intelligence problems, this book is for you. You’ll also find this book useful if you want to migrate from other BI tools to create powerful and interactive dashboards. No experience of working with Power BI is expected.
Table of Contents Introduction to Business Intelligence and Power BI Up and Running with Power BI Desktop Connecting and Shaping Data Creating Data Models and Calculations Unlocking Insights Creating the Final Report Publishing and Sharing Using Reports in the Service Understanding Dashboards, Apps and Security Data Gateways and Refreshing Datasets362 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 13, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 21, 2022
Covers very broadly the whole Power BI ecosystem, both working with the desktop tool and working with the service tool, and most things around that as well. If you have some experience with Excel but are a novice in Power BI, or BI in general, then this is a great place to start. Since the coverage is so broad, none of the topics are treated in great depth however.
The writing is very clear and the practice examples are easy to follow. The chapters can easily be read independently so you can skip the parts that don't seem relevant to you. I find the exercises pedagogical in their structure, often using different methods to reach the same goal and repeating some previous points now and then. Solving one problem is sometimes done in a trial-and-error fashion, stepping forward and backward to let us explore different paths and overcome any fear of working with a new and powerful tool.
The only thing I found lacking was some explanation of DAX (data analysis expression) language. While the reader can learn a few things here, I often had the feeling of coming away from finishing an exercise by having written a cool little code snippet, the structure of which I couldn't quite understand. So the next book for me to read will be a book about DAX.
The writing is very clear and the practice examples are easy to follow. The chapters can easily be read independently so you can skip the parts that don't seem relevant to you. I find the exercises pedagogical in their structure, often using different methods to reach the same goal and repeating some previous points now and then. Solving one problem is sometimes done in a trial-and-error fashion, stepping forward and backward to let us explore different paths and overcome any fear of working with a new and powerful tool.
The only thing I found lacking was some explanation of DAX (data analysis expression) language. While the reader can learn a few things here, I often had the feeling of coming away from finishing an exercise by having written a cool little code snippet, the structure of which I couldn't quite understand. So the next book for me to read will be a book about DAX.
February 18, 2024
📕 Why (Not) to read this book (Target Audience)
Great book when you are getting started with Power BI.
👀 How this book changed my daily live (Takeaways)
Data modelers tend to think in terms of facts and dimensions. Fact tables, or facts, are the tables that contain numeric information about particular business processes such as sales, marketing, production, and inventory. Each row in a fact table represents a particular event associated with that business process, such as a change in inventory or a sale to a customer. Columns in the fact table include such things as the amount of inventory change, the number of units sold, and the unit sale price.
A bus matrix is a data warehouse planning tool created by Ralph Kimball. It is useful for visualizing the relationships between facts and dimensions.
⁉ Spoiler Alerts (Highlights)
Everyone that's added to a workspace must have a Pro license unless the workspace is a Premium capacity workspace. Users can be assigned four different security roles for the workspace. These roles are listed as follows:
• Viewer
• Contributor
• Member
• Admin
To understand how object permissions work, consider that the hierarchy for dashboards, reports, and datasets is as follows:
• Dashboards
○ Reports
§ Datasets
• Scorecards
Three permissions can be assigned to objects outside of workspace permission settings. These permissions are listed as follows:
• Read
• Reshare
• Build
Great book when you are getting started with Power BI.
👀 How this book changed my daily live (Takeaways)
Data modelers tend to think in terms of facts and dimensions. Fact tables, or facts, are the tables that contain numeric information about particular business processes such as sales, marketing, production, and inventory. Each row in a fact table represents a particular event associated with that business process, such as a change in inventory or a sale to a customer. Columns in the fact table include such things as the amount of inventory change, the number of units sold, and the unit sale price.
A bus matrix is a data warehouse planning tool created by Ralph Kimball. It is useful for visualizing the relationships between facts and dimensions.
⁉ Spoiler Alerts (Highlights)
Everyone that's added to a workspace must have a Pro license unless the workspace is a Premium capacity workspace. Users can be assigned four different security roles for the workspace. These roles are listed as follows:
• Viewer
• Contributor
• Member
• Admin
To understand how object permissions work, consider that the hierarchy for dashboards, reports, and datasets is as follows:
• Dashboards
○ Reports
§ Datasets
• Scorecards
Three permissions can be assigned to objects outside of workspace permission settings. These permissions are listed as follows:
• Read
• Reshare
• Build
June 26, 2025
Helped me learn how to use PowerBi more effectively. Pace and screenshots were very helpful. The only criticism I had is that the chapters on DAX formulas moved quite quickly and weren’t as thorough as I needed to be able to learn DAX, but I was able to use other resources like Copilot to get through it!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews