As the technology continues to grow, understanding and interpreting the large volume of data is very crucial and for that, PowerBI is being used which is a very powerful business intelligence tool developed by Microsoft. In this PowerBI tutorial, we are going to teach you everything from basic to advanced concepts of PowerBI. Whether you are a beginner or a professional in this field, you will basically learn to create and design raw data into an interactive PowerBI dashboard and data reports.
With this detailed PowerBI tutorial for beginners, you will learn everything from connecting different data sources to developing dynamic PowerBI visualization, creating custom PowerBI reports, and optimizing overall PowerBI workflows.
What is Business Intelligence?
Business Intelligence(BI) is defined as the collection of different approaches and utilities used to scan unprocessed data. It is a reflection of strategies and techniques adopted by organizations to attain a comprehensive analysis of relevant business information. Business intelligence functions through ETL, which consists of the extraction, transformation, and loading of data into a database, covering functions such as data mining, online analytical processing, and business reporting. Business intelligence is used by several organizations to enhance overall productivity and efficiency in work.
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What is Power BI?
Power BI is a very powerful business intelligence tool that was developed by Microsoft. It is a tool that generally lets users connect, analyze, and visualize data from a wide range of multiple sources. PowerBI lets individuals or any organization design interactive data reports, eye-catching data visualizations, and dynamic PowerBI dashboards that can provide useful insights that help in smarter decision-making.
With the use of PowerBI, users can simply convert their raw data into actionable insights by building actual data models and visual reports. Also, it can integrate flawlessly with multiple types of data sources like SQL servers, Excel, Google Analytics, and cloud-based services generally making it a preferred platform for businesses that generally use data analytics to improve overall performance and productivity.
Why do we need Power BI?
Power BI provides data in interactive insight, along with the provision for self-service business intelligence. Working on business needs, the end-users can independently create an interactive business intelligence report and a set of dashboards using Power BI without the assistance or use of IT or a database administrator. This becomes most organizations’ standard go-to tool, to service business analytics requirements.
1. Installing Power BI Desktop
To get started with Power BI, you’ll need to install Power BI Desktop, a free application that lets you connect to, transform, and visualize your data. Download the PowerBI from its official website of Power BI.
Installation Steps for PowerBI:
- Download the installer from the official website.
- Follow the installation instructions.
- Launch Power BI Desktop and explore its interface, which includes the ribbon, panes, and report canvas.
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2. Power BI Components and Development tools
This section introduces the use of Power BI Desktop for developing reports, building interactive PowerBI dashboards to gain real-time insight, and sharing analytics through the Power BI Service. The section will also cover how to navigate through key features, PowerBI Tools, PowerBI Reports, and the Architecture of PowerBI in order to leverage them in dynamic data visualization and meaningful reporting.
Following we have discussed the major Power BI components:
- Power Query: Power Query is one of the key components used in searching, accessing, and transforming data from public and corporate sources.
- Power Pivot: Furthermore, Power Pivot provides the functionality to model data within the memory for analytics in Power BI.
- Power View: This is a function within Power BI that will help you visualize, analyze, and present your data.
- Power Map: Power Map is a visualization tool used to create interactive geographical data.
- Power BI Service: Share views of data and workbooks centrally, and refresh from on-premises and cloud-based sources using Power BI Service.
- Power BI Q&A: The Q&A in Power BI allows the user to ask questions sonorously and get immediate answers through natural language queries.
- Data Management Gateway: The Data Management Gateway refreshes data on a regular basis, views data feeds, and exposes tables.
- Data Catalog: Through it, the user will be able to search for and reuse queries. This functionality could also be made available with Metadata.
The Power BI Architecture consists of a data foundation layer, a data analytics engine, and a data visualization dashboard.
- Data Foundation: Power BI allows for coordination and the bringing together of different file formats from various cloud sources into one coherent data model. Power BI will be able to integrate with a variety of cloud sources such as Azure Dataverse and various data formats like flat files,.csv.
- Analytics: Power BI contains a wide range of analytics capabilities, from descriptive to diagnosis. Besides that, Power BI is fully integrated with cloud machine learning platforms like Azure ML, furthering the analytics capability.
- Data Visualization: Power BI makes visualizing pretty smooth and instinctive. Visualization from one united data model goes into implementation and execution with ease.
- Data Sources: Power BI features a wide range of data sources as the need or requirements that are important for the tool to function. The data sources will, however, permit Power BI to connect and access data from the system’s local files and cloud-based online repositories.
Further in this Power BI Tutorial, we will learn a few of the most important Power BI tools:
The Power BI Service, also known as PowerBI Online, is a web-based interface through which you can share reports on the Power BI Desktop. Power BI Service makes it easier to collaborate with users in creating dashboards and reports. It is a Software-as-a-Service tool that hosts PowerBI models, dashboards, and reports.
Power BI desktop is a free data analysis and visualization tool with the help of which the user can create models, dashboards, and reports for his data. PowerBI desktop makes it very easy to connect with various types of available data. PowerBI desktop creates and shares the largest part of business intelligence reports.
It is an on-premise platform for showing and managing your reports and KPIs. Power BI Report Server is going to host paginated reports, dashboards, power applications, and KPIs. You can customize the reports that are developed by your development team. You will also be able to use filters to bring a customized experience into your reports. You can access the reports through web browsers or mobile devices. Reports can also be accessed via e-mail.
The Power BI Gateway is a connection set up by the BI admin that connects Power BI to on-premises-based Excel, DirectQuery, PowerApps, and Azure Analysis Services, among others. Data is pulled through secure channels with the help of Power BI Gateway and utilized for analytics and reporting. Power BI Gateway provides ease to data in such a manner that it connects the client platform directly to on-premise sources.
This is basically a mobile application that can run on iOS, Android, and Windows operating systems. It enables you to view reports and dashboards anywhere and at any time. You can share the reports and dashboards with other users using Microsoft Intune. The users can access these reports using their smartphones over the Internet.
3. Data Source and Connectivity
In this section, we are going to learn how to connect Power BI from various sources of data like databases, cloud services, and online portals. Learn how to bring in data, clean it, and prepare the data for efficient analysis. Further, enhance your skills with the best practices for handling large datasets and creating secure connections for strong data pipelines.
- Connecting to Databases (SQL Server, Azure, etc.)
- Connecting to Cloud Services (Google Analytics, Salesforce)
- Best Practices for Data Connectivity
4. Data Management in Power BI
Data management is an indispensable concept in Effective analytics. With this section, we will now explain a number of the ‘must-know’ techniques around the transformation of data in Power Query, bringing in data from various sources, and advanced means of preparing that data.
5. Data Modeling and Relationships
Proper data modeling is the key to getting good reporting done. Learn how to build strong models, and define your relationships with tables, calculated columns, and measures that unlock and represent information in the manner you realize. Get best practices while modeling your data for better end-report performance with accuracy.
- Building Relationships Between Tables
- Best Practices for Data Modeling
6. DAX and Data Analysis
Learn how to leverage Data Analysis Expressions-DAX to create dynamic calculations and advanced analytics. This section will focus on teaching the necessary functions, best practices, and techniques for DAX to build dynamic reports and dashboards that go beyond insight visualization.
7. Visualization Techniques
The core of data-driven decision-making lies in visualization. Get an overview of how to make an impact with best practices for visualizations, ranging from basic bar and pie charts to very advanced custom visuals; understand how to choose the proper visualization for your data and optimize your reports by applying high-end design techniques.
- Bar, Line, and Pie Charts
- Custom Visuals
- Advanced Visualization Techniques
8. Advanced Power BI Functions
Now, learn more advanced Power BI features like heat maps, data alerts, and integration with various applications. Study the use of Power BI Service for collaboration and some advanced tools to take your analytics to the next level.
9. Safety and Sharing
Data security and report sharing are core to enterprise analytics. In this section, learn how to set up row-level security, secure sensitive data, and share reports via the Power BI Service. Learn various ways to ensure that the right people have the right data.
- Row-Level Security
- Sharing Reports on the Power BI Service
10. Career & Industry Applications
Power BI opens career paths in various fields. Additionally, this section describes a few job roles such as Power BI Developer and Consultant, how to prepare a resume, and how to face interviews. Find out how Power BI is used in finance, marketing, and supply chain management.
11. Comparative Study
We will now compare Power BI to other leading business intelligence tools like Tableau, Excel, and Google Data Studio. Understand the pros and cons of each option so you can make informed decisions about the best solution for your organization’s data analytics needs.
If you have prepared till now, then check out Top Power BI Interview Questions and Answers for your next PowerBI interview
12. Working on Power BI
You should first connect your data to Power BI, then transform what you have uploaded and then model the data whenever necessary, create visualizations of the data, and share of generated results. Below we have also explained the detailed working of PowerBI:
- Connecting Your Data: You can connect a variety of data sources such as MySQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, etc., by using either Power BI or Power BI Desktop. You can connect your data to Power BI generally in two ways- upload your file to Power BI or import the file into Power BI.
- Uploading Your File to Power BI: Connect to the data in your workbook in order to make meaningful PowerBI reports and PowerBI Dashboards.
- Import your file into Power BI: Then, you have to import your file in Power BI, where you can interact with the file just like you do in the case of Excel Online.
- Data Transformation: After your data is loaded, you can transform it according to your requirements. You can do this by using the ‘Transform’ menu. It contains a set of operations like reverse rows, counts rows, renames, replace values and errors, pivot and unpivot columns, etc.
- Data Modeling: Add data sources to perform data modeling in Power BI’s new report option. You can also add functions, calculations, relationships, measures, etc. in Power BI, which enables users to do data modeling for better visualization and analytics of their data.
- Data Visualization: On Power BI, based on modeled data and depending on the requirements in your organization, you can build reports, dashboards, etc. There are several ways in which report creation can be done: you have to select a field of your choice from your CSV or data file, and thereafter select the tool that you want to give to your data so as to get the desired report. Following are some samples of data visualization:
- Sharing the Generated Reports: To share a generated report, select the ‘Share’ option that appears in the top navigation. Select the ‘share’ option, complete the form, and share it with your team.
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- On selecting the ‘share’ option, complete the form, and share it with your team.
- You can share the generated reports from Favorites, Recent, and My Workspace.
Since you have completed this tutorial, let’s analyze the advantages and disadvantages of PowerBI that will give you more details about PowerBI
Advantages of Power BI
The following are the advantages of using Power BI:
- Has a short learning curve as compared to other BI tools such as Tableau
- Simple and easy-to-use interface with drag-and-drop features for data visualization
- Introduces new functionalities and data analysis functions almost every month
- Crowning features allow you to create customized dashboards and meet exact organizational demands
- The power natural language interface lets you run database queries through voice commands
- Allows the author to connect with live data sources and provides the information to the stakeholders in real-time
Disadvantages of Power BI
The following are the disadvantages of using Power BI:
- Reports and dashboards can only be shared with users with the same email domain
- You cannot merge data from live connections with on-premise datasets. Instead, you have to connect all data sources to the Power BI Server and publish your dashboard on the website
- Power BI only accepts datasets with a maximum size of 250 MB for its in-memory database. If a dataset is larger in size, then you have to run direct queries on the database, which makes the process much slower
- Few data sources and parameters as compared to Tableau
Companies Using Power BI
There are many companies that use Power BI for efficient decision-making. Computer software companies are the largest segment of companies that use Power BI. Some companies that use Power BI are:
- Microsoft
- Oracle
- IBM
- SAP
- Dell
- Wipro
- Procter & Gamble (P&G)
- Amazon
- Nestlé
- PepsiCo
- Airbus
- Honeywell
Conclusion
In this Power BI step-by-step tutorial, you learned that Power BI is a business intelligence tool through which you can make creative reports and dashboards for better decision-making. You also learned about business intelligence, its importance, how Power BI came into existence and importance, the workings of Power BI, companies using Power BI, etc. Also, check out this Microsoft Power BI Certification Training to get your skills certified and gain a competitive edge in the job market.
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Power BI Tutorial – FAQs
Is Power BI easy to learn?
Yes, PowerBI is generally very easy to learn due to its interactive interface and various useful features. Follow this tutorial thoroughly to master PowerBI.
Can I learn Power BI by myself?
Absolutely with different learning resources available online, you can easily understand PowerBI with little effort and dedication.
Is Power BI easier than Excel?
Power is well suited for tasks like data visualization and data analytics while Excel is generally used for detailed data manipulation. Both have different use cases so we can’t compare.
Can we learn Power BI in 10 days?
You can learn the fundamentals of PowerBI in 10 days but in order to master it, you need to give it more time and effort.
What is the PowerBI professional salary in India?
The average salary range offered to PowerBI professionals is 5 to 12 LPA based on proficiency level and skills. Although seniors also earn more than this range.
Is coding required for Power BI?
No, coding is not essential for creating reports and dashboards in PowerBI. But an understanding of DAX is very helpful and M language can be very useful for advanced data modeling.
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