Power BI Workshops, Spring 2016

These Power BI Workshop sessions are coming up pretty soon and if you’re in the area of these events, please consider attending.  Learn core skills for data wrangling with Power Query and M, data modeling with Power Pivot and SSAS Tabular, calculations with DAX and data presentation and analysis with advanced Power BI visuals.

Chicago – March 4th
SQL Saturday preconference – Full day

Huntington Beach – April 1
SQL Saturday preconference – Full day

Phoenix – Apr 15
SQL Saturday preconference (registration link TBA)

San Jose – May 3-4
PASS Business Analytics Conference – 2-hour micro workshop

With all the changes and new features added recently to Power BI, expect to see updates to the sessions that are not yet detailed in the abstract.

Session description:

This engaging workshop will teach attendees how to use Power BI Desktop to create a complete solution delivering dashboards, self-service and mobile BI.  Attendees will learn to analyze information using impactful and interactive visualizations.  We will create a solution using a variety of data sources that can be used on the desktop by Data Analysts or for group collaboration in the Power BI secure cloud service.

Attendees should have a basic knowledge of database concepts and should know how to use Excel 2013 or newer.

Computer Requirements

Bring your laptop running Windows 7 or newer (4 GB of RAM is required, more is better, 64 bit OS recommended).  Before the session, attendees should download and install the Power BI Desktop and create a free account at PowerBI.com (90% of the exercises can be completed in Power BI Desktop without a PowerBI.com subscription.)  Note that to create a subscription you must use a work email address rather than an address from a free mail provider such as Hotmail, GMail or Yahoo!.  If you have any difficulty getting signed up, follow the directions at this post.

At the conclusion, attendees will know how to use Power Query to combine and transform data from different sources; Power Pivot to model data for reporting and discovery, and write calculations, KPIs and complex metrics. They will learn to use Power BI report visuals to create interactive visualizations and dashboards, and Excel PivotTables, PivotCharts, slicers, conditional formating and advanced features to create collaborative dashboards and reports. Finally, attendees will learn to deliver a collaborative BI solution in Power BI online enabling natural language queries with Power BI Q&A, scheduled data refresh and queries using live, on-premises data.  We will also introduce enterprise capabilities which include connectivity to live, on-premises data sources through DirectQuery and Analysis Services.

BI Solution Components

Begin with a brief and high-level introduction to the components of traditional BI solutions to help attendees appreciate the usual scale and cost.  Discuss the options to scale these items for small and large projects.  Discuss the trade-offs for each and the value of centralized solutions, data quality and master data management.  Discuss the challenges of designing, building and maintaining large-scale BI solutions.

Topics covered:

• Introducing the Power BI Dashboard designer
• Universal principles of data behavior
• Universal data problems & visualization principles
• Interactive visuals
• Project types & scale
• Self-service BI & enterprise scale projects
• Power BI project stages
• Managing data transformations with Power Query
• Introduction to advanced “M” script
• Data modelling with Power Pivot
• Introducing DAX Calculations
• Visualizing & exploring with Power BI report visuals
• Building live, interactive dashboards
• Publishing and collaborating with PowerBI.com
• Integrating Excel pivot tables & reports
• Introducing management groups & content packs
• On-premises and large-scale solution options
• Data Management Gateway & scheduled refresh