Detailed Course Outline
Get started with Microsoft data analytics
Businesses need data analysis more than ever. In this learning path, you will learn about the life and journey of a data analyst, the skills, tasks, and processes they go through in order to tell a story with data so trusted business decisions can be made. You will learn how the suite of Power BI tools and services are used by a data analyst to tell a compelling story through reports and dashboards, and the need for true BI in the enterprise.
This learning path can help you prepare for the Microsoft Certified: Data Analyst Associate certification.
Modules covered:
Discover data analysis
- In this module, you explore the different roles in data and learn the different tasks of a data analyst.
Get started building with Power BI
- Learn about Power BI, the building blocks and flow of Power BI, and how to create compelling, interactive reports.
Create interactive reports using Copilot for Power BI
- Copilot for Power BI uses Generative AI to simplify data visualization and create reports, making Power BI more insightful and accessible.
Prepare data for analysis with Power BI
You'll learn how to use Power Query to extract data from different data sources, choose a storage mode, and connectivity type. You'll also learn to profile, clean, and load data into Power BI before you model your data.
Modules covered:
Get data in Power BI
- You'll learn how to retrieve data from a variety of data sources, including Microsoft Excel, relational databases, and NoSQL data stores. You'll also learn how to improve performance while retrieving data.
Clean, transform, and load data in Power BI
- You'll learn how to simplify a complicated model, change data types, rename objects, and pivot data. You'll also learn how to profile columns so that you know which columns have the valuable data that you’re seeking for deeper analytics.
Model data with Power BI
Learn what a Power BI semantic model is, which data loading approach to use, and how to build out your semantic model to get the insights you need.
Modules covered
Describe Power BI Desktop models
- In this module, you'll learn about the Power BI Desktop model structure, star schema design basics, analytics queries, and report visual configuration. This module provides a strong foundation on which you can learn to optimize model designs and add model calculations.
Choose a Power BI model framework
- Describe model frameworks, their benefits and limitations, and features to help optimize your Power BI data models.
Design a semantic model in Power BI
- Building a great semantic model is about simplifying the disarray. A star schema is one way to simplify a semantic model, and you learn about the terminology and implementation of them in this module. You will also learn about why choosing the correct data granularity is important for performance and usability of your Power BI reports. Finally, you learn about improving performance with your Power BI semantic models.
Write DAX formulas for Power BI Desktop models
- In this module, you'll learn how to write DAX formulas to create calculated tables, calculated columns, and measures, which are different types of model calculations. Additionally, you'll learn how to write and format DAX formulas, which consist of expressions that use functions, operators, references to model objects, constants, and variables.
Add measures to Power BI Desktop models
- In this module, you'll learn how to work with implicit and explicit measures. You'll start by creating simple measures, which summarize a single column or table. Then, you'll create more complex measures based on other measures in the model. Additionally, you'll learn about the similarities of, and differences between, a calculated column and a measure.
Add calculated tables and columns to Power BI Desktop models
- By the end of this module, you'll be able to add calculated tables and calculated columns to your semantic model. You'll also be able to describe row context, which is used to evaluated calculated column formulas. Because it's possible to add columns to a table using Power Query, you'll also learn when it's best to create calculated columns instead of Power Query custom columns.
Use DAX time intelligence functions in Power BI Desktop models
- By the end of this module, you'll learn the meaning of time intelligence and how to add time intelligence DAX calculations to your model.
Optimize a model for performance in Power BI
- Performance optimization, also known as performance tuning, involves making changes to the current state of the semantic model so that it runs more efficiently. Essentially, when your semantic model is optimized, it performs better
Enforce Power BI model security
- Enforce model security in Power BI using row-level security and object-level security.
Build Power BI visuals and reports
Turn data into interactive, actionable insights with Power BI Desktop visuals and reports.
Prerequisites Before starting, you should be familiar with data analytics and reporting concepts. You should also have experience working with Power BI Desktop.
Modules covered:
Scope report design requirements
- This module provides you with a strong foundation on which to learn how to plan your report design requirements.
Design Power BI reports
- This module will guide you through selecting the most appropriate visual type to meet your design and report layout requirements.
Create visual calculations in Power BI Desktop
- Calculations in Power BI are necessary to enrich data analysis. Visual calculations simplify complex formulas, enhance performance, and reduce maintenance.
Configure Power BI report filters
- Report filtering is a complex topic because many techniques are available for filtering a Microsoft Power BI report. However, with complexity comes control, allowing you to design reports that meet requirements and expectations. Some filtering techniques apply at design time, while others are relevant at report consumption time (in reading view). What matters is that your report design allows report consumers to intuitively narrow down to the data points that interest them.
Enhance Power BI report designs for the user experience
- The features and capabilities that are covered in this module will help you enhance your reports to make them more refined.
Perform analytics in Power BI
- You'll learn how to use Power BI to perform data analytical functions, how to identify outliers in your data, how to group data together, and how to bin data for analysis. You'll also learn how to perform time series analysis. Finally, you'll work with advanced analytic features of Power BI, such as Quick Insights, AI Insights, and the Analyze feature.
Manage workspaces and datasets in Power BI
In this Learning Path, you'll learn how to publish Power BI reports to the Power BI service. You'll also learn how to create workspaces, manage related items, and data refreshes for up-to-date reports. Additionally, implement row-level security to restrict user access to relevant data without the need for multiple reports.
Create and manage workspaces in Power BI
- Learn how to navigate the Power BI service, create and manage workspaces and related items, and distribute reports to users.
Manage semantic models in Power BI
- With Microsoft Power BI, you can use a single semantic model to build many reports. Reduce your administrative overhead even more with scheduled semantic model refreshes and resolving connectivity errors.
Create dashboards in Power BI
- Microsoft Power BI dashboards are different than Power BI reports. Dashboards allow report consumers to create a single artifact of directed data that is personalized just for them. Dashboards can be composed of pinned visuals that are taken from different reports. Where a Power BI report uses data from a single semantic model, a Power BI dashboard can contain visuals from different semantic models.
Implement row-level security
- Row-level security (RLS) allows you to create a single or a set of reports that targets data for a specific user. In this module, you'll learn how to implement RLS by using either a static or dynamic method and how Microsoft Power BI simplifies testing RLS in Power BI Desktop and Power BI service.