Devin Knight - Microsoft Power BI Quick Start Guide: Build dashboards and visualizations to make your data come to life

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The teams at Pragmatic Works that I have known over the last decade have been on top of all the latest trends in the Microsoft Business Intelligence world. Looking around my office and home, I located four books I have purchased that are authored by Pragmatic Works employees. The have produced Microsoft employees and independent consultants, as well as some of the most popular speakers at data conferences. Brian Knight founded Pragmatic Works, and I have never been bored in any of his sessions over the years. Devin Knight has leads a team of online content producers that is second to none. Mitchell Pearson has a brilliant way of presenting BI topics with their online learning and instructions. Manual Quintana has a strong personality that enables him to be an effective speaker.

This awesome team has developed a wonderful book to help Power BI users navigate a frequently changing product. However, they have formatted the book to help more experienced users jump to any chapter to learn about a new feature of Power BI. The flow is very intuitive and highlights the necessary guidance for all types of Power BI users. The book follows a step-by-step method for learning about Power BI with examples along the way. I really like when they give credit to a data platform community member for the work done and links to their information.

This book begins nicely with the introduction to the most important step in using Power BIGet Data. Without data and the proper format, the visualizations are useless. The examples are of the most popular data structures that are used with Power BI. The second chapter focuses on the Query Editor (Power Query) with clear examples. The R language is explored via an interesting example. There is a simple explanation of the M language that helps the chapter flow to Native Queries.

The next section, about data modeling, comes at the perfect time. Data modeling has to be one of the biggest areas for new users. When explaining relationships, the writers do a nice job relating these complex topics to newbies. I really like the usability section examples for cleaning up the model, such as building hierarchies and sorting by a different column. Leveraging DAX is a great continuation from data modeling. Here, we learn some basic functions that are almost always used; plus, we get the time intelligence section for advanced slicing and dicing.

After all that, we get to the fun stuffvisualizations. The book breaks down the visualizations into sections that explain where each visualization is most useful. This is the right thing to do. There are so many types of charts that someone new can get really confused. I enjoyed the beginnings of chapters, where the application work space is labeled with explanations. The stroytelling chapter takes the visuals and places them in a format to help an end user understand the data being visualized. The book does a great job in expanding the concepts of the helpfulness of data, once formatted.

Of course, it does not stop there. Cloud deployments are discussed in the next chapter. This is the area where end users get to interact with the data but not modify the dashboard. The last chapter concludes with Power BI Report Services. This helps the users of Power BI who need to deploy to a local environment. Having this chapter directly after the one on gives the readers an understanding of the flexibility Microsoft has so graciously given us.

The authors have done an A+ job with this book. If you are a beginner, start at the first chapter. If you are intermediate user, go to the chapter with the topic that you need more information or examples on. If you are a manager, go to the last two chapters to find out where these visualizations can be deployed in your company. Providing data and step-by-step usage of that data in one package, this book is a must have for Power BI users.

Thomas LeBlanc

Data Warehouse Architect & Microsoft Data Platform MVP, Data on the Geaux

Devin Knight a Microsoft Data Platform MVP and the Training Director at Pragmatic Works. At Pragmatic Works, Devin determines which courses are created, delivered, and updated for customers, including 10+ Power BI courses. This is the seventh SQL Server and Business Intelligence book that he has authored. Devin often speaks at conferences such as PASS Summit, PASS Business Analytics Conference, SQL Saturdays, and Code Camps. He is also a contributing member to several PASS Virtual Chapters. Making his home in Jacksonville, FL, Devin is the Vice President of the local Power BI User Group and SQL Server User Group (JSSUG). His personal blog can be found at Devin Knight's website.