Dan Clark - Beginning Microsoft Power Bi: A Practical Guide to Self-Service Data Analytics

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Self-service business intelligence (BI)you have heard the hype, seen the sales demos, and are ready to give it a try. Now what? You have probably checked out a few web sites for examples, given them a try, and learned a thing or two, but you are probably still left wondering how all the pieces fit together and how you go about creating a complete solution. If so, this book is for you. It takes you step by step through the process of analyzing data using the tools that are at the core of Microsofts self-service BI offering: Power Query and Power BI Desktop.

Quite often, you need to take your raw data and transform it in some way before you load it into the data model. You may need to filter, aggregate, or clean the raw data. I show you how Power Query allows you to easily transform and refine data before incorporating it into your data model. Next, I show you how to create robust, scalable data models using Power BI Desktop. Because creating robust Power BI models is essential to creating self-service BI solutions, I cover it extensively in this book. Next up, I show you how to use Power BI Desktop to easily build interactive visualizations that allow you to explore your data to discover trends and gain insight. Finally, I show you how to deploy your solution to the Power BI Service for your colleagues to use.

I strongly believe that one of the most important aspects of learning is doing. You cant learn how to ride a bike without jumping on a bike, and you cant learn to use the BI tools without actually interacting with them. Any successful training program includes both theory and hands-on activities. For this reason, I have included a hands-on activity at the end of every chapter designed to solidify the concepts covered in the chapter. I encourage you to work through these activities diligently. It is well worth the effort.

As you start working with Power BI, you will soon realize it is constantly evolving (for the better). Every month there is an update to Power BI Desktop that introduces new features and changes to the interface. For this reason, some of the screenshots may not look exactly like the current version of Power BI. They will be, however, close enough to figure out what has changed.

Good luck on your journey, and dont hesitate to provide feedback and suggestions for improving the experience!

Once again, thanks to the team at Apress for making the writing of this book an enjoyable experience. A special thanks goes to my good friend and technical reviewer, Althank you for your attention to detail and excellent suggestions while reviewing this book.