Cracking Microsoft Power BI Data Analyst Certification

Written by: Peter ter Braake, Author: Microsoft Power BI Data Analyst Exam Guide

Data is one of the most valuable assets of companies. Companies need to understand their business, the world, and the market they are operating in, and the processes within the company. Data can help. Data is crucial.

Microsoft is one of the leading vendors in the world for building a data platform. Power BI is the tool that lets us visualize that data. By choosing good visualizations, you transform data into information, leading to insights and knowledge.

Power BI is a leading reporting and dashboarding tool used by companies in all sorts of businesses around the world. Being able to create Power BI reports is a valuable skill for a lot of different people to have. Whether you work in accounting, HR, sales, or so on, transforming data into informative visualizations is a valuable skill.

You may even have made it your primary task to work with data as a data analyst. Or you may have a more technical job role as a data engineer. Knowing your way around Power BI makes you a better-skilled professional. Nowadays, proof of a skill is more critical than it ever was before. Earning an official certification to prove your skills and knowledge is valuable to you and to your (potential) employer. Microsoft does offer you the chance to get an official certification. When passing the Microsoft exam PL-300, you earn the certification Microsoft Certified: Power BI Data Analyst Associate.

This book is written to help you become a good Power BI report developer. It is a practical guide written with a lot of real-world examples, practical demonstrations that you can follow along, and best practices from the field. Knowing your way around the tool not only helps you in using it but also in understanding it. The understanding will be a great help in passing the official exam.

To be of help in both the real world as well as in passing the exam, the book covers all aspects of Power BI. The BI in Power BI stands for Business Intelligence. The book starts by explaining what Business Intelligence is. Concepts as data warehousing and Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) are explained. You learn why people started using the star schema database design (dimensional modelling) when performing data analysis-related tasks.

You will learn not only what a star schema is, but also how to model your own data into a star schema data model. With this background of data modelling, you will learn about Power Query. Power Query is the ETL tool of Power BI. It plays a crucial role in preparing your data. We all know the saying: garbage in, garbage out. With Power Query, you make sure that you do not have garbage in. Power Query lets you prepare and cleanse your data before you use it in reports.

All Power BI reports depend on an underlying structure called a Power BI Semantic model. With the data prepared, you learn how to make it into a semantic model. A big part of that is learning about relationships. Another big part is enriching your data with calculations. Data Analysis eXpressions (DAX) is the language used to add business rules to your data model.

With a proper semantic model in place, it is time to actually create reports and dashboards. You will not only learn how to create compelling visualizations like bar charts, line charts, and all sorts of other visualizations, but you will also learn when to use which visualization type and why. You want your report to be effective. That means you need understandable, clear visuals on your reports. And to actually actively analyze the data to get the necessary insights, users need to be able to interact with the data. You need drill-through and drill-down, you need filters and slicers, pop-ups and bookmarks in order for people to interact with and learn from your data.

Power BI comes with Power BI Desktop, a Windows-based application to develop Power BI reports. The heart of Power BI is the Power BI service. Reports created in Power Desktop are published to workspaces within the Power BI service. From this portal, you can share reports with coworkers to collaborate.

In the service, you can set security. You can define who can create, edit, or use reports. You can even define the data that someone using a report gets to see. You can set refresh rates to keep the data in the reports up to date. There are heaps of settings that let you configure your Power BI tenant.

This book takes a hands-on approach to guide you through all facets of Power BI, from initial report development to deployment and usage of your Power BI artifacts. After reading this book, you can build compelling reports that provide readers with insight into their business. You know all the options that you can choose from when developing the report, and when to choose which setting. You know your way around the Power BI service and can find and set different settings. With these skills, you also know how to pass the PL-300 Microsoft exam. You will be a true Microsoft-certified data analyst.