Introduction to MS Power BI for Dashboards

Why Should You Attend:

In today's fast-paced, high-tech, competitive business environment, analytics, data visualization and Business Intelligence (BI) are the hot topics many firms and professional recruiters seek. Increasingly, organizations of all sizes are seeking to take advantage of the vast data available to them to identify previously undiscovered insights and gain competitive advantages. The premier tool for this is MS Power BI – Excel’s big brother – on steroids!

These “big data” desk-top tools were out-of-reach just a few short years ago. Today Microsoft Desktop Power BI is free. The cloud-based Power BI Pro service costs a small business $10 per month and is used by Fortune 1000 firms on an enterprise-wide basis at extremely competitive prices.

Over the last few years, data has become the lifeblood of organizations. Those organizations that harness the power of big data business intelligence (BI) realize tangible competitive advantages. MS Power BI allows mangers to rely less on the IT department and achieve more self-service, control, agility and focused business intelligence (BI) using both the data warehouse and outside sources. With MS Power BI you can easily manipulate several databases. MS Power BI is easy, fast, and free.

Power BI is a cloud-based business analytics service that gives you a single view of your most critical business data. Monitor the health of your business using a live dashboard, create rich interactive reports with Power BI Desktop and access your data on the go with native Power BI Mobile apps.

The top BI trends for 2018 include:

• Data literacy becomes a fundamental skill of the future
• Modern BI such as Power BI becomes the new normal
• Advanced analytics becomes more accessible
• Those versatile in using big data analytics in conjunction with professional-level data visualizations for business intelligence decision making will have a path to the future.

In 2015 Microsoft introduced Power BI in its current form. Microsoft’s major BI competitor saw their stock price fall 50% within three months. Today Microsoft, Oracle and one other competitor dominate the BI analytics market. Learn the essential basics of MS Power BI on February 28, 2018, in just 100 minutes.

Areas Covered in the Webinar:

• Introduction to Power BI Desktop
• Downloading the Power BI Desktop for Free
• Desktop Summary - Three Different Views and What They Do
• An Overview of the Workflow in Power BI Desktop
• Dashboard in Minutes - Overview
• Loading the Data Model - Connecting Power BI Desktop to Data Sources
• Direct Query vs Import Data (Load)
• Connecting to Excel Data Sources
• Connecting to CSV and text files
• Connecting to a Folder of data
• Connecting to a web URL
• Introduction to the Query Editor Interface: Editing Data
• Cleaning up and transforming data
• Establishing Headers and Removing rows
• Editing and Renaming Rows and Columns
• Rearranging columns
• Creating custom columns
• Trim, Clean and Case
• Replacing Values
• Splitting columns
• Pivoting and Unpivoting Columns
• Understanding Database Relationships: Power BI Data Modeling
• The Data Model: Data & Relationship Power BI Desktop View
• Adding Databases and Connecting Data Model Relationships
• Creating Relationships Automatically and Manually
• Primary Key, Foreign Keys and Index Columns
• Understanding Cardinality: Many to Many and One To Many Relationships
• Creating DIM and FACT Table(s)
• Introducing the Star Schema
• Creating a date table - date/time intelligence
• Modeling with Power BI Desktop
• Query Editor vs. Data Model
• Formatting Data
• Performing Basic Mathematical Operations
• DAX: Creating Calculated Columns and Measures
• Using time intelligence functions
• Formatting Dates
• Using the SUMX function
• Power BI Desktop Report View: Creating Interactive Visualizations/Dashboards
• Walkthrough of Available Charts
• Creating Your First Visualizations
• Data, Format and Analytics Controls
• Creating Column, Bar and Line Charts
• Aggregating Data: Default Summarization & Sorting
• Grouping data
• Reference/Constant Lines
• Stacked and 100% Graphs
• Formatting, Colors, Charts and Sorting
• Tables, Matrices & Conditional Formatting
• Trend Analysis Graphs - Analytics
• Cards, Multi-Row Cards, Gauges, Targets and KPIs
• Scatterplots and Bubble plots
• Map Visualizations
• Adding Color Saturation
• Tree map v. Pie or Donut (Desert) Charts
• Creating/Managing Hierarchies Including Date Hierarchies and Drill-Down /Up
• Cross Filtering and Highlighting
• Visual, Page and Report Level Filters
• Creating Slicers & Timeline Slicers
• Backgrounds, logos and images
• Customizing Tooltip Messages
• The Quick Calc Option
• Downloading Custom Visuals and Slicers
• Overview of the Power BI Service: Reports, Datasets and Dashboards
• Pinning Your Report to a Dashboard
• Publishing Dashboards
• Introduction: Analyze Power BI Data with A.I. Using Q & A
• Sharing Dashboards and Reports

Learning Objectives:

• Introduction to Power BI and how to signup
• How to create your first online report and dashboard
• How to download the Power BI Desktop Designer
• Loading, transforming and filtering data in Power BI
• Creating tables and reports
• Learning how to use the wide range of graphs and visualizations
• Creating relationships between tables of data
• Creating powerful calculations, key metrics and key performance indicators
• Creating interactive dashboards
• Publishing dashboards to Power BI

Who Will Benefit:

• Managers
• Supervisors
• Financial professionals
• CPAs
• Budget directors
• Financial analysts
• CFOs
• Controllers
• Accountants
• Administrative assistants
• Sales professionals
• Marketers
• Anyone who uses Microsoft Excel and wants to save hours, avoid using cumbersome tables and analyze data in the most proficient manner possible.

Tom Fragale
Sr. Consultant, The PC Guy Consulting INC

Tom Fragale is a computer professional with over 30 years of professional experience. He is a Microsoft Certified Trainer, a Microsoft Certified Office Master, and a Microsoft Certified Expert in Word and Excel., and a Microsoft Certified Specialist in Access, Outlook, and PowerPoint. He has trained over 30,000 business people in on-line webinars, public seminars, and on-site training.

His clients include many Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, military bases, and companies large and small across many industries, including insurance, manufacturing, banking, pharmaceutical, education, retail, etc. He started his career as a database application programmer and has served as a consultant and project manager on many successful projects.

His topics of expertise include: Access, Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, Crystal Reports, SQL Server, Visio, QuickBooks, and SharePoint, among others. His passion is training people and helping people get the most out of their computers, and he is a published author having written a book on Microsoft Access. He graduated in 1988 from LaSalle University in Philadelphia, PA with a BA in Computer Science.

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