Microsoft Power BI DAX 2026: Data Analysis Masterclass

Learn what DAX, the data analysis expressions language, does for Power BI: build advanced data models with dynamic calculations, year-over-year comparisons, rankings, and comprehensive reports.

Learn the rules and structure of DAX syntax, including naming, function calls, arguments, and data types, to write error-free measures like total revenue using SUMX.

Master the difference between calculated columns and measures in Power BI, and learn when row context or filter context governs evaluation for dynamic visuals.

Discover how row context, created by calculated columns and iterators, differs from filter context, defined by slices, visuals, filter pane, and calculate function.

Apply DAX concepts to a real Nexa Retail Global dataset in Power BI, building a complete data model with fact and dimension tables to answer growth, targets, and margins.

Import nine data sheets from an Excel workbook into Power BI Desktop, transform data types, promote headers, and load to build a complete star schema for DAX measures.

Explore how dex measures run as query templates, not fixed cells, and how the three-layer engine—dex expression, evaluation engine, and vertipack—determines results by context.

Discover VertiPax's speed through columnar storage, directory encoding, and run length encoding, and apply three rules: keep cardinality low, use a star schema, and remove unnecessary calculated columns.

Understand how DAX variables function as named containers inside measures, enabling single calculations reused multiple times for faster, cleaner, and more readable Power BI data analysis.

Create a dedicated measures table in Power BI for DAX measures. Use an underscore measures table from the start for every new measure, and display folders like revenue and profitability.

Discover how DAX variables in Power BI Desktop create cleaner, faster measures by rewriting profit margin and revenue calculations, and learn the rule that a variable is evaluated once.

Master DAX error handling in Power BI by using IFERROR to substitute values for failing expressions and ISBLANK to handle empty results, preventing blank card visuals and silent errors.

Explains building DAX measures in Power BI with IFERROR and ISBLANK to handle division by zero and blank periods, featuring the average inventory value per unit.

Learn to use math and statistical functions in Power BI DAX to answer business questions, covering abs, sin, power, sqrt, round, median, percentile, stdef, var.p, and rank.

Attend hands-on demo of abs, sign, power, and sqrt in Power BI, building measures on the NexaRetail dataset to analyze gross profit movements with category slicers.

Explore the five DAX rounding functions—round, round up, round down, ceiling, and floor—and learn when to apply decimal-based versus significance-based rounding for accurate finance, pricing, inventory, and packaging.

Discover how median and median x tame outliers, replacing averages with the middle value, using median on a column and median x for per row calculations of revenue and margins.

Explore percentile analysis in Power BI DAX with percentile.inc and percentile.exe, distinguishing inclusive and exclusive thresholds (P75, P90) across 15,000 transactions to define top quartiles and KPIs.

Learn how to create automatic percentile-based thresholds in power bi using percentile.inc and percentile.exe, build a three-tier transaction classification with a calculated column, and compare inc versus exe methods.

Explore CONCATENATE and CONCATENATEX in Power BI DAX, showing how to join two text values in calculated columns and how to collapse a table into a string with a delimiter.

Learn to extract text in Power BI with left, right, and mid, using 1-based indexing to pull SKU prefixes, item numbers, and category codes in Power BI Desktop.

Clean text data in Power BI with trim, upper, and lower to remove extra spaces and normalize casing. Use a calculated column on import to prevent mismatches.

Master text manipulation in Power BI DAX by using substitute and replace to modify strings, and search and find to locate positions, enabling dynamic extractions with error handling.

Convert numbers or dates to text with format for display. Convert text back to numbers with value for calculations; format yields text, value yields numbers in DAX.

Master text functions in Power BI DAX through eight tasks in the Nexa Retail Global assignment, combining, extracting, cleaning, and formatting data from three ERP systems.

Explore Microsoft Power BI DAX date and time functions, including today, now, year, month, day extraction, weekday and weeknum, eomonth, edate, datediff, networkdays, and calendar to build a date table.

Create date and time values using today, now, and date functions in Power BI DAX. Build dates from year, month, and day, and understand automatic rollovers and volatile recalculation.

Extract year, month, and day from a date using Power BI DAX year, month, and day functions; create calculated columns for grouping, filtering, and period analysis to enable date navigation.

Explore EOMONTH and EDATE to manage month boundaries in Power BI, including last-day calculations for reporting periods and deadlines, the first-day-next-month trick, and exact-date scheduling for recurring events.

Create a dedicated date table in Power BI with calendar or calendar auto, add columns via addColumns, mark as date table, and relate to facts for accurate time intelligence.

Practice date and time functions in Power BI DAX through eight tasks, using today and now for dates, and build date tables with year, month, weeknum, networkdays, and datedif.

Explore four DAX filter context inspection functions—hasonevalue, hasonefilter, isfiltered, and iscrossfiltered—and learn to build adaptive measures that respond to direct and relationship-driven filters, with region examples.

Learn to use IsInScope with the switch true pattern to label each hierarchy level and suppress totals in a Power BI matrix with regions and countries, including grand total handling.

Apply a complete DAX conditional logic and filter context toolkit, using IF, SWITCH, IFERROR, ISBLANK, HASONEVALUE, ISFILTERED, and ISINSCOPE to build a region-to-country matrix with revenue bands and KPI cards.

Master six core DAX functions—sum, average, min, max, count, and distinct count—in Power BI, using the sales transactions table under the current filter context.

Master the iterator functions AVERAGEX, MAXX, MINX, and COUNTAX in Power BI DAX, learn when to use x-functions over standard aggregates, and apply per-row calculations such as transactional margin.

Explore how cardinality affects DAX performance by counting iterations across table sizes, and apply strategies like using sum instead of sumx, precomputing columns, and filtering before summing.

Master the risks of nested iterators in Power BI DAX, learning the performance cost of 225 million evaluations and safe patterns, including alternatives with calculate, calculated columns, or summarize.

Learn how rankx and topn enable dynamic ranking in power bi by using calculate and all to rank items by a measure, handling ties and filtering to top n.