Power BI: A Beginner's Guide to Visualization and Analysis

Connect, analyze, and visualize data using Power BI, a cloud-based business intelligence service that turns raw data from Excel, Azure, Salesforce, and more into interactive dashboards and reports.

Install and launch Power BI desktop, then explore drag-and-drop visualizations and connect to data sources such as Excel, SQL Server, MySQL, Access, and Azure.

Install SQL Server 2022 using the developer edition for testing and integrate it with Power BI. Download and install the on-premises edition, configure features, and create a named instance.

Install SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) to interact with SQL Server 2022, download version 19, and complete installation with a restart before proceeding to restore the database.

Learn to set up Power BI with a restored AdventureWorks 2019 database in SQL Server, connect via SSMS, and explore the Power BI interface for visualization and analysis.

Discover the core difference between Power BI desktop and Power BI service, and learn to create visualizations in desktop while publishing, sharing, and scheduling data refresh in the cloud service.

Explore the Power BI interface, ribbons, and the three views—report view, data view, and model view—learn data import and build visuals like stacked bar charts with tooltips.

Explore how to create and customize a stacked column chart in Power BI, loading data, assigning country to the x-axis, population to the y-axis, and tuning formatting, labels, and sorting.

Explore how to create a clustered bar chart in Power BI to compare regional sales for computers, iPhones, and TVs, including axes, legend, data labels, sorting, and saving the report.

Explore the clustered column chart in Power BI, compare it to the clustered bar chart, note background color tweaks, rounded corners, axis labels, product labels, and tab renaming.

Learn to create area charts in Power BI, differentiate them from line charts by color saturation, and read tooltips to analyze sales by country.

Explore the stacked area chart in Power BI using a financials dataset, display yearly sales by country, enable data labels, and use filters to compare Canada and France.

Learn to read a ribbon chart, compare sales by year, and interpret rankings from 21 to 23; hover reveals values, and adjust legend position, colors, and spacing for clear visualization.

Rank categories with a ribbon chart and create a line chart of products by the sum of sales, using a centered legend, red border, and square markers.

Explore how the waterfall chart in Power BI shows a running total of sales by year and product, with green for increases and red for decreases.

Learn how the funnel chart visualizes sequential stages from leads to closed, including leads, qualified leads, prospects, proposals, and contract, with steps in Power BI and Excel.

Learn to build a Power BI scatter chart that plots sum of sales against sum of profit by country, with bubble size and animation by year or month.

Explore the pie chart's role in Power BI for visualizing percentage-based data with 2–5 large slices, showing sales impact by product and avoiding overly busy splits.

Master the Power BI donut chart and its hole for visualizing sales by product. Enable detail labels to show product name, quantity, and percentage, and use rotation sparingly.

Explore the treemap chart, which uses nested rectangles to show hierarchical data, where larger areas reflect higher sales and leaves reveal product details within each country.

Explore how to build and customize map charts in Power BI, using Bing Maps geocoding, location data, and latitude-longitude to visualize profit by state with bubble sizes, regions, and styles.

Explore the filled map in Power BI, using region-based shading to compare sales across central, eastern, southern, and western regions, with hover tooltips showing regional and state totals.

Explore how to create and interpret a gauge chart in Power BI, using a circular arc, a needle, and shading to show current sales against a target KPI.

Explore how to create and format Power BI cards to display single values like total profit and total sales, customize fonts and colors, and introduce multi row cards for dashboards.

Discover how the multi row card in Power BI displays multiple fields, such as sales, profit, and discount, with formatting options for call out values, labels, borders, and accent bar.

Learn how to use KPI visuals in Power BI to track actual values against targets, with color-coded progress on gauges and area charts.

Explore the table visualization in Power BI, learn how to add and expand columns, sort and format data, and customize headers, totals, and grid settings for clear analysis.

Learn how the matrix in Power BI acts like a pivot table, differing from a table by organizing data into rows, columns, values, subtotals, and totals, with formatting options.

Learn why the R script visual and Python visual are beyond this course in Power BI, then preview the key influencers and the decomposition tree with Python resources.

Explore the key influencers visual in Power BI to analyze sales by explained by discounts and segments, ranking factors that increase or decrease sales with AI-assisted insights.

Discover how the decomposition tree in Power BI visualizes data across multiple dimensions, explodes totals into regions, states, and product categories, and enables drill-down in any order for sales insights.

Explore Power BI's Q&A visualization, using natural language to ask questions about your data, and learn IntelliSense, synonyms, and color cues to generate insights.

Learn the core Power BI components and views, including desktop and service, and connect to a SQL Server to interact with visualizations and data at the database level.

Learn to restore a SQL Server database from a backup, create and manage a view as a temporary table, and query the AdventureWorks data to kick off Power BI analysis.

Transform data in the power query editor by deleting and duplicating columns, tracking applied steps, and using undo to prepare data for visualizations.

Connect to a SQL Server in Power BI, transform data to keep only last name and sales, build a stacked column chart with data labels, a border, and a slicer.

Explore how to delete, move, and rename columns in the Power Query editor. Learn to set data types like text, number, and date to prepare data for Power BI analysis.

Discover how to append queries in Power BI by combining two tables into one. Align column headers and data types, handle missing columns with nulls, and remove duplicates before loading.

Learn how to merge queries in Power BI to combine tables using a common key like task ID, and explore inner, left, right, and full outer joins.

Learn how to scrape data from the web into Power BI, select tables, and build live visualizations like a stacked bar chart with updateable data.

Explore the Power BI report view ribbon and data view, adjusting column names, hiding fields, changing data types, and formatting currencies and dates for precise visualization.

Connect to a SQL server, load two tables (dim customer and dim geography), and build a one-to-many relationship in Power BI to visualize total children by city, with London leading.

Learn to use Power BI slicers to filter multiple visuals and customize interactions with edit interactions. Filter by year across charts and choose which visuals the slicer affects.

Explore calculated columns and measures in Power BI: columns are stored in the data model for row-level calculations and increase file size, while measures are on-the-fly aggregations not stored.

learn to add and format text boxes and images in Power BI using the insert ribbon and properties, adjusting padding, titles, dividers, borders, and shadows to refine reports.

Discover how to create and use buttons in Power BI to navigate between visuals and pages, toggle charts with bookmarks and selections, and enhance reports with interactivity.

Learn to navigate Power BI reports using back buttons and page navigation, linking two pages with back actions, and using control-click shortcuts to move between pages.

Learn to configure a Power BI button to open a web URL by enabling action, inserting the CNN URL, and adding a tooltip for hover feedback.

This lecture guides updating Power BI to version 2.118, highlights new right-side visualizations and the build visualization pane, and explains enabling or reverting preview features like the infrastructure update.

Load the Power BI data in the older version, then add product category, customer segment, and sum of sales, and apply conditional formatting rules for sales ranges with colors.

Power BI: learn to create simple reports with charts, customize visuals, use spotlight and export data, then push reports to Power BI service for dashboards and sharing.

Power BI integrates artificial intelligence to analyze sales fluctuations by month, year, and category. Use AI-driven insights to identify factors and visualize sum of sales by region and month.

Explore building multi-chart Power BI reports from a simple 3–4 chart layout, applying client-aligned formatting. Learn to extract client requirements and design reports with end-user input.

Sit down with the end user to determine report needs, data sources, and audience; listen, ask questions, outline charts and slicers, then refine for accurate data.

Create a Power BI HR dashboard for project two with measures for total employees, females, males, and average age, plus attrition, a department tree map, and a salary-by-education donut.

Master Power BI visuals by converting text to numbers with a conditional column, creating cards, bins, and key charts—stacked columns, treemaps, donuts, and clustered columns.

Use tooltips in Power BI to reveal sum of sales by state and subcategory details on hover. Link a state chart to a tooltip page and build clustered bar charts.

Learn how to streamline Power BI filtering with bookmarks, applying a saved state-and-city filter to a chart. Create a button, assign a bookmark named Kelly, and update it.

Take a quick tour of the Power BI canvas, visuals, and modeling, then learn the sign-in process and prepare for using Power BI service with work or school accounts.

Create a Microsoft 365 developer account to access the Power BI service, publish reports to a designated space, and manage login credentials and destinations.

Learn how to sign in to Power BI service from the desktop workflow, publish to app.powerbi.com, and distinguish between Power BI reports and dashboards.

Explore how Power BI reports differ from dashboards, how publishing reports creates dashboards in the Power BI service, and how dashboards use tiles for upper management with less interactive visuals.

Learn how Power BI uses workspaces as secure containers to organize dashboards, reports, and data sets by departments like HR and finance, with per-user permissions and admin controls.

Learn to create two Power BI workspaces, build dashboards, publish reports to dashboards, and pin visuals as tiles, then share access with colleagues.

Publish your report to the Power BI service, connect the dataset with a gateway, update credentials, and set up automatic refresh to reflect changes from the original data source.

Enable and configure scheduled refresh in Power BI by setting frequency, time zone, and multiple times, then monitor results and refresh history automatically.

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