Power Pivoting: Microsoft Power BI for Career Changers

In this video, learn about business intelligence as an exciting data industry.  When was "business intelligence" first coined as an expression?  What is the goal of business intelligence and why do companies assemble BI teams and analytics orgs?  From what domains and backgrounds do great BI professionals emerge?  In this video, we'll cover a variety of high-level details about business intelligence and why it's such an exciting area to work.

In this video, let's really dig deeper into the work that a lot of BI professionals find themselves doing.  From the tools we build to why we build them, how we build them, and FOR WHOM we build them, we'll be covering the complex reality of business intelligence work and why so many BI projects fail despite their ambitious goals.

In this optional career topic discussion video, Dr. Nina stops by for a conversation about her experience and challenges in finding her first business intelligence role.

In the second part of this optional video, Sean shakes his fists at Udemy for not allowing him to upload videos larger than 4GB, which required him to split his Nina interview into two parts despite it being originally recorded as a single take.  C'est la vie!

While this class focuses on Microsoft Power BI, it's far from the only skillset aspiring business intelligence professionals need to have in their arsenal.  In this video, we'll talk about some of the other skills and concepts you will need some familiarity with in order to land your first business intelligence role. 

In this optional career topic discussion video, I'll talk about some common BI resume mistakes I see as food for thought as you kick off your BI career journey and start whipping your resume into shape.

In this video, learn about why this class is dedicated to teaching Microsoft Power BI and the important role that it plays in delivering business intelligence product workstreams.  Learn about the typical lifecycle of a BI tool and receive an introduction to the range of Power BI-specific topics we'll be unpacking for the remainder of the course

Before we start discussing how to build incredible Power BI tools, let's briefly walk through a finished example and explore some of the components that make up a Power BI report so that we understand the direction we're going.

In this optional career topic discussion video, let's talk about business intelligence roles, including how to find them, what to look for in the job descriptions, how to improve your chances at landing an interview, and even some red flags to watch out for.

In this video, we'll be jumping into one of Power BI's most important and game-changing features, the Power Query Editor.  Learn how to connect to common data sources, how to clean and transform data, and how to set yourself up for success before you even think about building amazing data visuals and flashy interfaces.

In this video, I'll show you how to connect to a fake toy company sales dataset and begin applying some common transformations in the Power Query Editor in order to clean the data prior to visualization.

Almost every Power BI report needs a good date table to help us visualize time-series data.  In this video, I'll walk you through how to build a date table in the Power Query Editor that will automatically update when refreshed and can be easily recycled across all your future Power BI builds with only a couple of lines of code.

In our first discussion of the Power Query Editor, we discussed a variety of techniques for cleaning and transforming our data.  In this lesson, we'll continue our conversation about the Power Query Editor by discussing the most important concepts related to modeling our data.  If you're new to the party and unfamiliar with data modeling, no problem; this video will explain what data modeling is, why we need to understand it, and run through a variety of terms and vocabulary focused on helping us build the most effective data model for the analysis we need to perform.

In this video, we'll walk through how to take two datasets and model them together into a star schema.  Note that the dataset is attached to this lesson if you would like to follow along!

In this optional career topic discussion video, let's talk about BI portfolios.  What are they?  How many examples should your portfolio include?  Do people actually look at these things?  Of course they do, which is why you want to make sure you have a strong one!

Data visualization is the most instantly recognizable aspect of Microsoft Power BI so, in order to deliver high-quality tools and impactful insights to your employer, it's important to have a solid foundation in the most common data visuals and when to use them.  In this video, we'll discuss what makes a strong data visual, identify common types of data we'll be visualizing in Power BI, and run through the most important data visuals at your disposal in Power BI.  We'll also cover which data visuals are strong for different situations and which data visuals you are probably best avoiding if you can.

In this video, I'll walk you through how to build and format the most common data visual of all:  Bar charts!

We have to draw the line somewhere, so in this video, I'll show you how to build another extremely common data visual that is often essential when visualizing time-series data:  Line charts!

In this video, we'll discuss the lesser known relation (cousin? stepsibling??) of line charts:  Area charts!

When it comes to pastry-themed data visuals, pie charts might get all the press, but donut charts are the best!  In this video, we'll discuss how to build donut charts and one of the simplest data visuals in Power BI:  The Card Visual!

You know what they say:  Location, location, location.  If you've got geographic data, it's only natural to want to flex your geospatial muscles by building a map visual.  Fortunately, this video has you covered.

Column what you will, tables are another extremely common type of data visual that can help your users unpack multi-dimensional information that is simply too complex to be neatly visualized using other tools.  Sometimes all your users need is the raw information at their fingertips and that's okay, so in this video we'll cover how to build and format table visuals and how they're different from their pivot-table like counterpart:  The Matrix Visual.

In this bonus video, we're going to be talking about a visualization that is not technically a data visual:  The Slicer.  The reason it deserves its own video is that slicers help your users filter your report and truly explore your datasets.  Accordingly, you better get used to them because you'll have to build a lot of them during your BI career.

Designing amazing Power BI tools is about more than just querying data and visualizing it.  For better or worse, there is also an art to building tools that are simple, attractive, and engaging.  In this video, I'll run through some techniques for mastering some of the cosmetic aspects of designing Power BI tools that make smart use of color choice, organization, and more in order to deliver reports that look amazing and help your data sing.

Everyone loves a great story.  In this video, we'll help you find yours by covering what separates data storytelling from traditional storytelling, identifying some common types of data stories that emerge in business intelligence, and how to imbue your data visuals with the context needed to deliver true insights to your business partners.

In this video, we'll talk an ugly Power BI report full of common problematic design choices and apply some of the most common Gestalt techniques and formatting fixes to transform the report into something clean, simple, and visually engaging.

In this video, we'll revisit a variety of topics discussed in Lessons 7 and 8 through the lens of designing a Power BI report layout full of impactful data visuals.  I'll also walk through some techniques for elevating data visuals from "meh" to amazing in order to tell more compelling data stories.

In this "fixer upper" video, I'll take a Power BI report developed by someone new to Power BI and show you some techniques for enhancing the overall presentation of the tool by applying a variety of data visualization and design techniques. 

In this "fixer upper" video, I'll take a Power BI report developed by someone new to Power BI and show you some techniques for enhancing the overall presentation of the tool by applying a variety of data visualization and design techniques. 

One important aspect of Microsoft Power BI that newcomers often don't spend enough time carefully considering is the user experience.  Power BI is a platform that is supposed to help users navigate and interact with data in a way that is more immersive and customizable. 

Accordingly, the tools that we build in Power BI are more akin to websites that users can utilize to click through and self-service a variety of information needs depending on their specific requirements for different business situations.  So understanding how to bridge that gap between data visualization and interactive website development is fundamental to designing more engaging, interactive tools.  

In this video, we'll talk about some of the more interactive features that Power BI offers to help you get your users clicking and knock their socks off when it comes to immersive data exploration.

In order to get users clicking, of course, we have to give them something to click on.  In this video, I'll run through how to use one of Power BI's most interactive objects:  Buttons.

Bookmarks are among the most insanely useful features Power BI has to offer.  In this video, I'll walk you through this absolutely game-changing capability that will help you revolutionize how your organize your report and all your data visual ideas.

As cool as bookmarks can be, correctly navigating their settings is the true key to unlocking their potential.  In this video, I just want to talk about what the items in the settings menu for bookmarks actually mean so that you save yourself some future headaches.

Tooltips are useful for helping users hover on something and learn more about it but what's really crazy is using the tooltip capability to present an entirely new group of data visuals that dynamically filter for whatever you or your user happen to be hovering on.  In this video, I'll walk you through how to set up this incredible front-end feature that your users will absolutely love.

In this video, I'll show you how to set up drill-through pages, which can be extremely helpful for helping your users "drill" into a subset of data in your report.