Build on your foundational Power BI skills with practical, real-world techniques for business analysis. This course explores advanced topics including snowflake schemas, header-detail modeling, time intelligence, speed of service metrics, workload tracking, and incorporating forecasting and quota data. Learn how to calculate elapsed workdays, build smarter dashboards, and deliver insights that drive action.
Prerequisites
The Definitive Introduction to Power BI or any introductory or fundamentals course.
Audience
- Business Analysts: Moving beyond Excel for data analysis, dashboards, reports, and data models. Learn fast ad-hoc reporting and insights.
- Data Enthusiasts / Power Users: Comfortable with Excel and want to upskill. Eager to explore more advanced data transformation and visualization tools.
- Team Leads / Managers: Don’t necessarily build reports but need to understand Power BI outputs. Interested in data-driven decision-making and KPI tracking.
- IT and Database Professionals: Looking to support or integrate Power BI into existing systems. May focus on data modeling, performance tuning, or governance.
- Admin Professionals: Learn about best practices for turning data into useful and impressive dashboards.
- Software Developers and Database Developers: Bring your data into Power BI to meet reporting requirements using interactive, professional looking reports.
Content
- Working with snowflake schemas. Flattening data, how and why
- The Header-Detail pattern and how to integrate into Star and Galaxy Schema
- Understanding Fiscal and Calendar Date Tables
- Custom Period Logic
- Time Between Events (Start to End, Order to Delivery), Speed of Service
- Elapsed time using workdays only, the use of Holiday tables for driving DAX calculations
- Filtering out weekends
- Peak Load and Load Distribution
- Net Workdays vs duration
- Incorporating Forecast and comparing to Actuals
- Incorporating Quotas and comparing to Actuals
- Combining Speed of Service and Workloads into Unified Reports
- Showing flow, Sankey diagrams and related data modelling
- DAX coding, debugging and best practices
Course Setup Checklist
- Power BI Desktop:
- Work computers: Install via your software center or contact your help desk.
- Personal computers: A free download link will be provided upon registration.
- Computer with at least two monitors and a mouse.
- The course files (download link provided when you register).