Module 1 · Power BI Fundamentals
Introduction to business intelligence with Power BI
What Power BI is, its parts (Desktop, Service, Mobile), the workflow you'll follow in this course, and how to get set up.
About 15 minutes
The problem
Every Monday, Kolanut Distribution's analyst rebuilds the same Excel report: revenue by region, by month, by product. It takes a morning, and the managing director sees it on Tuesday. She wants to open a dashboard on Monday at 8am, click on a region, and see the numbers update.
That's what Power BI is for: building an analysis once, connecting it to data, and letting people explore it themselves.
The concept
Power BI is Microsoft's business intelligence tool. It has three main parts:
| Part | What it's for | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Power BI Desktop | Building reports on your Windows computer: load data, model it, write calculations, design pages | Free |
| Power BI Service (app.powerbi.com) | Publishing, sharing, scheduled refresh, dashboards in the browser | Free to publish to your own workspace; sharing with others needs a Pro (or higher) licence |
| Power BI Mobile | Viewing reports on a phone | Free app; access follows the Service licence |
The Power BI workflow, which this course follows step by step:
- Get data: connect to files, databases or online services.
- Transform: clean and shape it in Power Query.
- Model: relate the tables and add a date table.
- Calculate: write DAX measures (revenue, growth, % of total).
- Visualise: build report pages with charts, cards and slicers.
- Publish and share through the Service.
How it relates to Excel. Power Query and pivot-style thinking are shared with Excel, so the Excel course helps a lot. The big differences: Power BI handles millions of rows, keeps several related tables in one model, and produces interactive reports rather than static sheets.
| Excel | Power BI | |
|---|---|---|
| Data size | About a million rows per sheet | Many millions of rows, compressed |
| Several tables | Linked by lookups you write | Related once in a model |
| Calculations | Cell formulas | DAX measures that respond to filters |
| Output | Sheets, charts, pivot tables | Interactive report pages and dashboards |
| Refresh | Usually by hand | Scheduled, automatic |
| Sharing | Send the file | Publish once; people open it in a browser or on a phone |
| Best for | Quick, flexible, one-off analysis | Reports many people use repeatedly |
Most analysts use both: Excel to explore and check, Power BI to deliver.
The building blocks
You'll meet these words throughout the course:
| Term | Means | Lesson |
|---|---|---|
| Query | A recipe for loading and cleaning one table, in Power Query | 3–5 |
| Model | The loaded tables and the relationships between them | 6–7 |
| Measure | A DAX calculation, worked out for whatever a visual shows | 8–9 |
| Visual | One chart, card, table or slicer on a page | 10 |
| Report | A set of pages built on one model (a .pbix file) | 10–12 |
| Dashboard | In the Service, a single page of tiles pinned from reports | 13 |
| Workspace | A shared folder in the Service where reports are published | 13 |
Example
By the end of this course you'll have built a Kolanut sales report with:
- KPI cards: revenue, growth versus last year, active customers;
- a monthly revenue line comparing this year with last year;
- revenue by region with growth, highlighting the regions that fell;
- slicers for channel, category and date;
and then a dashboard of your own for a law firm as the final project.
Walkthrough
Get set up
- Install Power BI Desktop from the Microsoft Store (search "Power BI Desktop"). The Store version updates itself.
- Open it. You don't need to sign in to build reports; sign-in is only needed to publish.
- Download the course data:
Practice
Practice
Which part of Power BI do you use to build reports on your own computer? (Give its full name.)
Practice
In the Power BI workflow, which tool do you use for the transform step (cleaning and shaping data)?
More practice
Optional drills. They don't count towards the certificate, but each one checks you can apply the lesson to a new situation.
Drill · optional
A manager wants the same sales report every Monday without anyone rebuilding it. Which Power BI feature, set up after publishing, keeps the data up to date on its own? (Two words.)
Check your understanding
Answer every question to check.