Power BI Basics: Requirements to Visualizations

Overview

Welcome to the Power BI Essentials course! Our world is changing, and today’s businesses rely on data to do many things; and that includes using data to illustrate insights that captures more dimensions of what’s happening with their customers, products, services and the world around us. This beginner-friendly Power BI course is designed to help you master the essentials of getting started with using the Power BI interface, navigating the relevance of business requirements gathering and using Power Query and other basic features to connect, combine and transform data. We do recommend some basic experience using Microsoft Excel as this is the primary application we will use for uploading data to Power BI. With engaging video lessons, hands-on practice exercises, and interactive quizzes; you’ll master the foundations to grow your business intelligence as you continue to deepen your knowledge with more advanced Power BI Visualizations courses offered at the University of Washington.

Syllabus

Getting Started: Introduction and Power BI Basics

Welcome, Coursera online learners! We will first provide introductory content before proceeding to lesson content in this module. We will focus on ensuring you have clear expectations about the course content and structure, and this includes tips on how to prepare for the lessons ahead. The Power BI Desktop app software link, vocabulary guide, and a suggested self-paced course outline are included in this module. We recommend reading through each item and downloading the Power BI Desktop software before you begin your first lesson.

Intro to Relational Data Modeling

For this activity, you'll learn a vital concept in preparing your data, relational data modeling. The learning materials and activities in this lesson will help you understand the fundamental building blocks of a data model, including tables, keys, and relationships. It will also help you understand and make decisions between a star schema and a snowflake schema. You will also walk away with more useful insights that will help you see the impact of what a well-built data model has on the performance of Power BI.

Data Sources and Loading Data

This week, we’ll get our hands dirty by opening up Power BI and learning how to connect to and clean data.  The learning materials and activities in this lesson will help you understand where, how, and why you might alter your data to provide greater accuracy and performance. You will also review the role of data sources that Power BI can connect to.

Relational Data Modeling

In this module we will move away from the theoretical and on to the practical application of data modeling in Power BI. We’ll create and manage relationships between tables, clean up our models by adding and removing information, and, finally, we’ll start looking at how to enhance our models through basic calculations. After you complete all activities and graded assessments in this lesson, you will complete a final assessment.