Course Overview
Modern reports and dashboards are highly interactive and use data from multiple sources. Managers want real-time information for analysis and decision making. This course builds on the beginner course and enables dashboard creators to support these requirements.
Data is only as up to date as its latest refresh. The location of data has refresh implications, as does the feature used by Power BI Desktop to connect to that data. This course covers the issues that must be addressed to determine the freshness of an organizations reporting data. Data often comes from different sources. When all that data together must be used for visualizations and analysis, the data must be modeled. Data modeling includes the topics: Table Relationships, Cardinality, Row-level Security, and Referential Integrity.
Sometimes a data source does not have all the information that is required for reporting or forecasting. Calculated columns may be added to produce the data required for further analysis. Calculated columns are covered in this course. Visualizations that are not covered in the beginner course are covered here. This course includes: Donut Charts, Tree Maps, Line and Stacked Column charts, Line and Cluster Column charts, Maps, and Filled Maps. Perhaps mostly importantly, use cases that determine when each of these visuals is the best one to use are explained and demonstrated.
Filters are introduced as a technique for interactively analyzing data. Filters may be applied to single visualizations, pages, or entire reports. Each has its place. Special filters are also included such as: Include / Excluded filters, Cross filters, Top N filters, and relative Date filters. Slicers are visual filters that enhance interactivity, especially on dashboards. There are various types of slicers, and this course covers date slicers, time slicers, numeric range slicers, and others. Even though dashboards are covered in the beginner course, there is so much that can be done with them!