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 20 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.
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)?
Check your understanding
Answer every question to check.