Microsoft Power BI for Data-Driven Decision Makers
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What you'll learn
You will explore, analyze, and customize reports and visualizations in Power BI to discover new insights, showcase those insights, and share them.
Skills you'll gain
Tools you'll learn
Details to know
January 2026
1 assignment
See how employees at top companies are mastering in-demand skills
There are 7 modules in this course
As data acquisition, access, analysis, and reporting are interwoven with our businesses and lives, more and more data is collected about business and personal activities. This abundance of data and the computing power to analyze it has increased the use of data analysis and data visualization across a broad range of job roles. Decision makers of all types, including managers and executives, must interact with, interpret, and develop reports based on data and analysis provided to them.
Microsoft® Power BI® software is designed for data analysis and the creation of visualizations. Data analysts prepare data, perform initial analysis, and create visualizations that are then passed to business data decision makers. These decision makers can use Power BI's tools to explore the data, perform further analysis to find new insights, make decisions, and create customized reports to share their findings. This course is designed for professionals in a variety of job roles who receive Power BI data visualizations and reports from data analysts or from data visualization engineers. These data report recipients want to use the features and capabilities of Power BI to fully explore the visualizations and initial analyses provided to them in reports, perform additional analysis to ask next-level questions of the data, and to customize and create new visualizations and dashboards in order to share new insights and create compelling reports. In this course, you will: explore Power BI reports; analyze data to get answers and insights; sort and group data for analysis and reporting; filter visualizations; prepare reports; and troubleshoot, collaborate, and share reports. This course requires that you have access to a trial version of Microsoft 365 Business Premium, along with Power BI Desktop. The course setup instructions provided in the first module of the course go into more detail about the hardware and software requirements.
As a data-driven decision maker, you will receive a variety of reports that contain data, visualizations, and related information relevant to your job. If you want to make sense of the insights, arguments, and data provided, and then make recommendations and decisions, you must be able to view and explore the reports you're given. In this lesson, you will explore Microsoft® Power BI® reports.
What's included
6 plugins
6 plugins•Total 100 minutes
- Getting Started with This Course•30 minutes
- Lesson Introduction•5 minutes
- Data Analysis Workflow with Power BI•20 minutes
- Explore Reports in the Power BI Service•20 minutes
- Edit Reports•20 minutes
- Lesson Summary•5 minutes
Decision makers must analyze the data and visualizations they are given to find insights related to their role and incorporate the unique perspective they have. In this lesson, you will analyze data to get answers and find insights.
What's included
5 plugins
5 plugins•Total 130 minutes
- Lesson Introduction•5 minutes
- Configure Data Visualizations•40 minutes
- Ask New Questions by Changing Summarization•40 minutes
- Find Answers with Calculations•40 minutes
- Lesson Summary•5 minutes
If you need to work with large and complex semantic models in Microsoft® Power BI®, you're going to need to adjust, organize, sort, and group data to analyze it effectively and to create meaningful visualizations. In this lesson, you will sort and group data.
What's included
4 plugins
4 plugins•Total 40 minutes
- Lesson Introduction•5 minutes
- Sort Data•15 minutes
- Group Data•15 minutes
- Lesson Summary•5 minutes
Having extraneous information in your reports and visualizations can detract from the insights and story you're trying to tell with the data. If you want to keep visualizations and reports focused so that you can perform better analysis, it's necessary to filter what you don't want to see so that you can focus on what you want. In this lesson, you will configure worksheet filters, apply advanced filtering options, and create interactive filters.
What's included
4 plugins
4 plugins•Total 70 minutes
- Lesson Introduction•5 minutes
- Filter Data to Refine Analysis•30 minutes
- Create Slicers for Reports•30 minutes
- Lesson Summary•5 minutes
If you need to explain your data analysis, back up your recommendations and decisions with data that provides evidence that your decisions are sound, or give presentations of your findings, then you will need to prepare reports that are well formatted, emphasize your insights and evidence, and can be delivered in a compelling visual way. In this lesson, you will format and annotate visualizations, emphasize data in reports, and animate visualizations for clarity.
What's included
4 plugins
4 plugins•Total 70 minutes
- Lesson Introduction•5 minutes
- Format and Annotate Reports•30 minutes
- Emphasize Data in Reports•30 minutes
- Lesson Summary•5 minutes
When you're analyzing data with Microsoft® Power BI®, you may have issues that you need to troubleshoot, and you will often wish to share your findings and visualizations with others. In this lesson, you will troubleshoot data issues, and share and collaborate with Power BI.
What's included
5 plugins
5 plugins•Total 40 minutes
- Lesson Introduction•5 minutes
- Troubleshoot Data Issues•10 minutes
- Collaborate in Power BI•10 minutes
- Collaborate with Non-Power BI Users•10 minutes
- Lesson Summary•5 minutes
You'll wrap things up and then validate what you've learned in this course by taking an assessment.
What's included
1 assignment2 plugins
1 assignment•Total 25 minutes
- Course Assessment•25 minutes
2 plugins•Total 20 minutes
- Appendices•15 minutes
- Course Summary•5 minutes
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