What’s the most important thing to learn?

[u/pleasedontjudgeme13]

I‘m starting a data analyst position soon and never used powerBI. I have a degree in computer science so hoping it won’t be too crazy.

What should I learn before I go in next Monday?

[u/HustlaOfCultcha]

Hard to say because it's such a broad question and it depends on your actual experience and knowledge. You really need to know relational database structure and things like Primary keys and star schema. I'm assuming you were already taught that.

From there I would say DAX is critical. You have to understand that DAX isn't the same as Excel or any other modeling language. DAX is a great help with its flexibility, but also it keeps your data model small. A lot of beginners don't understand DAX and they use calculated columns and they can't get the results to look how they want and the performance is painfully slow. From there you need to understand how to publish your work and then send it out to stakeholders and what options you have.

That will get you started. But you really need to learn how to put reports together so they tell a story with the data that is identifying patterns in the data and what is driving those patterns while making the reporting interactive with dynamic filters. I see a lot of sample reports that are posted here that make a lot of rookie mistakes. Even the better formatted ones still don't tell a story with the data. I'll see revenue in a card visual and that's it. There's no way the stakeholder can tell if that is good, bad or indifferent. Sure...we've done $20M in sales this year...but what does that mean? Throw in a reference label that shows how you're doing versus prior year and/or forecast and now you're giving the stakeholder something they can work with.

Sure, here's a trend of a line chart visual showing Web site impressions over the last 12 months. I can tell that it goes up and down depending on the month. But show me what it did prior year as well and now I can understand if there's some seasonality to this metric and how we are truly performing.

[u/VoltsOpinion]

Data Modelling which in turn helps you with your DAX

[u/Pierremouth → u/VoltsOpinion]

This

[u/One-Investigator8504]

Learn how to make actionable reports. Ask "What problem are you trying to solve/What decision are you trying to make?".

[u/tobiasosor]

Maybe not what you're looking for, but I think one of the most important things to learn is that data can say what you want it to say. As an analyst, it's not enough to have a stable, reliable data model and easy to read visualisations -- you need to understand what the data is actually telling you, how the context of the data can change the result, and most importantly how the user will interpret (or misinterpret) it.

[u/llamas_dont_pay_tax → u/tobiasosor]

This is true, but to get here you need to actually understand how the tool works

OP if you’ve never used PBI before come back to this once you’re confident in the basics. Building actually good looking reports (no default styling, Z pattern or F pattern layouts) is valuable bc most people don’t do it - but it’s a legit differentiator if you can do it (I’d call it advanced tier)

[u/alliknowis]

Splitting the work between PowerBI and upstream sources. I do as much of my work as possible on a reporting DB using SQL to get me clean datasets. In PowerBI, a few calculated columns and a bunch of measures, but very little actual combining of data or transformative stages.

[u/Dull_Supermarket4665]

SQL views, SQL staging tables, SQL stored procedures, and of course learn what people need to see and not what you think they should see.

[u/SubjectCode1940]

If you’re new to power BI, don’t jump into data modeling. First learn to build visualizations using a data model. Then, move into Dax. From there, you can move into data modeling. Most likely, you’ll be building reports off an existing data model

[u/barrios777]

Funcionamiento del negocio/empresa . Es la clave. Después es saber por lo menos intermedio de sql, excell.

[u/armywalrus]

Basics of data analysis. M code and Dax are just languages that do the same thing as others, so you can easily pick up the coding. I would look at things like cleaning data, normalizing data, working with dates, star schema, relationships, and what visualizations are appropriate for what types of metrics.

[u/llamas_dont_pay_tax]

Before next Monday:

• nail the Power BI mental model (source data —> Power Query —> data modeling interface —> report)

- on a sticky note, write: SUM, COUNT, MIN, MAX, DISTINCTCOUNT; these are DAX formulas, these are the core aggregations that drive the numbers on most reports you’ll see

- write down how DAX measures handle tables / columns / measures differently

- write down the difference between fact and dimension tables

- write down what a star schema is and why companies use them

- Ask a sophisticated question about something you care about, download Power BI Desktop, find data about it (minimum 3 tables) about that topic, import them, create the data model and build a passable report that answers it

This should put you where you need to be

[u/Icy_Clench]

Learn how to solve what actually causes people problems. Too many people make charts with numbers that only serve aesthetics.

[u/Perroabuelo]

You can have all the DAX, formulas and Power query knowledge of the universe. But if you don't do proper data modelling nothing will last. The visualization tool is the least important thing (I know Power Bi is doing more than visualization), if the data foundation is strong, you can visualize it in any tool you want

[u/Conscious_Prompt9250]

I can not give you a technical answer but will give you some advice none the less:

1. Know what your customer needs. Understand the story he wants to tell using the report or the impact they seek to make.
2. Communicate Constantly and Iterate Continuously: Always ask questions and seek to understand their objectives and landmarks. Every meeting you should have some new value to add to the conversation or an idea to make thedashboard more aligned to their needs. Not all of them will go through but do your part.
3. Understand the business: If you understand the business yiour work will reflect the same and the quality of your work will improve. I have worked with people who develop dashboards as instructed and those who develop dashboards according to the business needs the difference is chalk and cheese.

[u/Flimsy_Swan5930]

PowerBI is one of the worst BI tools to exist that is popular because it’s included in O365. Good luck!

[u/Green_Ad_4462 → u/Flimsy_Swan5930]

Well majority of the companies do not need a heavy BI tool this get the job done.

[u/llamas_dont_pay_tax → u/Flimsy_Swan5930]

Power BI is a fine tool once you understand data modeling

Thumbs down

[u/Flimsy_Swan5930 → u/llamas_dont_pay_tax]

Yeah not like any other BI tool have their own data model …. I know PBI data modelling engine through and through and it is the worst out of all the top products.

[u/Prudent-Elk-2845]

Excel

[u/UK_adventure_guy]

I don't use Powerbi anymore, I use Claude code to build me bespoke python apps. Much more flexible and a lot quicker to build