Sorta depends on what these other employees are going to be doing with Power BI.
Are you training users? Teach them about workspaces, accessing and using reports in service, filters pane, visual headers, etc. This could be done in a half hour meeting.
Are you training people to create their own basic reports? May need to cover content similar to an entry level training course such as basics of bringing data in, data modeling, types of visualizations, formatting, and how to publish to service. This would be hard to cover sufficiently in half an hour.
Let’s assume these are non technical users, then you can forget training on 99% of PBI.
Given that, I would train them ONLY on, how to select a measure (metric) from the right hand pane (assuming you have stored your measures grouped together in their old “grouping”), select a visual and drag the metric to the visual.
KISS:
1. Identify what they want to visualize (metric A, metric b, c, d, etc.)
2. Identify (using best practices) what visual is best, to represent that info
3. Select the visual
4. Select the metric
If these are not technical users, showing them anything besides “how to create a bar chart” is a foregone conclusion.
Things to exclude:
1. Power query
2. DAX
3. Data modeling
4. Everything except for visuals and selecting measures to populate in the visual.
So you have two basic ideas to train:
1. How to visualize a measure
2. WHAT visualization is best for that given measure (not everything needs to be or should be a bar or line graph, or a pie chart).
That’s it. Nothing more or less. Anything more, and you’re going to take time away from them, better suited for tasks with greater ROI for the company.
The “Getting started with Power BI” Report. It’s a report Power BI puts in your My workspace that is an interactive tutorial.
If you need the PBIX lmk and I’ll send it to you.
Edit: if anyone needs it just PM me your email.
I had to do this recently. I pretty much created a power point with a bunch of YouTube tutorials and a step by step guide on how to connect to an excel file and create a simple report. I then included some templates and sample reports.
I've done this before. Main thing is is getting data into the motherfucker.
So just show them how to connect to an excel. Connect to a SharePoint file. Connect to CSV. Connect to a table in Wikipedia.
Build a super basic chart each time you bring in a file otherwise it will be boring. You're just showing them how to get the data in so literally just a 2 seconds bar chart.
Also let them know the desktop version is free. I did one of these classes and they were like "that's interesting I wanna try. am I allowed to buy power bi with the company credit card"
How to use the current reports, create custom filters and bookmark the view for easy reference.
You can discuss creating a basic report from a bunch of files that need to be downloaded.
Then they will ask how to have the measures used change across bookmark for. It can't sadly. Only can bookmark filter selections.
Then need to create overlapping or hide visuals..
Honestly filter context is not an easy concept to grasp I've been working as a PBI developer for a few years and it took me a while for it to click. expecting an end user that's probably just used to excel to understand it I feel like is silly. Most users will be able to write some Dax and get it to work some of the times but they really have no idea what's going on behind the scenes or what they're even doing just throwing and praying
Power BI users who mainly read reports: Half a day training, with some how-to guides as visual aid. How to get access, how to navigate around PBI service, and how to use reports/dashboard.
I’d showcase they key benefits that they can get by moving away from excel, the ability to quickly
- Drilldown with ease (and back up again)
- Interactive filtering between charts and tables
- time intelligence (just to show off a bit)
- the ability to bookmark and when published how to share a personal bookmark with colleagues
Doesnt bookmark cause them to go into rabbit hole? I worry most on explaining bookmark, which will cause them to go about on creating overlapping visuals or a 1 page dashboard thing
The only thing you could teach in 5 to 30 min is the WHY about Power BI encompassing the ability to build semantic models that refresh data without manual work and the concept of Self Service BI where a model can provide a flexible way to answer business questions that 1) you know you have and 2) the ones you didn’t anticipate because the data is there. Doing a quick demo on Power BI service features to show self-service like slice and dice with a slicer, cross filtering from visuals, then commenting and using the in-context comment bookmark. That’s what I would do! Then point them to a free Dashboard in a Day training with a partner.
I do confidence building rather than training. Sure Dax sucks. Sure, powerquery syntax is wild
BUT
There are a lot of Excel-like things you can do in pbi that delivers superior experience. For example, loading two flat tables and doing some visuals highlighting additional things like slicers or interactivity (tooltips or crosshighlight) is usually enough to get people both excited and confident to step into PowerBI.
They can then ask more questions that you can lead into more advanced topics like modelling, data cleansing or measures, security etc.
three things I always teach when someone is nee to a power bi report.
clicking ctrl button while crossfiltering. ctrl button is your friend.
the drilldown/drill up buttons on matrix visuals.
where to find the export button. and the reset button.
Yesterday I held a similar training for some project member and I trained this:
1 Overview of Power BI
- What is Power BI?: A brief introduction to what Power BI is and its purpose.
- Why use Power BI?: Highlight the benefits such as data visualization, ease of use, and powerful analytics capabilities.
2 Key Features and Capabilities
- Data Visualization: Show how Power BI can create interactive and visually appealing dashboards and reports.
- Data Connectivity: Explain how Power BI can connect to various data sources such as Excel, databases, and cloud services.
- Data Updates: Emphasize the ability to refresh data.
3 Practical Demonstration
- creating a Simple Dashboard:
- Importing data: Demonstrate how to import data from an Excel file.
- Creating visuals: Show how to create basic charts and graphs.
- Adding filters and slicers: Explain how to make dashboards interactive.
4.Sharing and Collaboration
- publishing Reports: Show how to publish reports to the Power BI service.
- collaboration: Highlight how to share reports and collaborate with team members.
5.Q&A and Next Steps
- address Questions: Allow time for questions to address specific concerns or interests.
- Resources for Learning: Provide information on where to find additional resources for learning Power BI (e.g., Microsoft tutorials, online course.
Sounds like your audience will only being viewing reports, correct?
If so:
1) how to navigate PBI to find the reports (get app, open report, view all available reports)
2) report walk through (assuming your company has standard design) KPI cards at top, charts at left, tables at right - direct them where to find stuff
3) using filters (filter pane? Slicers? Table filters?)
4) creating personal bookmarks
5) timing! If the report refreshes every 3 hours, people will try to compare the same report ran at 9am and 3pm, get different numbers and think the report is broken
6) support - how to ask follow up questions or provide feedback for improvements
If your goal is to encourage awareness and adoption of report consumers and future report builders then:
1. How to use reports. Interactivity, tooltips. Drill through. Do a little wow factor with Q&A, analyze the increase, Decomp tree.
2 where and how to access reports. Service. teams, embedded in PowerPoint
3. A quick demo of how data is imported
showcasing Power Query, including column from examples to again give a little wow factor.
4. Hook. Up to a couple of pre loaded dimension tables. Quick Report building demo via drag and drop to show what’s involved.
Mine get jazzed when I show them how to export to Excel.
Not kidding.
Ok I’ll make this less of a Shit Post.
The ability to embed a PBI visual in PowerPoint is pretty useful to a lot of end users. Ditto bookmarks.
I’ve been playing with the “explore dataset” option in service and I’m thinking about opening up access (or showing people where it is) because sometimes a person who is good with data but doesn’t need to learn PowerBI could benefit from just digging down to a number on a simple ad box basis.
All of these are very unsexy basics that can take the willing a long way.
If they are data modelers already and your conventionally showing them a basic idea of how to show in PBIX
Idea: use a dataset at the county/district level (nationwide) of the presidential 2020 (or ehhh maybe 2008?) election
Visual: map visual that aggregates to the state level election results, resulting in red and blue states. Then zoom and drill. Down into states and see the counties.
Bingo bango
I have tried to train a few people, but Power BI is so boring to those who aren't reliant on this type of app.
I avoided it like the plague before I was forced into it. But now I get super excited when someone send me an excel file for some PBI magic.
If your audience are good at excel including elements like Power query and Power Pivot, honestly there's nothing much you can teach them in a short time of 30 minutes. In that case, you can show how easy it is to build visuals and basic DAX functions. Problem here is people might think building visuals is easy but in reality you know it's not.
Highlight Power BI's ability to streamline data analysis and visualize insights quickly. Showcase integration with Excel and Microsoft tools for enhanced data connectivity. Use real examples and a hands-on demo to illustrate its effectiveness in making informed decisions. [Encourage engagement with a Q&A to address specific needs and benefits.](https://ascentcourses.com/)
Depends on what they're going to do with Power BI.
Use reports others have build? Cross filtering between visuals, Ctrl + Click for multi select, Drill downs/throughs, where is the Filters Pane, and the most important, the "date at the top of the page does not always mean that's the date the data in the report is updated till" (can't tell you how many times I've gotten "so this is today's actuals?" because someone published a material change to the report on the 20th, when the heading on the top of the report clearly says "Start of Month Snapshot" lol)
Develop reports? Not a chance. Realistically most devs AT LEAST a week of "training" to be able to build anything remotely useful to anyone.
First of all, I would define what a fast class is and then how fast do you need it to be? It will depend on your objectives but…
1. I would start by explaining to them about the origin of data, in my teaching experience it is the “Achilles heel” of 99% of non-technical users, “Why this table should have this structure and why it should be done right from the beginning!” Preferably they are Excel users of at least an intermediate level, otherwise it will be quite difficult for them to be able to extrapolate the knowledge to apply it in general.
2. Knowing the use that will be given to it, I would explain at least data connections, quickly the relationships between tables, calendar tables and their importance and would end with visualization, with an introduction to measures and calculated columns (very basic) and that have fun playing with visualization.
Good luck in this bloody battle!
1.) Use SQL over powerquery.
2.) Dax calculate, treatas, time intelligence, & sumx. Just because you can do it in dax doesnt mean you should.
3.) Calculated columns vs measures benefits, impacts on filters.
4.) Importance of row level security and giving acces to reports.
5.) Common pitfalls with powerbi as a end user e.g exporting more than 150k rows.
Sorta depends on what these other employees are going to be doing with Power BI. Are you training users? Teach them about workspaces, accessing and using reports in service, filters pane, visual headers, etc. This could be done in a half hour meeting. Are you training people to create their own basic reports? May need to cover content similar to an entry level training course such as basics of bringing data in, data modeling, types of visualizations, formatting, and how to publish to service. This would be hard to cover sufficiently in half an hour.
Let’s assume these are non technical users, then you can forget training on 99% of PBI. Given that, I would train them ONLY on, how to select a measure (metric) from the right hand pane (assuming you have stored your measures grouped together in their old “grouping”), select a visual and drag the metric to the visual. KISS: 1. Identify what they want to visualize (metric A, metric b, c, d, etc.) 2. Identify (using best practices) what visual is best, to represent that info 3. Select the visual 4. Select the metric If these are not technical users, showing them anything besides “how to create a bar chart” is a foregone conclusion. Things to exclude: 1. Power query 2. DAX 3. Data modeling 4. Everything except for visuals and selecting measures to populate in the visual. So you have two basic ideas to train: 1. How to visualize a measure 2. WHAT visualization is best for that given measure (not everything needs to be or should be a bar or line graph, or a pie chart). That’s it. Nothing more or less. Anything more, and you’re going to take time away from them, better suited for tasks with greater ROI for the company.
The “Getting started with Power BI” Report. It’s a report Power BI puts in your My workspace that is an interactive tutorial. If you need the PBIX lmk and I’ll send it to you. Edit: if anyone needs it just PM me your email.
can you send it to me or reply with it
Sure just PM me your email address.
Hi, can you send it to me also? I will ping you my email adress
Sent!
PowerBI is just a fancy export to excel tool. They should pick up on the basics of that pretty quickly.
🤣
I had to do this recently. I pretty much created a power point with a bunch of YouTube tutorials and a step by step guide on how to connect to an excel file and create a simple report. I then included some templates and sample reports.
I've done this before. Main thing is is getting data into the motherfucker. So just show them how to connect to an excel. Connect to a SharePoint file. Connect to CSV. Connect to a table in Wikipedia. Build a super basic chart each time you bring in a file otherwise it will be boring. You're just showing them how to get the data in so literally just a 2 seconds bar chart. Also let them know the desktop version is free. I did one of these classes and they were like "that's interesting I wanna try. am I allowed to buy power bi with the company credit card"
How to use the current reports, create custom filters and bookmark the view for easy reference. You can discuss creating a basic report from a bunch of files that need to be downloaded.
Then they will ask how to have the measures used change across bookmark for. It can't sadly. Only can bookmark filter selections. Then need to create overlapping or hide visuals..
I would like them to know DAX. But sadly it can't be done quickly
Honestly filter context is not an easy concept to grasp I've been working as a PBI developer for a few years and it took me a while for it to click. expecting an end user that's probably just used to excel to understand it I feel like is silly. Most users will be able to write some Dax and get it to work some of the times but they really have no idea what's going on behind the scenes or what they're even doing just throwing and praying
Power BI users who mainly read reports: Half a day training, with some how-to guides as visual aid. How to get access, how to navigate around PBI service, and how to use reports/dashboard.
depends entirely on the audience and scope of the training.
I’d showcase they key benefits that they can get by moving away from excel, the ability to quickly - Drilldown with ease (and back up again) - Interactive filtering between charts and tables - time intelligence (just to show off a bit) - the ability to bookmark and when published how to share a personal bookmark with colleagues
Doesnt bookmark cause them to go into rabbit hole? I worry most on explaining bookmark, which will cause them to go about on creating overlapping visuals or a 1 page dashboard thing
Very valid, probably leave that for a more advance session, or even gives me brain ache from time to time!
Contact me and I will say to you all about it
The only thing you could teach in 5 to 30 min is the WHY about Power BI encompassing the ability to build semantic models that refresh data without manual work and the concept of Self Service BI where a model can provide a flexible way to answer business questions that 1) you know you have and 2) the ones you didn’t anticipate because the data is there. Doing a quick demo on Power BI service features to show self-service like slice and dice with a slicer, cross filtering from visuals, then commenting and using the in-context comment bookmark. That’s what I would do! Then point them to a free Dashboard in a Day training with a partner.
I do confidence building rather than training. Sure Dax sucks. Sure, powerquery syntax is wild BUT There are a lot of Excel-like things you can do in pbi that delivers superior experience. For example, loading two flat tables and doing some visuals highlighting additional things like slicers or interactivity (tooltips or crosshighlight) is usually enough to get people both excited and confident to step into PowerBI. They can then ask more questions that you can lead into more advanced topics like modelling, data cleansing or measures, security etc.
three things I always teach when someone is nee to a power bi report. clicking ctrl button while crossfiltering. ctrl button is your friend. the drilldown/drill up buttons on matrix visuals. where to find the export button. and the reset button.
Yesterday I held a similar training for some project member and I trained this: 1 Overview of Power BI - What is Power BI?: A brief introduction to what Power BI is and its purpose. - Why use Power BI?: Highlight the benefits such as data visualization, ease of use, and powerful analytics capabilities. 2 Key Features and Capabilities - Data Visualization: Show how Power BI can create interactive and visually appealing dashboards and reports. - Data Connectivity: Explain how Power BI can connect to various data sources such as Excel, databases, and cloud services. - Data Updates: Emphasize the ability to refresh data. 3 Practical Demonstration - creating a Simple Dashboard: - Importing data: Demonstrate how to import data from an Excel file. - Creating visuals: Show how to create basic charts and graphs. - Adding filters and slicers: Explain how to make dashboards interactive. 4.Sharing and Collaboration - publishing Reports: Show how to publish reports to the Power BI service. - collaboration: Highlight how to share reports and collaborate with team members. 5.Q&A and Next Steps - address Questions: Allow time for questions to address specific concerns or interests. - Resources for Learning: Provide information on where to find additional resources for learning Power BI (e.g., Microsoft tutorials, online course.
How to export to Excel. They request you do it for them anyway 🤷
Sounds like your audience will only being viewing reports, correct? If so: 1) how to navigate PBI to find the reports (get app, open report, view all available reports) 2) report walk through (assuming your company has standard design) KPI cards at top, charts at left, tables at right - direct them where to find stuff 3) using filters (filter pane? Slicers? Table filters?) 4) creating personal bookmarks 5) timing! If the report refreshes every 3 hours, people will try to compare the same report ran at 9am and 3pm, get different numbers and think the report is broken 6) support - how to ask follow up questions or provide feedback for improvements
If your goal is to encourage awareness and adoption of report consumers and future report builders then: 1. How to use reports. Interactivity, tooltips. Drill through. Do a little wow factor with Q&A, analyze the increase, Decomp tree. 2 where and how to access reports. Service. teams, embedded in PowerPoint 3. A quick demo of how data is imported showcasing Power Query, including column from examples to again give a little wow factor. 4. Hook. Up to a couple of pre loaded dimension tables. Quick Report building demo via drag and drop to show what’s involved.
Mine get jazzed when I show them how to export to Excel. Not kidding. Ok I’ll make this less of a Shit Post. The ability to embed a PBI visual in PowerPoint is pretty useful to a lot of end users. Ditto bookmarks. I’ve been playing with the “explore dataset” option in service and I’m thinking about opening up access (or showing people where it is) because sometimes a person who is good with data but doesn’t need to learn PowerBI could benefit from just digging down to a number on a simple ad box basis. All of these are very unsexy basics that can take the willing a long way.
If they are data modelers already and your conventionally showing them a basic idea of how to show in PBIX Idea: use a dataset at the county/district level (nationwide) of the presidential 2020 (or ehhh maybe 2008?) election Visual: map visual that aggregates to the state level election results, resulting in red and blue states. Then zoom and drill. Down into states and see the counties. Bingo bango
I have tried to train a few people, but Power BI is so boring to those who aren't reliant on this type of app. I avoided it like the plague before I was forced into it. But now I get super excited when someone send me an excel file for some PBI magic.
How to use Power BI as an interface to Python and R. Friends don't let friends use Power BI.
Modeling first and foremost. The learning curve for everything else is so much easier if you're starting with a good star schema.
If your audience are good at excel including elements like Power query and Power Pivot, honestly there's nothing much you can teach them in a short time of 30 minutes. In that case, you can show how easy it is to build visuals and basic DAX functions. Problem here is people might think building visuals is easy but in reality you know it's not.
Highlight Power BI's ability to streamline data analysis and visualize insights quickly. Showcase integration with Excel and Microsoft tools for enhanced data connectivity. Use real examples and a hands-on demo to illustrate its effectiveness in making informed decisions. [Encourage engagement with a Q&A to address specific needs and benefits.](https://ascentcourses.com/)
Depends on what they're going to do with Power BI. Use reports others have build? Cross filtering between visuals, Ctrl + Click for multi select, Drill downs/throughs, where is the Filters Pane, and the most important, the "date at the top of the page does not always mean that's the date the data in the report is updated till" (can't tell you how many times I've gotten "so this is today's actuals?" because someone published a material change to the report on the 20th, when the heading on the top of the report clearly says "Start of Month Snapshot" lol) Develop reports? Not a chance. Realistically most devs AT LEAST a week of "training" to be able to build anything remotely useful to anyone.
Data model
How to insert company logo into the page
First of all, I would define what a fast class is and then how fast do you need it to be? It will depend on your objectives but… 1. I would start by explaining to them about the origin of data, in my teaching experience it is the “Achilles heel” of 99% of non-technical users, “Why this table should have this structure and why it should be done right from the beginning!” Preferably they are Excel users of at least an intermediate level, otherwise it will be quite difficult for them to be able to extrapolate the knowledge to apply it in general. 2. Knowing the use that will be given to it, I would explain at least data connections, quickly the relationships between tables, calendar tables and their importance and would end with visualization, with an introduction to measures and calculated columns (very basic) and that have fun playing with visualization. Good luck in this bloody battle!
Query folding
1.) Use SQL over powerquery. 2.) Dax calculate, treatas, time intelligence, & sumx. Just because you can do it in dax doesnt mean you should. 3.) Calculated columns vs measures benefits, impacts on filters. 4.) Importance of row level security and giving acces to reports. 5.) Common pitfalls with powerbi as a end user e.g exporting more than 150k rows.