Intro to Data Visualization and Business Analytics with Microsoft Power BI

There are no prerequisites for this course, though some may find it helpful to have experience with Microsoft Excel and Power Query, as Power BI uses similar formulas and frameworks.

Strong data culture is a sine qua non for effective organizations in the digital age, and proprietary data insights are increasingly becoming the most important asset such organizations can accrue. Additionally, firms that are invested in crafting a compelling, authentic narrative from their data are uniquely positioned to establish enduring brands, often thriving in the dynamic markets and uncertain times we find ourselves in. When it comes to communicating such insights in service of a great mission or brand, there are few things that can beat a striking data visualization. Over the course of a single day, we invite participants to explore an exciting and extensible data visualization framework (Microsoft Power BI) that allows finance and business professionals to create reports and dashboards on top of their existing data products. Participants will learn how to gather relevant data from sample spreadsheets, overcome common data preparation obstacles, and build an interactive dashboard they can publish to the web. At the conclusion of the workshop, participants will have developed their own web dashboard that they can readily adapt to their own professional contexts, and which they can then use to obtain better insights into their own work and/or share it with their co-workers.

● Hands-on data visualization experience Microsoft Power BI and its Power Query engine

● Every participant leaves with a working dashboard that they can connect to their organization’s data sources

● Insights on how best to automate tedious data workflows with web dashboards

● Overview of data sourcing, preparation, and visualization pitfalls

● Course notes, certificate of completion, and post-seminar email support for 1 year

● An engaging and practical training approach with a qualified instructor with relevant technical, business, and educational experiences

The target audience for this course is finance and business professionals, but the skills we teach here are transferable across many disciplines. If any of the following points apply to you, you will most likely find this course useful: – In my current role, I spend a lot of time creating reports and/or surfacing the insights they contain. – I often need to copy and paste data between different Excel spreadsheets to build simple charts on top of it. – I’m responsible for manually updating the data sources for my team’s regular snapshots and briefs and want to reclaim that time. – I want to conduct my organizations, teams, or own personal work more effectively by becoming more data-driven. – I always want to have a current view on certain key metrics for which my company already stores relevant data. – I want to learn how to incorporate data design and visualization principles into my core practice as a professional.

Introduction – · Walkthrough – what is Microsoft Power BI? · Success stories and use cases  · How companies and individuals have used dashboards successfully to become more data-driven  · Initial Setup  · Review of popular resources for Power BI

Connecting Data and Transforming Data in Power BI · How does Power BI connect to our data? · How might we clean and transform our data to prepare it for a dashboard? · What is Power Query and how does it work? · Updating and modifying data loads · Customizing a table we’ve loaded  · Customizing and adding columns to a table

Table Relationships and Data Models · Introduction to the Relationships pane in Power BI · How does one establish relationships? · Cardinality of relationships · Fact and Dimension tables · Basic schema types (data models) and normalization

Data Analysis with DAX and M · M and Power Query · DAX and the Data pane · When to use M and when to use DAX  · Common M transformations · Common DAX transformations · Measures, filters, and contexts

Data Visualization · Intro to the Report pane · Tiles, tabs, and filters · Common visualizations and their use cases · Formatting a visual · Slicers and Interactions · Styling and Accessibility

Date: Wednesday, and Thursday, May 13 and May 14, 2026  

Location:Virtual, Zoom based

Course Hours: 5:30 – 9:00 pm EDT, each day

Early Bird Registration & Deadline: Members- $419, Non-Members – $519 until April 13, 2026

Registration Closes: May 8, 2026 COB