Power BI Intermediate
Power BI Intermediate Course
Strengthen your Power BI capabilities through advanced data transformation, dimensional modelling, DAX calculations and interactive business reporting.
Course overview
The Power BI Intermediate Course is designed for participants who already understand the basic Power BI workflow and want to build more accurate, dynamic and professional analytical solutions.
Participants will move beyond basic data import and visualizations. They will learn how to transform data from multiple sources, develop a star-schema model, create reusable DAX measures and build reports with advanced navigation and analytical features.
The course also introduces the operational aspects of the Power BI service, including workspaces, scheduled refresh and row-level security.
Who should attend?
This course is suitable for:
- Power BI users who can already create basic reports
- Business and data analysts
- Management-reporting and performance officers
- Finance, sales, operations and human-resource analysts
- Report developers responsible for recurring dashboards
- Excel users with Power Query or Power Pivot experience
Course prerequisites
Participants should be able to:
- Navigate Power BI Desktop
- Import data from Excel or CSV files
- Perform basic Power Query transformations
- Create simple table relationships
- Create standard charts, tables, cards and slicers
- Create basic measures such as totals and averages
Completion of the Power BI Beginner Course or equivalent practical experience is recommended.
Learning outcomes
After completing this course, participants will be able to:
- Profile, clean and restructure complex source data
- Merge and append data from multiple sources
- Consolidate multiple files from a folder
- Design an effective star-schema semantic model
- Configure relationship cardinality and filter direction
- Distinguish measures from calculated columns
- Apply filter context and row context appropriately
- Create time-intelligence calculations with DAX
- Develop drill-through, tooltip and bookmark navigation
- Configure scheduled refresh and workspace content
- Implement introductory row-level security
Day 1: Data preparation, modelling and DAX
| Module | Topic | Course content |
|---|---|---|
| Module 1 | Data profiling and Power Query | Column quality, column distribution, column profile, transformation steps, errors, null values and data-type validation. |
| Module 2 | Advanced transformations | Conditional columns, custom columns, extracting values, splitting and merging columns, fill operations, grouping, pivoting and unpivoting data. |
| Module 3 | Combining multiple data sources | Append operations, merge types, join keys, query references, query dependencies and combining multiple files from a folder. |
| Module 4 | Dimensional modelling | Fact tables, dimension tables, data granularity, primary keys, foreign keys and the principles of star-schema design. |
| Module 5 | Model relationships | Relationship cardinality, single and bidirectional filtering, active and inactive relationships, ambiguity and model validation. |
| Module 6 | Understanding DAX contexts | Measures versus calculated columns, row context, filter context and an introduction to context transition. |
| Module 7 | Intermediate DAX measures | Using CALCULATE, FILTER, ALL, REMOVEFILTERS, VALUES, DISTINCTCOUNT and DAX variables. |
| Module 8 | Date-table modelling | Creating a dedicated date table, generating calendar attributes, configuring relationships and marking a table as the model's date table. |
Day 1 practical exercise
Participants will transform transactional data from multiple source files into a structured star-schema model. They will then create reusable DAX measures for sales, profit, quantity, customers and performance targets.
Day 2: Analysis and professional reporting
| Module | Topic | Course content |
|---|---|---|
| Module 9 | Time-intelligence calculations | Year-to-date, month-to-date, previous period, previous year, year-over-year difference and year-over-year growth percentage. |
| Module 10 | Advanced report interaction | Drill-through pages, report-page tooltips, bookmarks, buttons, page navigation and controlling visual interactions. |
| Module 11 | Dynamic reporting | Dynamic report titles, conditional formatting, field parameters, metric selection and Top N analysis. |
| Module 12 | Visual analytics | Trend analysis, variance analysis, decomposition trees, key influencers and selecting suitable visuals for analytical questions. |
| Module 13 | Power BI service management | Workspaces, reports, dashboards, apps, permissions, semantic model settings and content distribution. |
| Module 14 | Data refresh and gateways | Data-source credentials, scheduled refresh, refresh history, cloud connections and an introduction to on-premises gateways. |
| Module 15 | Row-level security | Creating security roles, applying DAX filters, testing roles in Power BI Desktop and assigning users in the Power BI service. |
| Module 16 | Final project | Developing and presenting an interactive management performance dashboard from multiple business data sources. |
Day 2 final project
Participants will build a management dashboard that compares current performance against previous periods and business targets. The report will include interactive navigation, drill-through, dynamic calculations and secured access.
DAX functions covered
Filtering and evaluation
- CALCULATE
- FILTER
- ALL
- REMOVEFILTERS
- VALUES
- SELECTEDVALUE
Time and comparison
- DATEADD
- SAMEPERIODLASTYEAR
- TOTALYTD
- TOTALMTD
- DIVIDE
- RANKX
Course assessment
Assessment methods
- Power Query transformation exercises
- Star-schema modelling challenge
- DAX calculation exercises
- Report interaction assignment
- Final dashboard presentation
Participant deliverable
- Cleaned multi-source data
- Star-schema semantic model
- Dedicated date table
- Reusable DAX measures
- Time-intelligence calculations
- Interactive management dashboard
- Basic row-level security
Software and equipment
- Current version of Microsoft Power BI Desktop
- Microsoft Excel or compatible spreadsheet software
- Windows laptop with internet connectivity
- Power BI account for service-based exercises
- Course datasets and practical exercise files
Recommended next course
After completing this course, participants can continue with the Power BI Advanced Course. The Advanced course covers enterprise semantic modelling, advanced DAX patterns, model optimization, performance diagnostics, dynamic security, incremental refresh, governance and deployment pipelines.