Free Resources to help get you started

Over the last few years, I’ve been lucky enough to work with a pretty huge number of more junior Power BI devs, and many of them have all asked me versions of the exact same question:

“I’ve gone through the Microsoft Learn content and gotten a certification, but where should I go next to learn how to build things out ‘the right way’ instead of just ‘the way that works’?”

This will be the first iteration in a short series of blog posts that will serve two purposes: Helping share the resources that I wish existed when I was first starting out, and reducing the number of times I type out this same list! The resources listed below can be helpful no matter where you’re at in your learning journey, since they’ll establish a solid base for all of your other knowledge to sit on top of.

Step 1: Getting the vocabulary

Resource: Understand star schema and the importance for Power BI – Power BI | Microsoft Learn

Starting off with this article will allow you to start getting used to some core vocabulary that will pop up throughout the other resources. By understanding both what a star schema is, and why it’s important will let you know “here’s what I should ideally be building towards” as you start to ingest data into Power BI. Back when I used to do private trainings for folks, I would often have them read this article multiple times between sessions if they didn’t come from a data background, because it’s absolutely PACKED with good information, but can be a lot to absorb

Resource: Why Power BI loves a Star Schema

Pairing the article above with this video from Guy In A Cube is designed to help cater to the fact that everybody learns a little bit differently: For those who absorb a bit more from video formats, this introduces some of the same core content, but doesn’t quite cover absolutely everything in the first article.

Step 2: Data Modeling, and Getting warmed up

Resource: Introduction to Data Modeling for Power BI Video Course – SQLBI

Once you’re gone through the first step, you’re now ready to start actually getting your hands on some data. This is a completely free, ~2 hour long video course from the guys over at SQLBI, which will build on top of the concepts from step one, along with some hands-on content so that you can start to build up muscle memory. It’s important to mention that at this point, we have not started to introduce DAX yet, and that is by design! The better structured your data model is, the easier your DAX will be.

Resource: Power BI Tutorial | From Flat File To Data Model

Building on top of the content from the video course, this will help introduce the concept of working towards a star schema no matter how our data is served to us from the source systems. Even when we’re handed a big flat table with all of the data we could need, you’ll still gain benefits in Power BI from breaking this out to an actual star schema

Step 3: Now we can talk about DAX

Resource: Introducing DAX Video Course – SQLBI

Now that we’ve been able to cover our data modeling layer, now we actually can start to talk about DAX. This is another free video course from the guys at SQLBI, and contains around ~3 hours worth of content, with follow-along exercises again. This is by far the best resource I can recommend for starting to get your feet wet in DAX, but make sure you’ve gone through the data modeling course first!

Once you’ve gone through the 3 steps above, there is still plenty more learning to do, but the focus here is to establish a foundational understanding of the core pieces of Power BI development that AREN’T just dragging and dropping visuals onto a page.