Microsoft Power BI Reporting and Dashboard Development Training Course

Course overview

Business teams often spend too long exporting spreadsheets, reconciling conflicting figures, and manually assembling monthly reports that become outdated as soon as they are circulated. This Microsoft Power BI Reporting and Dashboard Development Training Course enables professionals to turn operational, financial, customer and project data into governed reports that answer defined business questions. Participants learn to replace static reporting packs with refreshable Power BI dashboards, clear KPI definitions and drill-through analysis that managers can use to investigate performance rather than debate data quality.

The course covers the full report-development workflow in Microsoft Power BI: connecting to Excel files, folders and relational data sources; cleaning and reshaping data with Power Query; designing a usable data model; writing DAX measures; and building interactive reports. Participants create date tables, relationships, calculated measures, hierarchies, slicers, drill-through pages, tooltips and conditional formatting. They also learn when to use measures rather than calculated columns, how to design KPI pages for executive audiences, and how to publish, refresh, share and secure content through the Power BI Service.

Instructor-led demonstrations are followed by structured hands-on labs using a realistic business-performance dataset. Participants progressively build a multi-page management reporting solution, from source data through to a published dashboard and supporting documentation. By the end of the week, each participant leaves with a Power BI Desktop report file, a set of reusable DAX measures, a data-model design, and a practical checklist for applying the approach to an identified workplace reporting requirement. The course is suitable for analysts and business professionals building reports themselves, as well as managers responsible for improving the reliability and adoption of organisational reporting.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Connect Power BI Desktop to Excel workbooks, CSV files, folders and relational data sources
• Transform and standardise source data using Power Query steps, data types, merges and append queries
• Design a star-schema data model with fact tables, dimension tables, relationships and a dedicated date table
• Create DAX measures for totals, ratios, year-to-date values, prior-period comparisons and percentage variance
• Build interactive report pages using slicers, drill-through, hierarchies, bookmarks, tooltips and conditional formatting
• Develop an executive KPI dashboard that presents targets, trends, exceptions and supporting detail
• Publish reports to the Power BI Service and configure workspaces, dashboards, scheduled refresh and sharing permissions
• Document a reporting solution with KPI definitions, data-source assumptions and a report acceptance checklist

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Business Analysts — who need to convert operational data into repeatable management reports
• Data Analysts — who need practical Power Query, data-modelling and DAX skills in Microsoft Power BI
• Finance Analysts — who report budgets, actuals, forecasts and period-on-period performance
• Operations Managers — who need visibility of service, productivity, quality and capacity measures
• Project Managers — who need portfolio dashboards for milestones, risks, costs and delivery status
• Reporting and MI Professionals — who are replacing spreadsheet-based reporting packs with governed Power BI content

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should be comfortable using Microsoft Excel, including working with tables, filters, basic formulas and pivot-style reporting concepts. Familiarity with the business measures they report, such as revenue, cost, volume, service level or variance, will help them apply the exercises to their role. No prior Power BI, Power Query, SQL, programming or DAX experience is required. This is a foundation-to-intermediate course: complete beginners can attend, but should expect to work carefully with data structures, formula logic and report-design decisions throughout the five days. Participants need access to a Windows laptop capable of running Power BI Desktop.

Training methodology

The course combines focused instructor explanation with guided build sessions in Power BI Desktop. Each concept is demonstrated against a business-performance reporting scenario, then applied by participants to supplied data covering sales, budgets, customers and operations. Exercises progress from data profiling and Power Query transformation to star-schema modelling, DAX calculation and dashboard design. Small-group review activities test whether visuals answer the intended management question. On the final day, participants refine their own report solution and produce an application plan for a live reporting need in their organisation.

Course outline

Day 1: Power BI foundations and data preparation

• Power BI Desktop interface, report view, data view and model view
• Business questions, report audiences and KPI definition before visual design
• Importing Excel workbooks, CSV files and folder-based datasets
• Power Query data profiling, column quality and data-type validation
• Cleaning nulls, errors, duplicates and inconsistent category values
• Appending monthly files and merging lookup tables in Power Query
• Applied steps, query dependencies and refresh-aware transformation design

Workshop: Participants clean and combine monthly sales and target files to produce a documented, refreshable reporting dataset.

Day 2: Data modelling for reliable analysis

• Fact tables, dimension tables and grain of data
• Star-schema design for sales, customer, product and date analysis
• One-to-many relationships, cross-filter direction and active relationships
• Creating and marking a dedicated date table
• Role-playing dates and inactive relationships
• Calculated columns versus measures in Power BI models
• Model properties, hidden fields, display folders and user-friendly naming

Workshop: Participants build and validate a star-schema model, including a date table and relationship map for the reporting scenario.

Day 3: DAX measures and business calculations

• DAX syntax, evaluation context and measure construction
• Aggregation measures using SUM, COUNTROWS, DISTINCTCOUNT and DIVIDE
• Filter context and CALCULATE for controlled KPI logic
• Conditional measures using IF, SWITCH and variables
• Time-intelligence measures for month-to-date, year-to-date and prior year
• Budget versus actual variance and percentage variance calculations
• Troubleshooting DAX results with matrix visuals and filter inspection

Workshop: Participants create a reusable measure library for revenue, margin, targets, year-to-date results and budget variance.

Day 4: Report and dashboard design

• Selecting visuals to answer comparison, trend, composition and exception questions
• Executive KPI page design with cards, targets, trends and variance indicators
• Slicers, sync slicers and visual-level, page-level and report-level filters
• Drill-down, drill-through and hierarchical navigation
• Report page tooltips and contextual detail
• Bookmarks, buttons and guided report navigation
• Conditional formatting, accessibility, layout consistency and mobile design considerations

Workshop: Participants build a three-page management report with an executive summary, performance analysis page and drill-through detail page.

Day 5: Publishing, governance and workplace application

• Publishing Power BI Desktop reports to the Power BI Service
• Workspaces, apps, dashboards and sharing approaches
• Scheduled refresh, data gateways and refresh-failure checks
• Row-level security concepts and role testing
• Dataset ownership, report lifecycle and content certification considerations
• KPI definitions, data lineage and report documentation
• Report testing, stakeholder review and adoption planning

Workshop: Participants publish or simulate publishing their completed report, complete an acceptance checklist, and prepare a workplace application plan.

Tools & standards covered

Microsoft Power BI Desktop, Microsoft Power BI Service, Microsoft Excel, DAX

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions