Mastering Microsoft Power BI: Expert techniques to create interactive insights for effective data analytics and business intelligence, 2nd Edition Paperback – 30 Jun. 2022

I’ve read many books relating to Power BI, and I’ve even written one myself on the use of the DAX query language, but this book really takes it to the next level.I’ve always struggled to find information on using Power BI, which goes beyond the basics, but this book finally gives me what I’ve been looking for. It’s aimed at the business intelligence professional who is looking to plan and implement a Power BI Project that involves the distribution of Power BI apps to a large group of users. I am currently involved in just such project, and this second edition of the book has come along at just the right time.Although I was provided with an early review copy of this book to give feedback on and review, I will be purchasing copies of it to give to members of my team, as I believe it will help them to successfully implement the use of Power BI reports and apps within our organisation.Running to over 600 pages, this book provides a comprehensive look at developing and distributing Power BI apps, kicking off with planning a Power BI project. The book goes on to look at preparing your data sources, transforming data with the M language, designing data models, through to creating Power BI apps and managing the administration of the Power BI service. In addition to showing you how to do things, it also goes into great depth on how and why you should take certain approaches to what needs to be done, helping you to really understand the product.One of the problems with writing a book about Power BI is that the pace of change with the product quickly renders content out of date. However, with this second edition, the authors have done a good job of bringing the content up to date with changes and additions that have taken place since the first edition was released.Overall, this is a really great book, and one that I will find very useful in my own work. However, it is also aimed at the advanced Power BI user, so some knowledge of working with Power BI Desktop to create content and the Power BI Service to share content would be helpful.

This book is highly recommended by me whenever somebody wants to know of a great resource that brings together many Power BI topics into one central place as "Mastering Microsoft Power BI" provides an end-to-end analysis of the many Power BI tools and features, from the very beginning of planning a Power BI project and ending with a guide to how you can distribute your Power BI reports by using Power BI apps.It starts with the fundamental concepts of Power BI datasets, reports, and dashboards and shows how they can be implemented in a scaleable way so you can deliver real insight via rich, interactive visualisations.After you have got a grip of the fundamentals you then move on to management and administration including topics such as the allocation of Power BI Premium capacities, Azure Active Directory (AAS) security groups, conditional access policies, and staged deployments of Power BI content.

A solid reference guide, but in today’s AI-driven world, with DataCamp & YouTube at our fingertips, it feels redundant. I only wish resources like this had existed in the ’80s-’90s.

Mastering Power BI, this book ended on my hands at the right time, I was contacted by our dear friend Valerie Connor and she asked me if I would like to review a Power BI book. I said: I would love to, actually, it is the time that I am reading lots of books related to Power BI because I am planning to go for the PL-300 certification.Then Vidhi Vashisth very kindly sent me a copy of this amazing book.This book is not for those starting their path on Power BI, it is for those with previous and solid knowledge of the Power BI environment, so if you are thinking to start your journey here let me tell you that this is not for beginners.I liked chapters 7, 8 and 9 dedicated to Data visualisations and formatting, applying advanced analytics, and dashboard designs. My data career has been linked to these topics when analysing data. I loved the part about ArcGis for Power BI, brought back a lot of memories of when I was involved in a mobile shop and live data collection project.DAX was a bit short, as my brother Ugochukwu Onyeka said, if you are looking to dive deep into DAX there are more books about DAXing including one from one of the writers of this book.Here you have a brief list of the things I refreshed from this book: - How to setup your environment and use Power BI Desktop to connect to SQL Server databases and get data (for your models) - I have been dealing with the AdventureWorks DB recently :) - How to design and implement master pages to manage page titles, column captions, and page navigation - How to design and implement workbooks to manage reports, reports page setup, report content, and page navigation - How to use dashboards to design and implement dashboards with multiple pages that display live data from the same model - How to establish and enforce security permissions on a Dashboard page, including user memberships - How to display reports in an interactive page with live data, including report filter and page navigation - How to use the Report Parts feature in the Power BI Desktop to create reusable content that you can package and reuse in reports on dashboards - How to get started with using the Power BI Service - How to use Power BI on the web - How to get started with published reports on mobile apps - How to implement and manage reports with data refreshes - How to publish a report to SharePoint and Teams.The chapter that was new and intriguing for me was Chapter 14, Administering Power BI for an Organisation. It got me thinking about the application of GDPR, local policies, and rules. I have not had the chance to apply this in real life yet.I am sure that you may release another edition because Power BI is being updated constantly.I enjoyed this book a lot and I will use it for my PL-300 exam preparation.Thank you, Val and Vidhi.