Is it good idea to learn Power BI and when

[lezawang]

Hi
When I should learn Power BI? Do I need to master Excel then after that I can go to Power BI? Is it good idea to learn it, I mean is there is demand for Power BI in the job market? Thank you.

 

[ajetrumpet]

GREAT question, leza. YES there is a great demand for the thing. And I can tell you from literally years of experience that the corporate world, right now, specifically in America, is obsessed with Power BI. Probably because it's one of Microsoft's "babies", in terms of what they can "flaunt" as a great tool. But in reality, there's nothing special about it, because it's just one of many things out there that are called "dashboards", which I'm sure you know about. This obsession is just like the corporate world's obsession with using AJAX (asynchronous) technologies sourced from the original javascript language. These include platforms and tools such as REACT, NODE.JS, ANGULAR, and JQUERY. Any job description you look at will most likely have those "power" words in them. I'm not a teacher and I'm not advertising, but if you would like to read anything more about what employer's currently want, and are obsessed with in terms of skills they're looking for, I can give you a link to 2 webpages that are on a subdomain of my own website where I outlined for a friend of mine, in simple English, what these these things mean, their purposes, and why the corporate world wants the skills. If you want the credentials (UN/PW) to access the pages, send me a PM and I can send them to you. Or, if fluff, Rory or any other admin here chime in and tell me they don't like that method, I won't be able to do it because I can't be posting passwords on a public forum.

On a side note to this thread's topic, this MrExcel forum uses AJAX technology for every button click a user makes.

 

[Jon von der Heyden]

From Wikipedia:

Power BI is a business analytics service by Microsoft. It aims to provide interactive visualizations and business intelligence capabilities with an interface simple enough for end users to create their own reports and dashboards.

I really like this statement, and I find the following to be particularly true:

...an interface simple enough for end users to create their own reports and dashboards

Microsoft say:

Power BI is a collection of software services, apps, and connectors that work together to turn your unrelated sources of data into coherent, visually immersive, and interactive insights. Your data may be an Excel spreadsheet, or a collection of cloud-based and on-premises hybrid data warehouses. Power BI lets you easily connect to your data sources, visualize and discover what’s important, and share that with anyone or everyone you want.

Key for me from this statement is:

Power BI lets you easily connect to your data sources, visualize and discover what’s important, and share that with anyone or everyone you want.

Further, beyond a simple interface, is the fact that information on 'how to' is becoming abundant on the web, which at least for me typically makes the process of developing value-add analytics so much easier. And with it gaining popularity also means that we start to develop a common vocabulary when helping each other.

Should you learn it?
Well that depends on what you do, or want/need to do. If you need to summarise data and present it to an audience in a way that makes it that much easier to interpret, then sure go for it. I for one like it!

 

[ajetrumpet]

after reading your post Jon, I kind of think mine was a bit out of line. but the moderators didn't change it, so maybe it's ok....

 

[Jon von der Heyden]

I kind of think mine was a bit out of line. but the moderators didn't change it

We do not moderate members opinions unless they breach our rules (e.g. if they are rude). You are absolutely entitled to share your opinion of this product as you have.

 

[SpillerBD]

Hi
When I should learn Power BI? Do I need to master Excel then after that I can go to Power BI? Is it good idea to learn it, I mean is there is demand for Power BI in the job market? Thank you.

Microsoft Power BI is independent of Excel,(See PowerBI for Desktop) while at the same time an available add-in to Excel. Power BI for Desktop combines both Get And Transform (formerly Power Query), Power Pivot and Power View.

Most the concepts of PowerBI are independent of Excel except for those of Pivot Tables, so you do not need to master Excel to learn PowerBI and is a separate skill-set.

If you plan to be in any position that works with data analysis, I would recommend learning the basic concepts at least.
The knowledge would also include dash-boarding, which is a term too often miss-used.

So PowerBI includes advanced data analysis and dash-boarding.
PowerPivot teaches DAX which is the calculations that often provide dashboards their values, but also work for providing solutions where a normal PivotTable fails.
The PowerQuery gives insight to importing and cleansing data for use in analysis.
PowerView is the graphic dashboarding in Excel that is the main display technique of PowerBI.