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Getting Started with Power BI

  • Article

As often happens - I meet a series of customers who are keen to learn about something, Power BI in this case, and I collate a growing list of useful links and things to get started with. So here's my current list for Power BI.

  • Create and manage relationships in Power BI Desktop

    • A key topic in the creation of powerful reports

  • Microsoft Data Insights Summit

    • Some very informative videos from this years summit – introduces many new features coming down the line.

  • Whitepapers for Power BI -

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<td><a href="https://aka.ms/pbipremiumwhitepaper">Microsoft Power BI Premium</a></td>
<td>Describes Power BI Premium, both as it exists when launched and also how it will evolve.</td>
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<tr class="even">
<td><a href="https://aka.ms/Premium-Capacity-Planning-Deployment">Power BI Premium Planning and Deployment</a></td>
<td>This paper provides guidance and best practices for planning and deploying Premium capacity for well-defined workloads.</td>
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<tr class="odd">
<td><a href="https://aka.ms/pbiewhitepaper">Plan capacity for embedded analytics with Power BI Premium</a></td>
<td>This paper provides guidance for the app developer/ISV to determine the most appropriate capacity for its business.</td>
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<tr class="even">
<td><a href="https://aka.ms/pbienterprisedeploy">Planning a Power BI Enterprise Deployment</a></td>
<td>This is a technical whitepaper outlining considerations for a well-performing and secure organizational Power BI deployment.</td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td><a href="https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/report-server/capacity-planning">Capacity planning guidance for Power BI Report Server</a></td>
<td>This paper aims to offer guidance on capacity planning for Power BI Report Server by sharing results of numerous load test executions of various workloads against a report server.</td>
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<tr class="even">
<td><a href="https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-admin-power-bi-security">Security</a></td>
<td>Provides a detailed explanation of security within Power BI.</td>
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<tr class="odd">
<td><a href="https://aka.ms/power-bi-gdpr-whitepaper">Power BI and GDPR</a></td>
<td>Power BI can be an important part of your journey toward GDPR compliance. The purpose of this document is to provide you with some basic understanding of the GDPR and relate that to Power BI. While compliance with the GDPR is mandatory in specific situations outlined in this document, it is not a "check box" exercise. It is also a way to enhance your overall data protection and privacy capabilities.</td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td><a href="https://aka.ms/powerbi-b2b-whitepaper">Distribute Power BI content to external guest users using Azure Active Directory B2B</a></td>
<td>This paper outlining how to distribute content to users outside the organization using the integration of Azure Active Directory Business-to-business (AAD B2B).</td>
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<tr class="odd">
<td><a href="https://info.microsoft.com/advanced-analytics-with-power-bi.html?Is=Website">Advanced Analytics with Power BI</a></td>
<td>Describes the advanced analytics capabilities of Power BI, including predictive analytics, custom visualizations, R integration, and data analysis expressions.</td>
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<tr class="even">
<td><a href="https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/power-bi-visualization-best-practices">Best design practices for reports and visuals</a></td>
<td>Provides best practices for designing reports in Power BI.</td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td><a href="https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/desktop-bidirectional-filtering">Bidirectional filtering</a></td>
<td>Explains bidirectional cross-filtering in Power BI Desktop (the whitepaper also covers SQL Server Analysis Services 2016, both have the same behavior).</td>
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<tr class="even">
<td><a href="https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2017/04/06/directquery-in-sql-server-2016-analysis-services-whitepaper/">DirectQuery in SQL Server 2016 Analysis Services</a></td>
<td>For SQL Server 2016, DirectQuery was redesigned for dramatically improved speed and performance, however, it is also now more complex to understand and implement.</td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td><a href="https://aka.ms/powerbiandsapbw">Power BI and SAP BW</a></td>
<td>This document describes how SAP customers can benefit from connecting Power BI to their existing SAP Business Warehouse (BW) systems.</td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td><a href="https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=785915&amp;clcid=0x409">Power BI Governance and Deployment Approaches</a></td>
<td>Provides concepts, options and suggestions for governance within the Power BI ecosystem.</td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td><a href="https://download.microsoft.com/download/D/2/0/D20E1C5F-72EA-4505-9F26-FEF9550EFD44/Securing%20the%20Tabular%20BI%20Semantic%20Model.docx">Securing the Tabular BI Semantic Model</a></td>
<td>This paper introduces the security model for tabular BI semantic and Power BI. You will learn how to create roles, implement dynamic security, configure impersonation settings, manage roles, and choose a method for connecting to models that works in your network security context.</td>
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