Resources

I wanted to put together a place with all of the resources I send to people when they ask me about where to start with Power BI.

I’ll also have other resources like finance/economics books, newsletters, blogs, podcasts, etc.

I’ll regularly update this page with new resources I come across.

Power BI (Blogs)

Power Pivot Pro (P3)

Rob Collie, founder of Power Pivot Pro (P3), was at Microsoft for 13 years and worked on the Excel team.

The “What is Power Pivot” page on the P3 site was one of the first places where I learned about Power BI and how it was positioned between business users (Excel pros) and IT (database admins).

Take a look at the post to learn more about Power BI and the problem it solves.

SQLBI

Marco Russo and Alberto Ferrari, creators of SQL BI, have one of the best and most helpful sites in the Power BI space. They have some of the best articles out there, have created some of the best tools, and created my personal favorite DAX guide.

Here are a few of my favorite articles from SQL BI:

RADACAD

Reza Rad and Leila Etaati created RADACAD and provide data analysis consulting and training services. They have some of the best how-to guides and some of the most technical articles in the Power BI space. Their weekly newsletter is a must-read.

Here are some great articles from RADACAD:

Power BI (YouTube)

Guy in a Cube with Adam Saxton and Patrick LeBlanc

Curbal from Ruth Poulo Martinez

Power BI Pro from Avi Singh

Power BI (Books)

Power Pivot and Power BI: The Excel User's Guide to DAX, Power Query, Power BI & Power Pivot in Excel 2010-2016

Rob Collie (Power Pivot Pro) and Avi Singh (Power BI Pro) wrote on the best books about Power BI that walks you through Power Query, DAX, and Power BI.

The examples they use throughout the book center around Adventure Works, a fictitious bicycle manufacturer that Microsoft created as a sample database.

Power BI (Tools & Reference Guides)

Power Query documentation (powerquery.io)

This is my favorite site to lookup Power Query code (Github: https://github.com/Hugoberry/PowerQuery#readme)

You can browse functions by groups such as Date Time, Text, Metadeta, and other groups. 

For example, Date.StartOfMonth will return dates at the beginning of the month. If you have a column of dates, then you can reference it to create a new column with the beginning month.

 

DAX Guide (created by SQL BI)

DAX (Data Analysis Expressions) language is what makes Power BI a great tool. DAX comprises functions, operators, and constants that allow you to get new information from your data such as sums, averages, etc.

DAX Guide is the best resource out there for looking up functions and viewing examples of the functions.

One of my favorite functions is CALENDAR, which allows you to auto generate a calendar based on a start and end date.