Best Free Power BI Resources & Tutorials

Many professionals are eager to learn Power BI but hesitate because of the perceived up-front costs. Several Power BI packages are currently available with different price points. Power BI Desktop is offered as a free download, Power BI Pro is available for $9.99/user/month, and You can purchase Power BI Premium for $20/user/month. However, many free resources are also available to help beginners get the hang of this exciting program. 

Read on to learn about the different types of free resources and tutorials to help you learn Power BI. 

What is Power BI?

Microsoft Power BI is a group of BI (business intelligence) services and products that converts data from various sources into reports, visualizations, and interactive dashboards. This allows users to share data insights with others who work at their organization or to embed them onto a website or application. Power BI offers effective business solutions with each of its individual elements and provides users with even more capabilities when these components work together.

One of the main benefits of working with Power BI is that it can integrate with other Microsoft services and products and third-party platforms. Users can connect Power BI to Excel, Teams, SharePoint, and Exchange, among others. Whether your data is stored in an on-premises data warehouse, a cloud-based warehouse, or an Excel spreadsheet, Power BI can easily connect to these data sources, provide visualizations based on the data they contain, and offer insights that you can then share with other stakeholders. There are several Power BI products, each of which has different uses; Power BI Desktop creates reports, Power BI Services publishes the reports, and the Power BI mobile app provides users with a way to view each dashboard or report.

Read more about what Power BI is and why you should learn it.

What Can You Do with Power BI?

Power BI is a valuable tool for illustrating what’s happening within an organization in the present. It also has applications for helping to anticipate what may transpire in the future. Because it relies on machine learning capabilities, Power BI can locate patterns in data, then draw from these patterns to predict various “what-if” scenarios. Based on these predictions, Power BI users can create forecasts and work to prepare for different demand patterns that may emerge. They can then communicate this information through data visualizations, which impart key data findings to stakeholders to make more educated business predictions.

Power BI is a go-to for those who work with data because it can be used to input huge stores of data that would be a struggle for other platforms to process. Because this intelligence suite is cloud-based, it provides users with regularly updated algorithms and intelligence capabilities. Those who use Power BI can personalize their experience by creating dashboards that allow them to quickly and easily access necessary data. In addition, it’s possible to create alerts in Power BI, which provide users with up-to-date measurements. Best of all, because this platform can integrate with other business management tools, such as Office 365, SharePoint, SAP, Google Analytics, and Hadoop, it remains a hugely popular tool for those working with data across platforms. 

Free Power BI Resources

Suppose you are looking to learn Power BI but don’t want to invest money into a certificate program or full course. In that case, many free learning resources are available from top educational providers. Not only are they readily available, but they are offered in various formats so that every learner can find the option most suited for their Power BI study. Blogs, webinars, tutorials, video content, online communities, and coursework are just some of the many free learning options you can select from when deciding on the best Power BI learning method for you. 

Simplilearn offers a beginner-friendly Power BI Full Course, which is accessible on YouTube. Additionally, Power Pivot and Power BI Reference Card is an eight-page reference card to help users work with Power BI Desktop and Power Pivot, as well as with data modeling and DAX. This resource provides insights into current best practices with this tool. The content is communicated to learners via cue cards that contain details about Power BI. These cards are available as a free download, which means they can be saved and referenced for later use.

Another way to study Power BI for free is to explore the webinars and videos provided by Alberto Ferrari and Marco Russo, which provide instruction on best Power BI practices, tips for dashboarding, and working with DAX. Edx offers a data science course, “Analyzing and Visualizing Data with Power BI,” which spans several weeks and is facilitated by Microsoft’s Power BI product team. This class offers a series of demos, quizzes, labs, and lecture-based videos. 

In addition, Microsoft offers various free resources to help with your Power BI learning needs. Its official Power BI Community offers an interactive forum founded by tech enthusiasts, where members discuss trending Power BI topics. Microsoft also uploads videos onto YouTube devoted exclusively to Power BI. More than 100 free videos cover various relevant business intelligence topics, such as shaping data, creating visualizations, and handling more complex Power BI operations. Another valuable, free resource from Microsoft offers Power BI learners guided learning that takes them from beginner to advanced concepts using various tutorials. Tutorials are available on topics like customizing visualizations, working with Excel data, and connecting to different data sources.

If you’re interested in learning more about commonly used business analytics and data analytics tools, Noble Desktop also has a variety of articles available on topics like data analytics, Excel, and Tableau. 

Learn Power BI with Hands-on Training at Noble Desktop

Noble Desktop's Power BI Bootcamp is an excellent option if you want to learn more about using Power BI. This project-based course prepares students to use Power Query for data querying, Power BI’s data model for connecting to datasets, and its report view for designing interactive data visualizations and dashboards. Students work with different case studies to learn how to work with various Power BI capabilities and this tool’s DAX language for creating visualizations based on their data. All students have the option of a free retake for up to one year to revisit the material and gain additional practice.

Another excellent learning option for individuals who are interested in working with Power BI is Noble Desktop’s Data Analytics Certificate. This intensive course is offered in the in-person and live online format and provides participants with hands-on instruction with core data analytics and business intelligence tools and programs. Those enrolled complete real-world projects using Microsoft Excel, Python, SQL, and Tableau and have the option of also taking the Power BI Bootcamp free of charge. All students receive instruction from an expert instructor and one-on-one mentoring.

Key Insights

• Microsoft Power BI can help an organization have a better understanding of its current state of affairs, as well as anticipate what may come in the future.
• Power BI’s machine learning capabilities help users find data patterns that can be used to accurately predict various “what-if” scenarios so that they can prepare accordingly.
• For those who aren’t ready to sign up for a paid Power BI course, a variety of free learning options are also available, such as webinars, blogs, video tutorials, and online community forums.
• If you want to learn more about how to work with Power BI, Noble Desktop’s in-person and live online courses provide comprehensive training with expert instructors.