Power Pivot and Power BI. The Excel User’s Guide to DAX, Power Query, Power BI & Power Pivot in Excel 2010-2016
Contents:
1 – A Revolution Built On YOU
2 – Power Pivot and the Power BI Family: Making Sense of the Various Versions
4 – Loading Data into Power Pivot
5 – Intro to Calculated Columns
6 – Introduction to DAX Measures
7 – The “Golden Rules” of DAX Measures
8 – CALCULATE() – Your New Favorite Function
9 – ALL() – The “Remove a Filter” Function
10 – Thinking in Multiple Tables
11 – “Intermission” – Taking Stock of Your New Powers
12 – Disconnected Tables
13 – Introducing the FILTER() Function, and Disconnected Tables Continued
14 – Introduction to Time Intelligence
15 – IF(), SWITCH(), BLANK(), and Other Conditional Fun
16 – SUMX() and Other X (“Iterator”) Functions
17 – Multiple Data Tables
18 – Multiple Data Tables – Differing Granularity
19 – Performance: Keep Things Running Fast
20 – Power Query to the Rescue
21 – Power BI Desktop
22 – “Complicated” Relationships
23 – Row and Filter Context Demystified
24 – CALCULATE and FILTER – More Nuances
25 – Time Intelligence with Custom Calendars: Greatest Formula in the World
26 – Advanced Calculated Columns
27 – New DAX Functions… and Variables!
28 – “YouTube for Data” – The Importance of a Server
PS: Can We Ask You for a Special Favor?
A1 – Power Pivot and SSAS Tabular: Two Tools for the Price of One (again!)
A2 – Cube Formulas – the End of GetPivotData()
A3 – Some Common Error Messages
A4 – People: The Most Powerful Feature of Power Pivot
Introduction – Our Two Goals for this Book
Fundamentally of course, this book is intended to train you on Power Pivot and Power BI. It captures the techniques we’ve learned from many years of teaching Power Pivot and its “cousin technologies” (in person and on PowerPivotPro. com), as well as applying it extensively in our everyday work.
Unsurprisingly, then, the contents herein are very much instructional – a “how to” book if ever there was one. But we also want you to understand how to maximize the impact on your career. This isn’t just a better way to do PivotTables. It isn’t just a way to reduce manual effort. It’s not just a better formula engine.
Even though Rob worked on the first version of Power Pivot while at Microsoft, he had no idea how impactful it would be until about two years after he left to form his own company. He had to experience it in the real world to see its full potential, and even then it took some time to overwhelm his skeptical nature (his Twitter profile now describes him as
“skeptic turned High Priest.”)
This is the rare technology that can (and will) fundamentally change the lives of millions of people – it has more in common with the invention of the PC than with the invention of, say, the VCR.
The PC might be a particularly relevant example actually. At a prestigious Seattle high school in the early 1970’s, Bill Gates and Paul Allen discovered a mutual love for programming, but there was no widespread demand for programmers at that point. Only when the first PC (the Altair) was introduced was there an opportunity to properly monetize their skills. Short version: they founded Microsoft and became billionaires.
But zoom out and you’ll see much more. Thousands of people became millionaires at Microsoft alone (sadly, we both missed that boat by a few years). Further, without the Altair, there would have been no IBM PC, no Apple, no Mac, no Steve Jobs. No iPod, no iPhone, no Appstore. No Electronic Arts, no Myst. No World of Warcraft. The number of people who became wealthy as a result of the PC absolutely dwarfs the number of people who had anything to do with inventing the PC itself!
We think Power Pivot and Power BI offer the same potential wealth-generation effect to Excel users as the PC offered budding programmers like Gates and Allen: your innate skills remain the same, but their value becomes many times greater. Before diving into the instructional stuff in Chapters 2 and beyond, Chapter 1 will summarize your exciting new role in the changing world.
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Download Power Pivot and Power BI. The Excel User’s Guide to DAX, Power Query, Power BI & Power Pivot in Excel 2010-2016 in free pdf format.
