Power BI: Adventure Works Dashboard Project

At the end of 2022, I was able to complete a guided project taught by Chris from Maven Analytics. This project was used to teach Power BI and all its features. While I have been exploring Maven Analytics learning tools and learning paths, this particular course was purchased from Udemy before I got in-depth with Maven Analytics.

The course was titled Microsoft Power BI Desktop for Business Intelligence and I highly recommend it for anyone interested in learning about Power BI and how to utilize it for business dashboard creation.

This course took you from data importation to data cleaning (or transformation) to linking or creating relationships between multiple tables to visualizing all the data. The course also touched on creating measures & using DAX. Lastly, it touched on the newer AI features within Power BI. Each section ended with some hands-on homework and the last section also included a bonus guided project with less instruction so that you could practice everything you learned in the course at once.

I think the biggest drawback for the course was that it was utilizing an older version of Power BI. There were some updates added along the way, but sometimes I had to figure it out on my own. With that said, I felt having to figure some stuff out on my own enhanced my comfortability with using Power BI and actually learning it as a data visualization tool.

Overall, I found that I really learned a lot through this course and gained a ton of confidence in using Power BI. I’m excited to put together my own projects using the tool now.

Things to Note:

Power BI is a free tool you can download to your desktop; however, you will be unable to share your project with others like you can with Tableau Public.
In order to share your project, you have to sign into Microsoft with a student or business email & purchase (or free trial) Power BI Pro. If you do not have a student or work email or don’t have access to getting the Power BI app or Power BI Pro free trial, then follow this link on how you can access Power BI online: Signing up for Power BI with a new Microsoft 365 Trial – Power BI | Microsoft Learn.
- This is what I ended up doing as I did not have a student or business email that qualified. I did an office 365 free trial and once that trial expires, I’ll still be able to access Power BI. I haven’t started my Power BI Pro free trail though, but I can now access the Power BI app / web workspace to see my projects.
While this project was so much fun to do and a great thing to talk about and share with you all, it was a GUIDED project — meaning I didn’t have to do too much figuring out on my own. So, while I’m adding it here to my online portfolio, I’m going to be very transparent that it was a step-by-step dashboard creation and that I didn’t really do too much on my own for it. Instead, I’ll be using this as a foundation that I can then build a new project upon using the skills I’ve learned.

Below is a video tour of the dashboard I was able to create through this course. I’ve also included a PDF version. It was the first one that I’ve created with a business focus, and I’m obsessed! Going forward I definitely want to create more business focused dashboards alongside my other interests in HR / People Analytics, Finance and Healthcare analytics.