Short course
Power BI
Power BI is the most widely deployed data-driven management tool in organisations today. It connects scattered data sources, cleans them, models them, then produces interactive dashboards that decision-makers consult from their browser or phone, with figures updated automatically.
- Duration
- 5 sessions, 18 hours
- Format
- In person or online
- Credential
- Certificate of attendance
Tuition99,000 XOF
By the end of the programme, you will be able to
- Install and master the Power BI Desktop interface
- Connect to a variety of sources: Excel, CSV, folders, databases, web pages, online services
- Clean and transform data in the Power Query editor
- Build a clean relational data model, with a date table and correct relationships
- Write DAX measures to calculate indicators, running totals and changes
- Design reports that are readable, well structured and genuinely useful for decision-making
- Make a report interactive: slicers, filters, bookmarks, tooltips, drill-down
- Publish a report to the Power BI Service and organise it in a workspace
- Set up automatic data refresh and manage access rights
- Build a dashboard and make it available on phones with Power BI Mobile
Who it is for
Target audience
The course is for people who produce or present figures to management, a donor or a client: monitoring and evaluation officers, management controllers, sales managers, project officers, stock managers, analysts, consultants and heads of department. The fee is the same for everyone, whatever the profession or organisation.
Prerequisites
Three requirements:
- Master Excel at intermediate level: structured tables, formulas, sorting and filtering, pivot tables. This is the real prerequisite, far more decisive than any diploma
- Hold the baccalaureate or, failing that, have proven professional experience in data processing
- Have a laptop running Windows 10 or later, as Power BI Desktop has no macOS version, and a work or school email account to access the online service
No prior experience of Power BI is required. However, someone who cannot build a pivot table in Excel will struggle from the third session, because the modelling logic relies on those reflexes.
Detailed program
5 sessions · 18 h of teaching
- Installing Power BI Desktop and setting regional options, separators and date formats
- The logic of the three components: Desktop to design, Service to publish, Mobile to view
- The Desktop interface: Report, Data and Model views, the ribbon, the fields pane
- Connecting to an Excel workbook, a CSV file, an entire folder
- Connecting to a database, a web page, a data collection platform export
- Import mode and DirectQuery mode, and how to choose
- The Power Query editor: the logic of applied steps and their reversibility
- Promoting headers, setting data types, removing unnecessary columns and rows
- Replacing values, handling empty cells and errors
- Splitting and merging columns, extracting part of a text
- Pivoting and unpivoting, to flatten a table built for the human eye
- Adding a custom column and a conditional column
- Combining several files from the same folder into a single table
- Merging two queries, the equivalent of a join
- Guided exercise: prepare a monthly monitoring dataset split across twelve files
- Why a star schema rather than one large table
- Fact tables and dimension tables, the founding distinction
- Creating relationships between tables, cardinality and filter direction
- Active and inactive relationships, and the pitfalls of bidirectional relationships
- Creating a date table and marking it as such, an essential step for any time analysis
- Hiding technical fields to deliver a readable model
- Calculated column or measure: the distinction everyone confuses at first
- First DAX measures: SUM, AVERAGE, COUNTROWS, DISTINCTCOUNT
- Filter context, the central concept of DAX
- The CALCULATE function and modifying the context
- Conditional measures with IF and SWITCH
- Time intelligence functions: year-to-date, month-to-date, comparison with the previous period
- Calculating a change, a completion rate, a budget variance
- DAX variables for readable and fast measures
- Organising your measures in a dedicated table
- Guided exercise: build the model and the ten key indicators of an activity monitoring report
- Design before you click: which decision-maker, which decision, which indicators
- The visual hierarchy of a page: what the eye reads first and why it matters
- Summary visuals: card, multi-row card, gauge, KPI
- Comparison visuals: column chart, bar chart, stacked bars, line chart
- Composition and distribution visuals, and the cases where the pie chart should be banned
- The table and the matrix, and conditional formatting within them
- Geographic visuals: map, filled map, handling place names
- Importing a custom visual from the marketplace
- Slicers: list, drop-down, numeric slider, date picker
- Syncing a slicer across several pages
- Interaction between visuals: filter, highlight, none
- The filters pane: visual, page and report filters
- Drill-down from national level to region and then to municipality
- Bookmarks and buttons to create guided navigation
- Custom tooltips that display a mini report on hover
- The report theme: colours, fonts, consistency with the organisation's style guide
- Guided exercise: design a complete, interactive management page
- Signing in to the Power BI Service and understanding the difference between Free, Pro and Premium licences
- Publishing a report from Desktop to a workspace
- Workspaces: creating, organising, assigning the Admin, Member, Contributor and Viewer roles
- The distinction between report, dataset and dashboard in the Service
- Building a dashboard by pinning visuals from several reports
- Pinning a whole page and managing the tile layout
- Sharing a report with a colleague and understanding what they will actually see
- Power BI apps to distribute to a wide internal audience
- Scheduled refresh: setting the frequency and times
- The data gateway for on-premises sources, principle and installation
- Row-level security: each user sees only their own data
- Creating and testing a security role, the typical case of the regional manager
- Data alerts and automatic notifications
- Subscribing to a report and receiving it by email on a schedule
- Exporting to PDF, PowerPoint and Excel, and the limits of each export
- Collaborative comments directly on a visual
- Guided exercise: publish the report from session 3, share it and schedule its refresh
- Installing the Power BI app on Android and iOS, and signing in
- What changes on a phone screen: what stays readable and what becomes unusable
- Creating a dedicated mobile layout in Desktop, separate from the desktop version
- Choosing which visuals to keep on mobile and the order in which to stack them
- Optimising a dashboard for viewing on a phone
- Mobile alerts and push notifications on a critical indicator
- Offline mode and viewing in areas with poor network coverage
- Annotating a visual on mobile and sharing it immediately with a colleague
- Scanning a paper table with the camera and using it in Power BI
- Group application: the group works through a complete case, from raw source to a dashboard viewable on a phone
- Regular checkpoints to compare solutions and discuss design choices
- The trainer moves between workstations throughout the session
- Final summary: the standard approach to repeat for any new dashboard request
Assessment and certification
There is no final assessment in this course. As the training is short and intensive, it aims to build practical skills, not to validate a level through an exam.
A training attestation is given to each participant at the end of the fifth session. It is issued by Waaldé Impact, signed by the trainer, and states the course title, the 18-hour duration, the dates and the list of modules followed: Desktop, Service and Mobile.
Upcoming sessions
Next dates being prepared
Leave your email: we will let you know as soon as registration opens.
Frequently asked questions
99,000 XOF per participant. Training for a team or an organisation is quoted on request.
5 sessions, 18 hours.
Yes: you can attend onsite or online, as you prefer.
Three requirements: master Excel at intermediate level: structured tables, formulas, sorting and filtering, pivot tables. This is the real prerequisite, far more decisive than any diploma ; hold the baccalaureate or, failing that, have proven professional experience in data processing ; have a laptop running Windows 10 or later, as Power BI Desktop has no macOS version, and a work or school email account to access the online service ; no prior experience of Power BI is required. However, someone who cannot build a pivot table in Excel will struggle from the third session, because the modelling logic relies on those reflexes.
A certificate of attendance is issued at the end of the course.
Fill in the online enrolment request: no payment is taken on the site. The firm reviews your application, then contacts you to confirm your place and the payment terms. No session is scheduled yet: leave your email on this page to be told when registration opens.
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