Power BI and PowerPivot Training Courses and Resources
This page lists Wise Owl scheduled public training courses on DAX and PowerPivot for Excel, and also on Power BI Desktop.
Power BI classroom training
We currently run separate training courses for the Excel Power BI tools (PowerPivot, primarily) and the standalone Power BI Desktop application, as well as a dedicated DAX course:
Can't see the course you want? Have a look at our onsite Power BI Tools training page.
Not sure which course you want? See what you can learn on one of our Power BI courses.
Other Power BI Tools training resources
Try our Power BI exercises
You wouldn't buy a car without a test drive, so why buy a training course without seeing the exercises first?
Power BI training venues
Wise Owl PowerPivot courses run in these venues:
Blogs on Power BI
Have a look at our blogs on PowerPoint and the DAX language:
Power BI courseware manuals
You can see some sample Power BI courseware chapters below:
Videos on Power BI
Have a look at our training videos on learning PowerPivot:
Which is the right Power BI course for you?
The main Microsoft Power BI tools are as follows:
| Application | Notes |
|---|---|
| Power BI Desktop | Create visual, interactive reports which you can then publish to your organisation's website (or to a public site). |
| Power BI Service | This allows you to view reports that you've published online, to create shared workspaces and to pin tiles to dashboards. |
| Power BI Mobile | Create reports to be viewed on mobile devices. |
In addition, PowerPivot within Excel is often thought of as a Power BI tool (mainly because that's what Microsoft used to call it).
You may also have heard speak of Power View, Power Map and Power Query. The first two are being quietly shelved by Microsoft, while Power Query has morphed into something called Query Editor, which is a part of both Power BI Desktop and PowerPivot. Confused? So are Microsoft when it comes to naming software!
Our Power BI Courses
We run the following introductory courses in the Microsoft Power BI tools:
| Course | What you'll learn |
|---|---|
| Introduction to Power BI Desktop | How to create visually interactive reports, including importing data, transforming it using Query Editor, creating visuals such as tables, matrices and charts, filtering data (for example, using slicers) and creating calculated columns and measures using DAX |
| PowerPivot for Excel | How to import data, use Query Editor to transform it, and how to create tidy data models upon which to create pivot tables in Excel. You'll also learn how to create calculated columns and measures using DAX, as well as creating KPIs. The course ends with an overview of Power BI Desktop. |
As you can see, there's a lot of overlap between the two courses! In addition, we have the following more advanced courses listed on our site:
| Course | Notes |
|---|---|
| DAX | Learn how to create measures and calculated columns using DAX. |
| Advanced Power BI Desktop | Learn some more advanced features of Power BI Desktop, including parameters, hierarchies, binning and advanced charts. |
You can get more help on whether you should book onto our Power BI Desktop or our PowerPivot training course here (this blog contains a full explanation of the differences between the two courses).
10 things our Power BI courses include
Each of our scheduled courses includes:
- Small course sizes - we have a maximum of 6 people on each course, and frequently run courses with fewer.
- A computer for each delegate (obviously).
- A trainer! And not just anyone - Wise Owl courses are only ever given by Wise Owls.
- Full colour courseware of oustanding quality (download a sample Power BI courseware chapter to judge this claim for yourself) .
- Interesting exercises to reinforce what you've learnt (you can review some of the Power BI exercises we use here).
- Lunch out each day at a local restaurant (chosen on the day of the course, after discussion!).
- Unlimited refreshments during the day, including Tassimo or Nespresso coffee and a range of biscuits and snacks to keep you going through those dark afternoon hours.
- A one gigabyte USB stick, containing course files, answers to exercises and (by the end of the course) your answers too.
- A Sheaffer biro and notepad.
- Unofficial help after the course (although we don't have a dedicated post-course support line, in practice trainers will be happy to answer the odd ad hoc question after a course has taken place).
Have a look at our full list of benefits, or read hundreds of testimonials to the quality of our training.
About our Power BI training
Both our PowerPivot and our Power BI Desktop courses use the same sample database. It's called Make-a-Mammal, and is like a more general version of Build-a-Bear. It consists of a handful of simple tables containing purchasing data for a (fictitious) company, which delegates get to analyse by:
- Region, town and shopping centre
- Environment, habitat and product
- Year, quarter and month
Both courses will show you how to load data into your data models, applying clever transforms as you do so, and how to add additional statistics called measures using the DAX formula language.