Power BI Interview Questions and Answers

power bi interview questions and answers

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Best Power BI Interview Questions and Answers

Here we will be discussing some of the most important and career-focused Power BI interview Questions which will assist aspirants to crack the Power BI interviews at ease. We have collected the most frequently asked top 50 Power BI interview questions and answers to help aspirants with their interview preparation; these questions will certainly help both freshers and experienced or certified Power BI professionals to face technical Power BI interviews confidently. These top 50 Power BI interview questions are prepared consulting various experts in the field of Power BI like professionals in visualization and data analytics.

You can brush up your Power BI knowledge by reading our top 50 Power BI interview questions and answers. These questions where likely asked by most of the employers and interviewers. So if you are preparing for an interview related to Power BI do not miss preparing these questions. All these questions and answers are prepared in such a way that every individual who makes use of these questions can easily understand the concepts defined and use it well to crack the interviews and get placed in the top multinational companies with attractive salary packages. The team of Coursejet wishes you all success in your further Power BI interviews.

  • Power BI can be defined as the following:
  • One of the business analytics solution powered by Microsoft is known as Power BI.
  • Power BI is highly used to visualize a particular business data from a several data sources and to share the insights with the organization.
  • Power BI is also referred to be a cloud-based self-service BI tool which is a combination of various connectors, applications and software services that are used to organize a raw data into an essential content that is highly informative.

Microsoft’s self-service business solutions consist of two parts namely Excel BI Toolkit and Power BI.

Excel BI Toolkit: As per report requirement, Excel BI Toolkit is used to generate an interactive report by importing several data from various sources and model data.

Power BI: It is actually an online solution that is used to cater or distribute the queries and interactive reports that has been effectively created by Excel BI Toolkit.

Self-service business intelligence (SSBI) can be defined as the following:

SSBI is defined to be one of the data analytics approaches that assist business users without in-depth or holistic knowledge in business intelligence (BI) and statistical analysis to effectively segment, filter and analyze a particular data.

SSBI also makes it simpler for the end users to extract the required data and generate easily understandable visual insights which can be used for business engagement.

Business users with the basic understanding of data can easily build intuitive and shareable dashboards by generating error-free reports.

Managed Enterprise BI

Self-service BI

Programming skills are highly required to create reports.

Business users can easily build intuitive and shareable dashboards without much programming skills.

When it comes to data analyzing it might lead to lack of information and various time constraints.

With self-service BI, data analysis becomes too simpler and so time constraints are highly neglected.

Third-party vendors are required to make the most out of the organizational data; this might lead to slow down in productivity and budget issues.

Self-service BI does not require any third-party vendors and so the problems associated with implementing third-party vendors are eradicated.

There are five major Power BI components and they are as follows:

  • Power Pivot: It can fetch and clean data and then load it on to the power query.
  • Power Query: It usually operated on the data that has been loaded.
  • Power Q&A: Here, users with the help of simple English language can interact with the reports easily.
  • Power View: Using Power view, users can effectively general several interactive maps, charts, graphs and various other visuals.
  • Power Map: It can be effectively used to process accurate geographical locations present in the specific datasets.

With Power BI, data reporting and visualization becomes too simpler. And, to make this possible Power BI is categorized into three version types. With the help of these versions, users can get holistic operations and functionalities of Power BI at ease. Those versions are explained below in detail:

  • Power BI Desktop: It is one of the on-premise versions available for Windows 10
  • Power BI Service: It is helpful in publishing essentials to the Cloud
  • Mobile Power BI: This is highly useful for mobile users

A Windows desktop application that is used in personal computers to design, generate and publish several useful reports to the cloud is known as the Power BI Desktop. Being an on-premise version of Power BI, it can operate on any PCs and work on the whole even when the particular system that you are working is not connected to the strong internet. Only when the user requires sharing or publishing any specific report to the cloud or with their colleagues, they will have to connect the system with the proper internet.

Any data present in Power BI can be filtered accurately using a filter. There are three types of filters available in Power BI and they are as follows:

Drillthrough Filters: With the help of drillthrough filter present in Power BI, users can easily create separate pages for the following entities in their reports which include customers, manufacturers and suppliers.

Page-level filters: With page-level filters, users can easily filter any charts that are available in the individual pages.

Report-level filters: With report-level filters, users can simultaneously filter various charts that are available in all the pages of a report.

There are three different edit interaction options present in the visual tile of Power BI Desktop and they are filter, highlight and none.

Any data when ingested into Power BI stores either in a fact or dimension table.

Fact Table: The fact table is one of the central tables present in the data warehouse’s star schema. It actually stores all the quantitative information that is required for analysis and in most of the cases it is not effectively normalized.

Dimension Table: This is another table that is present in the star schema and it stores the dimensions and attributes that are used to describe an object that is present in the fact table.

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There are three different types of views present in Power BI and they are as follows:

Report view: From report view, users can add several visualizations and various other report pages and publish these on the required portal.

Data view: Here you will find query editor tools to perform data shaping at ease.

Relationship view: In this view, users can effectively maintain the relationship between several datasets.

The common data shaping techniques available in Power BI are as follows:

  • By removing the desired Columns and Rows
  • By adding several Indexes
  • By applying a necessary Sort Order

Data Analysis Expression also known as DAX can be highly used in querying or returning a data with the help of the table expression. DAX is one of the formula languages that can be used to perform data analysis and basic calculations on the data that are present in the Power Pivot. With DAX, we can also effectively compute calculated tables, calculated columns and measures. Also, keep a note that with DAX we cannot make any modifications to the data or we cannot insert any data.

Some of the data types present in DAX are as follows:

  • Numeric
  • Boolean
  • String
  • Date & Time
  • Decimal

On using variables in DAX, users can experience the below mentioned advantages:

Variables that are used in DAX queries can be reused and so we can avoid the necessity of adding additional queries to the database source.

With variables, the expressions of DAX become easily understandable.

Calculated Tables

Calculated Columns

Measures

It is actually created with the help of DAX formula for defining values effectively.

It can be added to the tables with the help of applying DAX formula to some of the existing available data.

Several complex calculations can be created with the help of DAX functions.

It can be generated in both data views and data reports.

The values of new columns can be determined with the help of DAX formula apart from data source queries.

It can be used to highlight the totals, sales comparisons and to forecast a sale and can be used for various other purposes.

It can perform well in intermediate level calculations and in data that users require to store in the particular model.

It can be used when data sources do not contain data in the prescribed format.

It can be used in both data views and reports.

The relationships between tables can be explained in two different ways if there are no duplicate rows or null values:

Manually: With the help of primary and foreign keys, users can manually determine the relationship between tables.

With the autodetect feature: Once this feature is enabled, we can create and detect the relationship between tables automatically.

With the help of Power BI Query Editor, users can exactly load data acquired from various other data sources and can apply any desired transformations on those data which might include affixing measures and new columns.

The advanced editor in Power BI can be used to view any query that is operated by Power BI against data sources in order to effectively import data.

The four tabs present in Power BI query editor are Home, Transform, Add Column and View.

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Yes, absolutely users can make use of Power BI for free. But the best of Power BI features can be accessed only when users switch to Power BI Pro. This Power BI Pro can be subscribed or purchased from the Microsoft Store. This Power BI Pro subscription account will provide more advanced features and enhanced versions when compared to the free Power BI account. Nowadays most of the organizations are moving to the subscribed account as it offers wide features and several refreshes per day.

Power BI provides a set of features with which users can get started to find a data in a unique way while Power BI Pro provides some of the advanced features like live data sources, scheduling data, storage capacity and many more along with holistic interactivity.

On clicking the “Get data” icon present in Power BI, users will find a drop-down menu which displays all the data sources available from which a data can be ingested at ease. The data that has to be ingested can be of any formats or any source files which include CSV, PDF, Excel, JSON, SharePoint or XML and any of the databases which include SQL, SQL server analysis services, MySQL, Access, IBM, Oracle and others. Both Power BI data flows and Power BI datasets are highly compatible. These data can also be obtained from several online sources and Azure.

A package of dashboards, reports and datasets which can be conveniently distributed with Power BI users of the other organizations are known as content packs. On connecting the content packs with powerbi.com portal, the reports items present can be easily merged with the lists of workspace.

Some of the notable benefits of content packs are mentioned below:

  • It can cater access to either an entire organization or a specific group
  • To assist users to choose the right pack, the content packs can be customized with the desired title and description
  • New dashboards from the content can be generated by the users who have access to the content packs

Row-level security can be used to restrict a user from viewing or accessing a particular data based on filters. To configure a row-level security, users will have to define the roles and rules in Power BI Desktop and publish the defined roles and rules to the Power BI service. Also, Power BI subscription account is mandatory to enable row-level security.

Power Pivot is generally known as an add-in available for Microsoft Excel 2010 which can be used to instantly and easily import several millions of rows of data extracted from multiple data sources into a single accurate Excel workbook. Power Pivot is also used to generate calculated columns and measures with the help of formulas; it can also be used to create relationships between various heterogeneous data, and to generate several PivotCharts and PivotTables. Also, it can be used to analyze data without IT assistance to make timely and instant business decisions at ease.

Power Pivot data model is a type of data model that comprises of several data types, columns, tables and various table relations. It is actually constructed to hold and handle several data that are used for business entities.

The type of in-memory analytics engine that can be used in Power Pivot can be referred to as the xVelocity. It stores data in a columnar database and so this type of engine can store or handle a vast volume of data. Also, in this type of engine the data is holistically loaded to the RAM memory and so it ensures maximum processing speed.

Power BI designer is one of the powerful and flexible tools of Power BI which instantly and easily empowers the users to generate intuitive dashboards and reports. It can also assist the users in changing the visual look of their data to make analytics and decision making simpler. The Power BI Designer also consists of the drag and drop feature through which any user can place the content in the report canvas of their choice and ensure a well-structured and defined layout.

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Yes, it is actually possible to refresh a Power BI report after promptly publishing it to the Cloud and it can be done by using some of the gateways which are listed below:

  • Data management gateway can be used for SharePoint
  • Power BI personal gateway can be used for Powerbi.com

There are four main types of refresh available in Power BI for the reports published namely model or data refresh, visual container refresh, tile refresh and package refresh.

A gateway is usually referred to as the bridge that connects both the data sources of on-premises and specific Azure cloud services.

Personal Gateway: This can be used to import data and it is highly valid only on the Power BI service. Only a single person can make use of this personal gateway.

On-premises Gateway: An advanced form of personal gateway is known as the on-premises gateway. This gateway can be used by multiple users to refresh a particular data and it can also support direct query.

Listed below are some of the data sources that effectively support direct query in Power BI:

  • Amazon Redshift
  • Azure Data Explorer
  • AtScale (Beta)
  • Azure SQL Database
  • Azure HDInsight Spark
  • Google BigQuery
  • Azure SQL Data Warehouse
  • HDInsight Interactive Query

Power BI supports users to visually map any particular geographical data both regionally and globally with the help of available map chart and filled map chart.

Power BI is actually integrated with the Bing Map to estimate the default location coordinates and this process is termed as geocoding.

In this integration process, there is no need for the users to provide the latitude and longitude coordinates information.

A design strategy that is effectively used to arrange several visuals over shape is known as the z-order in Power BI. It can be implemented as a method which can be used in reports that have several useful elements. Also, it can be used to refresh and display a set of items when the report is modified or changed.

On doing this, a data will be selected and copied effectively to the clipboard. Then this copied data can be proficiently pasted to any of the details in accordance with the user’s requirement.

The building blocks or the key components involved in Power BI are known as:

  • Visualizations
  • Datasets
  • Reports
  • Dashboards
  • Tiles

The process of representing data in a pictorial format which includes graphs, tables or charts in line with specific requirement is known as the visualization.

A Power BI feature that represents the results of a visualized data from a single dataset is known as a report and it contains several pages of visualization.

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A dashboard is highly used to glance or view any useful strategic data extracted from a single or multiple reports.

An ETL tool that is sued to transform, clean, and shape data with the help of intuitive interfaces without the need for coding is known as the Power Query.

The two types of data destinations available in Power Query are as follows:

  • Load to the data excel model
  • Load to any table present in a worksheet

The translation of a defined step in Power Query or Query Editor into SQL is known as query folding and this can be executed by the database source other than the client machine. It can also be used to enhance scalability and processing performance.

Some of the available power query or editor transforms are as follows:

Choosing or removing columns

  • Filtering rows
  • Adding new columns
  • Grouping
  • Splitting any single column into a multiple column
  • Changing several data types and more

M-Code is one of the new programming languages which are used in Power Pivot. M-Code is one of the case sensitive languages which is similar to other programming languages and easy to use.

The basic requirements needed for using Power BI effectively are as follows:

  • Users will need a promptly performing web browser and a work or business email address
  • The email address that ends with .gov or .mil is not currently compatible for Power BI

Yes, Power BI is compatible with mobile devices as it contains several apps for Windows 10 devices, android smartphones and iOS devices. The Power BI apps can be installed from the following app stores:

  • Apple Store
  • Windows Store
  • Google Play Store

A CORR is a correlation function that is used to determine the correlation between two distinct variables which are ranging between 1- to +1.

The two different types of connectivity modes that are available in Power BI are Import and Direct Query.

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