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KIND Learning Network BI for Beginners

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A from-scratch, practical, introduction to Power BI aimed at users in health, social care, and housing. The course runs as a series of four interactive sessions, and builds basic skills and confidence at using Power BI. It's friendly, free, and open to all across health, care, and housing in Scotland.

Course information

Prerequisites

  • This is a beginner's course, so no previous Power BI experience is needed at all. That said, you will need good general computing skills. Excel experience is a bonus
  • It's definitely focused on applications in health, social care, and housing, so you should have some relevant experience in any of these sectors. It is not a generic introduction to Power BI
  • You will need Power BI desktop installed on your computer. The online version of Power BI will not work properly. You'll need to arrange access to Power BI Desktop in advance of the sessions yourself.
    • If you're an NHS Scotland employee, you'll need to be on an E5 licence to access Power BI desktop
    • The reason we currently don't support the SaaS web-based version of Power BI in this course is that data loading and wrangling are done very differently in the two versions of the software.
  • This course doesn't cover licencing or publishing Power BI dashboards

Main session topics

Session 1

  • we start with a few relevant examples of Power BI dashboards for health and care (e.g. NHS Digital Adult Social Care dashboard)
  • we give a quick introduction to the way that Power BI works, and those features that make it potentially attractive for health and care use
  • we then do some practical work to get more comfortable with Power BI's interface and terminology
    • loading data from Excel
    • inspecting data in Power BI
    • building a first visualisation, calculated column, and summary measure
    • showing how updates occur in Power BI

Session 2

  • this session exposes trainees to a wide range of visualisation tools in Power BI
    • maps
    • column charts
    • line graphs
  • it also reviews some key tools for working with summaries of data
    • cards
    • filtering and slicing tools
  • using pre-tidied data, trainees build a simple dashboard showing service use, and visualising GP list sizes across Scotland

Session 3

  • this session is an introduction to data tidying (and ETL work more generally) in Power BI
  • it provides an introduction to Power Query and the Power Query M language
  • using open data, this session re-creates the data tidying work needed to produce the tidy data used in session 2. Techniques include:
    • removing, joining, and re-shaping data
    • filtering and replacing missing data
    • tips and tricks for smooth data handling

Session 4

  • this session mainly concentrates on using DAX to manipulate data
    • DAX vs Excel formula language
    • calculations with data using measures
    • reviewing core DAX functions
  • finishing touches and storytelling
  • troubleshooting

For more information, or if you have any suggestions about this training, please contact Brendan Clarke (brendan.clarke2@nhs.scot).

Course materials

Course materials are available on TURAS. Please make sure you download and review these before the first session.

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