In 2011, Business Intelligence (BI) tools gained rapid popularity, posing a challenge for Microsoft. Hence, Microsoft introduced Power BI in 2013 as an independent tool to keep pace. It combines multiple Excel add-ons to deliver compelling analytical capabilities to existing MS Excel, making it smart enough to generate intuitive and interactive reports. Power BI has contributed immensely to Microsoft's growth in the BI domain and data visualisation.
Microsoft Power BI is among the top business intelligence tools, and many leading IT companies rely on it for business analytics. Hence, increasing the demand for skilled and knowledgeable Power BI experts.
We understand that studying for a job interview can be challenging, especially when it’s a wide topic like business intelligence. If you are planning for a job interview in the BI domain, then you need to prepare diligently, seeking in-depth information about the topics often discussed in interview sessions. No worries, we have got you covered.
In this blog, we have shared the top 50 interview questions on Power BI. These questions are based on extensive research and survey after consulting experienced professionals from the data analytics and visualisation industry. This article is to help Power BI aspirants gain a better understanding of the domain and brush up on their basics so they can crack any interview.
So, let’s have a look at the top 50 Power BI interview questions and answers:
Power BI Interview Questions For Freshers
1. What is Power BI?
Power BI is a collection of business analytics tools, techniques, and processes used to turn raw business data into valuable and interactive information. Owned by Microsoft, it connects, transforms, and visualises data sets from multiple unrelated sources.
The data can either be in the form of an Excel spreadsheet or on the cloud. Power BI makes it easier to connect data sources and share insights with anyone as it offers the right tools to create interactive dashboards and live reports that are shared across platforms to make informed decisions. With highly competitive and categorised information, involved parties can track their performances in the market.
2. Why should we use Power BI?
Power BI is known for providing an easier way to connect, transform, and visualise raw data from different sources and convert it into meaningful and insightful business information to make informed and smart decisions.
Even non-technical users can extract information from the data without much hassle. Power BI makes it cost-efficient for small businesses to visualise their data without maintaining a separate team of data analysts. In addition, it offers a secure cloud service to view dashboards or reports and share them with stakeholders and business partners for real-time analysis.
Moreover, it comes with AI features in the form of Power Q&A and Power Query. The former allows you to analyse data through voice commands, while the latter enables you to create dashboards by typing in the columns and visuals you need to include.
3. What are the main components of Power BI?
Here is a brief description of each Power BI component:
a) Power Pivot
It is used to fetch, clean, and load data on Power Query. Besides, it is used for data modelling that uses DAX (Data Analysis Expression) for calculations. Here, relationships between tables are created and users get values shown in Pivot Tables.
b) Power Query
It is an important Power BI component that operates on the loaded data. It extracts data from various sources, such as SQL, Excel, Oracle, and Text/CSV files, transforms it, and even deletes it.
c) Power Q&A
Allows users to interact with reports by providing answers to their questions. It works with Power View and provides answers through representations.
d) Power View
Used to provide an intuitive display of data via charts, maps, graphs, and other visuals and retrieve metadata for analysis. It offers an interactive view and slicers and filters are used for slicing and dicing data.
e) Power Map
Presents geo-spatial visualisation of data in 3D mode. It highlights accurate geographic locations of data based on state, city, continent, and address.
f) Power BI Desktop
Integrates Power View, Power Query, and Power Pivot. It helps users create advanced queries, reports, data models, and dashboards and hone their BI skills for data analysis.
g) Power BI Mobile Application
Available for iOS, Android, and Windows and has an interactive display of a dashboard that can be shared easily.
4. Can you tell the difference between Managed Enterprise BI and Self-service BI?
Following are the differences between Self-service BI and Managed Enterprise BI:
| Managed Enterprise BI | Self-service BI |
| Data flows from various sources, and there is no order for companies to ingest and manage their data sources. | Companies can ingest data from any source seamlessly, and data can flow from any source in any format. |
| Companies find it hard to conduct business operations effectively as they are unable to report and analyse data and collaborate to gain valuable insights from it. | Companies can process data and conduct business operations easily as data ingestion falls into order. |
| Analysing data is difficult due to time constraints and a lack of proper information. | No time constraint, allows to analyse data implicitly and easily. |
| Companies have to employ third-party vendors to make the most out of their data sources, resulting in straining their budgets and slow productivity. | No third-party vendors are required, which eliminates other expenses and constraints. |
| Demands complex programming skills for generating reports. | Even non-technical users can generate intuitive and actionable dashboards easily without executing complex programming codes. |
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5. What are the various Power BI versions?
Power BI has three versions:
a) Microsoft Power BI Free/Desktop
For users who want to get business insights from data with visualisation.
b) Microsoft Power BI Pro
This full version of Power BI enables unlimited viewing, sharing, and reporting.
c) Microsoft Power BI Premium
Rather than providing a per-user license, it offers a dedicated unit of capacity for all users in an organisation.
6. What are the building blocks of Power BI?
Here are the building blocks of Power BI:
a) Visualisations
Visual representation of raw data extracted from various sources. Examples are charts, line graphs, pie charts, maps, bar graphs, etc.
b) Datasets
A collection of data used to create reports and visualisations. It can be in the form of Excel sheets, Oracle, SQL, CSV files, etc.
c) Reports
A collection of visualisations that appear together on single or multiple pages. Each visualisation shows specific aspects of the data depending on the requirements. Examples include profit by-products, sales by country, city, report, logistic performance report, etc.
d) Dashboards
They are single-layer presentations with one or multiple visualisations embedded on one page. Dashboards can be shared across various platforms, such as Power BI Apps for live information. Examples are geographical maps, pie charts, and bar charts.
e) Tiles
It is the single visualisation in a dashboard or report. Examples are pie charts, line graphs, or other visualisations in a report.
7. What is Power BI Desktop?
Power BI Desktop is an open-source application developed by Microsoft. It can be installed on your computer and is used for generating, shaping, modelling, designing, and publishing reports to the cloud with interactive visualisations.
Moreover, it works cohesively with the Power BI service, and you can save your work to a file or publish data to your Power BI site that can be shared with others. It is also used as an on-premise version of Power BI Desktop and works full-fledged even if the system is not connected to the internet.
Users need the internet only when they want to publish their reports to the cloud and share them with colleagues. It is the first application that users jump into as soon as they board Power BI.
8. What are the essential applications of Power BI?
Power BI is used for various reasons by different professionals and departments:
a) Database Administrators
PowerShell or Microsoft 365 allows database administrators to increase the Power BI capacity, and they can assign their roles to different team members. Also, they can set new passwords and restrict access to reports or dashboards in Power BI.
b) Project Management Office
Project managers use Power BI to determine the situation of several business units. They can see the performance of team members and track the progress of their projects.
c) IT Professionals
They use Power BI to create visualisations and dashboards that can track their performance and visualise log files for meetings. They can find the areas they need to work on and enhance their performance.
d) Business and Data Analysts
They use Power BI to analyse the raw data efficiently and turn it into meaningful information by cleaning it based on specific requirements. Analysts can prepare live reports to represent raw data in the form of visual insights.
e) Reports for Consumers
Users can add custom reports to different applications designed from consumers’ perspectives. You can create a report showing daily sales in different countries and add it to your social media websites, profiles, and applications. This will highlight your product’s popularity among consumers and motivate them to buy it.
9. What are some drawbacks of using Power BI?
Here are a few drawbacks of Power BI:
a) Can’t Handle Large Data
Power BI is unable to handle files larger than 1 GB and might even time out while processing them. Also, it can’t mix imported data accessed through real-time connections.
b) Limited Data Sharing
Allows to share dashboards and reports with users on the same domain or have email addresses listed on Office 365.
c) Limited Data Source
Real-time connection is allowed with a few or limited data sources.
d) Complex in Nature
Its design is a bit complex, and users must be well-versed in Power BI before they start working on it.
10. What is Self-service BI?
SSBI, or Self-service Business Intelligence, enables business professionals or users with no technical knowledge to filter, segment, analyse, and visualise their data and instantly generate intuitive and actionable reports or dashboards.
It has simplified the process of accessing data and creating visuals to get meaningful insights. The best part is users don’t need technical expertise for data reporting. They can use available filters and data manipulation options to create dashboards and make informed decisions. Microsoft SSBI has two parts- Excel BI toolkit and Power BI.
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11. What are the key benefits of using Power BI?
Some of the significant advantages of Power BI are:
a) Custom Visualisation
Users have the flexibility of creating custom visualisations and adding them to their reports and dashboards. With custom reports, decision-makers and planners can find the problem and make an informed decision to enhance their business performance.
b) Easy to Use
Power BI doesn’t need technical prowess to visualise data and create reports. Using its simple interface, even non-technical users can transform raw data into interactive reports.
c) ETL/Data Recovery Suite
It uses its robust set of tools to implement ETL ((extraction, transformation, and loading of the datasets) capabilities. Data transformation and preparation are critical stages before moving to the visualisation stage. Moreover, with Power BI, users can directly build reporting datamarts and eliminate any ambiguities in the datasets.
d) Affordable Price
Power BI is much more affordable than other BI and data visualisation tools, making it an ideal choice for small businesses. They can now use this effective tool for free to make informed and better business decisions to enhance their performance. Also, for a minimal amount, it offers an array of features.
e) Q&A Capability
Power BI can execute natural language queries using Power Query and Power Q&A. Also, using the Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithm, it processes commands of users to deliver the desired results.
Other benefits of Power BI include:
- It enables building interactable data visualisation in data centres.
- Users can transform raw data into interactive visuals and share them with anyone.
- Allows fast data analysis by establishing a connection for Excel queries and dashboards.
- Gives quick and accurate solutions.
- Allows users to perform queries using simple English words.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Ace your next interview with our curated list of the most common Power BI Interview questions from basic concepts to advanced techniques This guide provides structured insights, proven methodologies, and actionable execution steps for modern professionals.
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