End‑to‑end Power BI scenarios for any skill level

This article provides curated, sequential lists of documentation for common Power BI scenarios. Each path takes you from start to finish for a specific use case, building knowledge progressively.

Scenario selection guide

Not sure which path to follow? Use this guide:

1. New Power BI user: Start with Power BI

• Audience: Users who are new to Power BI and want a general introduction
• Goal: Understand Power BI basics, create your first report, and share it
• Suggested learning sequence:
  1. What is Power BI? - Understand the platform and its components
  2. Get Power BI Desktop - Install the free application
  3. Get started with Power BI Desktop - Your first hands-on tutorial
  4. Connect to data in Power BI Desktop - Quick start guide
  5. Tour the report editor - Learn the interface
  6. Power BI Desktop: Excel to report - Build your first report
  7. Basics of Power BI service - Understand the online component
  8. Get started with the Power BI service - Publish and share your work

2. Excel user: Transition to Power BI from Excel

• Audience: Excel users who want to apply their spreadsheet expertise in Power BI
• Goal: Transition Excel workflows to Power BI and create interactive reports from Excel data
• Suggested learning sequence:
  1. What is Power BI? - See how it extends Excel
  2. Get Power BI Desktop - Install the tool
  3. Power BI service: Excel to report - Transform Excel data
  4. Import Excel workbooks - Bring Excel data into Power BI
  5. Analyze sales data from Excel and an OData feed - Combine data sources
  6. Connect to Power BI datasets from Excel - Use Power BI data in Excel
  7. Create Excel featured tables - Bridge Power BI and Excel
  8. Analyze in Excel - Pivot Power BI data in Excel

3. Business user: View and explore reports

• Audience: Users who view and interact with reports created by others to make data-driven decisions
• Goal: Navigate Power BI confidently, interact with reports, and get insights without building anything
• Suggested learning sequence:
  1. Am I a Power BI business user? - Understand your role
  2. Sign in for the first time - Access Power BI
  3. Get around the Power BI service - Navigate the interface
  4. Understand Power BI terminology - Learn the vocabulary
  5. Find content shared with you - Locate your reports
  6. Open and view a report - Access reports
  7. Interact with reports - Use filters and slicers
  8. Use filters and slicers - Drill into data
  9. Run and view insights on visuals - Get AI-powered insights
  10. Chat with your data using Copilot - Ask questions in natural language
  11. Subscribe to reports and dashboards - Stay informed
  12. Set data alerts - Get notified of changes

4. Report creator: Build your first reports

• Audience: Users who need to create reports for their team or organization
• Goal: Build interactive, professional reports from scratch
• Suggested learning sequence:
  1. Get Power BI Desktop - Install the tool
  2. Get started with Power BI Desktop - Learn the basics
  3. Tour the report editor - Understand the interface
  4. Work with Report view - Navigate Report view
  5. Connect to data in Power BI Desktop - Get your data
  6. Power BI Desktop: Excel to report - Complete tutorial
  7. Visualizations in Power BI - Learn about visuals
  8. Add filters to reports - Enable interactivity
  9. Use report themes - Apply consistent styling
  10. Apply page display settings - Optimize layout
  11. Tips and tricks for creating reports - Best practices
  12. Get started with the Power BI service - Publish your report
  13. Create a dashboard - Pin visuals to a dashboard
  14. Data refresh in Power BI - Keep your data current
  15. Configure scheduled refresh - Automate data updates
  16. Share reports and dashboards - Distribute your work

5. Copilot user: AI-powered report creation

• Audience: Users who want to use AI to accelerate report creation and insights
• Goal: Use Copilot to generate reports, narratives, and insights
• Suggested learning sequence:
  1. Overview of Copilot for Power BI - Understand Copilot capabilities
  2. Enable Copilot in Power BI - Set up Copilot
  3. Tutorial: Discover data with Copilot - Hands-on exploration
  4. Copilot in Power BI Desktop - Use in Desktop
  5. Create reports with Copilot - Generate reports with AI
  6. Create narratives with Copilot - AI-written summaries
  7. Write DAX queries with Copilot - Generate DAX with AI
  8. Chat with your data using Copilot - Natural language queries
  9. Summarize report content with Copilot - Quick insights
  10. Evaluate semantic models with Copilot - Data quality checks
  11. Write effective prompts for report pages - Prompt engineering tips
  12. Write effective prompts for narratives - Get better AI summaries
  13. Prepare your data for Copilot - Optimize data for AI

6. Data analyst: Connect, transform, and model data

• Audience: Users who need to prepare and model data for reporting
• Goal: Learn data connection, transformation, and modeling for robust analytics
• Suggested learning sequence:
  1. Data sources in Power BI - Understand data connectivity
  2. Connect to data sources - Explore connection options
  3. Connect to data in Power BI Desktop - Hands-on connection
  4. Shape and combine multiple data sources - Clean and merge data
  5. What is Power Query Editor? - Learn data transformation
  6. Lakehouses in Fabric - Unified data storage for analytics
  7. Fabric data warehouses - Enterprise data warehousing
  8. Work with Modeling view - Understand the data model
  9. Understand model relationships - Create relationships
  10. Create your own measures - Build DAX measures
  11. Create calculated columns - Add computed fields
  12. DAX function reference - Complete DAX reference
  13. Implement time-based calculations - Time intelligence patterns
  14. Use calculation groups - Advanced calculations
  15. Tabular modeling - Best practices for data models
  16. Power BI Desktop: Dimensional model to report - End-to-end tutorial

7. Advanced report creator: Interactive and dynamic reports

• Audience: Users who are ready to add advanced interactivity and features to reports
• Goal: Create highly interactive reports with bookmarks, drillthrough, tooltips, and more
• Suggested learning sequence:
  1. Create bookmarks - Save and share report views
  2. Create buttons - Add navigation and actions
  3. Add drillthrough - Enable detailed exploration
  4. Use report page tooltips - Rich hover information
  5. Add drillthrough buttons - Advanced drillthrough navigation
  6. Cross-report drillthrough - Link multiple reports
  7. Use the selection pane - Manage visual layers
  8. Group visuals in a report - Organize layouts
  9. Apply conditional formatting - Dynamic visual styling
  10. Use Performance Analyzer - Diagnose and optimize report performance
  11. Use custom visuals from AppSource - Extend capabilities
  12. Design for accessibility - Inclusive design

8. Collaborator: Share, publish, and work together

• Audience: Users who share and collaborate on Power BI content with teams
• Goal: Learn workspaces, apps, sharing, and team collaboration
• Suggested learning sequence:
  1. What are workspaces? - Understand collaboration spaces
  2. Create workspaces - Set up team spaces
  3. Give access to workspaces - Manage permissions
  4. Share reports and dashboards - Direct sharing
  5. Filter and share a report - Share filtered views
  6. Create and distribute apps - Package content for distribution
  7. Fabric workspaces - Organize content in Fabric
  8. Collaborate in Microsoft Teams - Integrate with Teams
  9. Embed report in Microsoft Teams - Add reports to Teams
  10. Embed report in SharePoint Online - Integrate with SharePoint
  11. Subscribe to reports and dashboards - Set up email subscriptions
  12. Create per recipient subscriptions - Personalized subscriptions
  13. Endorse your content - Promote trusted content
  14. Content endorsement overview - Certification and promotion
  15. Deployment pipelines - Manage content across development, test, and production

9. Fabric user: Power BI in Microsoft Fabric

• Audience: Users who are using or exploring Microsoft Fabric for end-to-end data analytics
• Goal: Understand how Power BI fits into Fabric and when to use broader Fabric capabilities
• Suggested learning sequence:
  1. What is Microsoft Fabric? - Understand the unified platform
  2. Power BI in Microsoft Fabric - How Power BI integrates
  3. End-to-end tutorials in Fabric - Complete scenarios
  4. Lakehouses in Fabric - Unified data storage
  5. Data pipelines in Fabric - Data orchestration
  6. Real-Time Intelligence in Fabric - Streaming data
  7. OneLake - Unified data lake
  8. Create reports from Fabric data - Build Power BI reports
  9. Fabric workspaces - Organize Fabric items
  10. Fabric licensing - Understand licensing

10. Mobile user: Power BI on the go

• Audience: Users who need to access Power BI on mobile devices
• Goal: Effectively use Power BI on iOS and Android phones and tablets
• Suggested learning sequence:
  1. What are the mobile apps? - Overview of mobile capabilities
  2. Download samples in the mobile apps - Get sample content
  3. Explore dashboards and reports - Quick start guide
  4. View reports on mobile - Phone-optimized viewing
  5. Set alerts in mobile apps - Mobile notifications
  6. Create mobile-optimized reports - Design for mobile
  7. Mobile layout view - Optimize report layouts
  8. Scan QR codes - Quick mobile access

11. Admin: Manage Power BI for your organization

• Audience: Users who manage Power BI deployment and governance for their organization
• Goal: Configure, secure, and govern Power BI effectively
• Suggested learning sequence:
  1. What is Power BI administration? - Admin overview
  2. Admin portal - Central management console
  3. Understand licensing - License and capacity administration
  4. Tenant settings - Configure organization-wide settings
  5. Enable Copilot in Power BI - Copilot tenant settings
  6. Configure workspace settings - Workspace governance
  7. Data protection - Security and compliance
  8. What is an on-premises data gateway? - Hybrid connectivity
  9. Semantic model external org sharing (admin) - Cross-org sharing
  10. Usage metrics - Monitor adoption
  11. Row-level security - Data-level security
  12. Migrate from SSRS to Power BI - Migration planning and execution
  13. Embed for your organization - Embedding scenarios

12. Developer: Extend and embed Power BI

• Audience: Users who integrate Power BI into apps or create custom visuals
• Goal: Build custom solutions and integrations with Power BI
• Suggested learning sequence:
  1. Embedding Power BI content - Overview of embedding
  2. Embed for your customers - App owns data scenario
  3. Embed for your organization - User owns data scenario
  4. Power BI REST API - Programmatic access
  5. Fabric REST APIs - Programmatic access to Fabric
  6. Tabular Model Scripting Language - Programmatic model management
  7. What are Power BI custom visuals? - Custom visual overview
  8. Set up environment for developing a visual - Dev setup
  9. Tutorial: Develop a circle card visual - Build your first visual
  10. Power BI visuals API - API reference
  11. Publish custom visuals to AppSource - Share your work
  12. Row-level security in embedded scenarios - Secure embedded content

13. DirectQuery user: Live data connections

• Audience: Users who work with large datasets requiring real-time or live connections
• Goal: Understand and implement DirectQuery effectively
• Suggested learning sequence:
  1. About using DirectQuery in Power BI - DirectQuery overview
  2. Live connection and DirectQuery comparison - Understand options
  3. Connect to Analysis Services tabular data - Live connections to enterprise models
  4. Semantic model modes - Import vs DirectQuery vs Composite
  5. Use composite models - Combine import and DirectQuery
  6. Direct Lake mode - Fabric's high-performance query mode
  7. Connect to Fabric lakehouses - Report on lakehouse data
  8. DirectQuery model guidance - Performance optimization
  9. Implement row-level security - Secure DirectQuery

14. Print-ready reports: Formatted for printing and export

• Audience: Users who need specifically formatted reports for printing, invoices, or compliance documents
• Goal: Use the Report Builder tool to design professional reports with precise layout control
• Suggested learning sequence:
  1. What are paginated reports? - Overview
  2. Get Power BI Report Builder - Install the tool
  3. Create a paginated report - Quick start tutorial
  4. Plan a paginated report - Design considerations
  5. Paginated report data sources - Connect to data
  6. Report parameters - Add interactivity
  7. Expressions in paginated reports - Advanced report expressions
  8. Report items and design - Design patterns and best practices
  9. Publish a paginated report - Share your work
  10. Automate exports to SharePoint - Automation

15. Goals and metrics: Track business objectives

• Audience: Users who track key performance indicators (KPIs), business goals, and team performance in Power BI
• Goal: Create scorecards, define goals connected to your data, and monitor progress
• Suggested learning sequence:
  1. Introduction to metrics - Understand goals and scorecards
  2. Create a scorecard - Build your first scorecard
  3. Create connected goals - Link goals to report data
  4. Set up subgoals - Break goals into smaller targets
  5. Check in on goals - Track progress over time
  6. Define status rules - Automate goal status
  7. Customize goal status - Tailor status indicators
  8. Set permissions on goals - Control access
  9. Subscribe to goal updates - Stay informed on progress
  10. Automate goals with Power Automate - Trigger workflows from metrics

Related content

• Collaboration documentation
• Data connection documentation
• Data transformation, shaping, and modeling documentation
• Developer documentation
• Report and dashboard creation documentation
• Report exploration documentation
• Report Server documentation