Power BI

Top 50 Power BI Interview Questions and Answers in 2023

Power BI Interview Questions and Answers:

Power BI is a growing field today and has become a leader in the business industry. Learning Power BI also opens up a lot of job opportunities for many people making it a promising career. Developed by Microsoft it is used by many categories of users from Analysts to business owners. If you want to get a job in Power BI, this article discusses the Power BI Interview questions and answers.

Following are the Top 50 Power BI Interview Questions and Answers in 2022:

1. What is Power BI exactly?

A business analytics tool developed by Microsoft. It helps business owners to convert unrelated data into visual representation through charts by creating a dashboard. So that it can provide valuable information about data and helps in improving the business.

2. What is BI?

Learning and applying the insights from data to improve the business is known as Business Intelligence. It has two major fields as of now, BI analysts and BI engineers. This tool will be very helpful for those who are running a business enterprise.

3. Why use Power BI?

  • Provides quick as well as accurate solutions for a problem in a business.
  • Helps to see many unrelated data sources in a visualization form. 
  • The visuals from the data can be easily shared.
  • A dashboard that enables fast analysis of data.

4. What are the parts of Microsoft’s self-service business intelligence solution?

  • Creating data models
  • Transforming the data
  • Integrating the data from different sources
  • Big data analysis
  • Statistical analysis
  • Predictive analysis
  • Geospatial analysis

5. What are the benefits of Power BI?

Easy analysis of data which is helpful for taking quick decisions and also easily shareable with others.

6. What are the essential components of Power BI?

  • Power Query
  • Power Pivot
  • Power View
  • Power Map
  • Power Q&A
  • Power BI Desktop
  • Power BI Website
  • Power BI Mobile Apps

7. What is the Dax function?

DAX – Data Analysis Expression is a formula expression language that is used for analysis, Power BI, and power pivot in excel.

8. Why prefer Power BI over other tools? Why it is effective?

It is a part of Microsoft’s business product suite built for businesses. This makes it easy and more integrated for businesses. Compared to other tools, it helps in creating more advanced visualizations. That’s why Power BI is preferable compared to other tools.

9. What is a dashboard?

The board, also called Canvas, shows us all the visualizations and makes it easy to interpret. It is easy to interpret the details with the data as they are provided in the visualization form.

10. What is the difference between managed enterprise BI and Self-service BI?

Self-service BI focuses only on the process of analytics and reporting along with how a project owner is delegating those tasks to their team. Whereas a managed enterprise BI has an entire overhaul of how data is interpreted and used in the organization.

11. What are the types of power BI tools?

  • Power BI Desktop
  • Power BI Service
  • Power BI data gateway
  • Power BI Report Server
  • Power BI Mobile Apps

12. Name the difference between Power BI and Tableau?

Power BI is an analytics tool used in business that converts data into visualization and shares insights that can be shared with anyone across departments. Whereas, Tableau is a Business intelligence tool that shares data into actionable information. Power BI can handle only a limited number of data. Tableau on the other hand can handle a huge volume of data.

13. What is Self-service BI?

Self-service BI allows its users to extract information from the data without any knowledge of data mining and statistical analysis. Users can access and share their data easily. To put it simply it is a tool for non-technical users.

14. Differentiate between Power query and power pivot.

A power query is used to import the data whereas a power pivot is used to model the data that has been imported. Both can complement the function of each other. Power query benefits excel users and have an easy-to-use interface. Power pivot handles millions of rows of data that can go beyond excel.

15. List out the data types of Dax?

  • Binary 
  • Currency
  • Decimal
  • Boolean
  • Date time
  • Integer
  • Variant
  • String

16. What is Power Map?

It is also one of the Power BI tools that are used to analyze, interpret and share the data with others with more appealing visuals. One such visual is a map which provides data using a map. It can be used by both technical and non-technical users.

17. List down the various versions of Power BI.

It has three versions at present.

  • Power BI Free version
  • Power BI pro version 
  • Power BI premium version

18. Why do you choose Power BI as a career option?

As Power BI has become the leader today in business analytics, many MNCs as well as other businesses are looking for certified professionals in Power BI. It is a good career that provides the opportunity to work in big firms along with a good amount of salary.

19. What are the data sources that Power BI can connect with?

It can connect to both local databases as well as those in the cloud. Some of them are

  • SQL server database
  • Oracle database
  • Access database
  • IBM Db2 database
  • My SQL Database

20. What is a Power BI desktop?

It is a free application that can be installed and used on a local computer. At the same time, the data can be analyzed and shared with anyone. It is a free version of Power BI created specifically for desktops. The desktop version has good visualization and modeling techniques to analyze and share the data.

21. What do you understand by Power BI services?

Power BI service is a tool that is similar to Power BI desktop except that it provides all its services in the cloud. It is the Saas part of the power provider. 

22. How does Power Pivot work?

Power Pivot helps in creating data models in a more easy way. With this tool, one can analyze large volumes of data from various data sources and can interpret the information faster. You can interpret the imported data easily without slowing down your computer.

23. How to analyze Power BI data in excel?

To get started, one has to first connect Power BI to excel. Some of the ways to do this are:

  • Go to the report that you want to analyze and then go to more options next to the report and select the ‘Analyze in excel’ option. 
  • Open the report>go to export> select analyze in excel.
  • Select a dataset and in the dataset pane, select analyze in the excel option.

24. List down the essential applications of Power BI.

  • Visualization
  • Data management
  • Analytics
  • Visualize data easily
  • Gives a look at the financial performance of the company

25. What is Power BI Query Editor?

Power BI query editor is used to connect to one or many data sources and analyze and transform the data according to your need and load the model into the Power BI desktop. It helps to modify the data based on the needs of its users.

26. Describe visualization in Power BI.

Visualizations also known as visuals are the display insights in data. Power BI contains various visualization options such as simple chars and maps to complex waterfalls and many other components. Visualizations make it easy to present data effectively. 

27. List the important features of Power BI.

  • Monthly updates on all products
  • Robust security
  • Wide range of visualizations
  • Data connection to various sources
  • Access to volumes of data
  • Quick insights

28. What is a Power BI gateway?

Power BI gateway is the bridge to transfer all the data from a desktop or a system that is not in the cloud to the Microfit cloud services in a quick and secure manner. It is needed to access data on the on-premises network and also to share the data.

29. What are the filters in Power BI?

  • Visual filters
  • Page filters
  • Report filters
  • Drillthrough filters

30. List down the different connectivity modes in Power BI?

  • SQL server import
  • Direct query
  • Live connection

31. What is the function of Power BI custom visuals?

The main function is to create and edit power BI content. With these, you can map your data point in different ways. It is used to discover hidden patterns, compare the data and communicate interpretation that helps you in decision-making.

32. What are the prerequisites for gateway download in a system?

The prerequisites are

  • 4 GB RAM
  • 4 GB Free space
  • .NET Framework 4.8
  • A 64-bit version of windows 

33. Mention some drawbacks of Power BI?

  • Can be challenging for those who don’t use Microsoft excel power.
  • Complex as it has large components ad it is difficult to understand each component
  • No data cleansing
  • Cannot handle large volumes of data
  • Limited data sharing

34. What is a Power BI designer?

The Power BI designer is another name for the Power BI desktop that provides all of the commonly used Power BI tools in one place such as Power query, power pivot, power map, etc. One can aggregate, interpret, and model the data all in one place on a desktop.

35. List down the types of visualization in Power BI?

  • Charts: Area charts and bar charts
  • Cards
  • Map
  • KPIs
  • Power Apps Visual
  • Q&A visual
  • Scatter

36. Describe the use of the ‘Get Data’ icon in Power BI.

There are many options in the ‘Get Data’ icon in Power BI. These options allow us to import data in Power BI, create visualizations, load the data, and view the loaded data in the fields pane.

37. List down the types of Power BI Gateway.

  • On-premises data gateway
  • The virtual network data gateway
  • On-premises data gateway for personal mode

38. What are custom visuals in Power BI?

Custom visualizations enable its users to create their own data models for data visualization. It can be done using representations that don’t come under the in-built library.

39. Where will be the data stored in Power BI?

For managing and storing data, Power BI uses Azure Active Directory (AAD) and for metadata, it uses Azure BLOB and Azure SQL Database.

40. In terms of data modeling, tell the difference between Power BI for desktop and Power Pivot for excel.

Power BI is easy to use and has an easy interface when compared to Power Pivot. Also, Power BI makes it easier to change from reports to dashboards and dashboards to datasets. Whereas it is a little difficult in Power Pivot.

41. How to shape the data in Power BI?

Data shaping can be done using data editing.

42. What are the views available in Power BI?

  • Dashboard 
  • Report
  • Data 
  • Relationships

43. Describe KPIs in Microsoft Power BI?

KPI is a Key Performance Indicator that can tell us the progress we have made toward our goals. For example, targeting new customers, achieving a fixed number of sales, etc.

44. What is the calculated column in Power BI?

A Calculated column defines a column’s value by using DAX functions. It can do it by putting together text values for one column and numerical values for the other.

45. How to filter data in Power BI?

There are various filters available in Power BI to filter the data such as

  • Drill-through filter
  • Page-level filter
  • Reports-level filter

46. Is Power BI free to use?

A free version is available in Power BI. To get access to all of its features, one has to purchase this from the Microsoft store.

47. List down the types of refresh options in Power BI.

  • Data refresh
  • OneDrive refresh
  • Refresh of query caches
  • Tile refresh
  • Refresh of report visuals

48. What are the building blocks of Power BI?

  • Visualizations
  • Dashboards
  • Reports
  • Tiles

49. How are relationships defined in Power BI?

In the case of null values and duplicate values, relationships can be defined manually and with an auto-detect feature.

50. Explain how to categorize users in Power BI.

Users of Power BI can be classified as 

  • Technical users
  • Business owners
  • Analysts 
  • IT experts

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