I think it's possible to become extremely proficient in Power BI in a very short time, but ONLY if you concentrate on the right things. Here are my Power BI "Super Six" areas in which to focus your efforts for the highest payoff:
Everything in PowerBI is optimized for star schema. If you build your analysis and reporting on the foundation of a solid data model, everything else will fall into place smoothly. Build on a broken data model and you're pretty much sunk right out of the starting gate...
By pushing your data transformations up to the proper level, you will dramatically simplify every aspect of your report development, your reports will run faster, be easier to maintain, and be more transparent.
PowerQuery is a phenomenal tool for cleaning and shaping your data, striking a fantastic balance between power and usability. Gil Raviv, one of the top authorities on PQ, estimates that nearly 2/3 of data challenges can be solved using just the PQ UI and some lightweight formula editing.
There are over 350 DAX functions, but I strongly believe the Pareto principle holds here, and that you can garner well more than 80 percent of the benefits of DAX by concentrating on less than 20% of the functions. Focus your attention on table functions, iterator ("X") functions, and use of variables.
Time Intelligence calculations are some of the most common and important in Power BI. But I believe 99% of Power BI users take the hardest possible road here. There are over three dozen DAX time intelligence functions, which IMO are opaque, duplicative, confusing, and don't work with weeks, fiscal periods, or any other non-standard calendars. The Offset approach solves all these problems in an extremely intuitive way, using the DAX functions you already know from 4 above.
I see a lot of reports every day that go off the rails in the final data visualization stage through bad choice of colors, poor selection and application of chart types, poor layout, insuffient labeling, and a host of other pitfalls. The International Business Communications Standards (IBCS) provide a proven, tested framework for avoiding all of these traps, increasing comprehension of your reports, and making them relevant and actionable to your users.
Focus your energies on these "Super Six", and see how much simpler Power BI can be...
Originally from Brian Julius on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/brianjuliusdc_powerbi-powerquery-dax-activity-7047604247323926528-S5VI/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios