15+ Best Power BI Courses & Certifications Online in 2023
As a business grows, so does the amount of data it handles.
It becomes difficult to manage this data over time, and if you wish to harness it to make market decisions, data silos create roadblocks that isolate important information from the rest of the enterprise.
The result is a situation where biased reporting influences key decisions, which are made on partially correct data.
To unlock the full potential of big data, the best Power BI courses online provide a good starting point. Microsoft Power BI is a data analytics tool that enables integration with existing business systems like Office 365. It also offers an easy way for you to compile unstructured data from various formats into a simple relational model.
In this guide, we’ll be discussing the 15 best online courses to learn Microsoft Power BI in 2023 to fuel growth and make your company more competitive.
Let’s get started.
1. Microsoft Power BI – A Complete Introduction (2023 EDITION) [Udemy]
Are you tired of outdated Power BI tutorials?
This 2023 edition provides modern data analytics on the latest version of MS Power BI.
Some course highlights include:
- Learning how to use Query Editor to process all types of data sources that you may have at your disposal.
- This is the best Power BI course online for both mobile and desktop versions, enabling you and your team to access important results across all devices on the go or at the office.
- A precise teaching approach that leads you with excellent exercises around the most important features of Power BI.
This may not be the best Power BI course on Udemy for beginners as it covers a wide breadth of complex topics. If you’re already up to speed with the basics, it’s an excellent choice for unlocking the full potential of BI service, desktop, and mobile.
2. Getting Started with Power BI Desktop [Coursera]
If you’re totally new to the subject and would like to major specifically in Power BI Desktop, this is the tutorial for you.
The course covers:
- Data analysis techniques by reviewing data on credit card defaults, which offers a good foundation to scale to other scenarios.
- This is also the best Power BI course on Coursera if you’re on a deadline and would like a simple 2-hour crash course to get you started on your own.
- How to import, transform, and then visualize data so you can easily explain it even to non-technical team members.
Unfortunately, this course provides the best value for learners in North America. That said, the learning experience is still incredible if you’re based elsewhere, and a globally-inclusive course is also in the pipeline.
3. Power BI Essential Training [LinkedIn Learning]
Are you studying computer software & applications?
It might be helpful to note that this course offers 7.4 continuing professional education credits. You’ll also get the following if you sign up:
- Strong report creation and visualization skills, which make this one of the best Power BI courses online if you’d like to draft better proposals.
- Important tips on taking advantage of the natural language processing capabilities of Power BI Q&A, without having to learn data science from scratch.
- Vital pointers on designating roles so that you share one pro license with a large team without needing multiple subscriptions.
You may encounter a few problems when downloading the exercise files in the topic on uploading CSV files. It’s still the best Power BI course on LinkedIn Learning because it’s possible to solve this by switching to a different browser.
4. Microsoft Power BI Desktop for Business Intelligence [Udemy]
If you’d like an extremely practical course, filled with pro-tips throughout, this tutorial is a great option.
The course covers:
- A simple approach to DAX topics, demonstrated with lots of exercises to break down traditionally complex topics.
- Complimentary project files to offer additional exercises to keep you learning even after you’ve completed the class. Consequently, this is one of the best Power BI courses on Udemy for bonus material.
- How to create relational data models and database normalization for clearing out redundancies in your data sets.
Unfortunately, this course hasn’t been updated in a while so you’ll have to make do with an older version of PowerBI. That notwithstanding, this remains the best Power BI course online for getting a feel of how DAX formulas work across the board.
5. Power BI Report Development Crash Course [Coursera]
For a 2-in1 lesson on Power BI Desktop and Service, this course proves a nice compromise.
Course highlights include:
- Learning how to use the DAX query language to create calculated columns and determine the relationships in your data.
- This is one of the best Power BI courses online for value as you’ll learn to create reports in Power BI Desktop before using BI Service for publication and visualization.
- A step-by-step approach where everything is done on-screen to ensure a guided project where you never get lost.
You may need to purchase the Power BI Pro plan because this course touches on advanced features. The upside is that this is among the best Power BI courses on Coursera for unlocking the full range of possibilities with Power BI Service and Desktop.
6. Advanced Microsoft Power BI [LinkedIn Learning]
Are you searching for an advanced Power BI course?
With a little knowledge of Excel and other applications similar to Power BI, or even Power BI itself, this is the course for you.
By the end of the day, you’ll be able to:
- Use the Query Editor to unpivot data and transpose data tables, among other effective ways to prepare big data for analysis.
- Get excellent technical assistance if you run into trouble because the instructor is very active in the Q&A Forum.
- Perform advanced DAX calculations to get rich report insights. This tutorial is therefore one of the best Power BI courses on LinkedIn Learning for intermediate to advanced learners.
Without basic Power BI Desktop and Excel experience, you may find it hard to keep up in this course. The good news is that the class offers reliable support so you can have any doubts cleared up as you go along.
7. Power BI A-Z: Hands-On Power BI Training For Data Science! [Udemy]
If you’re finding it challenging to come to a single analytical solution, this tutorial will show you how to join several data sources and do so much more.
You’ll learn how to:
- Create pie, donut, and bar charts, to give you a range of data visualization aspects for powerful data-driven presentations. This is therefore the best Power BI course online for data visualization.
- Connect to shared datasets and make a live connection from them. This enables your business to create various reports to derive multiple insights from the same data set.
- Collect and clean data to forecast buying trends about your business, which can help better manage your inventory.
Regrettably, this course teaches Power BI on an older version so it may not be the best Power BI course on Udemy if you’re keen on the latest release. Granted some of the functionality has changed, you should still be able to create incredible visuals and dashboards regardless.
8. HR Analytics- Build an HR dashboard using Power BI [Coursera]
HR analytics can be quite challenging to perform given the enormous amounts of employee data companies generate, which is why this course is important.
It is one of the best Power BI courses on Coursera for HR managers because it enables you to:
- Create charts and graphs to visualize racial and gender diversity in your organization, which can inform more inclusive hiring policies.
- Make a detailed employee page where you can view all the details about a particular worker without having to scan through multiple data sources.
- Learn about choosing slicers, filters, and themes for your dashboard to create appealing employee demographics reports for presentation.
You may feel that it’s not an exhaustive class if you’re keen on complex DAX functions. Conversely, it is one of the best Power BI courses online if you want a quick course on creating smart dashboards to guide intelligent HR decision-making.
9. Learning Microsoft Power BI Desktop [LinkedIn Learning]
This recently released course on Power BI Desktop will show you how to leverage the power of data stored in your business systems, including the cloud.
Ultimately, you’ll be able to:
- Learn by doing thanks to 7 chapter quizzes with tons of practical exercises, which make this one of the best Power BI courses on LinkedIn Learning.
- Set up Power BI Desktop with ease and link it to a variety of data formats you may want to work with like CVS files, Excel spreadsheets, and even web sources such as Wikipedia.
- Perform data transformation using the Query Editor to change your data structure according to your varying needs.
However, this course isn’t the best power BI course online for instructor support, as you’ll largely be on your own. Even so, other learners are quite active in the discussion forum and may be willing to lend a hand if you encounter problems.
10. Complete Introduction to Microsoft Power BI [2023 Edition] [Udemy]
With some know-how of manipulating data in Excel, this tutorial offers you a good step up to Power BI.
Benefits of taking this course include:
- Creating powerful slices and filters to make the reports you create more interactive and powerful.
- This is of the best Power BI courses on Udemy, as it has been updated for the 2023 version of Power BI Desktop, so you won’t have any problems with deprecated features.
- Shortcuts on making the most of the Power BI Desktop Q&A feature to derive data conclusions with ease. The course also covers how to create DAX formulas to enable unique data calculations.
For Mac users, it’s worth noting that Power BI remains natively unavailable for Mac. However, you can still take many of the best Power BI courses online with a macOS by simply using a virtual machine.
11. Build a Real-time Stock Market Dashboard using Power BI [Coursera]
If you have a keen interest in keeping tabs on the stock market, this Power BI course is for you.
Some course highlights include:
- Building a stock market dashboard using the latest Finance API that delivers real-time market information. This enables you to capitalize on important changes to get stronger returns on your business’ capital cost.
- A quick, beginner-friendly, 1-hour course that offers the best Power BI course on Coursera for understanding how historical data impacts consumer trends.
- Learning important data visualization to show important stock data points at a glance.
The only downside to this course is that it focuses on a single API, and may be a let-down if you’d want to learn Power BI beyond the stock market. Even so, the Finance API it focuses on offers vital finance analytics that can be applied to other areas of business as well.
12. Using Power BI with Excel [LinkedIn Learning]
Do your data sets mostly lie in Excel?
If so, this is the best Power BI course online to harness the full potential of Microsoft Excel as enhanced by Power BI.
You’ll learn how to:
- Use Data Analysis Expressions (DAX), and even create your own custom DAX, to perform a wide range of useful calculations on your data to derive important insights like mean, among others.
- Conduct power pivots to better manage, import, and clean your data so that you only rely on quality data to power your analytics.
- Easily transition from Excel to data automation in Power BI, and uncover easier and less-cumbersome ways to process your data.
There’s a logical error to watch out for on the chart created under the topic “visualizing trends in Excel,” where the months aren’t properly aligned so the trend on the chart isn’t entirely accurate. Save for that, this is the best Power BI course on LinkedIn Learning as it’s practically flawless.
13. Microsoft Power BI – Up & Running With Power BI Service 2023 [Udemy]
With lots of solved homework and quizzes, this course provides the practice you need to figure out Power BI Service.
Some course highlights include:
- Learning how to control and secure your data by configuring row-level security and user roles.
- One of the best Power BI courses online for support because of excellent instructor availability and prompt answers in the Q&A section.
- Free bonus material for the course, including a Power BI Service eBook to help you get better acquainted.
However, this course requires that you complete the preceding course by Maven Analytics on Power BI Desktop before you can get started. If you have some experience with the desktop version, this is the best Power BI course on Udemy for understanding BI Service’s advanced features.
14. Data Dashboards in Power BI [LinkedIn Learning]
If your major interest in Power BI lies in the front-end aspect, specifically learning to create interactive data dashboards for your end-users, this course offers the help you seek.
You’ll learn about:
- Comparing violin plots and trendlines for visually engaging data representation. The course is also one of the best Power BI courses on LinkedIn Learning in terms of instructor support.
- Creating visualizations like heatmaps to illustrate points of high data density, which can help you predict patterns more accurately.
- Building an engaging and intuitive dashboard, as you also earn 9.2 CPEs, making this the best Power BI course online if you’re studying Information Technology.
Given that this course concentrates on the front-end of Power BI, it doesn’t go in-depth with calculations and processing data. On the other hand, you’re bound to learn incredible visualizations tips not found in many other tutorials.
15. Power BI Data Visualization and Dashboard Tips, Tricks, & Techniques [LinkedIn Learning]
To make the most out of Power BI Service’s dashboards and visualization features, this course offers shortcuts on how to get around conventional procedures.
The class covers:
- Pro tips on choosing themes and fonts for your reports, such as how to quickly build your own custom themes and maintain consistency in your report.
- Tricks on how to improve your navigation on the dashboard, including how to view the range of pages you’ve created as opposed to clicking through each one.
- Overall, this is the best Power BI course on LinkedIn Learning to learn advanced visuals, such as creating maps for geographic data and statistical diagrams, enabling you to draft complex reports.
This may not be one of the best Power BI courses online if you’d to learn about DAX and how to calculate and analyze your data because it doesn’t touch on these formulas. Nonetheless, the visual design aspect is still a very important aspect of mastering Power BI.
Related:
Data Analysis Courses
Best Qlik Courses
Conclusion
Power BI can make for a really huge topic.
It is therefore important to be prudent about how you choose the best online courses to learn Microsoft Power BI in 2023.
If you’re more comfortable learning about one aspect of this incredible business intelligence tool at a time, I recommend taking the course on Getting Started with Power BI Desktop [Coursera] for starters.
This tutorial offers a simple, 2-hour crash course on the foundations of Power BI Desktop.
On the flip side, you could try out the Microsoft Power BI – A Complete Introduction (2023 EDITION) [Udemy] course to learn Power BI Service, Mobile, and Desktop.
While it’s certainly a lot more involving, it’s a good choice if you want to be a cross-platform Power BI expert.
