7 Power BI Interview Questions You Must Be Able to Answer

Power BI is one of the most popular powerful business intelligence tools.

It offers powerful data sorting and visualization and has impressive analytical capabilities to help organizations see through their data and make informed decisions.

The interface is cool, and the features are top-notch. Businesses are quickly adapting to Power BI across all industries and resultantly, we see a hike in the demand for Power BI specialists.

So, if you’re also on the hunt for your dream job that requires you to have Power BI skills, we can help you get through 🚀

After specializing in Power BI and teaching it to thousands of students, I have collated the 7 most asked Power BI interview questions. And in this guide, I will equip you with the knowledge and clarity needed to answer these.

Let’s begin learning straight away 🏃‍♀️

Table of Contents

What is Power BI

Basic but mostly interviewers want to see if you know what Power BI is about.

First and foremost, here’s how you tell what Power BI is (no big fat words or bookish definitions, we are not in a cramming competition) 👩‍💻

Simply put, Power BI is a business intelligence solution developed by Microsoft. It offers interactive and visual solutions to your data problems. The interface is simple for the end users so they can source data from many sources, and transform and model them to create data visuals, reports, and dashboards.

What you must know about Power BI is that is not a single-faced thing, it has different components 🌠

• Power BI Desktop: This is the desktop application for Power BI that you can download and install on your PC and use offline. Offers all features except for swift data sharing and collaboration.
• Power BI Service (Power BI Online): This is a cloud-based service (with limited features) where users can share, view, and interact with reports and dashboards in real-time.
• Power BI Report Server: The Power BI Report Server is an on-premises report server where users can publish and share Power BI reports, similar to the cloud-based Power BI Service.
• Power BI Embedded: A service that allows developers to embed Power BI reports and dashboards into custom applications using APIs.
• Power BI Mobile: This is the mobile app of Power BI for viewing Power BI reports on smartphones and tablets.

But what is Power BI meant for? Why is it important?

Power BI allows data connections from a list of sources starting from Excel spreadsheets, Azure cloud services, SQL Server databases, Google Analytics, Salesforce, and many more online services, too.

Once you’ve sourced the data into the application, Power BI helps you to create insightful data visuals and analytics out of it. And just as we say, seeing through a dataset is way better than reading it 🙌

This makes Power BI a popular choice for businesses who want to stay on top of their data analytical game.

By now, your interviewer would know that Power BI is not an alien concept to you.

What is the difference between Power BI Desktop and Power BI Service

Power BI has different versions, and the top two categories of these versions include:

• the desktop version (the offline application installed on your PC) and
• the cloud-based online version (what we also call a Power BI service).

You should be able to explain the difference between both these versions straight away.

This section will aid your understanding of how both these versions differ from one another 🧪

The Power BI desktop is the application that will be downloaded and installed on your PC. You can use it to load data and create data visuals and reports out of it.

Here’s what the interface for Power BI Desktop looks like.

• What’s great about Power BI Desktop?

It allows importing data from various sources.

Offers advanced features for creating better data reports.

Includes DAX to help you create calculated columns, measures, and custom KPIs ⚒

And you do not need any internet connection to work on it. It doesn’t offer as many sharing and collaboration options as the Power BI service but has advanced tools and is free to use.

Power BI Online, on the contrary, is the cloud-based version of the same application. More like Power BI Lite 😁

As it is cloud-based, you can access it from any device (with your credentials). The main highlight of the Power BI online is its incredible ability to allow sharing and collaborating reports in the cloud.

The interface looks like below.

• What’s great about Power BI Service?

It allows collaboration in real-time.

Offers limited features but you can create and share reports in real-time.

Create shared workspaces and share reports with your team members in real-time.

In summary, Power BI Desktop is used to create and build reports. Whereas, the Power BI Service version is used to share and collaborate on reports online 👉

What is DAX and an example of it

DAX stands for Data Analysis Expression 👩‍🏫

Just like Microsoft Excel, Power BI has its formula language which we call DAX. Using this formula language, you can create custom calculations and queries in Power BI.

DAX allows you to manipulate data to achieve calculated measures, columns, and tables. It provides you with ways to aggregate and filter data. This makes Power BI the best tool for business intelligence solutions and advanced data modeling 👩‍🎓

You can explain it to your interviewer by giving a quick example like here.

Let’s say you have imported a data table called Sales with the following two columns:

• Month Names
• Monthly Sales

And you want to create a measure to calculate the total sales (for all the months).

To do so:

Step 1) In Power BI, go to Table View > Table Tools > Calculations > New Measure.

Step 2) Enter the following DAX formula in the formula bar:

The Total Sales measure will now appear in the Fields list. You can use this measure in your reports and dashboards and everywhere around.

What are the key components of Power BI

In the simplest form, Power BI is a tool that we use to import and connect data from different sources, visualize and analyze it, and then share these visuals with others through interactive reports.

All of this in Power BI is achieved through a handful of the following basic blocks that make it up.

• Connection to datasets

Power BI will be connecting data from multiple sources starting (can be files on your PC like Excel or online cloud services etc.) 💁‍♂️

These imported datasets form the foundation for report creation and data visualization. Power BI also offers the Power Query tool for the transformation of data. Helps you clean and shape data like never before.

• Visualization tools

Power BI offers a variety of tools for the graphical picturization of data. You can make charts, graphs, matrices, and a variety of other custom visuals out of your data.

Using these advanced visuals, the dark and dry data turns into data trends and insights that speak volumes.

• Tiles

Tiles are the individual visuals that you create in Power BI and handpick them to pin on a dashboard. Tiles represent specific insights or data points from the reports 🎫

• Dashboards

After you’ve created your visual tiles, pin them together on a single page to offer a summarized view of the important metrics and KPIs of your data. We call this page the Power BI Dashboard.

This is how a dashboard in Power BI looks like.

• Reports

A report in Power BI is the multi-page visualization of your dataset. It contains different types of charts, tables, and in short, visuals that you’ve created out of your data 🧾

Power BI is a blend of these components that work together to offer cohesive ground for data analysis and visualization.

What is Power Query in Power BI

Now that’s a cool question 😎

To crack this, you must’ve had hands-on experience using this tool of Power BI. But even if you haven’t had the chance to use them, here’s the cheat sheet to impress your interviewer by answering this question like a pro.

Power Query is the ETL tool of Power BI (Data extraction, transformation, and loading) 🧠

When you’re connecting data to Power BI from multiple sources, you might have to clean, reshape, and transform the data before you model it.

This is where you use Power Query.

• You can connect Power Query to many data sources including Excel, databases, cloud databases, text files, and more.
• Once loaded, you can clean, filter, pivot, unpivot, merge, split, and do what’s not with your data using the Power Query editor.
• Power Query editor allows you to shape and structure your data by removing or adding columns, adding new calculated columns, and much more.
• Power Query uses a unique “M” language that allows users to write custom transformations if need be.

How to filter data in Power BI

Any smart interviewer who’s asked you about Power Query and DAX won’t stop there.

He’ll surely question you about filtering data in Power BI🚀

Not a problem! Here’s how you explain the multi-level filtering in Power BI in a snap!

Power BI Filters help you filter the data that you want to see/focus on only.

There are three categories of filters in Power BI:

• Visual Filters
• Page Filters
• Report Filters

Visual-level filters apply to a selected visual only.

Page-level filters apply to all the visuals within a page.

Report-level filters apply to all the visuals of all the pages within a report.

You can exercise all these filters by launching the Filters pane on the right of your Power BI window and they are available for both, Power Bi Desktop and Power BI Service.

What is Power BI Q&A

The Power BI Q&A is a Genie 🎃

It allows you to create visuals in Power BI out of your data using natural language commands.

The Q&A visual of Power BI is engineered to understand natural language commands and create data visuals. Best to be used when you want to create something out of your data or when you want to put it in different ways to see if you get what you’re looking for instantly.

The Power BI Q&A is an advanced expression of the Power BI’s automated machine learning capabilities.

The Q&A visual allows users to ask questions and answer them in an interactive manner 🦹‍♀️

Here’s what the Power BI Q&A visual looks like where you can ask questions about your data.

You add the Q&A visual to your Power BI dashboard. You will see some questions suggested by Power BI in advance. Clicking on any of these questions will yield the answer to that question in the form of a data visual.

And if you have any questions other than these, you can type it in and Power BI will create a visual out of it for you.

Conclusion

Microsoft Power BI skills are a valuable asset for every data professional (beginners to pros)

Especially when you’re hunting down jobs in this cut-throat competitive world and need to showcase the skills you’ve got, these skills are crucial 💪

In the guide above, we have discussed the 7 most asked Power BI interview questions. By answering these correctly, you can successfully demonstrate your technical and Power BI proficiency.

To keep learning newer Power BI skills and to stay on top of your Power BI learning journey, stay connected with us. And don’t forget to check out the following Power BI tutorials by Spreadsheeto to ace playing around with Power BI.

• Power BI Best Practices: 10 Guidelines to Always Follow
• Power BI Dashboard vs. Report: The Pros and Cons
• Power BI vs Excel: When to Use Excel and When Power BI Is Better