What Is Power BI?

Power BI is a business analytics service provided by Microsoft. It provides

interactive visualizations with self-service BI capabilities. End users can create reports
and dashboards by themselves. This means they don’t have to depend on information
technology staff or database administrators.

Power BI also gives you cloud-based BI services, known as “Power BI Services”, along
with a desktop based interface called “Power BI desktop”. It offers data
warehouse capabilities including data preparation, data discovery and interactive
dashboards. In March 2016, Microsoft released an additional service called Power BI
Embedded on its Azure cloud platform. Using it, one can deliver reports, analyze data
easily and perform various ETL operations with Power BI.

Power BI gateways let you connect SQL Server databases, Analytical Services, and
many other data sources to your dashboards. Reporting portals embed Power BI reports
and dashboards to give you a unified experience.

All this while I have used the terms ‘reports’ and ‘dashboards’ quite a few times. Let us
try to understand these terms one by one in the next section of this Power BI dashboard
blog.

Power BI Interview Questions

So, here are the Top 50 Power BI Interview Questions and Answers which are most
likely to be asked by the interviewer. For your ease of access, I have categorized the
Power BI interview questions namely:

1. General Power BI Questions

2. DAX
3. Power Pivot
4. Power Query
5. Power Map
6. Additional Questions

Power BI Interview Questions – General Questions

1). What are the parts of Microsoft self-service business intelligence solution?

Ans: Microsoft has two parts for Self-Service BI

Parts of Self-Service BI

It allows users to create an interactive report by importing data from different source
Excel BI Toolkit
to report requirement.

It is the online solution that enables you to share the interactive reports and queries
Power BI
the Excel BI Toolkit.

2). What is self-service business intelligence?

Ans: Self-Service Business Intelligence (SSBI)

 SSBI is an approach to data analytics that enables business users to filter,

segment, and, analyze their data, without the in-depth technical knowledge in
statistical analysis, business intelligence (BI).
 SSBI has made it easier for end users to access their data and create various
visuals to get better business insights.
 Anybody who has a basic understanding of the data can create reports to
build intuitive and shareable dashboards.

3). What is Power BI?

Ans: Power BI is a cloud-based data sharing environment. Once you have developed
reports using Power Query, Power Pivot and Power View, you can share your insights
with your colleagues. This is where Power BI enters the equation. Power BI, which
technically is an aspect of SharePoint online, lets you load Excel workbooks into the cloud
and share them with a chosen group of co-workers. Not only that, but your colleagues
can interact with your reports to apply filters and slicers to highlight data. They are
completed by Power BI, a simple way of sharing your analysis and insights from the
Microsoft cloud.

Power BI features allow you to:

 Share presentations and queries with your colleagues.

 Update your Excel file from data sources that can be on-site or in the cloud.
 Display the output on multiple devices. This includes PCs, tablets, and HTML 5-
enabled mobile devices that use the Power BI app.
 Query your data using natural language processing (or Q&A, as it is known).

4). What is Power BI Desktop?

Ans: Power BI Desktop is a free desktop application that can be installed right on your
own computer. Power BI Desktop works cohesively with the Power BI service by providing
advanced data exploration, shaping, modeling, and creating report with highly interactive
visualizations. You can save your work to a file or publish your data and reports right to
your Power BI site to share with others.

5). What data sources can Power BI connect to?

Ans: The list of data sources for Power BI is extensive, but it can be grouped into the
following:

 Files: Data can be imported from Excel (.xlsx, xlxm), Power BI Desktop files (.pbix)
and Comma Separated Value (.csv).
 Content Packs: It is a collection of related documents or files that are stored as a
group. In Power BI, there are two types of content packs, firstly those from services
providers like Google Analytics, Marketo or Salesforce and secondly those created
and shared by other users in your organization.
 Connectors to databases and other datasets such as Azure SQL, Databaseand
SQL, Server Analysis Services tabular data, etc.

6). What are Building Blocks in Power BI?

Ans: The following are the Building Blocks (or) key components of Power BI:

1. Visualizations: Visualization is a visual representation of data.

Example: Pie Chart, Line Graph, Side by Side Bar Charts, Graphical Presentation
of the source data on top of Geographical Map, Tree Map, etc.

2. Datasets: Dataset is a collection of data that Power BI uses to create its

visualizations.
Example: Excel sheets, Oracle or SQL server tables.

3. Reports: Report is a collection of visualizations that appear together on one or

more pages.
Example: Sales by Country, State, City Report, Logistic Performance report, Profit
by Products report etc.

4. Dashboards: Dashboard is single layer presentation of multiple visualizations, i.e

we can integrate one or more visualizations into one page layer.
Example: Sales dashboard can have pie charts, geographical maps and bar
charts.

5. Tiles: Tile is a single visualization in a report or on a dashboard.

Example: Pie Chart in Dashboard or Report.

7). What are the different types of filters in Power BI Reports?

Ans: Power BI provides variety of option to filter report, data
and visualization. The following are the list of Filter types.

 Visual-level Filters: These filters work on only an individual visualization,

reducing the amount of data that the visualization can see. Moreover, visual-level
filters can filter both data and calculations.
 Page-level Filters: These filters work at the report-page level. Different pages in
the same report can have different page-level filters.
 Report-level Filters: There filters work on the entire report, filtering all pages and
visualizations included in the report.

We know that Power BI visual have interactions feature, which makes filtering a report a
breeze. Visual interactions are useful, but they come with some limitations:

 The filter is not saved as part of the report. Whenever you open a report, you can
begin to play with visual filters but there is no way to store the filter in the saved
report.
 The filter is always visible. Sometimes you want a filter for the entire report, but
you do not want any visual indication of the filter being applied.

8). What are content packs in Power BI?

Ans: Content packs for services are pre-built solutions for popular services as part of the
Power BI experience. A subscriber to a supported service, can quickly connect to their
account from Power BI to see their data through live dashboards and interactive reports
that have been pre-built for them. Microsoft has released content packs for popular
services such as Salesforce.com, Marketo, Adobe Analytics, Azure Mobile Engagement,
CircuitID, comScore Digital Analytix, Quickbooks Online, SQL Sentry and tyGraph.

Organizational content packs provide users, BI professionals, and system integrator the
tools to build their own content packs to share purpose-built dashboards, reports, and
datasets within their organization.
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Power BI Interview Questions – DAX

9). What is DAX?

Ans: To do basic calculation and data analysis on data in power pivot, we use Data
Analysis Expression (DAX). It is formula language used to compute calculated column
and calculated field.

 DAX works on column values.

 DAX can not modify or insert data.
 We can create calculated column and measures with DAX but we can not
calculate rows using DAX.

Sample DAX formula syntax:

For the measure named Total Sales, calculate (=) the SUM of values in the [SalesAmount]
column in the Sales table.
A- Measure Name
B- = – indicate beginning of formula
C- DAX Function
D- Parenthesis for Sum Function
E- Referenced Table
F- Referenced column name

10). What are the most common DAX Functions used?

Ans: Below are some of the most commonly used DAX function:

 SUM, MIN, MAX, AVG, COUNTROWS, DISTINCTCOUNT

 IF, AND, OR, SWITCH
 ISBLANK, ISFILTERED, ISCROSSFILTERED
 VALUES, ALL, FILTER, CALCULATE,
 UNION, INTERSECT, EXCEPT, NATURALINNERJOIN,
NATURALLEFTEROUTERJOIN,
SUMMARIZECOLUMNS, ISEMPTY,
 VAR (Variables)
 GEOMEAN, MEDIAN, DATEDIFF

11). How is the FILTER function used?

Ans: The FILTER function returns a table with a filter condition applied for each of its
source table rows. The FILTER function is rarely used in isolation, it’s generally used as
a parameter to other functions such as CALCULATE.

 FILTER is an iterator and thus can negatively impact performance over large
source tables.
 Complex filtering logic can be applied such as referencing a measure in a filter
expression.
o FILTER(MyTable,[SalesMetric] > 500)

12). What is special or unique about the CALCULATE and CALCULATETABLE

functions?

Ans: These are the only functions that allow you modify filter context of measures or
tables.

 Add to existing filter context of queries.

 Override filter context from queries.
 Remove existing filter context from queries.

Limitations:

 Filter parameters can only operate on a single column at a time.

 Filter parameters cannot reference a metric.

13). What is the common table function for grouping data?

Ans: SUMMARIZE()` Y

 Main groupby function in SSAS.

 Recommended practice is to specify table and group by columns but not
metrics.You can use ADDCOLUMNS function.

SUMMARIZECOLUMNS

 New group by function for SSAS and Power BI Desktop; more efficient.
 Specify group by columns, table, and expressions.
14). What are some benefits of using Variables in DAX ?

Ans: Below are some of the benefits:

 By declaring and evaluating a variable, the variable can be reused multiple times
in a DAX expression, thus avoiding additional queries of the source database.
 Variables can make DAX expressions more intuitive/logical to interpret.
 Variables are only scoped to their measure or query, they cannot be shared among
measures, queries or be defined at the model level.

15). How would you create trailing X month metrics via DAX against a non-standard
calendar?

Ans: The solution will involve:

1. CALCULATE function to control (take over) filter context of measures.

2. ALL to remove existing filters on the date dimension.
3. FILTER to identify which rows of the date dimension to use.

Alternatively, CONTAINS may be used:

 CALCULATE(FILTER(ALL(‘DATE’),…….))

16). What are the different Excel BI add-in?

Ans: Below are the most important BI add-in to Excel:

 Power Query: It helps in finding, editing and loading external data.

 Power Pivot: Its mainly used for data modeling and analysis.

 Power View: It is used to design visual and interactively reports.

 Power Map: It helps to display insights on 3D Map.
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Power BI Interview Questions – Power Pivot
17). What is Power Pivot?

Ans: Power Pivot is an add-in for Microsoft Excel 2010 that enables you to import millions
of rows of data from multiple data sources into a single Excel workbook. It lets you create
relationships between heterogeneous data, create calculated columns and measures
using formulas, build PivotTables and PivotCharts. You can then further analyze the data
so that you can make timely business decisions without requiring IT assistance.

18). What is Power Pivot Data Model?

Ans: It is a model that is made up of data types, tables, columns, and table relations.
These data tables are typically constructed for holding data for a business entity.

19). What is xVelocity in-memory analytics engine used in Power Pivot?

Ans: The main engine behind power pivot is the xVelocity in-memory analytics engine. It
can handle large amount of data because it stores data in columnar databases, and in
memory analytics which results in faster processing of data as it loads all data to RAM
memory.

21). What are some of differences in data modeling between Power BI

Desktop and Power Pivot for Excel?
Ans: Here are some of the differences:

 Power BI Desktop supports bi-directional cross filtering relationships, security,

calculated tables, and Direct Query options.
 Power Pivot for Excel has single direction (one to many) relationships, calculated
columns only, and supports import mode only. Security roles cannot be defined in
Power Pivot for Excel.

22). Can we have more than one active relationship between two tables in data
model of power pivot?

Ans: No, we cannot have more than one active relationship between two tables.
However, can have more than one relationship between two tables but there will be only
one active relationship and many inactive relationship. The dotted lines are inactive and
continuous line are active.

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Power BI Interview Questions – Power Query

23). What is Power Query?

Ans: Power query is a ETL Tool used to shape, clean and transform data using intuitive
interfaces without having to use coding. It helps the user to:

 Import Data from wide range of sources from files, databases, big data, social
media data, etc.
 Join and append data from multiple data sources.
o Shape data as per requirement by removing and adding data.

24). What are the data destinations for Power Queries?

Ans: There are two destinations for output we get from power query:

1. Load to a table in a worksheet.

2. Load to the Excel Data Model.
25). What is query folding in Power Query?

Ans: Query folding is when steps defined in Power Query/Query Editor are translated
into SQL and executed by the source database rather than the client machine. It’s
important for processing performance and scalability, given limited resources on the client
machine.

26). What are some common Power Query/Editor Transforms?

Ans: Changing Data Types, Filtering Rows, Choosing/Removing Columns, Grouping,

Splitting a column into multiple columns, Adding new Columns ,etc.

27). Can SQL and Power Query/Query Editor be used together?

Ans: Yes, a SQL statement can be defined as the source of a Power Query/M function
for additional processing/logic. This would be a good practice to ensure that an efficient
database query is passed to the source and avoid unnecessary processing and
complexity
by the client machine and M function.

28). What are query parameters and Power BI templates?

Ans:Query parameters can be used to provide users of a local Power BI Desktop report
with a prompt, to specify the values they’re interested in.

 The parameter selection can then be used by the query and calculations.
 PBIX files can be exported as Templates (PBIT files).
 Templates contain everything in the PBIX except the data itself.

Parameters and templates can make it possible to share/email smaller template files and
limit the amount of data loaded into the local PBIX files, improving processing time and
experience .

29). Which language is used in Power Query?

Ans: A new programming language is used in power query called M-Code. It is easy to
use and similar to other languages. M-code is case sensitive language.

30). Why do we need Power Query when Power Pivot can import data from mostly
used sources?

Ans: Power Query is a self-service ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) tool which runs as an
Excel add-in. It allows users to pull data from various sources, manipulate said data into
a form that suits their needs and load it into Excel. It is most optimum to use Power Query
over Power Pivot as it lets you not only load the data but also manipulate it as per the
users needs while loading.
Power BI Interview Questions – Power Map

31). What is Power Map?

Ans: Power Map is an Excel add-in that provides you with a powerful set of tools to help
you visualize and gain insight into large sets of data that have a geo-coded component.
It can help you produce 3D visualizations by plotting upto a million data points in the form
of column, heat, and bubble maps on top of a Bing map. If the data is time stamped, it
can also produce interactive views that display, how the data changes over space and
time.

32). What are the primary requirement for a table to be used in Power Map?

Ans: For a data to be consumed in power map there should be location data like:

 Latitude/Longitude pair
 Street, City, Country/Region, Zip Code/Postal Code, and State/Province, which
can be geolocated by Bing

The primary requirement for the table is that it contains unique rows. It must also contain
location data, which can be in the form of a Latitude/Longitude pair, although this is not a
requirement. You can use address fields instead, such as Street, City, Country/Region,
Zip Code/Postal Code, and State/Province, which can be geolocated by Bing.
33). What are the data sources for Power Map?

Ans: The data can either be present in Excel or could be present externally. To prepare
your data, make sure all of the data is in Excel table format, where each row represents
a unique record. Your column headings or row headings should contain text instead of
actual data, so that Power Map will interpret it correctly when it plots the geographic
coordinates. Using meaningful labels also makes value and category fields available to
you when you design your tour in the Power Map Tour Editor pane.

To use a table structure which more accurately represents time and geography inside
Power Map, include all of the data in the table rows and use descriptive text labels in the
column headings, like this:

In case you wish to load your data from an external source:

1. In Excel, click Data > the connection you want in the Get External Data group.
2. Follow the steps in the wizard that starts.
3. On the last step of the wizard, make sure Add this data to the Data Model is
checked.

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Power BI Interview Questions – Additional Questions

34). What is Power View?

Ans: Power View is a data visualization technology that lets you create interactive charts,
graphs, maps, and other visuals which bring your data to life. Power View is available in
Excel, SharePoint, SQL Server, and Power BI.

The following pages provide details about different visualizations available in Power View:
 Charts
 Line charts
 Pie charts
 Maps
 Tiles
 Cards
 Images
 Tables
 Power View
 Multiples Visualizations
 Bubble and scatter charts
 Key performance indicators (KPIs)

35). What is Power BI Designer?

Ans: It is a stand alone application where we can make Power BI reports and then upload
it to Powerbi.com, it does not require Excel. Actually, it is a combination of Power Query,
Power Pivot, and Power View.

36). Can we refresh our Power BI reports once uploaded to cloud (Share point or
Powebi.com)?

Ans: Yes we can refresh our reports through Data Management gateway(for sharepoint),
and Power BI Personal gateway(for Powerbi.com)

37). What are the different types of refreshing data for our published reports?

Ans: There are four main types of refresh in Power BI. Package refresh, model or data
refresh, tile refresh and visual container refresh.
 Package refresh

This synchronizes your Power BI Desktop, or Excel, file between the Power BI service
and OneDrive, or SharePoint Online. However, this does not pull data from the original
data source. The dataset in Power BI will only be updated with what is in the file within
OneDrive, or SharePoint Online.
 Model/data refresh

It referrs to refreshing the dataset, within the Power BI service, with data from the original
data source. This is done by either using scheduled refresh, or refresh now. This requires
a gateway for on-premises data sources.
 Tile refresh

Tile refresh updates the cache for tile visuals, on the dashboard, once data changes. This
happens about every fifteen minutes. You can also force a tile refresh by selecting
the ellipsis (…) in the upper right of a dashboard and selecting Refresh dashboard
tiles.
 Visual container refresh

Refreshing the visual container updates the cached report visuals, within a report, once
the data changes.

To know more about data refresh and understand how to implement data refresh, you
can check the following link.

38). Is Power BI available on-premises?

Ans: No, Power BI is not available as a private, internal cloud service. However, with
Power BI and Power BI Desktop, you can securely connect to your own on-premises data
sources. With the On-premises Data Gateway, you can connect live to your on-premises
SQL Server Analysis Services, and other data sources. You can also scheduled refresh
with a centralized gateway. If a gateway is not available, you can refresh data from on-
premises data sources using the Power BI Gateway – Personal.

39). What is data management gateway and Power BI personal gateway?

Ans: Gateway acts a bridge between on-premises data sources and Azure cloud
services.
Personal Gateway:

 Import Only, Power BI Service Only, No central monitoring/managing.

 Can only be used by one person (personal); can’t allow others to use this
gateway.

On-Premises Gateway:

 Import and Direct Query supported.

 Multiple users of the gateway for developing content.
 Central monitoring and control.

40). What is Power BI Q&A?

Ans: Power BI Q&A is a natural language tool which helps in querying your data and get
the results you need from it. You do this by typing into a dialog box on your Dashboard,
which the engine instantaneously generates an answer similar to Power View. Q&A
interprets your questions and shows you a restated query of what it is looking from your
data. Q&A was developed by Server and Tools, Microsoft Research and the Bing teams
to give you a complete feeling of truly exploring your data.

41). What are some ways that Excel experience can be leveraged with Power BI?

Ans: Below are some of the ways through which we can leverage Power BI:

 The Power BI Publisher for Excel:

o Can be used to pin Excel items (charts, ranges, pivot tables) to Power BI
Service.
o Can be used to connect to datasets and reports stored in Power BI Service.
 Excel workbooks can be uploaded to Power BI and viewed in the browser like
Excel Services.
 Excel reports in the Power BI service can be shared via Content Packs like other
reports.
 Excel workbooks (model and tables) can be exported to service for PBI report
creation.
 Excel workbook Power Pivot models can be imported to Power BI Desktop models.

42). What is a calculated column in Power BI and why would you use them?

Ans: Calculated Columns are DAX expressions that are computed during the model’s
processing/refresh process for each row of the given column and can be used like any
other column in the model. Calculated columns are not compressed and thus consume
more memory and result in reduced query performance. They can also reduce
processing/refresh performance if applied on large fact tables and can make a model
more difficult to maintain/support given
that the calculated column is not present in the source system.

43). How is data security implemented in Power BI ?

Ans: Power BI can apply Row Level Security roles to models.

 A DAX expression is applied on a table filtering its rows at query time.

 Dynamic security involves the use of USERNAME functions in security role
definitions.
 Typically a table is created in the model that relates users to specific dimensions
and a role.

44). What are many-to-many relationships and how can they be addressed in Power
BI ?

Ans: Many to Many relationships involve a bridge or junction table reflecting the
combinations of two dimensions (e.g. doctors and patients). Either all possible
combinations or those combinations that have occurred.

 Bi-Directional Crossfiltering relationships can be used in PBIX.

 CROSSFILTER function can be used in Power Pivot for Excel.
 DAX can be used per metric to check and optionally modify the filter context.
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45). Why might you have a table in the model without any relationships to other
tables?

Ans: There are mainly 2 reasons why we would have tables without relations in our
model:

 A disconnected table might be used to present the user with parameter values to
be exposed and selected in slicers (e.g. growth assumption.)
o DAX metrics could retrieve this selection and use it with other
calculations/metrics.
 A disconnected table may also be used as a placeholder for metrics in the user
interface.
o It may not contain any rows of data and its columns could be hidden but all
metrics are visible.

46). What is the Power BI Publisher for Excel?

Ans: You can use Power BI publisher for Excel to pin ranges, pivot tables and charts to
Power BI.

 The user can manage the tiles – refresh them, remove them, in Excel.
 Pinned items must be removed from the dashboard in the service (removing in
Excel only deletes the connection).
 The Power BI Publisher for Excel can also be used to connect from Excel to
datasets that are hosted in the Power BI Service.
 An Excel pivot table is generated with a connection (ODC file) to the data in Azure.

The Publisher installs all necessary drivers on local machine to establish connectivity .

47). What are the differences between a Power BI Dataset, a Report, and a
Dashboard?

Ans: Dataset: The source used to create reports and visuals/tiles.

 A data model (local to PBIX or XLSX) or model in an Analysis Services Server

 Data could be inside of model (imported) or a Direct Query connection to a source.

Report: An individual Power BI Desktop file (PBIX) containing one or more report pages.

 Built for deep, interactive analysis experience for a given dataset (filters,
formatting).
 Each Report is connected to atleast one dataset
 Each page containing one or more visuals or tiles.

Dashboard: a collection of visuals or tiles from different reports and, optionally, a pinned.

 Built to aggregate primary visuals and metrics from multiple datasets.

48) What are the three Edit Interactions options of a visual tile in Power BI
Desktop?

Ans: The 3 edit interaction options are Filter, Highlight, and None.

Filter: It completely filter a visual/tile based on the filter selection of another visual/tile.
Highlight: It highlight only the related elements on the visual/tile, gray out the non-related
items.

None: It ignore the filter selection from another tile/visual.

49). What are some of the differences in report authoring capabilities between
using a live or direct query connection such as to an Analysis Services model,
relative to working with a data model local to the Power BI Desktop file?

Ans: With a data model local to the PBIX file (or Power Pivot workbook), the author has
full control over the queries, the modeling/relationships, the metadata and the metrics.

With a live connection to an Analysis Services database (cube) the user cannot create
new metrics, import new data, change the formatting of the metrics, etc – the user can
only use the visualization, analytics, and formatting available on the report canvas.

With a direct query model in Power BI to SQL Server, for example, the author has access
to the same features (and limitations) available to SSAS Direct Query mode.

 Only one data source (one database on one server) may be used, certain DAX
functions are not optimized, and the user cannot use Query Editor functions that
cannot be translated into SQL statements.

50). How does SSRS integrate with Power BI?

Ans: Below are some of the way through which SSRS can be integrated with Power BI:

 Certain SSRS Report items such as charts can be pinned to Power BI dashboards.
 Clicking the tile in Power BI dashboards will bring the user to the SSRS report.
 A subscription is created to keep the dashboard tile refreshed.
 Power BI reports will soon be able to be published to SSRS portal

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