Book Reviews - Power Pivot and Power BI

Microsoft PowerPivot is a free add-on to Excel from Microsoft that allows users to produce new kinds of reports and analyses that were simply impossible before, and this book is the first to tackle DAX formulas, the core capability of PowerPivot, from the perspective of the Excel audience. Written by the world’s foremost PowerPivot blogger and practitioner, the book’s concepts and approach are introduced in a simple, step-by-step manner tailored to the learning style of Excel users everywhere. The techniques presented allow users to produce, in hours or even minutes, results that formerly would have taken entire teams weeks or months to produce. It includes lessons on the difference between calculated columns and measures; how formulas can be reused across reports of completely different shapes; how to merge disjointed sets of data into unified reports; how to make certain columns in a pivot behave as if the pivot were filtered while other columns do not; and how to create time-intelligent calculations in pivot tables such as “Year over Year” and “Moving Averages” whether they use a standard, fiscal, or a complete custom calendar. The “pattern-like” techniques and best practices contained in this book have been developed and refined over two years of onsite training with Excel users around the world, and the key lessons from those seminars costing thousands of dollars per day are now available to within the pages of this easy-to-follow guide. This updated second edition covers new features introduced with Office 2015.
Introduction - Our Two Goals for this Book
1 - A Revolution Built On YOU
2 - Power Pivot and the Power BI Family: Making Sense of the Various Versions
3 - Learning Power Pivot “The Excel Way”
4 - Loading Data Into Power Pivot
5 - Intro to Calculated Columns
6 - Introduction to DAX Measures
7 - The “Golden Rules” of DAX Measures
8 - CALCULATE() – Your New Favorite Function
9 - ALL() – The “Remove a Filter” Function
10 - Thinking in Multiple Tables
11 - “Intermission” – Taking Stock of Your New Powers
12 - Disconnected Tables
13 - Introducing the FILTER() Function, and Disconnected Tables Continued
14 - Introduction to Time Intelligence
15 - IF(), SWITCH(), BLANK(), and Other Conditional Fun
16 - SUMX() and Other X (“Iterator”) Functions
17 - Multiple Data Tables
18 - Multiple Data Tables – Differing Granularity
19 - Performance: Keep Things Running Fast
20 - Power Query to the Rescue
21 - Power BI Desktop
22 - “Complicated” Relationships
23 - Row and Filter Context Demystified
24 - CALCULATE and FILTER – More Nuances
25 - Time Intelligence with Custom Calendars: Greatest Formula in the World
26 - Advanced Calculated Columns
27 - New DAX Functions… and Variables!
28 - “YouTube for Data” – The Importance of a Server
PS: Can We Ask You for a Special Favor?
A1 - Power Pivot and SSAS Tabular: Two Tools for the Price of One (again!)
A2 - Cube Formulas – the End of GetPivotData()
A3 - Some Common Error Messages
A4 - People: The Most Powerful Feature of Power Pivot

Book Reviews - Power Pivot and Power BI