Power BI Interview Questions

 

Power BI Basic Interview Questions – General Questions

1. Can you have more than one functional relationship between two tables in a Power Pivot data model?

In a Power Pivot data model, you can indeed have more than one functional relationship between two tables. Power Pivot allows you to create multiple relationships between tables based on different columns, enabling you to build complex data models that represent various business scenarios.

By default, when you create relationships between tables in Power Pivot, it assumes a single active relationship between the tables. However, you can create additional relationships as needed and then switch between them to determine which relationship should be used for calculations and data analysis.

2. Why should you apply general formatting to Power BI data?

Because of the following reasons:

1. Data Consistency: By applying consistent formatting throughout your Power BI reports and dashboards, you ensure that the visualizations and data representation maintain a uniform appearance. Consistency helps users understand and interpret the data more easily, as they don’t have to adapt to different formatting styles in different parts of the report.
2. Improved Readability: Proper formatting enhances the readability of data. Using appropriate font sizes, colors, and styles for text and numbers makes the information more accessible and reduces the chances of misinterpretation.
3. Emphasizing Key Information: Formatting can be used strategically to highlight essential data points, trends, or insights. For example, you can use bold or color to draw attention to critical KPIs or performance metrics.
4. Professional Look and Feel: Applying general formatting makes your reports and dashboards look more professional and polished. This is especially important if you are sharing the reports with clients, stakeholders, or colleagues.
5. Accessibility: Proper formatting also ensures that your Power BI reports are accessible to a broader audience, including people with visual impairments or different viewing preferences. Following accessibility guidelines can be essential for compliance requirements in some organizations.

3. Define bi-directional cross filtering

Bi-directional cross filtering is a feature in Power BI and other data modeling tools that allows filtering to flow in both directions between related tables in a data model. In traditional one-directional filtering, data from one table can filter data in another table, but the reverse is not true. However, with bi-directional cross filtering, data can flow in both directions, enabling more flexible and complex data relationships.

4.What are the categories of data types? 

In Power BI, data types are categorized into the following main categories:

Text: Data types that store textual information, such as names, addresses, descriptions, etc.

Examples: Text, Whole Number (Int64), Decimal Number (Double), Currency, Percentage, etc.

Date/Time: Data types that represent dates, times, or both.

Examples: Date, Time, Date/Time, Duration, etc.

Boolean: Data types that store binary values (True/False).

Examples: True/False, Yes/No, On/Off, etc.

Binary: Data types for storing binary data, typically used for images, files, or other non-textual information.

Examples: Image URL, File, etc.

Other: Data types that do not fit into the above categories.

Examples: Blank, Any, Variant, etc.

5. What do you mean by grouping?

In the context of data analysis and visualization, grouping refers to the process of combining data into logical categories based on specific criteria. By grouping data, you can organize and summarize large datasets, making it easier to understand and analyze the information.

Grouping is particularly helpful when dealing with large datasets or when you want to analyze data at a higher level of abstraction. It allows you to create more concise and focused visualizations, such as charts, tables, or pivot tables, based on the grouped data. This way, you can quickly identify trends, patterns, and comparisons within the data, making it easier to communicate insights and support decision-making.

6.How is the Schedule Refresh feature designed to work?

The Schedule Refresh feature in Power BI is designed to automatically update data in a published report or dataset on a regular basis. When you create a report or dataset in Power BI and publish it to the Power BI service, you may want the data to stay up-to-date without having to manually refresh it each time.

7.How can you depict a story in Power BI?

In Power BI, you can depict a story or narrative by using the “Bookmarks” and “Buttons” features to create interactive and sequential presentations of your data visualizations. This allows you to guide the audience through a series of insights or data points in a storytelling manner. 

8.What is self-service business intelligence?

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.

9.How would you define Power BI as an effective solution?

 PowerBI is a cloud based Business Intelligence tool to analyze and visualize raw data that can be fetched from a wide range of data sources. It consolidates business analytics with data visualization and helps any organization to make business decisions based on data.It is easy to work with and the data is processed in such a way that it is easy to understand and reliable. It can be accessed from different platforms and can be shared across on-cloud participants. Thus it is an effective solution.

10.What are Building Blocks in Power BI?

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.