From the course: Power BI Essential Training

What you need for this course - Power BI Tutorial

From the course: Power BI Essential Training

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What you need for this course

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- [Instructor] In this course, we're going to start out with a Power BI service and then move to Power BI Desktop. This is what you will need if you want to work along with me, which I highly recommend. Let's talk first about hardware. Microsoft recommends two gigabytes of available RAM in order to run Power BI Desktop and four gigabytes or more is recommended. I would tell you that even more than this is better. If I'm running Power BI and trying to analyze even relatively simple datasets with only two gigabytes of available RAM, it's an underwhelming experience. I'm currently running a machine with 32 gigabytes of RAM, primarily because of Power BI. Your CPU, one gigahertz or faster with a 64 bit processor, and again, the faster the better. Although with a three gigahertz processor, I am rarely waiting while I'm using Power BI. Display settings are something that most of us adjust once with a new PC and then we ignore it. But with Power BI, you'll want to be attentive because if you set your display incorrectly, Power BI will still show a full window, it's just that some of it will be off the screen. So you'll need to have a display of 1440 by 900, or if you're in 16 by nine orientation, 1600 by 900. In a similar vein, you'll want to make sure that your text display is set for a hundred percent or less. It's really common now for folks to set their display high and then set the text at a higher percentage, 125 or 150. But if you do that, you'll have problems with Power BI. The bottom line, be attentive to your display with Power BI, even if you haven't had to be with any other software you've installed. Regarding software, Power BI is meant to run on Windows 8.1 or Windows Server 2012 R2 or later. Most of us will probably run it on Windows 10 or 11. The change here is that Windows 7 is no longer supported for Power BI use. You'll also need .NET 4.6.2 or later and the latest version of the browser that you're using, perhaps Internet Explorer 11, or my favorite, Microsoft Edge. There are three different ways Power BI is licensed. Power BI itself is the free version, and that version will allow you to do about 75% of what I'll show you in the course. To work along with all the demos, you'll want Power BI Pro, which has a monthly license associated with it. However, don't despair yet. It might already be included with the version of Office 365 that you're using. And if you don't have Power BI Pro, you can get a time-limited trial of Power BI Pro for free at powerbi.com, which I'm going to show you in a couple of movies from now. - In addition to Power BI Pro or perhaps Power BI Premium, we'll also be using Power BI Desktop, which is a free download that allows you to model and transform data. And additionally, there are some apps for Power BI for mobile devices, and if you have a mobile device and want to work along, you'll probably download and install an app there as well. How about your data skills? I assume that you know something about how to work with data because Power BI is all about visualizing data so you can share those visualizations with others. For example, if you are working in Excel and you know how to enter, edit and format text and numbers, you know how to use the table commands, how to find and replace and sort and filter data, and how to insert and format charts, you will do well here in Power BI because those are exactly the kind of skills you'll want to bring to this party. If you're not an experienced spreadsheet user and you would like a refresher on any of this, I would heartily recommend Oz du Soleil's course, Excel: Managing and Analyzing Data, which you'll find in the LinkedIn Learning Library. So if you'd like to buff up, feel free to go visit Oz, then come back here to me and we'll continue with Power BI. One more thought. This course will teach you how to create reports and dashboards in Microsoft Power BI. If you work in an organization where you are already receiving reports and dashboards that you need to be able to use immediately, not to create new ones, but to use the ones that already exist, then you might consider starting your Power BI training with Getting Started with Power BI, a consumer's course for end users, and you'll find this in the LinkedIn Learning library.

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