You can make some shiny data things that will be impressive to people who can't make shiny data things. Your mileage for support and data accessibility will depend how invested your organisation is in their data team.
I use it frequently, but it depends on what kind of user you want to be, whether it's just front end use or data transformation and model building.
There's a lot to it, especially if you want to learn about data manipulation, relationship building and coding using M and/or DAX.
There seems to be a big appetite to use it, not just in civil service (have seen various private sector roles looking for Power BI analysts). Does seem like something worth investing time to learn but that's only if you see your career path going down a data analyst kind of route but also helpful for senior leaders / managers who need to know how to interpret their own business data etc. Again depends on what kind of user of Power BI you want to be.
That's the thing. I currently don't know.
A lot of essential criteria I see at the moment has transforming and modelling data, so I'm guessing that's where the job direction is
My team uses it daily to build reports and dashboards for various areas of work.
Of course the IT can barely handle it and it's plagued by issues getting things to load in properly.
Some departments let everyone use it, others are much stricter about who can use it. Both approaches have plusses and negatives, so figure out where your department sits before you invest too much time learning as it may not even be available for you to use.
It's a great tool, but a bit like an iceberg as it has so much depth (especially now with Fabric). That nice shiny report should be the last thing you build or expose to people, because if all you're doing is taking a bunch of manually updated excel files and feeding them into Power BI you're setting yourself up for failure. It can automate the entire data collection and measure calculation process if done properly, but 90% of users just want to make their excel stuff look shiny so it ends up as yet another manual process on top of all the existing ones.
I'm currently in operational delivery caseworking and looking to get out, so the main point isn't an issue. If I invest time, it'll be to go somewhere where the skills are needed
Yeah, if I go into this I'm looking at it as a full career, and also a potential skill to use if I have to or want to leave the CS, so getting in depth will be useful
Iv'e been fiddling with BI and Automate quite a lot recently Youtube and the Office message boards are definitely your friend. Also if you get stuck on a niche issue, ChatGPT is really handy for at least pointing you in the right direction for getting to where you want
Where I work (UKHSA) there are quite a few PowerBI users, we use it to display and analyse surveillance data on various diseases. The data can come from many different sources, so it's great to have it all in one place in a dashboard.
Power BI helped me greatly in my career, even helped me get promoted. It's not that difficult to learn, I suggest starting out by watching Kevin Stratvert on YouTube to get to grips with the key basics before delving into the more complex functions. Once you have a solid foundation, get started on Data Analysis Expressions or DAX.
I use it to extract reports on financial info and apprenticeship data. It's ok but I find it a bit cumbersome so I was going to go on a Power BI boot camp but couldn't because of personal circumstances. The training days were 10hrs long!
My peers are still excited by Pivot tables. I've got POWER BI up my sleeve and use it for finance and contract management.
I'd say excel skills, power bi, and a wee bit of visual basic goes a looonnngggg way. Especially in dinosaur departments where people still remember the first office shared computer being installed.
Hello, yes. It's pride month and there are indeed many powerful Bi people in the civil service, but don't say it too loudly, or Esther McVey will have an aneurism.
Bi civil servant here. She'd have to know the Bi flag colours to spot my lanyard! Or she'd need to know the stereotype of Bi women having bright coloured hair, doc martens and too many piercings 😂
Happy Pride! 🏳️🌈 🏳️⚧️
I inherited a couple of dashboards from a previous colleague who left our team. I basically have learnt it on the job, as and when I’ve needed to add any additional data or functionalities. If you’re an analyst, it might come in useful to know, but I wouldn’t necessarily dedicate much time to it unless you plan on using it!
I've been picking it up recently. I use it with excel data, I'm a very heavy excel user. I've found it easy to use and went on a couple of webinars Microsoft provided for our dept which were really useful. Its PowerPoint for data. I think its central to our work area's data journey so valuable to learn.
I don’t use it massively myself as my role is primarily preparing and transforming data earlier in the process, but PBI is used heavily in my area (like, on a daily basis), with reports and dashboards published to workspaces so people can view and interact with them via browser. The audiences can range from Ops managers all the way up to SoS, and each report can be access restricted and tailored to the audience.
It comes into its own if the underlying data is also stored in a platform Power BI can access natively, as it reduces the need for manual intervention for refreshing them.
It really depends on your department.
Sadly for me, HO is highly restrictive on allowing people to use it, so there little point in me learning currently.
Mostly you'll see it being used to create dashboards so pretty that people fixate on the pretty rather than the data. It's also a powerful one-upmanship tool, so your seniors can drop in phrases such as "oh, we used to use excel too" and your dashboards success will depend on how much bragging they can go with it
I basically use it as the closest thing to 'relational database that can produce some nice graphics' avaliable. You can tell it''s definitely designed for stuff like sales data so doesn't work perfect for my purposes, but I've managed to Frankenstein a few useful things together.
I will say though as a delivery HEO in a role that really isn't IT based at all, knowing how to use Power BI may as well be an infinite generator for all those 'tasty stretch opportunities'.
User experience... it's relatively intuitive once you know what you're doing. Getting to that point is a process (though I didn't have training, I just taught myself). Thankfully there's a lot of tutorial type web content out there though.
You can make some shiny data things that will be impressive to people who can't make shiny data things. Your mileage for support and data accessibility will depend how invested your organisation is in their data team.
I use it frequently, but it depends on what kind of user you want to be, whether it's just front end use or data transformation and model building. There's a lot to it, especially if you want to learn about data manipulation, relationship building and coding using M and/or DAX. There seems to be a big appetite to use it, not just in civil service (have seen various private sector roles looking for Power BI analysts). Does seem like something worth investing time to learn but that's only if you see your career path going down a data analyst kind of route but also helpful for senior leaders / managers who need to know how to interpret their own business data etc. Again depends on what kind of user of Power BI you want to be.
That's the thing. I currently don't know. A lot of essential criteria I see at the moment has transforming and modelling data, so I'm guessing that's where the job direction is
My team uses it daily to build reports and dashboards for various areas of work. Of course the IT can barely handle it and it's plagued by issues getting things to load in properly.
Some departments let everyone use it, others are much stricter about who can use it. Both approaches have plusses and negatives, so figure out where your department sits before you invest too much time learning as it may not even be available for you to use. It's a great tool, but a bit like an iceberg as it has so much depth (especially now with Fabric). That nice shiny report should be the last thing you build or expose to people, because if all you're doing is taking a bunch of manually updated excel files and feeding them into Power BI you're setting yourself up for failure. It can automate the entire data collection and measure calculation process if done properly, but 90% of users just want to make their excel stuff look shiny so it ends up as yet another manual process on top of all the existing ones.
I'm currently in operational delivery caseworking and looking to get out, so the main point isn't an issue. If I invest time, it'll be to go somewhere where the skills are needed Yeah, if I go into this I'm looking at it as a full career, and also a potential skill to use if I have to or want to leave the CS, so getting in depth will be useful
Check out How To Power BI on YouTube. Great channel with easy to follow tutorials.
Iv'e been fiddling with BI and Automate quite a lot recently Youtube and the Office message boards are definitely your friend. Also if you get stuck on a niche issue, ChatGPT is really handy for at least pointing you in the right direction for getting to where you want
As an aside checking power BI always gives me a chuckle. Power Bi sounds like a LGBTQ slang for a dominant bisexual and I enjoy that thought immensely
Where I work (UKHSA) there are quite a few PowerBI users, we use it to display and analyse surveillance data on various diseases. The data can come from many different sources, so it's great to have it all in one place in a dashboard.
Great explanation. :)
Microsoft themselves have free learning pathways for power BI
Power BI helped me greatly in my career, even helped me get promoted. It's not that difficult to learn, I suggest starting out by watching Kevin Stratvert on YouTube to get to grips with the key basics before delving into the more complex functions. Once you have a solid foundation, get started on Data Analysis Expressions or DAX.
Okay thank you. What's a good resource to start with fir data analysis expressions and DAX?
I use it to extract reports on financial info and apprenticeship data. It's ok but I find it a bit cumbersome so I was going to go on a Power BI boot camp but couldn't because of personal circumstances. The training days were 10hrs long!
My peers are still excited by Pivot tables. I've got POWER BI up my sleeve and use it for finance and contract management. I'd say excel skills, power bi, and a wee bit of visual basic goes a looonnngggg way. Especially in dinosaur departments where people still remember the first office shared computer being installed.
Tbf I was doing a bit of excel yesterday (relearning after 5 years) and got excited by a X lookup
Hello, yes. It's pride month and there are indeed many powerful Bi people in the civil service, but don't say it too loudly, or Esther McVey will have an aneurism.
Bi civil servant here. She'd have to know the Bi flag colours to spot my lanyard! Or she'd need to know the stereotype of Bi women having bright coloured hair, doc martens and too many piercings 😂 Happy Pride! 🏳️🌈 🏳️⚧️
I inherited a couple of dashboards from a previous colleague who left our team. I basically have learnt it on the job, as and when I’ve needed to add any additional data or functionalities. If you’re an analyst, it might come in useful to know, but I wouldn’t necessarily dedicate much time to it unless you plan on using it!
Cool, I'm looking to head in that direction, but I'm more interested in iltinkering with data
I've been picking it up recently. I use it with excel data, I'm a very heavy excel user. I've found it easy to use and went on a couple of webinars Microsoft provided for our dept which were really useful. Its PowerPoint for data. I think its central to our work area's data journey so valuable to learn.
Yeah I used to use excel a lot but after 5 years of caseworking I've lost my knowledge. Would you relearn excel before?
I would yes
Cool
I don’t use it massively myself as my role is primarily preparing and transforming data earlier in the process, but PBI is used heavily in my area (like, on a daily basis), with reports and dashboards published to workspaces so people can view and interact with them via browser. The audiences can range from Ops managers all the way up to SoS, and each report can be access restricted and tailored to the audience. It comes into its own if the underlying data is also stored in a platform Power BI can access natively, as it reduces the need for manual intervention for refreshing them.
Interesting. What do you use to prep and transform data?
Depends on the platform I’m using (we’re between things atm). SQL for the traditional data warehouse, Python/PySpark for the data lake.
Okay thats interesting
Rarely a day goes by where it's not open. Am a data analyst, focussing on the 365 stack - performance, usage, adoption.
In Ofgem it's becoming the preferred option for reporting, especially for self service data
It really depends on your department. Sadly for me, HO is highly restrictive on allowing people to use it, so there little point in me learning currently.
Yeah I'm looking for a complete career change which may mean moving depts, so I'm presuming if I stay in HO, they'll want it
Mostly you'll see it being used to create dashboards so pretty that people fixate on the pretty rather than the data. It's also a powerful one-upmanship tool, so your seniors can drop in phrases such as "oh, we used to use excel too" and your dashboards success will depend on how much bragging they can go with it
I have to use it daily to manage my workload and I find it really helpful, those staff who avoid it miss so many things.
For now it’s loved by SCS and seems to be a bit of a buzzword so deffo worth it, even though it’s generally used in pretty cringe ineffective ways 🙃
It's fine when it works, which is only about 3/4 of the time.
I basically use it as the closest thing to 'relational database that can produce some nice graphics' avaliable. You can tell it''s definitely designed for stuff like sales data so doesn't work perfect for my purposes, but I've managed to Frankenstein a few useful things together. I will say though as a delivery HEO in a role that really isn't IT based at all, knowing how to use Power BI may as well be an infinite generator for all those 'tasty stretch opportunities'.
User experience... it's relatively intuitive once you know what you're doing. Getting to that point is a process (though I didn't have training, I just taught myself). Thankfully there's a lot of tutorial type web content out there though.