IEPowerBI:
Immersion Event on Power BI,
Power BI Report Server, and SSRS

Upon completion: students will receive a verifiable badge through Credly/YourAcclaim.com

(Retired – no longer offered as a public class)

Overview

This 200/300-level, 2-day, reporting training class will help you gain a deep understanding about installing and implementing SQL Server Reporting Services, Power BI Report Server, and Power BI, and will start you on your journey to master the Microsoft Reporting Ecosystem.

We’ll dive into the administration and infrastructure around the various reporting options and you’ll quickly understand the architectures of single and hybrid reporting solutions. You’ll learn various administration task with report scheduling, delivery with data driven subscriptions, how to brand your report website, and scale-out options for high availability and disaster recovery. We’ll also explore the integration options with Office 365 and some of the complexities that you’ll have to overcome and cover the security options and features for securing access to your reports and overall performance monitoring.

A common challenge for many organizations is upgrading an existing reporting environment so you’ll learn various upgrade and migration options available for upgrading SSRS and migrating to Power BI Report Server. With any upgrade or deployment of reporting services, you need to understand your licensing options so we’ll explore how Microsoft licenses the various components.

After covering the infrastructure and administration aspects, we’ll turn our attention to report visualizations, starting by reviewing how you visualize data in the different reporting components and discussing some of the differences with SSRS, mobile reporting, and Power BI. In order to properly visualize your data, you must be able to build proper datasets (models) and for those you need to create data sources, so we’ll cover various data sources and how to properly configure them. We’ll walk through various features that can make your reports pop and catch the attention of your audience. There are so many options available that you can employ to give your end users a rich experience and allow them to drill into the reports for a better experience.

Mobile Report Publisher is something that your organization may be interested in as well so we’ll quickly cover mobile reporting and its current capabilities with various report examples. Bring your smartphone or tablet and you can experience it firsthand. We’ll then turn our attention to Power BI Report Server and look at additional visualizations and you’ll get to participate in building our first report from the ground up. Finally, you’ll get an overview of Power BI Premium, Power BI embedded and Report Server embedded and you’ll see how each option provides a unique solution and how you can leverage the different options for your organization or customers.

After these two days you’ll leave with a wealth of practical techniques that you can use as soon as you return to the office to start building rich dashboards for your customers and you’ll gain the knowledge to be able to implement a robust Microsoft reporting environment.

Instructor: Tim Radney

Need Help Justifying Training? Here’s a letter to your boss explaining why SQLskills training is worthwhile and a list of community blog posts about our classes.


Curriculum

Module 1: Administration and Infrastructure

It’s imperative that you understand the architecture and infrastructure required to run the various reporting offerings. Topics covered include:

  • Reporting ecosystem overview
  • Reporting architecture
  • How do you get started? (installation and configuration)
    • SSRS / Power BI RS
    • Power BI
  • Administration (Power BI RS)
    • Report scheduling and delivery, including data-driven subscriptions
    • Branding
    • Scale-out / HADR
    • Office integration
    • Security
    • Performance monitoring

Module 2: Upgrade, Migration, and Licensing

Upgrading and licensing reporting can be complicated, especially with moving from Reporting Services to Power BI. This module will focus on upgrade and migration methods as well as overall best practices for each solution. We’ll also cover the various licensing options for each and discuss career options for reporting to include certifications and continued education. Topics covered include:

  • Upgrade and migration
    • Reporting Services
    • Power BI Report Server
    • Power BI
  • Licensing
    • Reporting Services
    • Power BI Report Server
    • Power BI
  • Best practices
  • Preparing for the reporting certifications and continued training

Module 3: Power BI Report Visualizations

Visualizing your data can be much more than presenting a result set in a grid or simple chart. This module will focus on building rich data sets and various visualizations to make your reports pop and stand out. We’ll review the various ways to visualize your data using Reporting Services, Power BI, and Mobile Reporting. Topics covered include:

  • How do you visualize?
    • SSRS
    • Mobile Reporting
    • Power BI
  • Data sources and data sets
  • Analysis Services 101
  • Power BI Desktop walk-through
    • My favorite visuals
    • Features that pop
    • Marketplace
    • New features
  • Mobile Report Publisher
    • Mobile Report example
  • Power BI Report Server
    • Report example in SSDT

Module 4: Putting It All Together: Building a Report and Using Embedded Reports

We’ll put it all together and build a Power BI report. You’ll be able to follow along using a public data set to build an interactive report using many of the features and tools we’ve discussed. We’ll also dive into the various embedded report options that your organization can use to leverage the power of Power BI within their custom code. Topics covered include:

  • Hands on demo: Building our first report
  • Power BI Premium overview
  • Power BI / PBI RS advanced topics
    • Power BI Embedded
    • RS embedded

Questions?

If you have any questions not answered by our F.A.Q., please contact us.