Data Visualization with Microsoft Power BI: How to Design Savvy Dashboards 1st Edition

Kolokolov and Zelensky's "Data Visualization with Microsoft Power BI: How to Design Savvy Dashboards" is a must-read for anyone looking to unlock the storytelling power of data. This book provides a comprehensive overview of chart types, from the familiar line chart to the more intricate chord diagram. But what sets it apart is its insightful guidance on chart selection, ensuring you always choose the most effective visual for your message.The authors excel at demonstrating best practices through real-world examples. By showcasing both effective and ineffective visualizations side-by-side, they provide clear visual cues that highlight common pitfalls and inspire design choices. For instance, I learned why tornado charts are a poor choice for comparing projected vs. actual values - a valuable lesson!Beyond individual charts, the book delves into dashboard design, offering practical advice on element positioning and configuration within Power BI. This makes it an invaluable resource for data analysts and business professionals in finance, sales, and marketing, especially those without coding experience.While the book boasts a companion GitHub repository with sample data, I found the link format somewhat cumbersome. Instead of direct links to file names, the authors use shortened URLs that are case-sensitive and redirect to the repository. Direct GitHub links would improve accessibility.The book's structure, with three sections of increasing chart complexity and challenging quizzes, reinforces learning and encourages deeper understanding.Overall: This book is a fantastic guide to data visualization with Power BI. Its clear explanations, practical examples, and focus on effective design make it a valuable asset for anyone seeking to transform data into compelling visual narratives.

OMG! It truly seems that this book was written not by another technical nerd, but by a person who has real business experience!As for me, I always struggled when technical persons trained me and my team how to work with corporate reporting platform. I felt myself stupid trying to understand WHY they tell me about data models and other stuff, but never about dashboard design and user experience...This book have met and even exceeded my expectations! It's written from manager's perspective. I don't want to become data scientist, I want to quickly build interactive reports.Thanks to clear step-by-step guides I have built sales dashboard using recommended layout and charts. My team was excited and IT colleagues were envious :) They assume I know secret magic of reporting.So I highly recommend this book, even if you found yourself stupid trying to understand BI tool like Power BI or Tableau. Start from this book and it really may change your career!

Exceeded my expectations and here is why. I got a paper copy - 400 pages of colorful chart examples and guides on how to work with Power BI. I skipped basic barcharts and started from the middle: waterfall, gantt and bullet charts. These chapters are well-structured and easy to follow. The author does an excellent job of balancing theory with practical examples, which made learning the concepts engaging and hands-on. I found myself constantly referring back to it during my projects, and I’ve already noticed a significant improvement in how I present data. If you're looking to deepen your understanding of visual storytelling through data, this book is a must-read.

Very informative.

O’Reilly book series are very well written.

This book is very well organized and packed with useful, real-world tips for Power BI. I really appreciate the clear step-by-step instructions and the many color pictures that make each concept easy to understand. It’s both a technical guide and a source of design inspiration—great for beginners and experienced users alike.

As someone who often struggles to make sense of raw data, I found this book to be a true lifesaver. The author breaks down the complexities of Power BI in a way that feels both practical and approachable, even if you’re not a data expert. What I loved most was the clear step-by-step guidance for building dashboards from scratch. The visuals and real-world examples really helped cement the concepts and inspired me to try new layouts in my own reports.

We’ve been using Power BI for data analysis for a while, as it pulls in data and transforms it into understandable visuals for us. However, the charts we generated needed improvements, and we weren’t quite sure how to go about it. Thanks to this book, we were able to study the examples and follow the step-by-step instructions, which helped us bring our visualizations to a much higher level.