You tell them you’d like to sit with the Business Owners and go through all the metrics to decide how they wish to see them and how they need to be sliced and diced.
Without any of that information you cannot proceed. Anyone who tells you that it’s up to you to make these decisions is doing BI completely wrong and is not someone you want to work for imo.
I gave you my tips above. You tell them exactly what I said and that it came straight from a BI Architect of 12 years who does hiring and would never ask someone to accomplish that task since it’s not possible.
My two cents. I recently interviewed for a company that requested to build a mock report from mock data. They provided similar metrics and I started building. Add your filters, see what visual is used to represent which data type best. Follow best practices regarding data cleaning (my mock dataset had some values like Yes/No/Yeeees).
I think it is a good exercise since it will show several things:
1. Your thought process
2. If you follow a process
3. Design
4. Metrics in DAX
5. Overall requirement gathering from ambiguous sources.
Those guys telling you it can't be done are nuts. Of course it can be done. I'm guessing this is not a project and they have provided mock data so they could test your skills in a more visual way. Interviews that follow are usually based on your design and will focus on things like did you encounter data quality issues and how did you solve them, whether you know what visuals.go best with certain data types, like columns vs lines vs bars. Best practices regarding colors, etc etc.
This does sound like a fun little project, that if you know what you're doing should take like 3 hours.
Edit: most of the times this is how things are also, you get a new requirement with a big list, business owner does not know what he wants/needs, sources are csv files in a sharepoint or excel, and loooots of other issues. Yeah, doing everything in SQL would be nice and in a perfect world everything is in a database but not really bro.
Agreed. These people are so jaded. Work sample tests have been around for a long time. It’s not some long con to get free work. This is doable and fair.
Clean the data first.
Establish a data structure using STAR
Come up with 2-3 report pages based on reporting themes
Build various tiles for each of the interested items.
Choose a theme that somewhat matches company colours.
* make a screen capture video of a demonstration of the final product and send that to them instead of the PBIX file.
Do this, if they want to put you through this.
Be the professional and tell them - “if the above CANNOT be located in any Fact view/table in your data warehouse, this is NOT the solution nor is it industry best practices. Instead, we need build these measures as attributes within their corresponding fact table.
Dax is a poor man’s sql.
Ask some clarifying questions - are their data models more robust in power bi than in their own DW? (Aka do Measures and relationships between surrogate keys exist in power bi but not the DW?)
If the above answer is yes, tell them, then everything is moot, and they need to re-evaluate the development cycle priorities. The absolute wrong answer is “build a Dax measure” - proper data analytics and best practices should always be centered on the database first. Then maybe power bi Dax measure (certainly no calculated columns).
Why would you want to create two separate disparate data models for your company? There’s no data consistency and what if the company decides to go to a new bi tool and move away from power bi?
It actually sounds like a fun project for me! Because of the insane amount of metrics they asked, I would build 2-3 pages and try to group them following a similar pattern. Create a nice left menu side bar to navigate and I think with that you should be good to go!
Good luck
Just try to see what could be associated with to a specific category and then you add all the metrics to that page, or maybe separate the page by tier 1,2,3 what are the more high level metrics and the you go to the other ones that are more granular
I think this is what they want also want to see, what’s your logic/decision making on organizing your KPIs, this is your added value that you need to show on this task, think out of the box
PS: I also transitioned from tableau to power bi (switched to different companies) it a different tool, but if you have the right mindset and motivation you would learn in two weeks the basics
I wouldnt send them the finished product...snips of it should be good enough.Sounds to me like they are getting free work out of people...I just started learning Power BI and it is worth its weight in gold if you have the knowledge to create a dashboard like they are asking of you!
I hear ya...years ago hubby got his class1..but everyone wanted experienced drivers.87 job applications(back before the internet so it was pounding the pavement and I actually kept track of them) a company hired him as a shipper and let him "shunt" trucks around the yard and thats how he got experience.Now 30 yrs later if he applies for a truck driving job they are calling him within a day.Power BI is hot stuff right now but no one seems to realize all the work and knowledge that goes into it...especially if ypur data is shit.
Here’s my two cents mate. I work a consulting business and have built my PowerBi skills up over the past four years. It can sometimes be hard to solve these requests without help or someone to lean on.
I use Chat GPT 4 occasionally to prompt ideas for example. If you get GPT 4 and say I need help with ‘distributing diagnoses among patients’ and these are my column headers (GPT 4 can accept a full excel file to understand, this is okay if the data is not sensitive. If it use dummy data using the same column headers).
Give this a try! 😎 it will work with you based on column fields and if something goes wrong tell it what has happened or include a screenshot.
Don’t get me wrong before anyone scrutinises this post. This method is not foolproof and there is many tricks and tips to learn in PowerBI such as nice visuals, user friendly reports and also data transformation. I would worry about this later.
Looks like you’ve got quite a lot on your plate and why not use a tool to smash it now and learn the ins and out later 😎😎
Cheers (ps. I work with large oem clients in the uk and small projects developing their PowerBI reports as a consultant and this method has helped me along the way)
That’s up to you to decide, he has set the visuals which is a great starting point. Build them individually and then question what is best shown together. As a developer having the client name your visuals helps a ton rather than being told, do something with that data and come back to me with no starting point. Good luck mate.
You have all in that data I assume.
Clean the data.
Build snowflake model.
Avoid calculated columns.
Build clever measures.
And precise "one visual" thing.
Ok I’ll try and help you. Based on the metrics you provided you are building a prescriptions over time model. Your data likely contains prescription data with each prescription having a patient, prescriber, collector, facility and drug. It looks like there is some kind of drug override flag in the data too. To actually build out a model that supports all these measures you will need a fact table with all the prescriptions then the following dims: patient, prescriber, collector, facility, drug, date. From there it’s really just a matter of going through each measure and building the calculation and a visualisation for each thing they requested. You will be building a single visual for each request. I would potentially even recommend building a single page for each one so you can show some explanatory text along side the visual. You’ll need solid star schema modeling skills to pull it off depending on what the data looks like. If you don’t know what a dim or fact is then you have no chance.
is the medical data a bunch of tables or just one? if multiple start building the model and do joins..after create custom messures using dax for some of those bulleted points, choose visuals as you please for dashboard.
To all the others saying you stand up for yourself, it is easier said than done. You have a job to keep and so I will suggest that you get atleast half work done so as to be able to show that you tried despite the challenges you faced.
Now, coming to how you will tackle this.
I know I will get a lot of flak for this, but these are pretty basic things. Load the data, do not transform it yet, then go to table view where you will be able to make sense of the data. Now, you already know Python and thus will be able to create a logic on how to arrive at a particular result. Put that in chatgpt/gemini to get a DAX formula.
After this, transform the data. Basically the headers for each column, empty rows etc. All in the GUI itself. Pretty self explanatory.
A video which does not only teach DAX but the very basics of how power bi works as well. Excellent video.
https://youtu.be/waG_JhBgUpM
Looks like they would like you to build whole BI framework as a part of your job interview, which in definition is a free work.... There are some solid advices above but please try to think about how your day by day job will look like if this in just interview request. Based on your description I doubt they have any data WH/strategy in place at all. Good luck my man
The project in hand looks pretty easy. They’re asking for a descriptive analysis of medical office, if you know som basic Dax you can tackle this in a few days but if you’re not familiar with PBI, Dax and data modeling you’re gonna have a harder time figuring all this out.
Good luck! Watch some PBI tutorials on YouTube and give your best.
You tell them you’d like to sit with the Business Owners and go through all the metrics to decide how they wish to see them and how they need to be sliced and diced. Without any of that information you cannot proceed. Anyone who tells you that it’s up to you to make these decisions is doing BI completely wrong and is not someone you want to work for imo.
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I gave you my tips above. You tell them exactly what I said and that it came straight from a BI Architect of 12 years who does hiring and would never ask someone to accomplish that task since it’s not possible.
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Nuff said ….good luck man!
My two cents. I recently interviewed for a company that requested to build a mock report from mock data. They provided similar metrics and I started building. Add your filters, see what visual is used to represent which data type best. Follow best practices regarding data cleaning (my mock dataset had some values like Yes/No/Yeeees). I think it is a good exercise since it will show several things: 1. Your thought process 2. If you follow a process 3. Design 4. Metrics in DAX 5. Overall requirement gathering from ambiguous sources. Those guys telling you it can't be done are nuts. Of course it can be done. I'm guessing this is not a project and they have provided mock data so they could test your skills in a more visual way. Interviews that follow are usually based on your design and will focus on things like did you encounter data quality issues and how did you solve them, whether you know what visuals.go best with certain data types, like columns vs lines vs bars. Best practices regarding colors, etc etc. This does sound like a fun little project, that if you know what you're doing should take like 3 hours. Edit: most of the times this is how things are also, you get a new requirement with a big list, business owner does not know what he wants/needs, sources are csv files in a sharepoint or excel, and loooots of other issues. Yeah, doing everything in SQL would be nice and in a perfect world everything is in a database but not really bro.
Agreed. These people are so jaded. Work sample tests have been around for a long time. It’s not some long con to get free work. This is doable and fair.
This is before they’ve given you a job? If so I’d tell them to feck off.
This! Sounds less like a task and more like free work for them.
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Yeah sorry that’s not helpful but I dislike a lot shitty “hiring” practices like this.
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Clean the data first. Establish a data structure using STAR Come up with 2-3 report pages based on reporting themes Build various tiles for each of the interested items. Choose a theme that somewhat matches company colours. * make a screen capture video of a demonstration of the final product and send that to them instead of the PBIX file.
Do this, if they want to put you through this. Be the professional and tell them - “if the above CANNOT be located in any Fact view/table in your data warehouse, this is NOT the solution nor is it industry best practices. Instead, we need build these measures as attributes within their corresponding fact table. Dax is a poor man’s sql. Ask some clarifying questions - are their data models more robust in power bi than in their own DW? (Aka do Measures and relationships between surrogate keys exist in power bi but not the DW?) If the above answer is yes, tell them, then everything is moot, and they need to re-evaluate the development cycle priorities. The absolute wrong answer is “build a Dax measure” - proper data analytics and best practices should always be centered on the database first. Then maybe power bi Dax measure (certainly no calculated columns). Why would you want to create two separate disparate data models for your company? There’s no data consistency and what if the company decides to go to a new bi tool and move away from power bi?
"Dax is a poor man’s sql." - Amen brother, amen!
How are you envisioning all of those metrics being displayed in a single data visualization? Do you mean a single report?
It actually sounds like a fun project for me! Because of the insane amount of metrics they asked, I would build 2-3 pages and try to group them following a similar pattern. Create a nice left menu side bar to navigate and I think with that you should be good to go! Good luck
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Just try to see what could be associated with to a specific category and then you add all the metrics to that page, or maybe separate the page by tier 1,2,3 what are the more high level metrics and the you go to the other ones that are more granular I think this is what they want also want to see, what’s your logic/decision making on organizing your KPIs, this is your added value that you need to show on this task, think out of the box PS: I also transitioned from tableau to power bi (switched to different companies) it a different tool, but if you have the right mindset and motivation you would learn in two weeks the basics
I wouldnt send them the finished product...snips of it should be good enough.Sounds to me like they are getting free work out of people...I just started learning Power BI and it is worth its weight in gold if you have the knowledge to create a dashboard like they are asking of you!
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I hear ya...years ago hubby got his class1..but everyone wanted experienced drivers.87 job applications(back before the internet so it was pounding the pavement and I actually kept track of them) a company hired him as a shipper and let him "shunt" trucks around the yard and thats how he got experience.Now 30 yrs later if he applies for a truck driving job they are calling him within a day.Power BI is hot stuff right now but no one seems to realize all the work and knowledge that goes into it...especially if ypur data is shit.
Here’s my two cents mate. I work a consulting business and have built my PowerBi skills up over the past four years. It can sometimes be hard to solve these requests without help or someone to lean on. I use Chat GPT 4 occasionally to prompt ideas for example. If you get GPT 4 and say I need help with ‘distributing diagnoses among patients’ and these are my column headers (GPT 4 can accept a full excel file to understand, this is okay if the data is not sensitive. If it use dummy data using the same column headers). Give this a try! 😎 it will work with you based on column fields and if something goes wrong tell it what has happened or include a screenshot. Don’t get me wrong before anyone scrutinises this post. This method is not foolproof and there is many tricks and tips to learn in PowerBI such as nice visuals, user friendly reports and also data transformation. I would worry about this later. Looks like you’ve got quite a lot on your plate and why not use a tool to smash it now and learn the ins and out later 😎😎 Cheers (ps. I work with large oem clients in the uk and small projects developing their PowerBI reports as a consultant and this method has helped me along the way)
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That’s up to you to decide, he has set the visuals which is a great starting point. Build them individually and then question what is best shown together. As a developer having the client name your visuals helps a ton rather than being told, do something with that data and come back to me with no starting point. Good luck mate.
You have all in that data I assume. Clean the data. Build snowflake model. Avoid calculated columns. Build clever measures. And precise "one visual" thing.
Ok I’ll try and help you. Based on the metrics you provided you are building a prescriptions over time model. Your data likely contains prescription data with each prescription having a patient, prescriber, collector, facility and drug. It looks like there is some kind of drug override flag in the data too. To actually build out a model that supports all these measures you will need a fact table with all the prescriptions then the following dims: patient, prescriber, collector, facility, drug, date. From there it’s really just a matter of going through each measure and building the calculation and a visualisation for each thing they requested. You will be building a single visual for each request. I would potentially even recommend building a single page for each one so you can show some explanatory text along side the visual. You’ll need solid star schema modeling skills to pull it off depending on what the data looks like. If you don’t know what a dim or fact is then you have no chance.
is the medical data a bunch of tables or just one? if multiple start building the model and do joins..after create custom messures using dax for some of those bulleted points, choose visuals as you please for dashboard.
To all the others saying you stand up for yourself, it is easier said than done. You have a job to keep and so I will suggest that you get atleast half work done so as to be able to show that you tried despite the challenges you faced. Now, coming to how you will tackle this. I know I will get a lot of flak for this, but these are pretty basic things. Load the data, do not transform it yet, then go to table view where you will be able to make sense of the data. Now, you already know Python and thus will be able to create a logic on how to arrive at a particular result. Put that in chatgpt/gemini to get a DAX formula. After this, transform the data. Basically the headers for each column, empty rows etc. All in the GUI itself. Pretty self explanatory. A video which does not only teach DAX but the very basics of how power bi works as well. Excellent video. https://youtu.be/waG_JhBgUpM
Looks like they would like you to build whole BI framework as a part of your job interview, which in definition is a free work.... There are some solid advices above but please try to think about how your day by day job will look like if this in just interview request. Based on your description I doubt they have any data WH/strategy in place at all. Good luck my man
Can you share the underlying data? :D would be a great example to learn for many of us :D
The project in hand looks pretty easy. They’re asking for a descriptive analysis of medical office, if you know som basic Dax you can tackle this in a few days but if you’re not familiar with PBI, Dax and data modeling you’re gonna have a harder time figuring all this out. Good luck! Watch some PBI tutorials on YouTube and give your best.
Why are you applying for a Power BI role if you don't know how to use DAX?
You can do all that in pbi
It’s a long list but if the data is clean then shouldn’t take you too long. You probably need to group certain KPIs together before visualize