A Day in the Life of a Certified Power BI Data Analyst

In today’s data-driven world, the role of a data analyst is particularly important in forming important business decisions. There are lots of BI tools available in the market that a data analyst can rely on. However, Microsoft Power BI stands apart from the rest with its robust analytics capabilities and visualization tools, along with a strong integration with Microsoft 365 ecosystem. In this blog, we will look at how a typical day in the life of a certified Power BI Data Analyst looks like. It is certainly as interesting as insightful and colourful visualizations but not restricted to the same.

Early Morning:

The first thing that goes through the mind of a Power BI data analyst is if all the scheduled refreshes scheduled overnight have run successfully or not. We need to ensure there have been no failures and hiccups, because any refresh failures are going to affect the business decisions, and we ought to correct them before we get a call from the client. We also check for mails not only to check meeting invites but also to see the dashboard alerts along with the refresh notifications.

Another common thing is to check the Teams Calendar and to have an idea about the various internal and client meetings for the day.

Mid-Morning:

The first thing in the normal office hours will be a stand-up meeting with the team. It could be with our internal team where we give updates on the status of ongoing projects, or sometimes with a cross-functional data team which includes data engineers, data scientists, etc., where we would seek the help of other experts to ease the bottlenecks in the projects.

We will also have meetings with clients regarding ongoing projects to listen to their feedback and suggestions and also with new potential clients in understanding their business requirements – as this initial phase of a project is the most important phase.

Late-Morning and Afternoon

This could be the longest session in a day as I generally take a late lunch. After the important meetings, we will start with our daily core work on data analysis. As a certified Power BI Data Analyst my work would largely be on Power BI Desktop and also on Power BI Service. The core work includes data transformation using Power Query Editor, Data Modelling on the Desktop that certainly includes a lot of DAX calculations for advanced analytics and reporting, and of course data visualization. Generally, we spend a lot of time on data shaping and creating calculations. And obviously putting in that amount of cognitive workload make me hungry and that is where I break for lunch.

Lunch Time:

I have a quick lunch and spend little time on scrolling through the important news feeds on new channels and apps. But certainly, that is when I also go through some of the latest updates on Power BI and try them out on my own. With Power BI brining updates almost every month in a year, it is certainly my top priority to be updated with latest Power BI updates, as a Microsoft Certified Power BI Data Analyst.

Late Afternoon:

This is the time when I work on the completed projects when the customers ask for minor changes and additions to the existing reports and dashboards. So, we may have to rework on the existing data models on Power BI Desktop and then publish them to Power BI Service. We will ensure the RLS applied remains intact as well before updating the latest report to the Power BI App.

Also, we might have internal calls with other business units and stakeholders regarding certain internal reporting requirements. We will get inputs from them on the requirements and some days, we may brief them on the reports, because as data analysts it is also our duty to explain the data to them to help the team in decision-making.

Evening:

We will work on the internal reporting requirements based on the inputs in the meetings and do the planning for the next day’s tasks.

Before logging off, we will ensure that we update the project tracker and all the documentations for the ongoing projects work are mistake-proof.

Additional tips:

As you might have already noticed, the life of a PL-300 Certified Power BI Data Analyst is not monotonous. We spend a lot of time with data, and the technology and spend almost equal amount of time with the human beings around us by explaining the data or taking inputs from them. It is certainly fun to work as PL-300 certified Power BI Data Analyst. If you are interested in becoming a Certified Power BI Data Analyst, you need to take an examination from Microsoft in the name of ‘PL-300 Power BI Data Analyst’. You may either take a self-leaning approach using the MS learn documentation or opt for an instructor-led course of PL-300 certification course.

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