The 2020 edition clarifies the distinction between Desktop and Service. While Desktop is for building, the Service is for sharing, collaboration, and scheduling refreshes. Free online tutorials demonstrate how to publish reports to workspaces, set up dashboards, and use natural language Q&A. However, a critical note in the 2020 materials is that while the Service offers a free license, sharing reports with others typically requires a Pro license—a nuance the course explains clearly.
The 2020 course focuses heavily on this free authoring tool. Learners are taught the Query Editor (for ETL processes), the Data Model (for relationships between tables), and the Report View (for drag-and-drop visualization). A key lesson from 2020 is the star schema design—teaching users to separate fact tables (transactions) from dimension tables (customers, dates). The 2020 edition clarifies the distinction between Desktop
Microsoft strategically offered this introductory content for free online to onboard a massive user base. The 2020 edition typically covers: connecting to data sources, transforming data with Power Query, building relational models, creating DAX measures, and designing interactive dashboards. The “free” aspect removed the barrier to entry, allowing students, small business owners, and analysts to upskill during a period when remote work was accelerating. A complete introduction to Power BI in 2020 revolves around three fundamental tools within the Power BI ecosystem: However, a critical note in the 2020 materials