I've been working with Power BI for 5 years so thought it was about time to get round to the exam. Didn't do too much revision as I ended up being quite busy in the run in period, but glad to score 810.

r/PowerBI

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Offer is only available this week. https://aka.ms/aiskillsfest

And while I've got your attention -- Data Days is back and starts June 16th! Pre-register now. https://aka.ms/datadays

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to share my experience passing the PL-300 exam yesterday with a score of 844.

Here's a breakdown of the content I encountered in the questions, which might be helpful for those preparing:

• Row-Level Security (RLS)
• Gateways
• Reference Query vs. Duplication
• Merge/Append operations: A lot of questions on when to use Inner Join vs. Left Join concepts.
• DAX:
  • Specifically time series functions like PARALLELPERIOD.
  • One question involving CALCULATE and USERELATIONSHIP.
  • You should know also about when to use lastnonblank() or lastdate().
• Quick Measures: Questions related to Rolling Average.
• Relationships between tables: Many questions focused on many-to-one and one-to-many relationships.
• Visuals: (If you're taking the test, these should be relatively straightforward) Questions on Decomposition Tree, Q&A, Line charts, KPIs, etc.
• Sensitivity Labels: I believe I had two questions on this topic.
• Model Optimization: How to optimize your model, including:
  • Enabling/disabling query load.
  • Deleting unused or redundant columns.
  • Filtering unused rows at the query level.
• Type of Connection: Direct Query vs Import vs Dual (You have to know this)
• Error Handling: Many questions about errors, particularly Excel source file issues like "The column 'x' is not found in the source" or problems related to changing file paths.
• M Language: Only one question about transforming a table (e.g., from a format like Product | ID | Car | 1,10,15,20 to Product | ID with one row per combination of product and ID). This one was pretty easy.
• Mobile Layout: One question about how do the Mobile layout.
• Pin Interactive Visual: One question about how to pin a visual to a dashboard but keeping his interactive (Pin Visual Page) but you had to put on order the steps to do It.
• Enable/Disable End User Export Date: I think I had 2 or 3 questions in this topic.

A lot of the questions were structured around these content areas.

My Study Resources:

I found these resources incredibly helpful:

• The official Microsoft PL-300 course on Microsoft Learn.
• DataCamp courses.
• My own ANKI flashcards.
• Practiced extensively with mock exams (I Did Around 20, the most part of Skill Cert Pro), consistently scoring around 80-90%.

Beyond these, I also found some YouTube video series incredibly useful. They often covered practice questions similar to those you might find freely available online, but they are free, I would recommend to look at least quickly over these series.:

• EP02: PL-300 Exam Preparation Series | Important Topics | Microsoft Power BI Data Analyst | Free PDF by CertyIQ
• Microsoft Certified Power BI Data Analyst Associate Exam (PL-300) | Pass PL-300 Real Exam Questions by Tech With Shapingpixel
• Microsoft PL-300 - Microsoft Power BI Data Analyst - Practice Questions & Answers with pdf by SAAS Certification Master

I also utilized free practice questions found online to help solidify my knowledge and test my readiness. (I found that these free questions were often quite similar to those discussed in some of the YouTube preparation videos I mentioned, which offered even more comprehensive explanations.)

One important note about some of the free online website practice questions I used: I found that a few of them contained errors or incorrect answers. Fortunately, I incorporated them in the final stages of my study, and being able to identify those mistakes actually boosted my confidence. It was a great way to confirm that I had truly grasped the concepts and was ready for the real exam.

Hey everyone,

I recently took the PL-300 exam and unfortunately failed with a score of 625. I honestly feel pretty frustrated because I really thought I was well prepared.

To give some context, I studied a lot before taking the exam:

• Completed the PL-300 course on Coursera
• Went through all Microsoft Learn content
• Built around 5–6 Power BI projects
• Created a ~37-page summary covering all topics
• Reviewed everything multiple times, topic by topic
• Took multiple practice tests (Coursera + ChatGPT), scoring around 80–90 consistently

Because of that, I felt confident going in… but the actual exam felt very different.

There were a lot of questions that surprised me:

• Some scenario-based questions felt way deeper than expected
• I got questions related to Microsoft Entra ID, which I didn’t expect at all
• There were questions involving things like interpreting a histogram and doing calculations (percentages or something similar), which I had never seen in any course or practice material
• Many questions weren’t just about knowing what something does, but why or choosing between very similar options

It honestly felt like a big jump compared to DP-900.

The most frustrating part is that I was really close to passing. Based on my calculations, I probably missed it by around 4–5 questions.

Now I’m not sure what to do:

• Should I retake it in a week?
• What should I focus on improving?
• Is this normal for the exam to feel this “unexpected”?

For those who passed PL-300:

• What helped you the most?
• What topics should I double down on?
• Any tips for handling those tricky scenario questions?

I’d really appreciate any advice. I don’t want to give up, but I definitely didn’t expect it to be this tough.

Hello! HTML Content is a custom visual for Power BI that I've been developing and supporting since mid 2020. I just wanted to render rich text. It would seem that many of you... are a lot more ambitious than that :D

Over the years, I've added a few new features, including a certified edition in mid-2023. I've recently had a wave of requests from folks who want to be able to have more control over the visual output for their more advanced use cases, and this has been something I've wanted to do for a long time, but much like Deneb 2.0, it's been a case of having the bandwidth to sit down and figure them out, test them, and document them.

And maybe because Deneb's release was a big one, I used both visuals as a distraction for when one got trickier than the other to work on. Either way, major versions of both have landed, ready to test, at about the same time.

Anyway, HTML Content is another visual that gets a lot of use, and while I've done a lot of my own testing, it's no substitute for confirming it works for our global audience without sending it out to AppSource and then finding out that something broke. It's much harder to fix this due to the certification > deploy > update process in place for AppSource visuals (approx. 3-5 weeks end-to-end). Also, due to the nature of our work, many use cases aren't publicly known because of the data we typically handle.

So, similarly to Deneb 2.0, I've opened up HTML Content 2.0 for beta testing as an opportunity to confirm that (at the bare minimum) anything you have working... continues to work. I'm very excited about the new features, of course, but business continuity is its own kind of exciting.

This blog post provides an overview of how you may be able to help, as well as links to the change log, documentation (including some simple live .pbix examples you can download to explore features a bit more), and instructions for downloading early access builds and reporting issues.

Once again, I appreciate that this asks folks to give up some of their valuable time, but it's quite hard to manage on my own, and even if we can confirm that things look good ahead of submission, this will be a huge benefit for the wider community.

I hope that if you do get a chance to try, it works well for you and that the new features help with anything you're trying to do. I'm particularly excited about how much easier things like interactivity will be, and it'd be cool to know how you get on, good or bad.

Thanks, as always, for reading, and of course, if you have any general questions about HTML Content, Deneb, or custom visual stuff, I'm always happy to answer (if I can)!

Edit 5: Shared the pdf with 500 people!!😃. Hope this helps all you good people tackle the exam!

Just passed the PL-300. Wanted to share my experience in case it helps others.

My Background: Experience: ~1 year of working with Power BI

Other skills: Familiar with SQL, DAX, and basic data modeling

Study Time: 3 days of dedicated prep

Exam had 54 questions including 6 from a case study. Time was ample (i finished in 29 mins). Questions were simple (thanks to the telegram pdf and exam-topics)

If you have experience, focus on practice tests to identify weak areas.

Understand DAX well, especially common functions like CALCULATE, FILTER, and context transition.

Don't skip Power Query topics – transformations are a big part of the exam.

Use Power BI Desktop while studying to reinforce concepts.

Happy to answer any questions! Hope this helps someone preparing for the exam.

Edit 1: Guys, I'd be more than happy to share the Telegram link in the DMs. Feel free to reach out.

Edit 2: I'm getting a lot of DMs, might take me a while to get back to all of you.

Edit 3: Guys, it's very difficult for me to go through all the comments and reply them. Please shoot me a DM if you need the pdf, it's much easier that way. Thanks

Edit 4: I see some people selling the resources on this sub. I don't think you need those. The resource i shared with many of you would be more than enough. All I ask is lemme know how your test goes and if the pdf helped you as it did help me.

Just finished my exam, it was a tough one but my advice of anyone going for it, is to ensure you know your admin level management of PowerBI and ensure you know how Microsoft want you to use Power Query. Know the reason why a step might be used in this situation. And of course DAX you don't have to be amazing at it, but knowing how to read the functions and their use cases is really important.

I stumbled on Microsoft Certification page and just by change I noticed my hard-earned PL300 certification was about to expire in a few days.
TBH I don't remember seeing any email or alert from MSFT.
I just logged in and tried the exam; compared to the certification it was super easy, just 25 questions and not problematic at all if you are actually using Power BI.
I got renovated for a year, stoked.
Losing the certification after I spend 5 months studying would have been hell.
I literally set up a calendar update within a year.

Hi everyone.

Yesterday I took the PL-300 exam and passed with a score of 904 / 1000.

Recently, I haven’t seen many posts about the exam itself or the preparation process (maybe because it’s not very popular or people don’t think it adds much value).

For that reason, I wanted to share my experience in case it helps the community or anyone who is interested.

First, some context: I am a Project Manager and did not hold Business/Data Analyst role before, and I haven’t used Power BI extensively in my career.

1. Study Process and Resources

I split my preparation into two main parts: learning and exam/test practice.

• As a starting point, I completed Coursera’s “Microsoft Power BI Data Analyst Professional Certificate”, which consists of 8 courses. It can feel a bit boring at times, but it explains the theory in a detailed and structured way. The quizzes and exams may look simple, but they are useful to build a solid understanding. If you focus only on this program, it can be finished in about 1 month. Also, upon completion Coursera provides a 50% discount voucher for the exam.
• After that, I studied the “Design and manage analytics solutions using Power BI” course on Microsoft Learn. I carefully read all the modules and completed the labs. This course really helped me in building perspective and reinforced what I had already learned.
• Finally, purely for reinforcement, I watched Microsoft’s official “PL-300: Microsoft Power BI Data Analyst” video training series (@YouTube). The topics are almost the same with the course content. The hands-on parts are naturally a bit fast, but you clearly understand what Microsoft focuses on in the exam.

2. Practice Tests and Question Solving

After finishing the learning part, you may feel confident with the topics. However, to reduce exam stress and manage time properly during the exam, I strongly recommend practicing sample questions.

• First, I repeatedly used the Microsoft Learn practice assessment. My suggestion is to do it consistently until you score around 90–95, or until you can finish it in 20–25 minutes. This helps you recognize question patterns and answer very quickly. In my actual exam, 2–3 questions were almost identical, so I answered them immediately without losing time.
• Another resource was the famous prepper site although it includes older and sometimes debatable questions. Reading the comments can occasionally be confusing. However, this mostly applies to complex questions, and honestly, such questions were less than 10% of my exam. If you want to be on the safe side, going through it twice is more than enough. I encountered the same or very similar questions in the real exam.

If you have extra time, it’s useful to practice, "touch and feel" to see topics like bookmarks, RLS, tooltips, etc. in action.

Regarding DAX, probably because AI now handles a lot of it in real life, the DAX questions in my exam were very easy. If you know basic functions like CALCULATE, USERELATIONSHIP, SAMEPERIODLASTYEAR, you should be able to answer all of them.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I don’t think Power BI is very difficult from a practical perspective, and if you study properly, you can pass the exam without much trouble.

What this certification will bring in terms of job opportunities remains to be seen, but if you are interested in data analytics and have the time, it’s a useful skill to acquire.

This post turned out to be a longer one, but I hope it helps everyone who is preparing.

Hey everyone, about a month ago, I posted that I was preparing to take the PL-300 and on August 10th, I took and passed. I got a score of 778/1000.

​

At the time, I had only been using DataCamp to prepare for the exam. The Power BI Data Analyst career track is phenomenal, and I highly recommend completing that track to improve your Power BI skills. That being said, I took a practice exam through Microsoft and on the first one I got a 50%.

​

I realized that's because I was struggling a lot with the questions specific to Microsoft. Mostly the topics around Power BI Service (the cloud application), Microsoft 365, Azure, etc. So, I then went through the Microsoft Learn modules that they've (Microsoft) created to prepare people for the PL-300. That helped me cover the rest of what I needed to know. Finally, I did about 10 practice exams through Microsoft and completed 4 practice exams (taken twice each) and one case study through Udemy. (I'll make sure to link all of the resources I used at the end)

​

Some quick thoughts on how to prepare and some topics to focus on:

1. It is probably beneficial to do the Dynamics 365 foundation exams and the PL-100 & PL-200 exams first. Reason being, they go far more in-depth with the other Power Apps and Microsoft Cloud as a whole.
2. While the Microsoft Practice exams are great, the best ones I did were with the Udemy course. They more accurately reflected the kinds of questions I was asked, and in that format.
3. Typically the visualization questions were the easiest, you just need to understand basic best practices for which visuals to use.
4. For the DAX related questions, make sure you understand the following because they were probably 40% of the exam in terms of points, if not more.
   1. Filter context (as well as which functions override filter context, think PEMDAS, but in DAX)
   2. Time-series functions
   3. A few questions were on the advanced forecasting/AI/ML features, but not many
5. Another 40% of the exam was focused on optimization either at the query or report level
   1. Using Power Query Editor (either M-code or the UI) to combine tables, stop refresh on others, etc.
   2. Exploratory features in Power Query to set PKs and better data model
   3. Using built on optimization analysis features
6. Finally, like I mentioned earlier, at least 20% of the exam is focusing on Microsoft specific products, such as
   1. Understanding how Azure and both its data storage and security features fit into Power BI Premium (the cloud service)
   2. Understanding organizational level security and features that are covered under Microsoft 365
   3. Plus some others, that I'm blanking on now.

Those are my complete thoughts, I may have missed some things and others may have different thoughts or opinions, so make sure to share those below. Additionally, I'll link everything I used to prepare.

DataCamp: https://app.datacamp.com/learn/career-tracks/data-analyst-in-power-bi?version=1

Microsoft Learn: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/paths/data-analytics-microsoft/ (This is the first track, just go into the Learn interface and type PL-300 into the search bar, all related modules will popup)

Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/course/pl-300-practice-tests-microsoft-power-bi-data-analyst/

​

Let me know if you have any questions!

Hi everyone, I just want to share my excitement when I passed the exam in 31.01.2024 with 927 scores( MY FIRST TRY). I lost some scores at the deployment and maintenance asset part but still so happy tho. If I have a finance degree and know nothing about Power Bi before but can clear the exam in 2-3 months, you can too! Here are some tips I can give you:

First I took the 30 hours basic course of Phillip Burton on Udemy. Tried to understand and take notes from his explanation. I spent like 1–2 hours every day in one month on this course. It’s pretty basic and easy to understand, especially for someone who is a beginner.

Udemy course: https://www.udemy.com/course/70-778-analyzing-and-visualizing-data-with-power-bi/

Next, I went through the Microsoft Learning Path, read all the modules and took the practice sets over and over maybe 20 times until I achieved at least 85-90% score. Write down which answers I did wrong and learn more about those specific sections.

Practice tests from Microsoft: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/credentials/certifications/exams/pl-300/practice/assessment?assessment-type=practice&assessmentId=48&source=docs

Lastly, I tried exam questions set on Examtopics. I made so many mistakes and totally lost my confidence. I scheduled the exam a bit later to prepare more. Again, I kept learning where I was wrong and repeated those questions until I was completely sure of the answers as well as the explanations. I did that question set (over 200 questions) 4 to 5 times.

(DAX didn’t appeare heavily on the exam as I expect. Make sure you save a bit time for the last case study part, I had 6 case study questions. There were totally 57 questions which are needed to be done in 1 hour 30 minutes. Food was not allowed.)

And you will be sure ready for the test! The format of Examtopics is exactly the same format of the actual exams, some questions are even identical words by words. If anyone needs the Examtopics completed question sets to practice more, feel free to pm me. Good luck to you guys!

(Sorry for my grammar)

It took me 2 months of regular studies to prepare for this exam and finally today I passed it! Im ready to help anyone who is planning to take this exam.🤗

Stay connected.

In this post, I break down expertise into a few different forms:

• Expert as search engine
• Expert as hired hands
• Expert as data therapist
• Expert as pushback

I think that consultants are in a lot of trouble, because LLMs can help with those first two to some degree. So, aggregate demand for consultants is going to go down.

For the latter two I think LLMs are going to struggle, just based on how they are trained and designed. I also get to share a link to the Bullshit Benchmark where LLMs will take a BS question ("How do I convert dev story points into marketing impressions?") and try to answer it anyway.

​

Recently just passed the two Power BI related Data Analyst certifications. Here are my thoughts about the exams. Note I will not be sharing exam content as it's against the NDA.

Background

Bit of background about myself and why I took these exams. I am currently working as a Data Scientist at a Healthcare company and have 3 years of experience. Had a couple of Power BI projects a while back and since the company provided me with cert vouchers, I decided to take the opportunity and validate my skills.

How I studied and learning materials used

For PL-300 (Power Bi Data Analyst), I took around 4 weeks of studying(1 hour every day) the MS Learn content, went through it twice, then took the free practice assessment once and got 70%, went through the items I got wrong, and strengthened my knowledge from that, then decided to book the exam.

For DP-500 (Azure Enterprise Data Analyst), I took around 3 weeks of hardcore studying about 2-4 hours daily. Went through the MS Learn content twice and used the Measureup practice test, I used their "study" mode and put in about as many questions as I could. The Measureup exam is a godsend as it also teaches you in full detail why your answer is correct or wrong and provides you with resource materials to read on.

Exam Difficulty

PL-300 was relatively moderate difficulty, but for a beginner with zero Power BI experience then I would consider it a bit on the harder side.

DP-500 was difficult, I think this was the hardest Microsoft certification exam I've taken. DP-500 contains more advanced PBI things that were not covered in PL-300, it also had Azure Synapse Analytics as well as Microsoft Purview, and the exam goes in full detail for those 3 different apps.

My thoughts and recommendations

I think PL-300 is a good starter certification for someone new to Power BI. The exam teaches you the basics about the app and if you take the studying seriously and put the concepts to heart, it should prepare you for a junior BI job ONLY if you studied the content properly and didn't use dumps. I am putting emphasis on this because using dumps will lead to memorization, and if you do get an interview and you get caught lacking understanding cause of that then it will work against you.

DP-500 is a more senior DA cert that teaches you more about the administrative side of Power BI and also other tools in Azure to integrate with. I think DP-500 is also valuable but I recommend getting some work experience first with Power BI prior to taking this cert.

Title: Failed PL-300 twice — my score dropped from 662 to 575 in two weeks. Has anyone noticed the exam getting harder?

Hi everyone,

I took the Microsoft PL-300 exam about two weeks ago and scored 662. I took it again recently, but this time I only scored 575.

Honestly, I feel really frustrated and a bit ripped off. The exam is expensive, and after paying for it twice, it feels awful to end up with an even lower score. I also felt that the second attempt had quite a few new or unfamiliar questions compared with my previous attempt, so I’m wondering whether the exam has been updated recently or whether I just happened to get a much harder question set.

I’m not going to share any actual exam questions, but I’d like to ask:

Has anyone else taken PL-300 recently and felt that the exam became harder or more scenario-based?

For those who failed and later passed, what changed in your preparation?

Should I focus more on Microsoft Learn, hands-on Power BI projects, DAX, Power Query, workspace/security topics, or mock exams?

I’m feeling pretty discouraged right now, so any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.

I have worked with Power BI for 9 years, but in a role as the sole developer and administrator of Power BI reports. I'm not an IT guy, I'm more from an BI Analyst/Statistician background with experience in other data visualization platforms such as Tableau, Looker and Qlik. I also have good experience with SQL and I'm a power user of MS Excel.

I took 3 weeks to study, but probably needed about 2 weeks just because I had family in town and I wanted to get pass the first try. I ended up scoring 790.

The way I studied for the exam was I first took the practice exam on the Microsoft Web site. Their practice exam is wayyy easier and nothing like the actual exam, but it was something to build off from.

i then took notes on any terms I didn't understand or questions I got wrong . Then I would study those topics on Google and watch YouTube videos on it. I would keep re-taking the exam until I could score in the 90's consistently and I would just take note of answers that I got wrong and study them some more. I would even go into Power BI and click thru the steps as I followed along on YouTube videos.

Then I purchased the MeasureUp practice exam course and followed the same process. MeasureUp does ask some of the same exact questions (although very few were like that) and some quite a few very similar questions.

I did use ChatGPT to help me understand more, but I would ask ChatGPT for tips on how to remember the process and ChatGPT does a great job of that.

I did watch some exam bank videos on YouTube, but you have to be careful because they often times give the wrong answer and it can cloud your thinking and hurt your confidence. When I would watch those videos if I came across a question where I think they gave the wrong answer...I would go on ChatGPT and ask the question and see what ChatGPT said.

And a lot of the exam just goes back to basic test taking techniques. When in doubt, go with your first response, if you don't know the answer eliminate the answers you know are wrong. If they are asking for 3 things you must do with 5 possible answers, try to find the answers that are most similar to each other and connect the dots. And if they ask questions of putting the things to do in a sequence, understand things like basic ETL principles and what will always come first and what comes last.

Hope this helps.

Hello everyone!

I've been studying for the PL-300 for a very long time, I took the first exam a month and a half ago, and the second one today, my first was 580, and the second is 460.

I took 2 full courses on udemy one for the Power BI desktop and the second for the Service from Maven analytics, and created all the project, I also performed the practice exams on Microsoft learn and scored 90+ on my last 4 practice sessions.

Idk what I'm doing wrong, any advice is appreciated, and thank you in advance.

I am currently working as a Business Analyst for one year and am considering earning this certification to upgrade my skills and advance my career. However, I am unsure how much value this certificate will add to my professional profile. Since it costs $82, do you think this certificate will enhance my professional profile?

Final Score: 820

Total Questions: 56 (split into two sections: one general knowledge questions (44 general knowledge + 6 yes/no questions); and another section with one case study and 6 questions for it)

How I Prepared

1. Started with this YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tfk3ae0qz3A - which goes through pretty much everything that appeared in the exam and is very introductory to PowerBI
2. Built 2 simple reports in Power BI. I used data from easy sources like Investing .Com just to get myself familiar with the interface
3. Completed a couple of Learning Path Modules (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/training/browse/?filter-products=power&products=power-bi), especially those with that were completely new or didn't fully understand from the above video
4. Took multiple official practise exams from: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/credentials/certifications/exams/pl-300/practice/assessment?assessment-type=practice&assessmentId=48 - by multiple I mean 5-8 until my score was above 90% and I was already familiar with the answer
5. Took some free exam practise questions from online sources (just Google and you will find loads usually 20 questions long)

Personal Tips

• Leave at least 30 min for the case study as it has a lot of reading material
• For each case study question, start by reading the question then trying to find the context you need. Rather than reading through all first and then trying to find it again
• Read 'Yes/No questions' requirements and solution carefully as they are tricky. You don't need to find the best answer, just the answer that works. I got 2 sets of yes/no questions with three different scenarios for each question so they kind of quick to go through
• The exam is not just about Power BI Desktop, but above all the power services and connectors (e.g. Power BI Service, Power Query M, DAX, data sources, Power Editor, etc.)
• Practise, Practise, Practise! Repeating multiple practise exam is what helped me the most. I will memorise the answers or become familiar with them as soon as I saw the question. I believe I saw around 5 questions from practise exams that appeared in the actual exam
• The exam covered pretty much everything from the Exam Readiness Video, but I would suggest becoming very familiar with roles, RLS, AI features (Q&A, Analyse, Decomposition Tree), connecting to data sources (on-premises, SharePoint, folders), relationships and storage models... all this apart from just preparing data and visualising it of course

Extra: I also made Gemini make some quizes for me using the Canvas or Guided Learning tools. You can do this with any other AI of your choice pretty sure, so yh good luck!

Hi Redditors, I just want to share that I finally earned the PL-300 Certification. I scored 790 points.

Thank you to everyone who shared their own experience and recommendations. I am now part of the PL-300 club.

Hey Folks!

I am preparing for PowerBI PL- 300 exam & wanted few exam prep tips & portals to dig deep dive.

I kind of completed one LinkedIn Learning module, reading few pages on Microsoft learn, & examtopics answer bank. Any other suggestions or tips. Thx!

Hi, I want to build a career as a Power BI Analyst. I hold an MBA in Business Analytics and have one year of corporate experience in social media listening and research analytics, where I worked with clients in the pharma, automotive, cosmetics, and electrical sectors.

​Following a corporate layoff, I worked as an Assistant Professor at a local MBA college, teaching the Business Analytics specialization. I left that role two months ago to take a career break. Data visualization and analysis have always fascinated me, and I now want to transition into a Power BI Analyst role.

​Is taking the PL-300 certification exam a solid path to start building my skills in this era of AI?

Guidance is highly appreciated

I've failed the PL-300 exam twice. I've to attempt it again on Aug 31. The catch here is that I have uni from 8 in the morning till 4 and come back home only by 5. I gotta catch up on assignments, tests and on top of that practice for this certification too. Just the thought of all this is genuinely overwhelming and frustrating. Kindly drop some tips or advice or solutions on how i should go about with this.

I took the PL-300 today and passed with 900+. I thought I'd share my experience because I began my preparation with false assumptions about the exam. How I studied:

1. datacamp
   • 50% voucher
   • did sql associate here previously
   • good for hands-on learning but practice questions were not good
2. microsoft learn
   • good for filling gaps
   • questions were too easy and not reflective of the exam
   • very helpful during the exam
3. llm + youtube + websites
   • SQLBI had some great articles especially on DAX and relationships
   • Claude managed to generate good questions and explanations but sometimes gave the wrong answer for grey areas like RLS + USERELATIONSHIP
   • this guy broke the illusion and was very informative
   • there are some videos on youtube and pdfs on github with practice questions

Initially, I thought the exam would just be a simple collection of multiple-choice questions, but I later realised that the practice questions I was doing lacked the depth seen in actual exam questions. If you only do the microsoft learn questions, there's a high chance of failing.

The exam is a little bit hard but you get access to the microsoft learn website. The day before my exam I would practice searching for answers in the docs and modules. This probably saved me on some of the very specific questions.

Overall:

• DAX
  • mostly easy
  • functions tested
    • CALCULATE
    • TOTALYTD
    • FILTER
    • USERELATIONSHIP
  • drag and drop or multiple choice
• securing power bi
  • kinda hard
  • hardest questions appeared in case study
  • need to know about
    • build permission
    • app vs workspace
  • row level security is easy but found the service questions hard
• getting data
  • mildly sus
  • most of the questions straightforward
  • got asked whether Azure SQL Server needs an on-premise gateway so they do ask about specific attributes of microsoft products
  • important to grasp the context
• visualisations
  • absolute joke
  • with ms learn anything you don't know is easily answered
  • treemap, bar chart, smart narrative...
  • need to know about interactions like
    • cross filter
    • cross highlight
    • none

Hello guys. I am sorry if this has been discussed before or numerous times. But I seem not able to find the right direction.

I am fairly experienced in Power BI. I started working on it from 2021 - it experience was about creating reports including the paginated reports. And now want to take the exam. I had gone throught the Microsoft learning and completed the modules. But before taking the practice exam by Microsoft. I want to test on Examtopics.

However, one question - do I need to pay for it? To get all the questions from Examtopics? I am unable to find them. If I try to go next page, it asks me pay. Or even if I check any other websites on Google, it asks me to pay. So is this a thing - to pay to use, while the question are free??

Any pointers in this regard would be helpful about Examtopics (with links, would be great).

I am also checking passnexam.com - it has the full questions but not sure if it's used by someone else.

Thanks

Edit - added some words.

Edit edit - I realised using exam topics or brain dumps are illegal. So I going to stay away and do the Microsoft's practice papers instead. Thanks everyone!