For all professionals, students, or Data Analysts aspiring for the Microsoft Data Analyst Associate [DA-100] Certification, this blog is for you!
During this blog post, we will visit and cover all the required Certification Exam details like Weightage of topics, Exam Course Content, Exam Duration, and far more to guide you while you prepare for the Microsoft Data Analyst Certification.
We will be referring to the subsequent topics:
- What Is DA-100 Microsoft Data Analyst Associate Certification?
- Who Is This Certification For?
- Microsoft Data Analyst Certification Benefits
- Prerequisites For Microsoft Data Analyst Certification
- Learning Path For DA-100 Microsoft Certified: Data Analyst Associate
- DA-100 Q/A
- Exam Topics
- DA-100 Hands-On Guide
- DA-100 Exam Details And Registration
- DA-100 Exam Day Tips
- DA-100 Exam Retake Policy
- References
- Next Steps to begin with DA-100 Certification
What Is DA-100 Microsoft Data Analyst Associate Certification?
This certification enables Data Analysts to attain a good quality in their data assets with the assistance of Microsoft Power BI. It is meant for the data analyst practitioners who collaborate with key stakeholders across verticals to deliver relevant insights supported on identified business requirements.
Who Is This Certification For?
First of all, it is very important to identify whether you are the right candidate for this certification or if it suits your domain or career prospects. So, below is a quick checklist for that purpose:
- If you wish to begin or currently are designing and building scalable data models, cleaning and remodeling data, and enabling advanced analytic capabilities that provide meaningful business value through easy-to-comprehend data visualizations.
- It is mainly beneficial for Data professionals and Business Intelligence professionals since it enhances their skills to accurately perform data analysis using Power BI.
- Also tuned for those individuals who use data from both cloud sources and on-premise to develop visualization reports for various purposes.
Microsoft Data Analyst Certification Benefits
- Data Analysts enable businesses to maximize the worth of their data assets by using tools like Microsoft Power BI.
- This certification enables the candidate to spot the varied methods and best practices that are in line with business and technical requirements for modeling, visualizing, and analyzing data with Power BI.
- The candidate will be confident in matters of accessing and processing data from a spread of information sources including both relational and non-relational data.
- Furthermore, it helps to explore the way to implement proper security standards and policies across the facility of the Power BI spectrum including datasets and groups.
- It asserts the candidates’ ability to use Power BI to manage and deploy reports and dashboards for sharing and content distribution, create paginated reports and publish them to a Power BI workspace.
Prerequisites For Microsoft Data Analyst Certification
There are no prerequisites for this exam although it’s good to know data-related skills such as handling incoming data, cleaning, and visualizing data, for a better understanding of the concepts in this certification.
Learning Path For DA-100 Microsoft Certified: Data Analyst Associate
DA-100 Q/A
To get a brief knowledge of topics and some Q/A covered in each Module of Microsoft Data Analyst Associate [DA-100]. Check the following list we provide.
- Get Started with Microsoft Data Analytics in Power BI
- Prepare Data in Power BI.
- Clean, Transform, and Load Data in Power BI
- Design a Data Model in Power BI
- Create Model Calculations using DAX in Power BI
- Optimize Model Performance
- Work with Visuals in Power BI
- Create Dashboards and Paginated Reports in Power BI
Exam Topics
The important domains covered in DA-100 Microsoft Certified: Data Analyst Associate Certification are:
1.) Prepare the Data (20-25%)
- Get data from different data sources – This section includes identifying and connecting to an information source, selecting a shared dataset or creating a local one, choosing an appropriate query type with identifying query performance issues.
- Profile the data – It covers identifying data anomalies, examining data structures including interrogating column properties and data statistics.
- Clean, transform, and load the data – It contains resolving data inconsistencies and data quality issues, identifying and creating appropriate keys for joins, applying data shape transformations to table structures and combining queries, leveraging Advanced Editor to change Power Query M code, configuring data loading and resolving data import errors.
2.) Model the Data (25-30%)
- Design a data model – It contains defining the tables and configuring table and column properties, defining quick measures and role-playing dimensions, flattening out a parent-child hierarchy, defining a relationship’s cardinality and cross-filtering direction, designing the data model to fulfill performance requirements, resolving many-to-many relationships and defining an acceptable level of data granularity.
- Develop a data model – The topics include applying a cross-filter direction and security filtering, creating calculated tables and columns and hierarchies, implementing row-level security roles, and setting up the Q&A feature.
- Create measures by using DAX – It includes using DAX to build complex measures, using CALCULATE to govern filters, implementing Time Intelligence in DAX, replacing numeric columns with measures, using basic statistical functions to boost data, and creating semi-additive measures.
- Optimize model performance – This section assesses skills to get rid of unnecessary rows and columns, identify poorly performing measures, relationships and visuals, improve cardinality levels by changing data types, improve cardinality levels through summarization and build/manage aggregations.
3.) Visualize the Data (20-25%)
- Create reports – Skills included within this are to feature visualization items to reports, choose an appropriate visualization type, format and configure visualizations, import a custom visual, configure conditional formatting and apply slicing and filtering, add an R or Python visual, configure the report page design and configure for accessibility, configure automatic page refresh and make a paginated report.
- Create dashboards – Content includes setting mobile view, managing tiles on a dashboard, configuring data alerts, using the Q&A feature, adding a dashboard theme, pinning a live report page to a dashboard.
- Enrich reports for usability – It covers skills to configure bookmarks, creates custom tooltips, edits and configure interactions between visuals, configure navigation for a report, apply sort and configure Sync Slicers, use the selection pane and drill through and cross filter, drill down into data using interactive visuals, export report data and design reports for mobile devices.
4.) Analyze the Data (10-15%)
- Enhance reports to reveal insights – It includes conditional formatting, applying slicers and filters, performing top N analysis and exploring statistical summary, using the Q&A visual, using Quick Insights feature for reports, reference lines with the help Analytics pane, using the Play Axis feature and to create personalized visuals.
- Perform advanced analysis – The key skills covered here are to spot outliers, conduct Time Series analysis, use groupings and binning, use the Key Influencers to explore dimensional variances, use the decomposition tree visual to split down measures, apply AI Insights.
5.) Deploy and Maintain Deliverables (10-15%)
- Manage datasets – This includes configuring a dataset scheduled, refreshing and configuring row-level security group membership, providing access to datasets, configuring incremental refresh settings, promoting or certifying Power BI datasets, identifying downstream dataset dependencies, configuring large datasets formats.
- Create and manage workspaces – It contains creating and configuring a workspace, recommending a development lifecycle strategy, assigning workspace roles, configuring and updating a workspace app, publishing, import, or update the asset in your workspace, applying sensitivity labels to workspace content, use deployment pipelines, configuring subscriptions and promoting or certifying Power BI content.
DA-100 Hands-On Guide
The best approach to learn and steel on self for such certification exams is to urge enough hands-on practice to be technically sound and conceptually crystal clear. To assist you with these from the exam point of view, we’ve got an entire guide Microsoft Certified: Data Analyst Associate [DA-100]: Step By Step Activity Guides (Hands-On Labs) for your better learning journey. The list of Activity Guides (Labs) we provide are as follows:
- Prepare Data in Power BI Desktop
- Load Data in Power BI Desktop
- Model Data in Power BI Desktop – Part 1
- Model Data in Power BI Desktop – Part 2
- Create DAX Calculations in Power BI Desktop – Part 1
- Create DAX Calculations in Power BI Desktop – Part 2
- Design a Report in Power BI Desktop – Part 1
- Design a Report in Power BI Desktop – Part 2
- Create a Power BI Dashboard
- Create a Power BI Paginated Report
- Perform Data Analysis in Power BI Desktop
DA-100 Exam Details And Registration
- Certification Name: [DA-100] Microsoft Certified: Data Analyst Associate
- Exam Duration: 180 minutes + 30 min for preparation
- Number of Questions: 40-60
- Passing score: 700 (70%)
- Exam Fee: $165 USD (for the United States)
You can register for [DA-100] Microsoft Certified: Data Analyst Associate by visiting the official Microsoft page.
DA-100 Exam Day Tips
- Run a System Test before the exam.
- Keep the workstation clean, because the proctor will monitor the environment through the webcam. don’t keep any electronic devices around you.
- No breaks are allowed in the midst of the exam for any reason.
- There are also variations within the kind of exam questions asked like fill within the blanks, true or false, multiple answers, multiple-choice, drag-and-drop, fill the missing modules within the given pipeline, so you would like to organize well for them.
- Last but most significant to recollect is Time Management, watch out and pace yourself on the questions so as to not grind to a halt on one question for very long.
DA-100 Exam Retake Policy
- If a candidate isn’t able to clear in their first attempt, they need to pause for a period of 24 hours before they reappear again for the second attempt.
- In case the candidate doesn’t clear within the second attempt, he/she should re-access their training and retake the exam for the third attempt after a waiting period of 14 days.
- At last, a candidate is allowed a maximum of 5 retakes in a year.
- The same waiting period of 14 days exists to retake the exam for the fourth and fifth attempts.
References
- Microsoft Certified Data Analyst Associate [DA-100] Step By Step Activity Guides (Hands-On Labs)
- [DA-100 Day 4 Q/A Review] Create Calculated Columns, Use DAX to Build Measures In Power BI.
- [DA-100 Day 5 Q/A Review] Work With Visuals and Create Data-Driven Story In Power BI
Next Steps to begin with DA-100 Certification:
In our Microsoft Data Analyst Associate Certification Training Program, we’ll cover 11 Hands-On Labs. If you wish to start your journey towards becoming a Microsoft Certified: Data Analyst Associate, try our FREE CLASS.
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