Power BI Developer /BI consultant Interview Questions

Interview #1:

1. Tell me about yourself and project?

2. How would you define Power BI as an effective source?
3. Major components of Power BI?
4. Various refresh options in Power BI?
5. What are data gateways?
6. What is bi-directional cross filtering?
7. What is row level security?
8. Where is data stored in Power BI?
9. Can you explain types of filters?
10. Out of 3 filters which filter works first?
11. Can we gather information data from SQL stored procedures?
12. Can we gather data from SQL views?

Interview #2:

1. Tell me about yourself and roles & responsibilities?

2. How would you rate yourself in SQL?
3. What is difference between rank, dense rank & row number?
4. What is clustered index and non-clustered index?
5. Do you know on joins?
6. What are types of connectivity modes?
7. Difference between import & direct query mode?
8. Difference between filter and slicer?
9. Difference between SUM & SUMX?
10. Do you have knowledge on incremental refresh?
11. Scenario is 5 countries of data, country wise sales are there, so need to show sales in percent wise. How
can you do that?
12. Different types of visuals you have worked on?
13. What is water fall chart and explain a scenario when to be used?
14. Difference between pie chart & donut chart?
15. Scenario: There is a report with 5 visuals & a slicers. If slicer is changed only 2 visuals should affect and
remaining 3 visuals should not affect. What will you do?
16. Scenario: There are 2 pages in a report. In the 1st page there is a slicer called country. If country changed
from slicer in the 1st page, then automatically the next page should also be impacted. How you will do?
17. What is drill through filter?
18. Difference between related and related table?
19. Scenario: There is a sales column. I need to show the sales for April month. What is the DAX expression?
20. Scenario: Report consists of so many visuals some of the visuals are loading very slowly. So, need to
optimise these visuals to load very quickly so, what are the steps to perform to improve the performance
the report?
21. Do you have knowledge on modelling?
22. What are the schemas that you have been working?
23. What is cross filtering?
24. Do you have knowledge on DAX functions?

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 25. What are types of DAX functions?
26. What is TOTALYTD?

Interview #3:

1. Tell me about yourself and project role?

2. What is power query?
3. What are connectivity modes in Power BI?
4. Explain the term incremental refresh?
5. Difference between calculated column, calculated table & calculated measure?
6. What is DAX function?
7. List out the benefits using variables & DAX?
8. What are the most commonly used DAX functions?
9. Difference between MAX & MAXA?
10. Difference between COUNT & COUNTD?
11. What does DATEDIFF DAX function do?
12. What is SUM & SUMX?
13. Scenario: You had worked on MTD, YTD. How you are going to use when 2 dates are there and how
you will calculate?
14. How do you perform dynamic filtering in Power BI?
15. What are the types of filters available in Power BI?
16. Difference between filter & slicer?

Interview #4:

1. Tell me about yourself?

2. How would you rate yourself in Power BI & SQL out of 10?
3. Are you aware of feature called RLS?
4. Is it possible to use RLS to limit the columns & measures?
5. What are the connectivity modes available in Power BI?
6. In Direct query can you use RLS features?
7. How Power BI get to know that all those data related information when we use direct query
connectivity mode?
8. Are you aware of metadata?
9. List out some of the common table DAX functions?
10. Scenario: There is a data table having more than 4TB of data, you have used live connection or direct
query mode. You imported he data and then after that you created a chart. When you are selecting any
filter. For refreshing the whole chart, it will take 6 minutes of time and you wanted to reduce to 1 min
then client ask you to reduce to 1 min. They told to optimise what are all the procedures you will take
to optimise it and to reduce to 1sec
11. What is bidirectional cross filtering?
12. Different kind of filters have in Power BI?
13. Difference between Primary key & unique key?
14. Difference between UNION & UNIONALL?
15. Explain the types of joins with an example?
16. Can we put any condition in cross join?
17. Use cases of full outer join?
18. Can we use left join as a inner join?

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Interview #5:

1. Tell me about yourself?

2. Have you worked on related and related table?
3. Scenario: There are 2 columns city & sales amount. How to get percentage based on sales amount?
4. Scenario is 1 calculated column is Qty x unit price & 1 calculated measure sum (sales amt). Can we
write these 2 statements in 1 statement?
5. Difference between SUM & SUMX?
6. Difference between calculated column & calculated measure?
7. Either calculated column or calculated measure which gives good performance?
8. When to go with calculated column or with a calculated measure?
9. Difference between calculate table & filter?
10. Have you done development of report from scratch?
11. Have you worked on source parameterisation?
12. Have you worked on dynamic parameterisation?
13. What is cross drill & drill through?
14. Difference between report & dashboard?
15. Difference between duplicate and reference query?
16. Have you used conditional formatting?
17. In time intelligence functions which are all DAX functions you have used?
18. How can you calculate previous year YTD?
19. How can you set the alerts in Power BI service?
20. Difference between premium and premium per capacity?

Interview #6:

1. Tell about yourself?

2. What is the source of your data?
3. How do you get the data?
4. 1st column – region, 2nd column-state, 3rd column-Date & 4th column-Sales on that day. Need to find
Total sales for all the regions, all the states, all the dates. What is query?
5. How do you import the data in Power BI? What are all the different modes?
6. To display above columns in a bar chart. I need to show each region how much the total sales are so
there are 4 regions. You want to show each region, total sales. How do you set this in Power BI?
7. You want to show sales for only 2021 region wise. How will you write DAX measure?
8. What are the visualisations you have implemented?
9. 4 regions. Total sales for all region is 100cr, West-50cr, South-25cr, North-12.5cr & East-12.5cr. can you
show how Pie chart looks?
10. Difference between Pie chart & donut chart?
11. What are other visualisations you have worked other than scatter plot & waterfall chart?
12. In visual what did you use to get scatter plot?
13. In visual what did you use to get waterfall plot?
14. What is purpose of scatter plot to gain what insight?
15. Have you done performance tuning/improvements in Power BI reports?
16. Have you worked on stacked bar chart anytime?

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Interview #7:

1. Tell me about yourself with the project role and responsibilities?

2. Building blocks of Power BI?
3. Report & dashboard what is the main difference?
4. In your current project which is the data source you are using?
5. What are the types of connectivity modes?
6. What is Power query editor and what can you perform in power query editor?
7. For example, there are 2 tables. 1 table have 3 columns i.e., product, price & sales amount. 2nd table has
price, discount, product & sales amount. So number of columns are different. Is it possible to append it?
8. What are types of joins in power query?
9. Can you explain about inner join?
10. In your current project which schema you are using?
11. Which schema gives better performance?
12. Why you have used snowflake schema?
13. What is Primary key & Foreign key?
14. What are the types of cardinalities?
15. Can we have more than 1 active relationship between 2 tables?
16. If there is more than 1 active relationship between tables what will you do?
17. What is DAX?
18. What is filter context & row context?
19. What are the types of filters in Power BI?
20. What is sync slicer?
21. What is RLS. How do you implement it?
22. Types of licenses available in Power BI?
23. What is data gateway?
24. What is minimum time interval for schedule refresh?
25. What are the types of refreshment options available in Power BI?
26. Can you explain about incremental refresh?
27. What are data flows?
28. Write the Syntax/measure for calculating running total sales?
29. Have you worked on multi language reports?
30. How to convert currency in Power BI? i.e., KPI values. For ex, we have 3 countries data so India, USA
& UK. When I select India in slicer, it should show in INR, when I select USA in slicer, it should show
in dollar

Interview #8:

1. Tell about yourself with the project role and responsibilities?

2. Other than SQL server credentials, what are steps you perform to get the data?
3. What is the source of data?
4. What are schemas available in Power BI?
5. What are licenses available in Power BI?
6. What are cardinalities available?
7. Types of filters available?
8. Types of connectivity modes available in Power BI?
9. Scenario: 2 visuals are there in page1. In page2 I have a tile. How can I bring 2 visuals into a tile?
10. Before schedule refresh, what are steps you take in SQL Server?

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 11. In development, you have UAT so how to convert to production?
12. One table is in excel, using SQL server how can you pull that table?

Interview #9:

1. Tell about yourself with the project you are working currently?
2. Write a query to get employee salary > 500000?
3. What is DAX?
4. What is many to many relationships and how do you overcome from many to many relationships?
5. What is difference between SUM & SUMX?
6. What are the dashboards you have prepared?

Interview #10:

1. What are the roles you have been in previous project?

2. What is the source of data?
3. Where you will perform data transformation either in SQL Server or where?
4. What is Sync slicer & filter?
5. What is duplicate & reference?
6. What is RLS?
7. Are you aware of dashboards?
8. Are you aware of deployment?
9. Are you aware of power apps?

Interview #11:

1. What are the roles and responsibilities from your previous project?
2. Have you used variables in DAX formulas?
3. What is dataset and dataflows?
4. What is RLS?
5. What is query folding?
6. What are DAX functions you have implemented?
7. Are you aware of incremental refresh?
8. What is your source for pulling data?
9. Will you do data transformations in power query editor when you want only few tables to be pulled
from SQL server database?
10. Will you write queries for pulling only required tables?
11. How many active relationships will have between 2 tables?
12. What will you do improve the performance of the report?
13. Can I write DAX in a DAX?

Interview #12:

1. Tell me about projects you have done?

2. Which license you have in Power BI Service?
3. Which ETL tool you have used?
4. What is the source of pulling the data?
5. With help of pro account, how will you pull the data from the SQL Server through import query?
6. Where data is stored in SQL server either in data mart or where?

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Interview #13:

1. Tell me about yourself with project role?

2. What is the source of data?
3. What are the visuals you have implemented?
4. What is RLS?
5. Scenario: You have a Date table. How to get Month name?
6. What is append & merge query?
7. What is use case of merge query?
8. What is duplicate & reference query?
9. Difference between column & measure?
10. Difference between SUM & SUMX?
11. Are you aware of RLS?
12. What are steps to get data from SQL server to Power BI?
13. How will you do schedule refresh when data is from SQL server?
14. Are you aware of Power BI services?
15. How will you add role in Power BI service level?
16. If sheet is in excel, how will I take it to SharePoint to pull data into Power BI desktop?

Interview #14:

1. Introduce yourself with the project you are working currently?

2. What is data gateway?
3. What is RLS?
4. What are the transformations performed in power query editor?
5. What is a view in SQL?
6. What are constraints?
7. What is temp table?
8. What is CTE?
9. Difference between UNION & UNIONALL

Interview #15:

1. Other than technical what are the skills you have?

2. What are most challenges you have faced in Power BI?
3. What is purpose of power query & DAX?
4. If 2 heading are there. If I click on 1 heading, then other heading should be hidden. How will you do?
5. What is SUM &SUMX?
6. What are CALCULATED & CALCULATED TABLE DAX functions?
7. Write an SQL query to remove duplicates in a single column of customer id?

Interview #16:

1. How many dashboards you have built?

2. What is report & dashboard?
3. What is SUM & SUMX?
4. What are CALCULATE & CALCULATED TABLE?
5. What are all DAX functions you have used?
6. What are connectivity modes?

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 7. What is incremental refresh?
8. What is the source you have used in getting the data?
9. Difference between import and direct query mode?
10. What is dynamic RLS. Explain with the steps how you have implemented in your project?
11. How will you share the reports?

Interview #17:

1. Can you rate yourself in Power BI & SQL out of 10?

2. Will you attend daily meetings with stakeholders either weekly or monthly?
3. From scratch are you creating reports that is development report or enhancement report?
4. What is RLS?
5. As you said that in your project, visuals are not loading, so how you fix that?
6. You have worked with direct query & import query right, so what is the basic difference of those 2
modes?
7. If you are a stakeholder where you have normal amount of data, but you want direct query mode to
use. What will you suggest? Can you convince me why should I go for import mode? What are the steps
you will be telling them and what will be the dashboard performance? Will it be faster or slower?
8. What is difference between SUM & SUMX?
9. Why we use CALCULATE?
10. What is ALL & ALLEXCEPT DAX function?
11. Have you worked with Bookmark?
12. Donut chart is there that is region by volume. I want top 10 regions by volume. How can I achieve
that?
13. Rolling 24 months. So, volume, net sales & gross profit is there. In that visual (from line & stacked bar
chart) you don’t want bar chart. So, what other charts you can use?
14. Scenario: Client having 2 categories i.e., potato & prepared potato products. So, there are volumes.
Volume is a measure that we have which is derived from table. If you see this measure, it is coming from
view, it has different values in sales volume & value. This is giving you the volume for this. Now how
you calculate % of volume?
15. Scenario: It’s January new year, for ranking which function you will be using? If you wanted to rank the
month according to the volume. I want to rank the category or the month I just want to rank it based on
the volume i.e., potato should come as 1, prepared potato should come as 2. Which function you will be
using to get it?
16. How will you write DAX function for cumulative volume?
17. In a measure, if you remove the filter, will it give the same data in the card visual?

Interview #18:

1. Which chart you have used to make target values?

2. What are gateways and its types?
3. What are connectivity modes?
4. Through which mode you have pulled the data?
5. Which sources you have used to pull the data?
6. What is RLS & its types?
7. What is dimension table & fact table?
8. What is difference between calculated column & measure?
9. What is related Dax function?

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 10. What is summarize DAX function?
11. What are the cardinalities and its types?
12. What is both cross filter direction?
13. What is difference between DATEDIFF & DATEADD DAX function?
14. What are the commands in DDL, DML, TCL & DCL?
15. What is UNION & UNIONALL?
16. What are the constraints?
17. What are the joins and its types?

Interview #19:

1. Which type of connection you have used to pull the data?

2. Did you know about direct query mode?
3. What are the DAX functions you have used?
4. Write DAX measure for last 3 months?
5. If you are in November, if you need October sales then what is the DAX function?
6. What are dataflows?
7. What you have done in workspace level?
8. In premium version if wanted to do every one-minute refresh, what is your approach?
9. Do you know power automate?
10. What is ALL & ALLEXCEPT?

Interview #20:

1. Tell about yourself and roles & responsibilities of current project?

2. Difference between DATESYTD & YTD?
3. I have columns of product type, category & region. Can we apply multiple filters on YTD?
4. What is difference between remove & duplicate?
5. What is duplicate & reference query?
6. What is difference between IF and SWITCH functions?
7. 10 members are there. You need top 10 people. How will you do in filter level?
8. You have a country column & many country. So, you have 4 visuals & show only USA. How will you
do that?
9. What is ALLSELECTED & ALLEXCEPT?
10. Do you know about tooltip & drill down feature?
11. What is the use of query editor and what are the transformations you did?
12. What is merge query?
13. What are data flows?
14. What is SUM & SUMX?
15. What are the types of filters available?
16. Difference between PARALLELPERIOD & PREVIOUSYEAR sales?
17. Do you know securities in Power BI?
18. What is left join & inner join and explain the use case?
19. What is dimension table & fact table?
20. What are the types of dimension table?
21. How many relationships we can have between tables?

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Interview #21:

1. Tell about yourself with current project roles?

2. So, you are doing development as well as dashboard testing?
3. Using any other tool for testing of the dashboard or a manual testing?
4. Who is writing SQL queries?
5. Who will model the dashboard?
6. What is the kind of modelling you have used in Power BI dashboard?
7. Tell me the fact & dimension tables from your last CRM?
8. Which version of SQL server you are using
9. How many Power BI reports you have developed?
10. How many pages are there in the report?
11. What are the visuals you have built in Power BI?
12. What are challenges faced in data modelling?
13. Who was your client?
14. From where you are getting the data?
15. Can you explain how many tables are there?
16. Which is the mode you have used either direct query or import mode?
17. Why you didn’t used direct query?

Interview #22:

1. Tell about yourself with the roles and responsibilities you are handling?
2. Where data is stored in Power BI?
3. What is DAX?
4. What is power query?
5. What data source can Power BI connect for a data exploration?
6. What are building blocks in Power BI?
7. What are connectors to databases & other datasets?
8. What is visual level filter?
9. What is default visual interaction?
10. What is a cursor & how to implement it?
11. Query to display name of employees that begin with s.

Interview #23:

1. Tell about yourself with the project you are working on?
2. How will you move / showcase the detailed information by using which feature?
3. If there are 5 pages. To come to home page which feature you will use?
4. What are the sources you have used?
5. From which database you will get the data?
6. Which license you have got?
7. How will you test from source side once the visual is built in Power BI desktop?
8. Do you know about gateways?
9. Do you know about securities?
10. What are data flows?
11. What are deployment pipelines?
12. What are DAX functions you have used?

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 13. What are time intelligence functions available?
14. What are SUMMARIZE & SUMMARIZE COLUMNS?
15. What is CALCULATE?

Interview #24:

1. How well you are in SQL?

2. What are indexes?
3. What are views?
4. Do you know about stored procedures & difference between view & stored procedure?
5. What are CTE’s?
6. What are triggers?
7. What are cursors?
8. What are aggregating functions?
9. What are the data sources you have used?
10. What are connectivity modes?
11. What is difference between import & direct query mode?
12. What are schemas available?
13. Explain use case of each schema?
14. What are DAX functions you have worked with?
15. How you will publish report?
16. What is difference between report & dashboard?

Interview #25:

1. How do you make report dynamic?

2. What is storage engine used in power query?
3. What is query folding?
4. What is LOOKUP?
5. What are other functions used other than SUMMARIZE?
6. Difference between SUMMARIZE & SUMMARIZE COLUMNS?
7. What is pro storage capacity?
8. How do you implement RLS?
9. Do you know about gateways?
10. Are you aware of incremental refresh?
11. What is difference between filter & slicer?
12. Difference between DATEADD & PARALLELPERIOD DAX functions?
13. What are connectivity modes available in Power BI?
14. Which time intelligence functions won’t work when using direct query mode?
15. What is row context?
16. What is CALCULATE & CALCULATE TABLE?
17. What are parameters?
18. What are append & merge queries?
19. How many tables you can append & merge?
20. What is DAX function you have used other than USERPRINCIPALNAME for dynamic RLS?
21. Many to many relationships how you have faced?
22. What are joins available in data modelling?

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