Pass DA-100 Certification Exam Fast

DA-100 Exam Has Been Retired

This exam has been replaced by Microsoft with new exam.

Microsoft DA-100 Exam Details

If you are a data analyst striving to get your skills validated in the scope of data assets, transformations, and models, then the Microsoft DA-100 exam is the one that will assist you with this.

About Data Analyst Associate and Who It Is Intended for

The Microsoft Certified: Data Analyst Associate is earned by passing DA-100 and is a role-based intermediate-level certification that falls under the Microsoft Power Platform certification hierarchy and authenticates the data analyst’s expertise in utilizing Microsoft Power BI in maximizing the businesses’ data assets value. The earner of this certificate will be competent to design and develop scalable data models along with cleaning and transformation of data to provide business values through data visualizations. Overall, this certification will be beneficial for data analysts in broadening their technological prowess and the values that they provide for businesses.

About Exam DA-100: Analyzing Data with Microsoft Power BI

The Microsoft DA-100 test is for those individuals who have at least some experience in working with Power Bi although it is not a strict requirement but a recommendation. In addition, the applicant should have some experience in the concepts of scaling data models, data visualizations, data cleaning, and data processing. When it comes to the test details, DA-100 exam is available in English, Chinese (Simplified), Korean, Japanese and will require $165 for registration. The registered candidate can use the Pearson VUE platform for scheduling an exam. In the final test, individuals will experience around 40-60 items that will have to be solved in 3 hours.

Exam DA-100 Topics Covered

Test DA-100 measures the entrant’s skills in 5 different domains:

• Preparation of data (20-25%)

  The first domain for DA-100 exam consists of questions that will test the candidate's understanding of data retrieval from various sources. Thus, applicants should be able to identify the data source and connect to it, modify the source settings, select and create various data sets, pick a storage mode, etc. In addition, the examinee should be familiar with the concept of data profiling and have to be able to identify anomalies, study data structures, and examine column properties as well as data statistics. This section also includes cleaning, transforming, and loading data. This means that the entrant must know how to resolve inconsistencies, transform column data types, combine queries, solve data import errors, and more. This topic will also include Microsoft Dataverse, the usage & creation of a PBIDS file, and data flow after the changes are incorporated.

• Modeling the data (25-30%)

  This part of the final exam includes designing a data model. Here, the candidate should be able to define and configure tables along with having an idea about various dimensions and relationships. They are also required to be familiar with the concept of cardinality and cross-filter direction. After designing a data model, the applicant should be aware of how to develop it. Therefore, understanding of security filtering, calculated tables, hierarchies, and the implementation of row-level security roles will be beneficial. Furthermore, the entrants’ expertise in working with DAX will be tested in this sector. They are required to be capable of using DAX for building complex measures, taking advantage of CALCULATE for manipulating filters using DAX with Time Intelligence, and more. In addition, this portion of DA-100 also involves the optimization of model performance by removing rows and columns, changing data types, managing aggregations, etc. Finally, the entrant should also know how to create semi-additive measures.

• Visualizing the data (20-25%)

  The third domain will test the applicant's know-how of creating reports, dashboards, and enriching reports for usability. This will require the candidate's expertise in adding visualization to reports, choosing a proper visualization style, formatting visualizations, slicing and filtering applications, configuring a report page, building automatic page refresh, etc. The knowledge of R and Python visuals will also be beneficial. Furthermore, it is also essential for the entrant to know how to set dashboard to mobile view, manage tiles, configure data alerts, arrange aspects of the dashboard, and pin live reports. Finally, the applicant needs to enrich the reports by configuring bookmarks, creating custom tooltips, sorting & configuring various Sync Slicers, designing reports for mobile devices, etc.

• Analyzing the data (10-15%)

  In the fourth tested area, the candidate will be asked to enhance reports for exposing insights. This means complying with the need to be well-informed about conditional formatting, slicers, filters, Analytics pane along with a few other concepts. Besides, candidates must be able to add Quick Insights results to reports and use Q&A visuals. Likewise, the exam-taker should be able to know how to execute the advanced analysis. This involves the understanding of outliers, Timer Series analysis, groupings, binning, dimensional variances, decompositions tree visuals, and AI Insights. The exam also requires an understanding of the Play Axis feature and the personalization of visuals.

• Deployment and maintenance deliverables (10-15%)

  The fifth and final section of DA-100 exam includes managing datasets. The candidate must be able to configure dataset scheduled refresh and row-level security. They are also expected to have an idea about giving access to data sets, incremental refresh settings, and certifying datasets. Moreover, the entrant is required to be well-informed about creating and managing workspaces. They should be able to create and configure workspaces, assign roles in the workspace, and manage the workspace app. Knowing how to import, export, update, and publish workspace assets will be essential. Finally, the candidate needs to know about applying sensitivity labels in workspace contents. The entrant also needs to be capable of identifying downstream data set dependencies and using deployment pipelines.

Career Opportunities and Pay

After getting through with DA-100 exam and earning the Microsoft Certified: Data Analyst Associate certification, you will be able to offer more for big business companies that need more analytical power that Excel cannot provide. This opens up multiple job opportunities with decent average annual salaries. Below are some of them as covered by Payscale:

• Data Analyst: $61k;
• IT Operation Analyst: $56k;
• Web Data Analyst: $67k.

Certification Path

After acquiring the Microsoft Certified: Data Analyst Associate certification, you are competent to go further and broaden your expertise in the Microsoft BI platform. Although this certificate is not a direct requirement for other BI-related validations, it will sure help you get started with the higher-level certifications like the Microsoft Certified: Dynamics 365 + Power Platform Solution Architect Expert.