Best Practices for Power BI Report Optimization: Build Faster, Smarter Power BI Reports

Power BI dashboards often look great — but they don’t always perform that way.

Whether it's a complex data model, too many visuals, or inefficient DAX, performance issues frustrate users, stall adoption, and undermine the credibility of even the best-designed dashboards.

In this live webinar, Zebra BI’s Senior BI Consultant Mark Leskovšek will walk you through the exact best practices and tools used to fix performance problems in Power BI — and build lean, scalable reports that deliver insights instantly.

You’ll learn how to speed up slow dashboards, optimize your data model using the star schema, streamline report layouts with fewer visuals, and use modern tools like Performance Analyzer, Tabular Editor, and Semantic Link Labs to monitor and improve performance.

Performance is more than a “nice to have” — it’s essential for building trust and driving adoption. In fact, a slow-loading report is one of the top reasons Power BI projects fail to scale across teams.

If your reports are taking 10, 15, or even 30 seconds to load… you’re not alone. But it’s also fixable — and this session will show you how.

You'll learn:
Why Power BI reports get slow — and how to fix them
The top performance killers (and how to avoid them)
How to optimize your data model using the star schema
Tools and techniques to monitor, diagnose, and improve performance
Real-world results — like cutting report load time from 15s to 0.5s
Presenter

Mark Leskovšek

Senior BI consultant
Mark Leskovšek is a Senior BI Consultant at Zebra BI with years of experience helping companies turn raw data into clear, actionable Power BI reports. He specializes in data visualization, IBCS standards, and business intelligence, making complex data easy to understand. Learn practical Power BI best practices from an expert who works with top companies daily.

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Still Waiting for Your Dashboard to Load?

You click.
You wait.
The spinning wheel mocks you.

You open another tab. Maybe check your email. Maybe refill your coffee.
By the time your Power BI report finally loads… your momentum’s gone.

Sound familiar?

Slow dashboards aren’t just inconvenient — they break focus, frustrate users, and quietly destroy adoption. And most of the time, it’s not Power BI’s fault. It’s the model. The visuals. The layout. The DAX.

But There’s a Better Way.

Zebra BI helps teams build dashboards that don’t just look good — they perform.
We’ll show you how to:

✔ Clean up your data model using a star schema
✔ Replace visual clutter with smart layouts
✔ Streamline DAX and push calculations upstream
✔ Use Performance Analyzer and other tools to monitor and improve

You don’t need to settle for slow. You need the right techniques, and a clear path to speed.

Who Should Attend?

  • BI developers and Power BI report builders
  • Data analysts and architects managing performance
  • Power BI admins overseeing model governance
  • Anyone tired of waiting for dashboards to load

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What a great audience, so much knowledge in one place.
Patrick Soehlke
Managing Director at Next Vision GmbH
Watching Zebra BI videos was a game changer for me in dashboard and report design! Thank you for always having great content! ⭐️
Meena Laird
Data Analyst
Woohoo! You guys rock the data viz world - keep up the great work!
Rachel Guthrie
Customer Success at Microsoft
Our financial landing page at KPN is completely based on the sales dashboard template. We also use a copy of the consolidated financials. The templates of Zebra BI are providing us with a lot of inspiration, and we don't "need to invent the wheel" again 😉
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You guys are amazing! Thanks so much for the great content! Keep up the fantastic work 👍
Kimberley Canoute
Business Intelligence Analyst
An amazing visual for finance. It has a lot of possibilities such as analytic periods, variances, or custom hierarchies for your income statement. 100% advisable.
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Senior Data Consultant
Awesome reports. Lots of tricks inside, thanks to the Power BI and the Zebra BI visuals.
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Zebra BI is the best feature that has been created for Power BI. It makes designing reports easy. Thank you.
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I spent a couple of hours searching for a solution, your brief tutorial was the only one that worked for me. Thanks so much!
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It looks so good to a point that makes me be like, what's the point of me learning given I'll never be that good.....😄
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I've recently been experimenting with Zebra BI's custom Table visual, which is like the native Power BI matrix on steroids. If your work allows for the use of custom visuals, I think it's definitely worth checking out. Planning on doing a video on it soon...
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Hey @ZebraBI: Your CEO is a cool dude and your visuals for #powerbi and #Excel are insane. Thanks @lapajne for presenting today. It was a ton of fun 👊
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I can't believe you always manage to pack so many new and great features into every update :-)
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I dare to say that Zebra BI is the most realy hight level custom visual that exist right now. Amazin job, great updates. I definitely will keep recomending this custom visual to our clients.
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The reusable trick of switch I think is brilliant! And obviously, Zebra BI table replaces any other table now in Power bi. RIP to normal tables!
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Business Intelligence Reporting Manager
This visual from Zebra BI enables you to build stunning P&L, CF, and BS statements with complex structures with ease. Very intuitive for developers and users. In my opinion the best solution for Financial Reporting structures. 11 Stars!
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As you say, Andrej Lapajne, we spent A LOT, searching and explaining how to do Comments, with Power Apps, and also with the help of Excel. They were workarounds!!! No doubt...this is awesome and the simple way to go forward.
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MS PowerBI Consultant