PL-300 · Microsoft
Studying for PL-300? What Microsoft changed in April
The April change log flags three groups of PL-300 objectives as changed. Which ones, what the four skill areas weigh, and how the exam is delivered.
Microsoft PL-300 is the exam behind the Power BI Data Analyst Associate certification. The study guide describes someone who turns available data into insights: working with business stakeholders on requirements, with analytics and data engineers to get the data, and building reports that let other people explore it on their own. You are expected to be proficient in Power Query and DAX.
What the exam measures
| Skill area | Weight |
|---|---|
| Prepare the data | 25 to 30% |
| Model the data | 25 to 30% |
| Visualize and analyze the data | 25 to 30% |
| Manage and secure Power BI | 15 to 20% |
Three areas share the exam almost equally, and they follow the order of real work: get and clean the data, model it, then report on it. The fourth, managing and securing what you publish, is lighter but not small.
Which version you will sit
The study guide lists objectives effective April 20, 2026. Check the current guide before your exam. Microsoft updates the English exam first; localised versions usually follow about eight weeks later.
This guide includes a change log comparing the April version with the previous one. It marks three groups of objectives as changed, all rated "minor": Get or connect to data, Enhance reports for usability and storytelling, and Create and manage workspaces and assets. The table does not list the individual changes.
How the exam is scored and delivered
- Time: 100 minutes.
- Scoring: Microsoft requires a score of 700 or greater.
- Delivery: proctored, and it may include interactive components.
- Languages: English, Japanese, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Korean, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil) and Italian. If yours is not available, you can request an extra 30 minutes.
- Renewal: every 12 months, through an online assessment on Microsoft Learn.
Key objectives in the study guide
- Storage mode. "Choose between DirectLake, DirectQuery, and Import" sits in the first group of the first area. The choice shapes everything that follows, from refresh to performance.
- Reference or duplicate. The guide asks when to use reference or duplicate queries and what the impact is. It is a small objective that is easy to get backwards.
- Relationships. Cardinality, cross-filter direction and role-playing dimensions are named explicitly, alongside a common date table and the keys that make relationships work.
- DAX beyond SUM. CALCULATE, time intelligence, semi-additive measures, calculation groups and visual calculations all appear, together with when a calculated column or table is the right tool.
- Performance. Performance Analyzer and DAX query view, used to find the measure, relationship or visual that is slow, and fixes such as removing unnecessary rows and columns or reducing granularity.
- Copilot. Several objectives involve Copilot: a narrative visual, a new report page, suggested content, and a summary of the semantic model.
- Security. Workspace roles, item-level access, access to semantic models, row-level security roles and their group membership, and sensitivity labels.
A study plan that follows the guide
Turn the study guide into a checklist, one line per objective, and split your time roughly into quarters with a little less for the last area.
- Prepare the data (25 to 30%). Connecting to sources and semantic models, credentials and privacy levels, parameters, profiling and cleaning, and transforming in Power Query: data types, grouping, pivoting, fact and dimension tables, merging and appending.
- Model the data (25 to 30%). Table and column properties, relationships, the date table, the DAX list above (except visual calculations) and model performance.
- Visualize and analyze the data (25 to 30%). Choosing and formatting visuals, themes, slicing and filtering, paginated reports, visual calculations with DAX, bookmarks, tooltips, drillthrough, mobile and accessibility design, and the analysis features (grouping, binning, clustering, forecasting, outliers and AI visuals).
- Manage and secure Power BI (15 to 20%). Workspaces and apps, distribution, subscriptions and data alerts, promoting or certifying content, gateways and scheduled refresh, then the security list above.
Since the change log flags workspaces and report usability, give those groups a careful read against your material if it predates April 2026.
Every date we track for this and the other exams we cover is in the exam calendar.