I'm a data analyst with 3 years of Power BI experience and I'm sitting the PL-300 in 6 weeks. I've passed AZ-900 and DA-100 (the predecessor to PL-300) but the DA-100 was before a significant exam update and I'm not sure how much the content changed.
My real-world Power BI work is mostly report building and basic DAX. I know I need to strengthen my advanced DAX, the deployment pipelines section, and the row-level security configuration — those are things I rarely touch in my current role.
How similar is the PL-300 to the old DA-100? If I passed DA-100 with a 78% two years ago, what gap am I realistically looking at to pass PL-300?
Also — I've seen some posts saying the exam heavily tests workspace and tenant-level settings that you'd only know if you're an admin. Is that accurate for someone with only report author permissions in my current environment?
I passed PL-300 last month. The deployment pipelines section was about 8-10 questions in my version. It's manageable — just understand the three stages (Development, Test, Production), what you can compare between stages, and when you'd use selective deployment vs. full deployment.
PL-300 has noticeably more deployment and workspace management content than DA-100 did. If you passed DA-100 at 78%, you have a solid foundation. The gap is probably 3-4 weeks of focused study on the new content areas — not a complete restart.
Advanced DAX is heavy on the exam — probably 20-25% of questions involve DAX functions, context transition, or CALCULATE modifiers. If your current DAX is basic, this is where to spend the most time. Specifically: CALCULATE, FILTER, ALL, ALLEXCEPT, RELATED, and time intelligence functions.
The tenant and workspace admin questions are real. You don't need to be an admin in practice but you do need to know what the settings do. The Microsoft Learn documentation for Power BI Admin is actually pretty good — go through the security and governance sections specifically.