Adding more steps to a dataset

Hi, I am new to Power BI but have been using Qlik Sense for few years. I am having a little trouble understanding the how to handle/architect large scale data and what power bi's version of QVDs are. 

My team store data in daily QVDs so that we only need to pull from the source once and ALL apps (qvfs & qvds) pull from these files. 

I have read about datasets but to my knowlegde you can't perform more steps to the data model (as the Power Query option disappears) in the new app. Is this correct?

Any help is much appreciated.

Thanks,

Amy