Microsoft Power BI is a cloud-based business analytics service that enables users to visualize and analyze data with greater speed, efficiency, and understanding. It connects users to a broad range of data sources through easy-to-use dashboards, interactive reports, and compelling visualizations and share them with others.
Power BI Desktop is a free application you install on your computer. It works cohesively with the Power BI service, allowing data scientists, report designers, admins, and developers to produce reports and make them available to business users
Power BI consists of three main components for everyday: Power BI Desktop (for creating reports), Power BI Service (for sharing and collaborating on reports), and Power BI Mobile (for accessing reports on mobile devices). Howerver the complete stack from Microsoft is as follows:
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Power BI Desktop: This is the authoring tool that allows you to create reports and dashboards. It is a Windows application that provides a rich, interactive environment for designing and building your data models, queries, and visualizations. You can connect to various data sources, transform and shape data, and create visualizations in Power BI Desktop.
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Power BI Service (Power BI Web): Power BI Service is a cloud-based platform where you can publish and share your Power BI reports and dashboards with others. It allows for collaboration and sharing within your organization. You can also access your reports and dashboards from any device with an internet connection.
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Power BI Mobile: Power BI offers mobile apps for iOS and Android, allowing you to access your reports and dashboards on smartphones and tablets. The mobile apps are designed for optimized viewing and interaction on smaller screens.
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Power BI Gateway: Power BI Gateway acts as a bridge between your on-premises data sources and the Power BI Service. It enables scheduled data refresh, direct query, and live connection to on-premises data sources. There are two types of gateways: On-Premises Data Gateway and On-Premises Data Gateway (Personal Mode).
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Power BI Report Server: This is an on-premises solution for publishing, managing, and delivering Power BI reports within your organization's own infrastructure. It is designed for organizations that need to keep their data and reports on-premises for security or compliance reasons.
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Power BI Embedded: Power BI Embedded allows developers to integrate Power BI reports and dashboards into custom applications. This is useful for organizations that want to embed interactive data visualizations in their own software products.
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Power BI Dataflows: Dataflows in Power BI allow you to build ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) processes in the cloud. You can create reusable data transformations and combine data from various sources, making it easier to create reports and dashboards.
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Power BI APIs: Power BI provides REST APIs that allow developers to programmatically interact with Power BI, create custom applications, and automate various tasks.
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Power BI Premium: Power BI Premium is a capacity-based licensing option that offers dedicated resources and enhanced performance for larger-scale deployments. It provides features like increased data refresh frequency, larger dataset sizes, and the ability to share reports with external users without requiring them to have a Power BI Pro license.
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Power BI Apps: Power BI Apps are pre-built solutions created by Microsoft or third-party developers. They contain dashboards, reports, and datasets tailored to specific industries or business needs, making it easier to get started with Power BI for particular use cases.
SureSkills runs courses on each of the main components in: Introduction, Intermediate, Advanced and Data Analysis.
- Power BI Pro: An individual user license that allows access to all content and capabilities in the Power BI service.
- Power BI Premium Per User (PPU): Provides premium features on a per-user basis, including all Pro license capabilities.
- Power BI Premium: A subscription that provides a capacity to deliver more consistent performance and supports larger data volumes
Power BI can connect to a wide range of data sources, including Excel files, databases (such as SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL), cloud services (such as Azure, SharePoint, Salesforce), and web services. Here's a fuller list:
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Relational Databases: Power BI can connect to a wide range of relational databases, including:
- Microsoft SQL Server
- Oracle
- MySQL
- PostgreSQL
- IBM Db2
- Teradata
- and many others.
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Data Warehouses: You can connect to data warehouses, such as Amazon Redshift, Snowflake, and Google BigQuery.
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Online Services and Cloud-Based Data Sources: Power BI can connect to data from various online services and cloud-based platforms, including:
- Azure SQL Database
- Azure Data Lake Storage
- SharePoint Online
- Dynamics 365
- Salesforce
- Google Analytics
- Facebook
- MailChimp
- Web APIs (via custom connectors)
- and more.
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Excel Workbooks: You can import data from Excel files, which can be stored on your local machine, OneDrive, or SharePoint.
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CSV and Text Files: Power BI supports importing data from comma-separated values (CSV) and text files.
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Web Data Sources: Power BI can scrape data from web pages through HTML tables or APIs.
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Hadoop and Big Data Sources: Power BI can connect to Hadoop HDFS, Spark, and other big data sources.
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On-Premises Data Sources: Power BI Gateway allows you to connect to on-premises data sources, including on-premises SQL Server databases and file shares.
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Azure Services: You can connect to various Azure services, such as Azure SQL Data Warehouse, Azure Cosmos DB, and Azure Blob Storage.
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OData Sources: Power BI can consume data from OData feeds, which are widely used for exposing and consuming data over the web.
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NoSQL Databases: Power BI can connect to NoSQL databases like MongoDB.
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XML Data: You can import data from XML files or web services that return data in XML format.
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Other Data Sources: Power BI also supports connecting to data through custom connectors, allowing you to create connections to proprietary or less common data sources.
In Power BI Desktop, you can drag and drop fields from your data onto the report canvas to create visualizations like charts, tables, maps, and more. You can customize these visuals by changing their appearance, formatting, and properties.
Dashboards in Power BI are collections of visualizations, reports, and other elements that provide an overview of your data insights. Dashboards can be created in Power BI Service by pinning visuals from different reports to a single canvas.
You can share your Power BI reports by publishing them to the Power BI Service. Once published, you can share the reports with specific individuals or groups, and they can access them using their Power BI accounts.
Power Query is a data transformation and shaping tool within Power BI that allows you to connect to various data sources, perform data cleansing, merging, and transformation operations, and then load the refined data into your Power BI model.
Yes, you can schedule automatic data refresh in Power BI Service for reports that are based on imported or DirectQuery data sources. This ensures that your reports always show the most up-to-date data.
Yes, Power BI offers a mobile app called Power BI Mobile. It allows you to access and interact with your Power BI reports and dashboards on smartphones and tablets.
Yes, you can definitely learn Power BI by yourself! Many people have successfully learned Power BI through self-study. Remember that learning Power BI, like any skill, takes time and practice. Start with the basics, gradually build your knowledge, and don't hesitate to seek help when needed. With dedication and perseverance, you can become proficient in Power BI on your own.
Power BI training comes in a variety of forms, including both free (YouTube, Microsoft Documentation and Resources, Microsoft Learn, Blogs and online Communities), and paid options.
While there are plenty of free resources available, keep in mind that intensive instructor led ourses that are more structured and advanced requires payment. Paid SureSkils courses offer in-depth content, certification, and access to expert instructors. Depending on your learning preferences and goals, you can choose the approach that best fits your needs and budget.
Learning Power BI in just two days can provide you with a basic understanding of the tool and its functionalities, but it's important to manage your expectations. Power BI is a large, versatile and feature-rich platform, and becoming proficient in all its aspects typically requires more time and hands-on practice. However, a focused two-day instructor led course can give you a very solid start.
While this two-day course can help you get started and create reports, remember that becoming proficient in Power BI requires ongoing practice, exploration of more advanced features, and a deeper understanding of data modeling, DAX, and complex data sources.
If you're looking to become a more advanced Power BI user or use it for professional purposes, you'll likely need to invest more time in learning and practicing over an extended period. Consider taking additional courses, exploring advanced DAX functions, and gaining experience with real-world projects.
The ease of learning Power BI depends on your background, experience, and familiarity with similar tools and concepts. There are several factors (your level of tech and data) that can influence the perceived difficulty of learning Power BI.
While Power BI is designed to be accessible to a wide range of users, its complexity can vary based on your background and familiarity with related concepts. With the right approach, practice, and resources, you can learn to use Power BI effectively, whether you find it relatively easy or somewhat challenging.
Some of the most important benefits of providing PowerBI training for all employees in an organisation is to reduce errors, such as lost data and the ability to organise and share data. As a Microsoft Partner, SureSkills' training experts have the technical know-how and virtual classroom presence to educate and maximize the use of PowerBI within your organization.
1. How do I create a report in Power BI Desktop? Open Power BI Desktop, connect to your data source, and use the "Report" view to drag and drop fields onto the canvas to create visualizations. You can then format and customize your report as needed.
2. How do I publish a report to the Power BI service? After creating your report in Power BI Desktop, click the "Publish" button in the Home tab, sign in to your Power BI account, and choose the destination workspace.
3. How do I create a dashboard in Power BI? In the Power BI service, click on "Create" and select "Dashboard." You can then pin visualizations from your reports to the dashboard to create a customized view of your data.
4. How do I use DAX (Data Analysis Expressions) in Power BI? DAX is a formula language used to create custom calculations in Power BI. You can use DAX to create calculated columns, measures, and tables. For example, SUMX(Sales, Sales[Quantity] * Sales[Price]) calculates the total sales amount.
5. What is Power Query and how do I use it? Power Query is a data connection technology that enables you to discover, connect, combine, and refine data across a wide variety of sources. You can use Power Query in Power BI Desktop to transform and clean your data before loading it into your model.
6. How do I use Power BI Q&A? Power BI Q&A allows you to ask questions about your data in natural language. For example, you can type "show total sales by year" and Power BI will generate a visualization based on your query
7. How do I create and use calculated columns and measures?
- Calculated Columns: Add a new column to your data model using a DAX formula. For example, Sales[Total] = Sales[Quantity] * Sales[Price].
- Measures: Create a dynamic calculation that changes based on the context of the data. For example, Total Sales = SUM(Sales[Total]).
8. How do I use Power BI's built-in visuals? Power BI offers a variety of built-in visuals, such as bar charts, line charts, and pie charts. You can add these visuals to your report by selecting the desired visual from the "Visualizations" pane and dragging it onto the report canvas.
9. How do I use custom visuals in Power BI? You can import custom visuals from the Microsoft AppSource marketplace or create your own using the Power BI Developer tools. To import a custom visual, click the "..." in the Visualizations pane and select "Import from marketplace."
9. Why is my data not refreshing? Ensure that your data source is accessible and that you have configured the data refresh settings correctly in the Power BI service. Check for any errors in the refresh history.
10. How do I fix errors in my DAX formulas? Common errors include syntax errors, incorrect data types, and invalid references. Review your formula for mistakes and use the DAX formula bar to debug and test your calculations.
11. How do I recover a deleted report or dashboard? If you accidentally delete a report or dashboard, you can restore it from the Power BI service's "Recycle bin" within the workspace where it was deleted.
10. How do I share my reports and dashboards with others? In the Power BI service, click the "Share" button on the report or dashboard, enter the email addresses of the recipients, and set the permissions.
11. How do I collaborate with colleagues in Power BI? Use workspaces in the Power BI service to collaborate with colleagues. You can create a workspace, add members, and share reports and dashboards within the workspace.
12. How do I embed Power BI reports in other applications? You can embed Power BI reports in other applications using the Power BI REST API or the "Publish to web" feature. This allows you to integrate Power BI visuals into websites, SharePoint, or other applications.
13. What are some keyboard shortcuts for Power BI Desktop?
- Ctrl + C: Copy
- Ctrl + V: Paste
- Ctrl + Z: Undo
- Ctrl + S: Save
14. How do I use Power BI templates? Power BI templates (.pbit files) allow you to save a report structure and reuse it with different data. To create a template, go to "File" > "Export" > "Power BI Template."
15. How can I optimize the performance of my Power BI reports?
- Reduce the amount of data loaded into the model.
- Use aggregations and summarizations to minimize the data processed.
- Optimize DAX formulas for better performance.