Introduction to Power BI

Microsoft Power BI is a collection of tools, software services, and integrations that work together to turn unstructured data into visually appealing and interactive insights.  Power BI can work with simple data sources like Microsoft Excel as well as more complex ones like hybrid data warehouses that are cloud-based or on-premises. It also you to effortlessly connect to your data sources, visualize your results, and share and publish them with everyone.  

Power BI is easy to use and quick to connect to an Excel file or a local database. It may also be robust and enterprise-grade, with effective modeling and real-time analytics capabilities. This means it can be used in a variety of settings, from a personal report and visualization tool to a group project, division, or an entire organization’s analytics and decision engine.

Because Power BI is a Microsoft product with built-in links to Excel, many of its functionalities will be recognizable to Excel users. 

Power BI components

Power BI is made up of three components: a Microsoft Windows desktop program called Power BI Desktop, an online SaaS (Software as a Service) called Power BI Service, and mobile Power BI apps that can be used on Windows phones and tablets as well as Apple iOS and Google Android devices.

These three components—Desktop, Service, and Mobile applications—form the foundation of the Power BI system, allowing users to generate, share, and consume actionable insights in the most efficient manner.

Roles and the use of Power BI

If you’re a project stakeholder, for example, you might want to use Power BI Service or the Mobile app to see how the business is performing. If you’re a developer, however, you’ll be using Power BI Desktop to publish Power BI Desktop reports to the Power BI Service on a regular basis.

Make use of Power BI.

The typical flow of activities in Power BI is as follows:

1. Create a report using the data you imported into Power BI Desktop.
2. Publish to the Power BI service, where you can construct dashboards and generate new visualizations.
3. Share dashboards with others, especially those who are constantly on the go.
4. In Power BI Mobile applications, you can see and interact with shared dashboards and reports.

Power BI building blocks

Power BI’s fundamental building blocks are as follows:

Visualizations: A visualization is a visual representation of data. It might be a line chart, a bar graph, a color-coded map, or any other visual representation of the data.

Datasets: A dataset is a group of data that Power BI uses to create visuals. You may create a basic dataset based on a single table from a Microsoft Excel worksheet, as seen in the figure below.

Reports: A report in Power BI is a set of visuals that are displayed on one or more pages. In Power BI, a report is a collection of items that are connected to one another. We’ll use the gapminder data to create the report below, which looks at GDP, population, and life expectancy in different parts of the world.

Dashboards: are a collection of graphics from a single page that you may share with others. It’s usually a carefully chosen set of graphics that provides quick insight into the facts or message you’re trying to convey.

INSTALLING POWER BI 

Please follow the instructions below to download and install the Power BI desktop.

1-Launch a browser and navigate to Microsoft’s Power BI Download Page.

2-Download the Installer from the Microsoft Store app.

3-Run the Windows Installer File.

4-Sign in with your qualified Office 365 ProPlus account.

Users can create visually appealing reports using Power BI, business intelligence, and reporting applications. Power BI is being used as a business analytics tool by an increasing number of enterprises. According to Gartner’s analysis, organizations that invest in analytics will see their value increase compared to those that do not.