Microsoft Power BI

Microsoft Power BI is a business intelligence (BI) platform that provides nontechnical business users with tools for aggregating, analyzing, visualizing and sharing data. Power BI's user interface is fairly intuitive for users familiar with Excel, and its deep integration with other Microsoft products makes it a versatile self-service tool that requires little upfront training.

Users can download an application for Windows 10, called Power BI Desktop, and native mobile apps for Windows, Android and iOS devices. There is also Power BI Report Server for companies that must maintain their data and reports on premises. That version of Power BI requires a special version of the desktop app -- aptly called Power BI Desktop for Power BI Report Server.

Common uses of Power BI

Microsoft Power BI is used to find insights within an organization's data. Power BI can help connect disparate data sets, transform and clean the data into a data model and create charts or graphs to provide visuals of the data. All of this can be shared with other Power BI users within the organization.

The data models created from Power BI can be used in several ways for organizations, including the following:

• telling stories through charts and data visualizations;
• examining "what if" scenarios within the data; and
• creating reports that can answer questions in real time and help with forecasting to make sure departments meet business metrics.

Who uses Power BI?

Though Power BI is a self-service BI tool that brings data analytics to employees, it's mostly used by data analysts and BI professionals who create the data models before disseminating reports throughout the organization. However, those without an analytical background can still navigate Power BI and create reports.

Microsoft Power BI is used by both department reps and management, with reports and forecasts created to aid sales and marketing reps, while also providing data for management on how the department or individual employees are progressing toward their goals.

In addition, Power BI offers an admin portal for administrators to help configure the implementation of Power BI, as well as usage monitoring and licenses.

Key features of Power BI

Microsoft has added a number of data analytics features to Power BI since its inception, and continues to do so. Some of the most important features are the following:

• Artificial intelligence. Users can access image recognition and text analytics in Power BI, create machine learning models using automated ML capabilities and integrate with Azure Machine Learning.
• Hybrid deployment support. This feature provides built-in connectors that allow Power BI tools to connect with a number of different data sources from Microsoft, Salesforce and other vendors.
• Quick Insights. This feature allows users to create subsets of data and automatically apply analytics to that information.
• Common data model support. Power BI's support for the common data model allows the use of a standardized and extensible collection of data schemas (entities, attributes and relationships).
• Cortana integration. This feature, which is especially popular on mobile devices, allows users to verbally query data using natural language and access results using Cortana, Microsoft's digital assistant.
• Customization. This feature allows developers to change the appearance of default visualization and reporting tools and import new tools into the platform.
• APIs for integration. This feature provides developers with sample code and application program interfaces (APIs) for embedding the Power BI dashboard in other software products.
• Self-service data prep. Using Power Query, business analysts can ingest, transform, integrate and enrich big data into the Power BI web service. Ingested data can be shared across multiple Power BI models, reports and dashboards.
• Modeling view. This allows users to divide complex data models by subject area into separate diagrams, multiselect objects and set common properties, view and modify properties in the properties pane, and set display folders for simpler consumption of complex data models.