Lesson 1 - What is Power BI?

Welcome everyone, I am back in writing my blog posts and going to write posts on Data and Analytics topics. 

What is Power BI?

Power BI is a Visualization tool developed by Microsoft to turn data into actionable insights. Power BI is part of the Power Platform ecosystem providing Business Intelligence capabilities. It is a collection of Software services, apps and connectors.

Power BI allows users to create reports and dashboards by pulling data from different data sources irrespective of whether they are hosted on-premises, cloud or SaaS applications that supports data driven decision making for organizations.

Power BI comprises of the following components.

• Power BI Desktop – Windows desktop application mainly used to design and develop reports with visualizations. The Power BI files are with extension .pbix
• Power BI Service – Also termed as Power BI Online is a SaaS service to host and share Power BI reports and dashboards.
  
• Power BI Mobile – Mobile Apps to access the Power BI reports and dashboards hosted on Power BI Service.
• Power BI Report Builder – Used to create Paginated reports (reports with a fixed layout formatted to fit on a page) that can be hosted on Power BI Service

How it works?

Users can use the Power BI Desktop to create reports and publish them to Power BI Service to share the reports through the Power BI Service Portal or through Power BI Mobile Apps.

How do I get it?

• Power BI Desktop – Free tool that can be downloaded via the Windows Store (https://aka.ms/pbidesktopstore) or from the website (https://www.microsoft.com/download/details.aspx?id=58494)

Note: Power BI Desktop gets updated monthly for new features and any bug fixes. If you want your Power BI Desktop to get the new version automatically then install Power BI Desktop using Windows Store. If you want to manually control the installation of the new version, then install via the Website.

• Power BI Service – Licensed SaaS product. The available licenses are Free Per User, Pro Per User, Premium Per User (PPU) (https://app.powerbi.com)
• Power BI Mobile – Free to download from App Store, Google Play store and Microsoft Store

• Power BI Report Builder - Free to download from Windows store Power BI Report Builder - Microsoft Store Apps or from the website https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=2086513

Useful Information

Tags	Power BI
Useful links	What is Power BI? - Power BI | Microsoft Learn
MS Learn Modules	Get started building with Power BI - Training | Microsoft Learn
Test Your Knowledge	Quiz