What is Power BI

Level: Beginners

Edit: Sep 2019

What is Power BI? Microsoft Power BI Expert, Matt Allington, explains

This ‘What is Power BI’ post is the third in my “what is” series having previously blogged about “What is Power Pivot” and “What is Power Query”.  This topic is the hardest of the three to give a straight answer, however it is also the most important to understand (as I will explain below).

Why Power BI is so Important

So, what is Power BI?  Microsoft Power BI is the single most important thing to happen in the data analytics market since the introduction of Microsoft Excel 30 years ago.  The reasons it is so important include:

1. Power BI is a Microsoft product, and it is a strategic priority for the company.
2. It is built on the heritage of two of the most mature and best BI products available – SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) and Microsoft Excel.  SSAS is Microsoft’s enterprise strength reporting tool that many companies use for their full scale (and expensive) business intelligence reporting projects.
3. Despite the heritage from SSAS and Excel, Power BI is actually being built/rebuilt using the latest technologies including HTML 5.0, cloud computing, column store databases and modern smart phone mobile apps.
4. Microsoft is listening to the community to determine what it builds and delivers next.  Let me state that again – Microsoft is listening and delivering!
5. Microsoft has opened up the visualisation layer to open source contributions via the custom visuals gallery, so there is (and will continue to be) be lots of community added value.  Read about that in my blog here.

Gartner has recognised the trend towards self service business intelligence and also Microsoft’s leading position in this space.

Why it is Hard to Explain What Power BI is

When most people are introduced to Power BI for the first time, in most cases the ask one seemingly simple question: What is Power BI?  Microsoft is known for its great products, however it doesn’t always have a great record when it comes to naming products.  The naming of Power BI products has been confusing to say the least.  I wont spend time going back through all the confusing history but instead I will provide my spin (below) on the least confusing way to consider Power BI products today.  I first covered this framework in my blog about the best training for Business Analysts.

So, What is Power BI?

Power BI is a suite of Power BI branded products plus an extended family of umbrella products that collectively change the way people use and analyse data.  All Power BI products (regardless of which group they are in) have all the attributes of a robust enterprise strength BI solution but in addition they all have best in class self service BI capabilities.  What this means to the average business analyst is that you don’t need to run to IT every time you need something done hence avoiding the normal time, cost, and money conflicts that so often prevent success.

If you want to learn to be a Power BI Ninja, you will need to learn skills in all of the following areas:

• Extract and Load your data ready for analysis – you use Power Query for this.
• Enhance the data you have loaded (using Power Query) with relationships and calculations (measures) that can be used to show and find business insights – you use Power BI data modelling (same as Power Pivot for Excel) for this.
• Create reports that bring out the insights from the data, and allow users to easily interact with the data – you use Power BI Visualizations for this.
• Distribute the reports  and Dashboards to those that need it – you use Power BI Service (Power BI.com) and Power BI Mobile for this.

Power BI Branded Products

There are 3 Power BI branded products.

Power BI Service

This is the cloud solution that makes sharing live business analytics a snap.  Need to share a 250MB report – no problem!  It is possible to share small or large reports and dashboards internally within your organisation, externally with third parties, and also share non sensitive information publicly over the web (as I have done with this demo).

The Power BI Service has a completely new visualisation front end built from scratch. The capabilities are still relatively immature however the pace of improvement is stunning, and the addition of the Open Source visualisation tools discussed earlier make it a sure bet.

The service can store your data online, and/or connect to your data in the cloud via Azure (or similar), and/or it can connect to your in house data via a Power BI Gateway.

Power BI Desktop

This is the free Power BI authoring tool that allows you to quickly and easily analyse your data and find insights directly on your PC. The general process is to connect to your data, reshape the data if needed, load the data into the data model, enhance the data model to bring out data insights and then build striking visualisations that help you analyse your business.  You then can save the workbook (just like you do in Excel), distribute the file for free to other people (eg email, place on a network drive) or better still – publish the file directly to the Power BI Service with just a couple of clicks.  Once the analysis is loaded to the Power BI Service, it is easy to share with others.

You should author your Power BI reports in Desktop over Service, as you can backup your Desktop files but you can’t backup your Service reports.

Power BI Mobile

This is the free mobile tool that allows you to consume any of the reports that are available to you in the Power BI Service.  There are versions for all the major tablets and smart phones.  This software is also fairly new and still being enhanced.  It is not perfect, but it is good enough to get started and it will only get better from here.

Power BI Umbrella Products

There is a suite of underlying “products” and technologies that support the Power BI branded products.  These umbrella products covered below are the supporting technologies sitting behind Microsoft’s Self Service BI Strategy (and also Enterprise BI in some cases).

Power BI Data Modelling

Power BI data modelling allows you to take tables of data, create relationships between those tables so they work together, and then enhance the data model so that it includes specific calculations that turn your raw data into useful business insights.  This work has historically been done by the IT department, however it can now be done by competent business users using the Power BI data modeling language – DAX (Data Analysis Expressions).

DAX is available in Excel 2010+, SSAS 2012+, and Power BI Desktop/Service.  It is the same across all of these products.  If you learn it once, you can use the same skills across all of these products.

If you want guided learning of Power BI data modelling, checkout my Supercharge Power BI (DAX) Online Training.

Power Query

Power Query is a data acquisition and transformation tool.  It helps business users grab data from anywhere it resides, then cleanse, reshape and prepare the data ready for the analytics work to come – no IT guru needed any more. Power Query is a user interface driven tool that makes is easy for anyone to manage and load data, however it is supported by a powerful programming language ‘M’ that makes it super powerful.  You can read more about Power Query here.

Power Query is available in Excel 2010+ and Power BI Desktop/Service.  It  (annoyingly) has been renamed “Get & Transform” in Excel 2016 and “Get Data” in Power BI Desktop.  What were they thinking?

If you want a comprehensive lesson on how to use Power Query, checkout my Power Query Online Training.

Power BI Reports

Power BI provides a wide variety of visualizations to portray the data insights in reports. In addition, Power BI supports custom visualizations, and several integrations such as esri, R, Python, etc. Power BI has several formatting options for the reports enabling the end-user comprehend the data effectively.

Power BI reports can be prepared in Power BI Desktop and then be shared in various ways. It is also possible to create dashboards in Power BI.com using the report elements in an easy way.

If you want to learn how to use Power BI to create reports and dashboards and share them, checkout my Data to Dashboard Online Training.

What is the right way to learn Power BI?

You can choose any of my following offerings.

• Read my books – Supercharge Power BI or Supercharge Excel. Both these books cover the same content and make you learn to write DAX with plenty of solved examples and practice exercises. The only difference between the two books is the UI used to explain the concepts. While Supercharge Power BI is written using Power BI Desktop, Supercharge Excel is written using Excel 2016.
• I offer various Power BI trainings to suit your requirements. Click on the image below to find the details of the courses.

• If you are residing in any place other than Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane in Australia and/or if you have more members attending from your organisation, you can opt for Corporate Inhouse Training. In this case, it is also possible to provide you training tailored to your specific requirements. You can have a chat with me to discuss your requirements.
• If you want online support to solve your business problems, you can avail my services (for Power BI, Power Pivot and Power Query) and would be happy to chat with you whenever you need help.

In the last two cases we can sign an NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement) to safe guard your sensitive data.