What is Microsoft Power BI?

Power Bi is the Business Intelligence tool developed by Microsoft. Power Bi offers many functions that allow you to generate your performance indicators (KPI), without the need for programming knowledge. The main purpose of this software is to make Business Intelligence accessible to everyone.

What does Microsoft Power Bi mean?

Microsoft describes Power BI as reducing the gap between data and decisions. Then Power Bo performs data analysis from systems such as Microsoft Azure available in real time on a clear and individual work interface. This interactive dashboard displays data reports or relevant data for users through graphs, diagrams, tables and graphics. Using various tools and settings, users can convert these views to report for ad hoc analysis or similar decisions in the company with a single click.

Business Intelligence is an important resource for companies. According to a Deloitte study in 2019, companies that adopt Business Intelligence have 77% more likely to achieve their business objectives.

What applications does Power Bi form?

As a multidimensional display application, Power BI is available on all common platforms and is connected to the network with the global database through various interfaces. The most important applications include:

• Desktop Power BI: Apps to be used on computer and notebooks
• Power BI Mobile: App for mobile devices
• Power Bi Service: Online Software Service as a cloud -based service
• Gateway-Urs Power BI: Synchronization of external data
• Incorporated power bi: Interface for the integration of Power BI in company applications
• Power Bi Report Server: Local report server without a cloud connection (local solution)
• Power Bi Visual Marketplace: Various visual elements

All important analyzes are modeled and displayed by Power Bi Desktop. Using the Office Power BI service, users can make the analyzes created in the company available, share their on -board paintings and work together on data information.

With Power Bi Mobile, users have a quick access to KPI and the results of the analyzes everywhere. This makes it an important tool for ad hoc decisions and allows a complete overview of the organization from anywhere.

How does Power Bi work?

As you saw above, Power Bi is a suite of tools divided into different elements. Some are on the cloud, others must be installed on the device. Below we will analyze the first 5 of the most important components of Power BI and their functionality:

1. Desktop Power BI

This is the most complete tool, which allows you to produce maximum relationships. Power Bi Desktop brings together many tools and features. It allows you to automate more activities. For example, the preparation and formatting of the data are often fully automated on the Desktop Bi Power.

Due to the numerous models available in the tool, but also on the Microsoft page, the construction of a dashboard adapted to your business is quite simple. For inspiration, Power Bi offers fairly specific models, for example there are almost 20 financial dashboard models. Quite impressive, isn’t it?

As mentioned above, the similarity with the office suite is repeatedly claimed on the official Microsoft website to emphasize the ease of use of Power BI. If you are familiar with the office suite, you will feel comfortable in the use of Power BI!

Finally, Power Bi Desktop is suitable for specialists in creating reports or files or for analysts who want reports in depth.

2. Power BI Mobile

To be increasingly accessible, Microsoft Power Bi has developed a mobile app. This app allows you to perform your software on mobile devices and tablets and check the team’s work at any time and everywhere.

Due to a monitoring feature, the application also allows you to automatically follow the KPIs (Key performance indicators). In fact, the user can configure the application in order to warn whether an indicator exceeds or descends below a certain number. This is particularly useful for the management of different projects, it can notify the trajectory or the new decisions that must be made before it is too late.

For example, thanks to the application, the human resources manager can access operational relationships (invoices or transcriptions) and the manager can be with his eyes on the financial committee.

Microsoft says that the Power BI app is flexible, but safe, which means that the user can access most of the work, without compromising the security of the data involved.

3. Power Bi Service

Microsoft Power Bi is an online service in the cloud, which allows easy and safe access to reports and data, being ideal for team leaders and data artists. In the Power BI service, you have unlimited storage and the data are updated instantly. Data security is strengthened by archiving in the cloud and the management of access is easy from the settings. This tool is very useful for data -based marketing strategies. It offers many useful services for campaigns, facilitating communication, feedback and allowing access to the objectives of the campaign at any time. In addition, the Microsoft Bi Power service is ideal for teams: it is possible to create detailed analyzes on the desktop and therefore you can publish them online on Power BI so that others can complete and comment.

4. Language Dax

Power Bi is a low code or code platform, which allows users to analyze data without having to write the code. Dax language is an essential part of this platform, because it allows users to create formulas and expressions to manipulate data and create personalized views.

Dax is a strong query language, but it is also relatively easy to learn for users who are familiar with Excel. The basic and calculation functions are similar to those of Excel, which makes the passage from Excel to Dax. However, it has been adapted for data analysis and enriched with other functions. It allows you to create your personalized indicators and adapt your analysis according to your needs.

In particular, the basic and calculation functions remain the same as Excel with the same list. This is quite practical for ordinary users with the office suite.

5. Power BI component

According to another, Power Bi Microsoft works by connecting to various sources of data by offering users a dashboard for the analysis of the business intelligence (BI). It can be connected to a simple Excel calculation sheet or a combination of Data Warehouse Cloud and local. The data from Cloud sources, such as Salesforce CRM, are automatically updated.

Users who use applications such as Excel or Power Bi Desktop, connected to the online or local data origins, must update the data or set up an update to ensure that the Dashboard Power BI reflects the most recent information.

This bi power Microsoft tool includes several components that allow users to create and share company information:

1. Power demand: A tool to combine and transform data.
2. Power Pivot: A tool for modeling tabular data in memory.
3. Power View: A tool for viewing data.
4. Map of power: A tool to view 3D geospace data.
5. Power Q&A: An engine for questions and answers in natural language.

In addition, Power Bi connects to a wide range of sources of data, including:

• Fi casier: Excel, PDF, SharePoint, XML
• Database: SQL Server database, Oracle database, baze de date ibm, Amazon Redshift, Google Bigquery
• Other sets of Power BI databases
• Azure data connections
• Online services: Dynamics 365, Salesforce Reports, Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, Facebook and others

What features do Power Bi offer?

The introduction of Excel Power Bi offers the opportunity to create efficient relationships and paintings. Users can customize Power Bi according to the needs of the employee, the team, the Department or the project. Power Bi offers a variety of tools and functionality to view data and integrate data origins. The most important of these are:

Data analysis and interpretation:

1. Recognition of images: allows you to identify objects and text in the images, useful for the analysis of visual data.
2. Text analysis: useful for discovering trends and models in textual data, such as customer reviews or social networks.
3. Automatic learning models: it helps to create forecasts and identify anomalies, support business decisions.

Connectivity and integration:

1. Support for hybrid implementation: allows connections to a variety of sources of data, both in the cloud and on-premise.
2. API for integration: facilitates the incorporation of Power Bi Dashboard in other software applications.

Interactivity and accessibility:

1. Cortana integration: allows reports of verbal data using natural language.
2. Quick information: provides the opportunity to quickly create data subsets and analyze them automatically.

Personalization and view:

1. Personalization: allows users to change the appearance of visualization and reporting tools, as well as add new tools.
2. View modeling: offers a clear vision on the structure of data models, facilitating the management and identification of problems.

Data preparation and management:

1. Preparation of self -service data: allows users to prepare data for code analysis, using the power query.
2. Common support for data models: simplifies the process of creating and management of data models using a common data model.

Microsoft Power BI benefits for companies

In most organizations, the essential obstacle between data analysis and prospects consists in the correct formation of data or in the view. Services such as Power BI can help overcome these obstacles by providing a series of advantages, including:

• A 360 degree view of your company at any time
• Fusion of a wide range of different sources of data possibly isolated
• Reporting and real analysis as an integral part of all business processes and decisions
• Simplify data sets and large quantities of data, analyzing them quickly and obtaining information on the basis
• Perfect integration of SQL databases (e.g. SQL Server)

Our conclusion?

Tools such as Power Bi open the way to the exploitation of Big Data, also for new companies in this field or for those who want to modernize their business analysis infrastructure. Power BI, with its ability to interrogate and connect data from various sources and create attractive content, perfectly adapts to companies that want quick and simple access to company data.

In this context, Newtech offers an Excel course that will facilitate the understanding and use of Power BI. The course is designed to give you the skills necessary to browse easily for Excel, understanding how it interacts with Power BI and how to fully exploit the data analysis capacity.