Power BI provides cloud-based BI services - known as Power BI Services, along with a desktop based interface - called Power BI desktop. It offers Data warehouse capabilities including data preparation, Data discovery and interactive dashboards. In March 2016, Microsoft released an additional service called Power BI Embedded on its Azure cloud platform.
The initial preview Power BI was unveiled by Microsoft in September 2014 as Power BI for Office 365.The first release of Power BI was based on the Microsoft Excel-based add-ins: Power Query, Power Pivot, Power View and Power Map. With time, Microsoft also added many additional features like Question and Answers, enterprise level data connectivity and security options via Power BI Gateways and many more. Power BI was first released to the general public on July 24 2015, for Power BI:
• Office 2010 Professional.
• Office 2013 Professional.
• Office 365 Pro Plus.
• Includes additional features such as adding synonyms to your PowerPivot data model for discovery in Power BI Q&A.
You will also need to ensure that you have the following add-ins installed and enabled in Excel to be able to use all features of Power BI:
• PowerPivot (required by Power View and used as data & analytics engine within Excel).
• Power View (required to build highly interactive and visual reports/dashboards).
• Power Query (required for import of certain data sources, see next section).
• Power Map (only for desktop use in Excel at the moment).
To view current enabled add-ins in Excel click file -> options -> add-ins -> choose manage: com add-ins
->go.
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Figure 1 the following image shows how to enabled add-ins in Excel.
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For Office 2010 you will need to download and install all plugins above from Microsoft web site.
As default only PowerPivot, Power View are installed with Excel 2013 but are NOT enabled. If you have Office 2013 or Office 365 Pro plus Power Map might also be installed but also needs to be enabled.
Required Services
The current version of Power BI (2015-03-08) is available in two subscription levels. Either as an add-on to an existing E3/E4 Office 365 subscription or as a standalone subscription which includes Office 365 as well.
Power BI Data Management Gateway
To source on-premise data to the cloud a Data Management Gateway (DMG) is required. This is an intermediate software that runs on a server inside your corporate network that sources data from internal resources to the Power BI cloud.
The DMG will copy your on premise data to the cloud. The data is always stored within your Excel documents. When using PowerPivot models there is a “hidden” tabular engine in the cloud that will use the data from the uploaded and enabled Excel files.
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| Figure 2the following image shows the Data Management Gateways architecture. |
Will “Power BI” in future only be available for CLOUD or will it also be available for Standalone version?
Power BI is a key element of Microsoft vision for the future. As the world slowly moves away from on-premises, and into the cloud, Power BI, Microsoft hope, will become an important component of how an organization will develop, deploy and consume Business Intelligence reporting in the future.
This is all well and good, but we suspect the reality for many organizations is that the idea of Power BI is simply a ‘pie-in-the-sky’ idea of where we may or may not be in the future. Microsoft continues to rapidly develop and deploy tools within the Power BI application stack. Of course there is the Power Query and Power Pivot tools in Excel but new Power BI is here and it’s bigger and better than ever! Microsoft has implemented a whole new user interface that is a stunning view of your business information. Users can customize these dynamic visualizations to stay informed of their critical business data such as sales, margin and profit. Your data is continuously updated so decisions can be made based on real time information.
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Figure 3 the following image shows Power BI Desktop.
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New Specialized Power BI Tools
· The Microsoft Power BI Designer will astound Data and Business Analysts by allowing them to generate dashboards and visualizations that will analyze their data.
· The Power BI app for Windows, iOS and Android gives mobiles users access to their data from anywhere, at any time.
· The Microsoft Power BI Analysis Services Connector allows the BI Professional to connect to their in-house data in SQL Server Analysis Services without moving data to the cloud. Reports automatically refresh from a scheduler.
Features and Benefits of Power BI
· View everything from spreadsheets, line-of-business applications or web services all in one central location.
· Generate interactive reports and insights that show the strengths and weaknesses of your company.
· Build custom dashboards to view information that is relevant to you. Eliminating the need to search through lists of data or reports to find pertinent data.
· Develop dashboards specifically for your team so they can view necessary information to make smart decisions.
· Use natural language to ask questions and the related charts or visualization can appear as the answer.
What Types of Data Can be utilized through Power BI?
With Power BI Desktop, you can connect to data from many different sources. A full list of available data sources on which Power BI can be used is mention below.
To connect to data, select Get Data from the Home ribbon. Selecting the down arrow, or the Get Data text on the button, shows the Most Common data types menu shown in the following image.
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Figure 4Most Common data types menu shown in the following image.
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Selecting More… from the Most Common menu displays the Get Data window. You can also bring up the Get Data window (and bypass the Most Common menu) by selecting the Get Data icon button directly.
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Figure 5 the following image shows the Most Common menu.
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Data Sources
Data types are organized in the following categories:
- All
- File
- Database
- Azure
- Online Services
- Other
The All category includes all data connection types from all categories.
The File category provides the following data connections:
- Excel
- CSV
- XML
- Text
- JSON
- Folder
- SharePoint Folder
The Database category provides the following data connections:
- SQL Server Database
- Access Database
- SQL Server Analysis Services Database
- Oracle Database
- IBM DB2 Database
- IBM Informix Database (Beta)
- MySQL Database
- PostgreSQL Database
- Sybase Database
- Teradata Database
- SAP HANA Database
The following image shows the Get Data window for Database.
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Figure 6 the following image shows the Get Data window for Database.
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The Azure category provides the following data connections:
- Microsoft Azure SQL Database
- Microsoft Azure SQL Data Warehouse
- Microsoft Azure Marketplace
- Microsoft Azure HDInsight
- Microsoft Azure Blob Storage
- Microsoft Azure Table Storage
- Azure HDInsight Spark (Beta)
- Microsoft Azure Document DB (Beta)
- Microsoft Azure Data Lake Store (Beta)
The following image shows the Get Data window for Azure.
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Figure 7 the following image shows the Get Data window for Azure.
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The Online Services category provides the following data connections:
- SharePoint Online List
- Microsoft Exchange Online
- Dynamics CRM Online
- Facebook
- Google Analytics
- Salesforce Objects
- Salesforce Reports
- App Figures (Beta)
- comScore Digital Analytics (Beta)
- GitHub (Beta)
- Mail Chimp (Beta)
- Marketo (Beta)
- Planview Enterprise (Beta)
- QuickBooks Online (Beta)
- SparkPost (Beta)
- Smartsheet
- SQL Sentry (Beta)
- Stripe (Beta)
- SweetIQ (Beta)
- Troux (Beta)
- Twilio (Beta)
- tyGraph (Beta)
- Webtrends (Beta)
- Zendesk (Beta)
The following image shows the Get Data window for Online Services.
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Figure 8 the following image shows the Get Data window for Online Services.
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The Other category provides the following data connections:
- Web
- SharePoint List
- OData Feed
- Hadoop File (HDFS)
- Active Directory
- Microsoft Exchange
- ODBC
- R Script
- Spark (Beta)
- Blank Query
Connecting to a Data Source
To connect to a data source, select the data source from the Get Data window and select Connect. In the following image, Web is selected from the other data connection category.
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Figure 9 .the following image shows Web is selected from the other data connection category.
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A connection window is displayed, specific to the type of data connection. If credentials are required, you’ll be prompted to provide them. The following image shows a URL being entered to connect to a Web data source.
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| Figure 10 the following image shows a URL being entered to connect to a Web data source. |
When the URL or resource connection information is entered, select OK. Power BI Desktop makes the connection to the data source, and presents the available data sources in the Navigator.
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Figure 11 this image shows Power BI Desktop makes the connection to the data source.
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You can either load the data by selecting the Load button at the bottom of the Navigator pane, or edit the query before loading data by selecting the Edit button.
That’s all there is to connecting to data sources in Power BI Desktop! Try connecting to data from our growing list of data sources.
