Power BI for business users

What is Power BI?

Power BI is the collective name for a set of cloud-based applications and services that help organizations collate, manage, and analyze data from multiple sources in an easy-to-use interface.

Business intelligence tools such as Power BI can be used for many purposes. 

Power BI primarily collects data and processes it into understandable information, often using visually appealing and easy-to-process charts and graphs. It allows users to create and share clear, actionable snapshots of what's happening in their business.

Power BI connects to a range of data sources, from simple Excel spreadsheets to databases, as well as cloud and on-premises applications.

Power BI is something of an umbrella term that can refer to either the Windows desktop application called Power BI Desktop, the online SaaS (software as a service) service called Power BI Service, or the mobile Power BI applications available on Windows phones and tablets, as well as iOS and Android devices.

Power BI is built on top of Microsoft Excel, so the learning curve from Excel to Power BI is not as steep; Anyone who can use Excel can use Power BI, but the latter is much more powerful than its spreadsheet counterpart.

Power BI features

Microsoft Power BI is used to create reports and collect analytics based on company data. Power BI can connect to a wide range of data sets and organize incoming information so it can be better absorbed and understood. Reports and visuals created from this data can then be shared with other users.

Power BI helps users see not only what happened in the past and what is happening in the present, but also what may happen in the future. Power BI is equipped with machine learning capabilities, which means it can identify patterns in data and use those patterns to make informed predictions and run what-if scenarios. These estimates allow users to create forecasts and prepare to meet future demand and other key indicators.

Business users of Power BI

How you interact with Power BI depends on your role. As a consumer or business user, you receive content such as dashboards, reports, and applications from peers. You're working in the Power BI service, which is the online or mobile version of Power BI. You view and interact with your content to make business decisions.

As a business user, you don't have access to all Power BI features. That's okay because your job isn't to create dashboards and reports. You use the Power BI service for analysis, monitoring, research, and decision-making.

You may hear the term “Power BI Desktop” or simply “Desktop”. Designers use this standalone tool to create and share dashboards and reports. It's important to know that there are other Power BI tools, but if you're a business user, you're only working with the Power BI service.

When you work with shared content, you meet one of the following requirements:

• You have a Power BI Pro or Premium Per User (PPU) license.
• Your organization has a Power BI Premium subscription, and the content you shared comes from your Premium usage.

When you filter, slice, subscribe, and export, your work does not affect the underlying dataset or the original shared content, such as dashboards, reports, and applications.

You can't mess up your data. Power BI is a great place to explore and experiment without worrying about breaking anything.

This doesn't mean you can't save your changes. You can, but these changes only affect your content presentation. To return to the default view, you can click the "Reset."

What versions of Power BI are available?

There are several versions of Power BI to choose from, depending on your budget, your needs, and how you want to deploy it. These versions range from simple to fully featured, from free to premium, so users can choose the one that best suits their requirements.

You can choose from a Windows desktop app called Power BI Desktop, an online SaaS (software as a service) service called Power BI service, a mobile Power BI app available on iOS and Android phones and tablets, or the well-known on-premises version. as a Power BI report server. There is also a white label service for software developers.

Here's a quick overview of the different versions before we dive deeper into each one: