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- Yooo! Adam Saxton with Guy in a Cube, and if you were wondering what Power BI is all about, maybe youre new to Power BI, just wanna know the lay of the land, this video is for you.
Lets go (upbeat music) If youre finding us for the first time, be sure to hit that subscribe button, to stay up to date with all the videos from both Patrick and myself.
All right, what is Power BI? Where did it even come from? Power BI is a interactive reporting platform, right? So, data analytics, business analytics, all of those buzzwords that youve heard, thats what Power BI is all about.
Working with your data and getting the right answers very quickly.
In fact, the mantra of Power BI when it first came about, was five minutes to WOW, and its true.
And the actual history of Power BI, it goes back, Microsoft is been involved with business analytics and business intelligence for a long time.
Weve got reporting services, analysis services, all of that came together as the roots of Power BI itself.
Microsoft Power BI is a cloud platform, for the sake of this video, were gonna stick with that.
There are some on-premises options, but lets talk about the cloud platform itself.
You may be thinking, well, what kind of data can it actually handle? It can handle everything from just your simple Excel file all the way to massive data amounts.
If youve got data of any size, Power BI is an option for you.
And security is also very important.
Ive got a link down in the description below, to the Microsoft Trust Center, where you can go check out all of the certifications that Power BI actually has, from regulatory and compliance perspectives.
So, if youre worried about that, check that out as well as the security whitepaper, theres tons of great information there.
Okay, so the actual journey of Power BI, youre gonna come at it from two different ways.
Either one, youre actually creating those reports, or shaping the data, working with the data, offering the reports themselves, or youre coming at it, youre just consuming the reports, right? So, youre using those reports, actually make business decisions with that data.
Lets look at the offering piece first from an offering perspective, your journey is probably gonna start with Power BI Desktop.
This is a free download from powerbi.com.
You can get going.
If you are on a Mac platform, check the video I did a long time back, it is still applicable, it talks all about your options, if youre on a Mac versus a PC, so, definitely check that out.
To begin that journey, youre gonna need to get some data, right? And Power BI can connect to a bunch of different data sources.
Whether thats Excel, SQL, relational databases, Cloud Sources or services that you use, like Salesforce or QuickBooks, or maybe its just an API that you wanna go get data, or even a webpage.
You can scrape that tons of options, and when you dont even know if its even available, or maybe you dont see it in the list, check out the ODBC or OLE DB providers, those are always options, that you can go and connect to your data.
After youve got your data, youre gonna want to clean or transform that data using Power Query.
This is about massaging your data, right? Getting it in that right format, if its not already done at your data source, you can do that transformation, with a lot of different actions, inside of Power Query to really get your data in that right shape as you pull that into Power BI, to make sure you can get the most out of it.
Once youve got the data in Power BI, then youre gonna wanna do some additional modeling steps, just to tidy things up to make sure everything is actually right.
Whether thats hiding fields from the report view, because theyre just not needed for actual reporting, to creating measures in DAX.
Those are gonna really bring your data up a level, to really make that data shine inside of Power BI.
And I will tell you, that the modeling step is super important.
Typically, a lot of conversations I have in a lot of videos youll see on this channel, its all about optimization and making that data work, especially at scale.
If youre working with a little bit of data maybe tiny data, it may not matter, but if youre going at scale of data, modeling step should not be overlooked, and you should absolutely spend a lot of time there.
Right, so once you get all of that data shaped and modeled correctly, youre gonna wanna build your awesome visuals, right? So, its easy as dragging and dropping, learning the clicks, and being able to pick the right visualization for your data, bringing that data in, and then laying it out and keeping in mind things like accessibility.
And just the story that you wanna tell with your data.
Theres a wide range of visuals to pick from, and also there are AI visuals to even take it beyond the normal visualization.
So, like, key influencers and the decomposition tree and things of that nature.
So, definitely check those out.
Once everything is done, youre gonna publish it to the Power BI service thats up in the cloud, and then, people will be able to consume that report share it, all of those great items.
Now, there is licensing that comes in here, whether its Power BI Pro, Premium Per User, Premium Capacity, theres a ton of different options, we wont get into that in this video, there are other videos we have that talk about this, but just know that you will need to be mindful a little bit about that, when you wanna go to share out with other folks, there are some implications there that need to be accounted for.
You can take advantage of integration with Microsoft teams.
Theres a personal app thats available there, as well as just adding a tab in your channel.
And also just, quick link embedding, inside of chats themselves.
You also have a ton of Embed options, with inside for reports and dashboards, whether thats Secure Embed, Published to Web, actual full on Power BI embedding.
You can do a lot with those reports, to put them where they need to be.
And you can just share a report inside of Power BI.
And you can do that with internal users in your organization or external folks.
So, maybe theyve got like an outlook.com address, or a Gmail address.
You can share reports with them as well.
Again, with all of those options just be mindful of the licensing that may be required for those items to work successfully.
Right, so thats coming at it more from an offering perspective, but from if youre just consuming reports, and you just wanna get the most out of Power BI, just be aware that theres concepts of like a Workspace versus an App.
Those are different ways that you can consume your reports and dashboards, and those are also different ways that you can share as well.
Maybe youre a consumer and you wanna share this with another colleague, thats where you would go to do that.
Inside of those Workspaces and Apps, you are also going to be able to work with those reports and dashboards and interact with the reports, explore your data a little bit more, create bookmarks and customize the report for yourself, or personalize it for yourself.
And then also, theres the mobile app.
So, you can even on the go, you can connect your reports, and explore those reports on your devices.
Whether its your phone, your tablet, what have you.
The other great benefit of Power BI, is the speed of the cloud, right? So, Power BI has been known for fast updates, regular updates, Power BI Desktops updated once a month, and the actual services potentially updated weekly.
Theres always new stuff coming out out, and you can check out the Power BI blog, for all of those great announcements and releases that are done.
All right, thats a ton of information but where do you go next? So, this YouTube channel has a ton of videos covering different features, looking at different topics, as well as answering your questions in live streams.
So, be sure to subscribe to get all of that information and stay up to date.
Also, if you are beginning your offering experience, and you want to take it to the next level, we have a Blueprint course available for you, that well walk you through in a lot more detail.
I also have a bunch of links down in the description below, for different resources, whether its documentation, the learn platform, the community site, and other items.
So, check out the links in the description below.
And let me know in the comments below, if you have other questions also just, congratulations on beginning your journey with Power BI.
Hopefully, you get a lot of value out it, and it takes your organization to the next level.
If youd like this video, be sure to hit that big thumbs up button, smash it if you so desire, if its your first time here, hit that subscribe button.
And as always from both Patrick and myself, thank you so much for watching, keeping awesome, and well see you in the next video.
Guy in a Cube: What is Power BI? (2021) - Business Intelligence & Analytics