Overview Of the Tool and The Main Features in Power BI
Introduction With businesses trying their best to acquire, analyze and leverage as much information as possible, it comes as no surprise that the demand for business intelligence has skyrocketed. Advanced business intelligence (BI) tools make acquiring valuable information from raw data a seamless process. Among the several BI tools that have emerged, Microsoft Power BI clearly dominates the market. Power BI gained popularity rather fast, largely due to the fact that even non-technical people can use it with ease. What exactly is Microsoft Power Bi? A brief overview Microsoft Power BI isn’t exactly a business intelligence tool. Rather, it’s a suite consisting of a variety of BI tools that together help businesses consolidate and analyze data. These include apps, software services, and data connectors that can work together to deliver the desired results. Power BI is available on three different platforms: • • •
Power BI Mobile Power BI Desktop Power BI Service (SaaS)
Using Power BI, a business can consolidate data from a variety of sources into a single dataset. These sources may be local, simple excel files, cloud-based, big data, or hybrid.
This, together with the fact that businesses can deploy Power BI both on cloud and onpremises, makes it extremely versatile. After consolidating all the data, users can also use this BI suite to visualize, evaluate and analyze them. Power BI turns data into helpful reports and simple dashboards, making them easily readable. What are the key features of Microsoft Power BI? The key to Power BI’s success lies largely in its unique features. It stands out from its competitors due to its various perks, including speed, comprehensiveness, and ease of use. Check out the key features of Microsoft Power BI below: 1.
Customizable visualizations
The detailed visualizations offered by Microsoft Power BI provide valuable insights. The suite comes with a default standard for the visualizations. However, it is only normal that every business has its own way of functioning. So, how do organizations get Power BI to meet their requirements? Well, the visualizations are actually customizable, and organizations can make a plethora of adjustments. In case a business has to process very complex data and the default visualization isn’t sufficient, the users simply need to customize it. 2.
Detailed reports
The best thing about Power BI reports is their detailed nature. These reports are very informative and present data in a well-structured manner. They are often a combination of dashboards with different visualizations of the analyzed data. Hence, even if a user isn’t very tech-savvy, he/she can still read these reports and gain valuable insights. Power BI also features easy sharing of the reports between users. 3.
Reliable security
For organizations working with large volumes of data and business intelligence, security is often a major challenge. However, Microsoft has done a great job at making Power BI an extremely secure platform. Moreover, when an organization uses Power BI, the team can grant access to the end-users in a fully regulated manner by setting roles. 4.
Affordable costs
Despite being the most popular and likely the best data visualization tool, Microsoft Power BI is cheaper than some of its closest competitors. Naturally, this makes Power BI more budget-friendly, and in turn, a more attractive option. Moreover, even the free version of Power BI desktop offers a generous number of features that small businesses can use completely free of cost. 5.
Mobile app compatibility
The fact that Power BI is available as a mobile app makes it extremely convenient for users to access information from anywhere. One can simply open a shared report on a mobile device, using the app. This is especially helpful in remote working conditions, where a user may not have a desktop within easy access. 6.
Easy to implement
Another feature of Power BI that has made it so popular among organizations is its easy implementation. Implementing a Power BI solution doesn’t really need a lot of engineering abilities and IT resources. The process is especially simpler for organizations that use Office 365, as integrating Power BI with other Microsoft systems is easy. How to learn Power BI and build your skills in it? Considering all the amazing features of Microsoft Power BI and the popularity that this suite has gained, it doesn’t seem like it’ll grow irrelevant anytime soon. Businesses are constantly adopting the suite for better management of data, and this has created a demand for Power BI data analysts. For IT professionals who are specializing in working with data, this is a golden opportunity. Wondering how you can develop your skills in Microsoft Power BI to become a data analyst? Well, the best way to go about it is to complete the About PL-300T00: Power BI Data Analyst course. The course covers a variety of topics, including: • • • • • •
Using Power BI to create paginated reports Applying and performing report analytics Ensuring better performance and stability by modeling data Ingesting, cleaning, and modeling data Managing and sharing report assets Designing and creating reports for data analytics
This is a comprehensive course that would greatly enhance your capabilities with Microsoft Power BI. Completing it would help you get better at managing data, implementing security standards, and deploying reports on Power BI. Who is the PL-300T00: Power BI Data Analyst course for? This is a relatively advanced course primarily targeting BI and data professionals, besides others who wish to learn to develop reports for data visualization. The course has several prerequisites that you must meet in order to be eligible. These include finishing the DP900T00: Microsoft Azure Data Fundamentals course first and having the knowledge of working with core concepts and non-relational data. You should also have an understanding of core data concepts, visualization concepts, and data analysis.
If you do meet the eligibility criteria for this course, it would be worth opting for it. The career opportunities that will open up are absolutely worth the effort.