PowerBi – A Powerful Analytical Reporting tool for all levels

What is Power BI?

There are many tools that provide analytical reporting for SMBs and Enterprises. But not all tools do Business Intelligence reporting. Also, most of these tools take time and effort to install, setup, configure, and build reports for end-users or Management Team. Microsoft understood this gap in the Business Intelligence market and came up with a new tool that solves all the projects and named it POWER BI.

Power Business Intelligence (in-short Power BI) is a Microsoft analytical reporting solution that lets you visualize your data and share insights across your organization. It ranked as a leader in BI and Analytics Platforms for ten consecutive years.

How do I try this tool?

1. Sign up – All you need is a business email address and you’re in. There are 2 versions of Power BI – Online and Desktop.

  • Power BI Online is used for connecting online data sources, transform, and visualize your data and build reports. It is also help to publish the reports to other users.

  • Power BI Desktop can be installed on your local computer that lets you connect to, transform, and visualize your data. With Power BI Desktop, you can connect to multiple different sources of data, and combine them (often called modeling) into a data model that lets you build visuals, and collections of visuals you can share as reports, with other people inside your organization. Most users who work on Business Intelligence projects use Power BI Desktop to create reports, and then use the Power BI service to share their reports with others

2. Connect – Connect to your data in minutes, with built-in connectors and pre-built dashboards and reports from a wide variety of

Data sources

Are classified in to File, Database, Power BI, Azure, Online Services, Other

File category

Includes Excel, Text/CSV, XML, JSON, Folder, SharePoint Folder

Database category

Includes SQL Server Database, Access Database, SQL Server Analysis Services Database, Oracle Database, IBM DB2 Database, IBM Informix database (Beta), IBM Netezza, MySQL Database, PostgreSQL Database, Sybase Database, Teradata Database, SAP HANA Database, SAP Business Warehouse Application Server, SAP Business Warehouse Message Server (Beta), Amazon Redshift, Impala, Google BigQuery, Snowflake, Exasol

Power BI category

Includes Power BI datasets

Azure Category

Includes Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Data Warehouse, Azure Analysis Services database, Azure Blob Storage, Azure Table Storage, Azure Cosmos DB (Beta), Azure Data Lake Store, Azure HDInsight (HDFS), Azure HDInsight Spark (Beta), HDInsight Interactive Query (Beta), Azure KustoDB (beta)

Online Services Category

Includes SharePoint Online List, Microsoft Exchange Online, Dynamics 365 (online), Dynamics NAV (Beta), Dynamics 365 Business Central, Common Data Service for Apps(Beta), Common Data Service (Beta), Microsoft Azure Consumption Insights (Beta), Visual Studio Team Services (Beta), Salesforce Objects, Salesforce Reports, Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, appFigures (Beta), comScore Digital Analytix (Beta), Dynamics 365 for Customer Insights (Beta), Data.World – Get Dataset (Beta), Facebook, GitHub (Beta), MailChimp (Beta), Marketo (Beta), Mixpanel (Beta), Planview Enterprise One – PRM (Beta), Planview Projectplace (Beta), QuickBooks Online (Beta), Smartsheet, SparkPost (Beta), Stripe (Beta), SweetIQ (Beta), Planview Enterprise One – CMT (Beta), Twilio (Beta), tyGraph (Beta), Webtrends (Beta), Zendesk (Beta), TeamDesk (Beta)

Other Category

Includes Vertica (Beta), Web, SharePoint List, OData Feed, Active Directory, Microsoft Exchange, Hadoop File (HDFS), Spark, R Script, ODBC, OLE DB, Blank Query

3. Use – Power BI Designer – that allows business analysts to connect to, model and visually analyze your data. You can effortlessly publish the report. A preview of Power BI for iPad – now available for download from the Apple App Store. Later this year Microsoft will introduce iPhone, Android and Windows universal apps.

How do my reports look like?

Power BI is regarded as the best visualization tool for Business Intelligence. Below are few snapshots.

Area charts: Basic and Stacked
Bar and column charts
Cards: Multi row
Cards: Single number
Combo charts
Doughnut charts
Funnel charts
Gauge charts
KPIs
Line charts
Maps: Basic maps
Maps: ArcGIS maps
Maps: Filled maps (Choropleth)
Matrix
Pie charts
Scatter and Bubble charts
Slicers
Tables
Tree Maps
Waterfall charts

Korcomptenz Team has experience working on PowerBI for various customers and solved the critical reporting needs. We also train the users on how easy it is to build reports using PowerBI. Feel free to reach us.