What is Power BI?

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Power BI is a collection of software services, apps, and connectors that work together to turn your unrelated sources of data into coherent, visually immersive, and interactive insights. Your data may be an Excel spreadsheet, or a collection of cloud-based and on-bounds hybrid data warehouses. Power BI lets yous easily connect to your information sources, visualize and discover what'south of import, and share that with anyone or everyone yous want.

The parts of Power BI

Power BI consists of several elements that all work together, starting with these three basics:

  • A Windows desktop application called Power BI Desktop.
  • An online SaaS (Software as a Service) service called the Ability BI service.
  • Power BI mobile apps for Windows, iOS, and Android devices.

Screenshot of Diagram of Power B I Desktop, Service, and Mobile showing their integration.

These three elements—Power BI Desktop, the service, and the mobile apps—are designed to permit y'all create, share, and consume business insights in the mode that serves you and your office most effectively.

Beyond those three, Power BI also features two other elements:

  • Power BI Written report Builder, for creating paginated reports to share in the Power BI service. Read more about paginated reports later in this commodity.
  • Ability BI Written report Server, an on-premises report server where you can publish your Ability BI reports, afterwards creating them in Power BI Desktop. Read more about Power BI Report Server later in this article.

How Power BI matches your role

How y'all utilise Power BI may depend on your part in a project or on a team. Other people, in other roles, might use Power BI differently.

For example, you might primarily utilise the Power BI service to view reports and dashboards. Your number-crunching, business-report-creating coworker might make extensive use of Power BI Desktop or Ability BI Study Builder to create reports, then publish those reports to the Power BI service, where you view them. Another coworker, in sales, might mainly apply the Power BI phone app to monitor progress on sales quotas, and to drill into new sales lead details.

If you're a developer, you lot might utilize Power BI APIs to push data into datasets or to embed dashboards and reports into your own custom applications. Have an thought for a new visual? Build it yourself and share information technology with others.

You lot also might utilise each element of Ability BI at different times, depending on what you lot're trying to achieve or your role for a given project.

How you use Power BI can exist based on which feature or service of Power BI is the best tool for your situation. For example, you lot can utilize Ability BI Desktop to create reports for your ain squad about client date statistics and yous tin view inventory and manufacturing progress in a real-time dashboard in the Power BI service. You can create a paginated report of mailable invoices, based on a Power BI dataset. Each part of Power BI is available to you lot, which is why information technology's so flexible and compelling.

Explore documents that pertain to your role:

  • Power BI for business organisation users
  • Power BI Desktop for written report creators
  • Power BI Report Builder for enterprise report creators
  • Ability BI for administrators
  • Power BI for developers
    • What is Ability BI embedded analytics?
    • Create your own visuals in Ability BI
    • What tin can developers do with the Ability BI API?

The menstruum of work in Power BI

One common workflow in Ability BI begins by connecting to information sources in Power BI Desktop and building a study. You then publish that written report from Ability BI Desktop to the Power BI service, and share it so business users in the Ability BI service and on mobile devices tin can view and interact with the study.

This workflow is common, and shows how the three main Power BI elements complement i some other.

Here's a detailed comparison of Power BI Desktop and the Ability BI service.

Use the deployment pipeline tool

In the Ability BI service, you can employ the deployment pipeline tool to test your content before you release it to your users. The deployment pipeline tool can aid you deploy reports, dashboards, datasets, and paginated reports. Read most how to go started with deployment pipelines in the Power BI service.

Paginated reports in the Ability BI service

Some other workflow involves paginated reports in the Power BI service. Enterprise study creators design paginated reports to be printed or shared. They can also share these reports in the Power BI service. They're called paginated because they're formatted to fit well on a page. They're often used for operational reports, or for printing forms such equally invoices or transcripts. They display all the data in a table, even if the table spans multiple pages. Power BI Report Architect is the standalone tool for authoring paginated reports.

Screenshot of paginated report in the Power B I service.

Read more about paginated reports in the Power BI service.

On-premises reporting with Power BI Report Server

What if you need to proceed your reports on premises, say, behind a firewall? Read on.

You can create, deploy, and manage Power BI reports in Power BI Desktop, and paginated reports in Report Architect, with the fix-to-use tools and services that Power BI Report Server provides.

Screenshot of Diagram of Power B I Report Server, service, and mobile showing their integration.

Power BI Study Server is a solution that you deploy behind your firewall and so deliver your reports to the correct users in different ways, whether that'south viewing them in a web browser, on a mobile device, or as an e-mail. And because Ability BI Report Server is compatible with Power BI in the deject, you can move to the cloud when yous're ready.

Read more about Ability BI Report Server.

Next steps

  • Quickstart: Larn your style around the Ability BI service
  • Tutorial: Get started with the Power BI service
  • Quickstart: Connect to data in Power BI Desktop