Getting started with Power BI

What is PowerBI?

Power BI is a collection of software services, apps, and connectors. These work together to relate the data extracted from different sources, make it visually immersive, and draw insights. Data can be in the form of Excel spreadsheets, SQL queries, or a collection of cloud databases. Power BI helps you easily connect to your data sources, visualize and discover what's important, and share that with anyone or everyone you want [Microsoft Power BI].

What are the different 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 software as a service (SaaS) service called the Power BI service.

-Power BI Mobile apps for Windows, iOS, and Android devices

These three elements—Power BI Desktop, the service, and the mobile apps—are designed to let you create, share, and consume business insights in the way that serves you and your role most effectively.

Other two elements of Power BI are as follows:

-Power BI Report Builder, for creating paginated reports to share in the Power BI service.

-Power BI Report Server, an on-premises report server where you can publish your Power BI reports, after creating them in Power BI Desktop.

What is Power BI Desktop?

It is a free application that you can install on your local computer. It 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 into a data model. The process of connecting different data sources and combining them is called data modeling. This data model 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.

The most common uses for Power BI Desktop are as follows:

-Connect to data

-Transform and clean data to create a data model

-Create visuals, such as charts or graphs that provide visual representations of the data

-Create reports that are collections of visuals on one or more report pages.

-Share reports with others by using the Power BI service.

There are three views available in Power BI Desktop, which is available on the left side of the canvas.

-Report: You create reports and visuals, where most of your creation time is spent.

-Data: You see the tables, measures, and other data used in the data model associated with your report, and transform the data for best use in the report's model.

-Model: You see and manage the relationships among tables in your data model.

These are the basics of Power BI. Let's move to the next tutorial for exploring different components of Power BI.

SWETA SARANGI

4-8-2023