Power BI on Youtube

Microsoft has uploaded some beautiful videos on Power BI to Youtube.

See the full picture in one pane

Transform data into decisions

Share a world of insight

Bring your story to life with data

Power BI on the Desktop

The most powerful way of using Power BI is on the Desktop. This is due to the fact that Power BI Desktop could be used just like any other desktop application. It also gives several options which are not available in other forms of usage such as follows.

• More options for getting data sources
• Advanced data exploration, shaping, modeling, and report creation facilities
• Highly interactive visualizations

Installing the Power BI Desktop

In order to use Power BI on the Desktop, first we need to download free Power BI Desktop software from Microsoft Power BI Web site. This could be done using the following steps.

• Visit https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/desktop
• Save the installation file (PBIDesktop_xxx.msi) on a local drive
• Double-click the saved installation file to install

Note: You may have to install additional database connectors and drivers depending on the data sources you would be using.

Power BI on the Web

The most popular way of using Power BI is on the Web. This is due to the fact that Power BI could be used on any device with a suitable Web browser. It also gives several options which are not available in other forms of usage such as follows.

• Creating Power BI Dashboards
• Pinning Power BI Visualizations in Reports to Dashboards
• Sharing Power BI Reports and Dashboards
• Power BI Q&A on related datasets

Creating a Power BI Account

In order to use Power BI on the Web, first we need to create a free Power BI account or paid Power BI Pro account. This could be done using the following steps.

• Visit https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/
• Select "Get started free"
• Select "Sign up"
• Enter "your work e-mail address"

Note: You cannot use a personal e-mail account such as Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, ...

What is Power BI?

Power BI (Business Intelligence) is a cloud-based business analytics service that gives a single view of most critical business data. It monitors the health of a business using live dashboards, rich interactive reports and allows us to access data on the go.

With Power BI, we have any data, anywhere, anytime easily, faster, and free.

Ways to use Power BI

Power BI could be used in multiple ways from desktops to mobiles as follows.

• On the Web
• On the Desktop
• On Mobiles as
• Android app
• iOS app
• Windows app
• Within other native apps

Supported Web Browsers for Power BI

• Microsoft Edge
• Internet Explorer 11
• Internet Explorer 10
• Chrome desktop latest version
• Safari Mac latest version
• Firefox desktop latest version