Business Intelligence - Introduction To Power BI

Introduction

 
This article teaches you about the most effective tool for Business Intelligence provided by Microsoft, i.e. Power BI. Before learning Power BI, you need to understand the term Business Intelligence. 

What is BI (Business Intelligence)?

 
As per Wikipedia ”Business intelligence (BI) comprises the strategies and technologies used by enterprises for the data analysis of business information. BI technologies provide historical, current, and predictive views of business operations. BI technologies can handle large amounts of structured and sometimes unstructured data to help identify, develop, and otherwise create new strategic business opportunities.”
 
It can be used by enterprises to support a wide range of business decisions ranging from operational to strategic. BI is most effective when it combines data derived from the market in which a company operates (external data) with data from company sources internal to the business such as financial and operations data (internal data). 
 

What is Power BI?

 
Microsoft Power BI is a business intelligence platform that provides you with a number of analysis tools for aggregating, analyzing, visualizing, and sharing data. Power BI users can create interactive reports, and access data while on the move through portable applications. Its profound incorporation with other Microsoft items makes it an adaptable self-administration device that requires minimal forthright preparation.
 
Business Intelligence - Introduction To Power BI
 
Power BI can be basic and quick, fit for making speedy experiences from an Excel exercise manual or a local database. In any case, Power BI is likewise vigorous and undertaking grade prepared not just for broad displaying and real-time analytics, yet in addition to custom development. Consequently, it may be your own report and perception device, yet it can likewise serve as the analytics and decision engine behind group projects, divisions, or entire corporations.
 
Business Intelligence - Introduction To Power BI
 
Power BI is the market leader in solving the data management crisis. This tool is mainly aimed to help organizations and individuals and organize their data.
 
Power BI is the aggregate name for an arrangement of cloud-based applications and administrations that help associations examine, oversee, and dissect information from an assortment of sources, through a user-friendly interface.
 

Features Of Power BI

  • Power BI utilizes Content Packs, which has dashboard reports, information models, and inserted questions. Content Packs are currently being utilized by an enormous number of utilizations, including QuickBooks.
  • This is one of the most integral assets in Power BI. Characteristic Language Q&A permits clients to compose questions and gives the substance and answer, which can be controlled to coordinate your visual need.
  • It's a library of custom representation. In the event that the business needs are extraordinary, at that point so should the visuals.
  • With Power BI, organizations can get information from for all intents and purposes anyplace. Power BI Desktop incorporates a colossal cluster of on-reason and cloud information sources, organized and unstructured, with more included every month.
  • Power BI is Microsoft's cloud-based BI arrangement that conveys a total self-administration BI arrangement intended to dissect and picture information over your whole business.
  • With Power BI, your information can without much of a stretch and rapidly be changed over to data and knowledge, on which you can base future choices and techniques. Gather and get ready information and perform compelling and sensible reports in only a couple of moments.
  • All ventures produce enormous measures of information consistently, yet by what means can this information be utilized to make an outline of your industry? In Power BI you will locate various industry arrangements that permit you to consolidate information and find new industry bits of knowledge and information that can be shared over the organization.

Use Of Power BI

 
The exercises and examinations that you'll learn with Power BI by and large follow a typical stream. The regular progression of action resembles this:
  1. Bring information into Power BI Desktop, and make a report.
  2. Publish to the Power BI administration, where you can make new representations or fabricate dashboards.
  3. Share dashboards with others, particularly individuals who are in a hurry.
  4. View and interface with shared dashboards and reports in Power BI Mobile applications.

Working of Power BI

 
In power BI, you should first connect your data to the tool, transform the data, model your data, visualize your data, and share the results generated by Power BI.
 
Connecting Your Data
 
You can connect a variety of data from various data sources like MySQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, etc. in two ways either upload your file to Power BI or import the file into Power BI.
  • Uploading your file to Power B
     
    Connect to the data in your workbook so that you can create Power BI reports and dashboards for it.
     
    Business Intelligence - Introduction To Power BI
     
    Business Intelligence - Introduction To Power BI
     
  • Importing your file into Power BI
     
    In order to view your file, you will have to fetch it in Power BI. You can interact with it just as you would do in the case of Excel Online.
     
    Business Intelligence - Introduction To Power BI
     
Transforming Your Data
 
Once your data is loaded, you can transform the data as per your need. You can do this by using the Transform menu. It has a set of operations like reverse rows, count rows, rename, replace values and errors, pivot and unpivot columns, etc.
 
Business Intelligence - Introduction To Power BI
 
Business Intelligence - Introduction To Power BI
 
Modeling Your Data
 
In the Power BI desktop, you can add some functions, calculations, relationships, measures, etc. to your data for better visualization. To perform different tasks and save your time, you can write a query to your files. 
 
Data Visualization
 
As per the company's requirement, you can create reports, dashboards, etc. using your modeled data. To create the desired report you need to select any filed from the data file and then choose the tool. There are a variety of tools and you can add a custom visual gallery effectively.
 
Sharing the Generated Reports
 
Through the publish menu you can share and publish your reports securely using Power BI Services also you can set up automatic data refresh. It provides real-time analytics for everyone.
 

Summary

 
In this article, you learned what is Power BI, and what is the use of Power BI. If you're a beginner with Power BI, this module will get you going this module will tie concepts together and fill the gaps. In the next part, we will learn why we use Power BI.


Similar Articles