What is Power BI?
Power BI is Microsoft’s next generation business analytics tool—embedded within Microsoft’s business applications solution—that comprises several technologies originally developed for Excel, such as Power Pivot and Power Query. Power BI then goes beyond these existing Excel capabilities, adding functionality for rich interactive visuals and dashboards with KPIs.
With Power BI, you can extract and transform data from multiple data sources and combine it into one data model that you can then use to create your reports. Data from multiple sources can be scheduled to refresh automatically or on-demand.
Since May 2023, Power BI has become an essential component of the Microsoft Fabric end-to-end analytics and data platform. Fabric is a unified, seamlessly integrated solution that simplifies your total analytics requirements. Using Power BI within the Fabric solution enables access to next-gen AI features using Copilot. Although the administration of Power BI is now handled within Fabric, Power BI can still be used as a standalone analytics tool separate from the other Fabric capabilities and cost. Learn more about Microsoft Fabric here.
Power BI is packed with amazing collaboration, sharing, and mobile features and is deeply embedded in Microsoft's business application solutions. So, if you're using Microsoft Office 365, then Power Apps or Microsoft Flow can be configured to tap into Office 365 data, refresh datasets stored in OneDrive or SharePoint, and set alerts or send emails. These are just a few examples; there are many ways Power BI can integrate with other applications and if you are thinking about Power BI from an IT perspective, it is truly an amazing tool to leverage those technologies.