With Microsoft’s business intelligence solution Power BI, companies aggregate the distributed data coming from different data sources into a single platform and analyze them to obtain actionable strategic insights .
As data plays an increasingly dominant role in the business world day by day, solutions which convert data into meaningful information enabling more profit generating business processes to emerge become widespread. These software and service packages, which can be described as business intelligence applications, turn raw data into actionable strategic insights.
Microsoft’s Power BI is a collection of software services, applications and connectors that work together to offer companies comprehensive solutions. No matter where your data is, be it on an Excel spreadsheet, in a cloud-based application or on-premises hybrid data warehouses, Power BI connects to your data, then interprets and visualize them, and finally share with anyone you want. With Power BI, data coming from different sources is presented to users on a single platform and in an actionable form enabling executives and employees to reach insights that they will strategically need. Offering comprehensive solutions to companies in terms of business intelligence, Power BI has 3 basic components:
Power BI Components
Power BI Desktop is Power BI’s free desktop application that allows to create interactive reports enriched with visual analysis. Power BI Desktop can connect and extract data from hundreds of on-premises and cloud-based applications ranging from Dynamics 365 and Salesforce to Azure SQL DB, SharePoint and Excel, and allows to deliver in-depth insights using extended analyses powered by artificial intelligence.
Power BI Service is an online SaaS (Software as a Service) version of Power BI. Thanks to the dashboards it contains, Power BI helps the users in a company analyze what is happening in their enterprise in the present, creating reports that one can work on in detail and enables users to share them with anyone they want. Power BI can connect to a vast number of data sets and collect the data required by the enterprise on a single platform. It also allows creating private workgroups so that teams can work on a relevant report or dashboard.
Power BI’s mobile application has been published on Microsoft Store, App Store and Google Play platforms. Available for Windows, iOS and Android devices, Power BI Mobile enables the users to securely access company reports and dashboards from anywhere. Moreover, Power BI Mobile allows users to set up push notifications enabling them to get personal data alerts sent to their device.
Apart from these three basic components, Power BI has two more elements that work together with these three components. The first of these two, Power BI Report Builder offers paginated reports ready to be shared and the other one, Power BI Report Server, is a private report server that allows on-premises publishing the created reports. Thanks to these two applications, the reports created can easily be shared within the organization and stored securely.
Using shared workflow by Power BI
Due to the restrictions enforced by the pandemic era, remote working and hybrid working models have become the “new normal” of the business world. While companies were updating their working strategies, the software and services had to keep up with the pandemic agenda accordingly. Thanks to its online reports and dashboards, Power BI allows multiple users to view, analyze and edit the same content simultaneously. Through the shared workflow, any user can connect to data sources with Power BI and create a report, then transfer it to the Power BI service (SaaS), and the employees using Power BI service or mobile application can work interactively on the subject report.
Testing the content you have created before sharing it with other users helps avoid potential mistakes. The deployment pipeline tool in Power BI service allows you to view reports, dashboards, data sets and paginated reports within the content. This preview function minimizes the risk of sharing untrue or erroneous content.
What is Power BI Pro?
Power BI Pro is the full and reasonably priced version of Power BI offering organizations a wide range of capabilities and strategic content to make better decisions. Power BI Pro enables all its users to benefit from enriched data visualizations and allows them to share the relevant content with team members working both in and out of the organization in accordance with various licenses and regulations. Thanks to its capability to share views and comments within a team, Power BI Pro paves the way for collaboration and development of ongoing projects.
An alternative that can be used to access content in Power BI Pro is to use plain spoken language. You can ask Power BI Pro questions about data and get meaningful answers to these questions. Fixing the most relevant content and directing the team members to benefit from this content is one of features that comes along with Power BI Pro. Working in harmony with many other business intelligence tools, Power BI Pro not only extracts data from them but also allows to view insights from applications such as Microsoft Teams, Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform.
Power BI Pro in Terms of Security
Power BI Pro also stands out in terms of security and prevents data loss thanks to its security solutions that seamlessly work row by row. It provides data protection in accordance with the compliance standards and certifications of the industry including the subject organization. Power BI ensures service delivery, data residency, data access and data control in compliance with both national and local regulations.
Power BI Pro offers enterprises all the business intelligence they will need, as well as providing these solutions with a comprehensive content, an easy access and numerous management opportunities. As IBSS, we stand by you with Power BI business intelligence solutions.