## Introduction [Power BI](https://powerbi.microsoft.com/) is a business intelligence (BI) and data visualization tool developed by Microsoft. It enables users to create interactive reports and dashboards by integrating with a wide range of data sources. With a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface, advanced analytics capabilities, and AI-powered insights, Power BI helps businesses make data-driven decisions effectively. <br>![[Tooling PowerBI.png]] *Example page of a report in Power BI* ## Features - **Data Connectivity**: Connects to multiple data sources, including SQL databases, Excel, SharePoint, Google Analytics, Salesforce, and third-party APIs, providing a unified view of business data. - **Interactive Data Visualization**: Offers a wide range of visualizations, including bar charts, line graphs, heatmaps, tables, and custom visuals from the Power BI Marketplace. - **Custom Metrics & DAX Formulas**: Allows users to define custom calculations, aggregations, and transformations using DAX (Data Analysis Expressions) for tailored reporting. - **Real-Time Data Updates**: Supports direct query mode and scheduled data refreshes, ensuring stakeholders always have access to up-to-date insights. - **Security & User Access Control**: Implements role-based access control (RBAC) and row-level security (RLS), ensuring sensitive data is only accessible to authorized users. - **Data Blending & AI Insights**: Combines data from multiple sources within the same report and utilizes AI-powered analytics for trend detection, forecasting, and anomaly detection. - **Collaboration & Sharing**: Allows teams to collaborate via Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, and PowerPoint, with scheduled report delivery and shared workspaces. - **Custom Themes & Branding**: Enables organizations to apply custom themes, brand colors, and logos to reports for a consistent look. ## Applications - **Marketing Analytics**: Tracks ad performance, customer behavior, and web traffic by integrating with Google Analytics, Facebook Ads, and LinkedIn Ads. - **Financial Reporting**: Helps finance teams analyze revenue, expenses, budget variances, and profitability trends using ERP integrations like SAP and Dynamics 365. - **Sales & CRM Insights**: Monitors sales trends, customer acquisition costs, and deal pipeline progress through CRM platforms like Salesforce and HubSpot. - **Operational Dashboards**: Tracks key performance indicators (KPIs), employee productivity, and supply chain performance with real-time data visualization. - **Embedded Analytics**: Allows organizations to embed reports into web applications, internal dashboards, and portals for seamless data access. - **E-commerce Insights**: Integrates with Shopify, WooCommerce, and Amazon Seller Central to analyze sales trends, inventory levels, and customer purchasing behavior. ## Best Practices - **Optimize Data Models**: Use star schema design, remove unnecessary columns, and avoid excessive data relationships to improve performance. - **Leverage DAX for Advanced Metrics**: Create custom KPIs, calculated columns, and aggregations using DAX formulas. - **Ensure Data Security with Row-Level Security (RLS)**: Restrict access to specific data views based on user roles. - **Use Power Query for Data Cleaning**: Transform messy data before visualization with Power Query’s ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) capabilities. - **Enable Performance Analyzer**: Identify slow-performing queries and optimize report load times. - **Automate Report Distribution**: Schedule and send reports via Power BI Service and Power Automate to improve collaboration. ## Pricing Power BI offers three pricing tiers: - **Power BI Free**: Basic self-service analytics, report creation & publishing (Free). - **Power BI Pro ($10 per user per month)**: Enables collaboration, real-time data sharing, and scheduled refreshes. - **Power BI Premium**: Advanced AI capabilities, paginated reports, larger data capacity, and on-premises data gateways. - $20 per user/month (Premium Per User). - $4,995 per capacity/month (Premium Capacity for enterprise use). > [!NOTE] > Power BI is included in Microsoft 365 subscriptions and integrates seamlessly with Azure Synapse for enterprise-scale data analytics. ## Usage We have the PowerBI reporting setup operational in a one client setup, and will deploy it when asked, but our preference goes towards tools like [[Preset]], since these scale better. %% Owner: Philip Boontje %%