- Yooo! Adam Saxton with Guy in a Cube, and if you were wondering
what Power BI is all about, maybe you're new to Power BI, just wanna know the lay of the land, this video is for you. Let's go (upbeat music) If you're finding us for the first time, be sure to hit that subscribe button, to stay up to date with all the videos from both Patrick and myself. All right, what is Power BI? Where did it even come from? Power BI is a interactive
reporting platform, right? So, data analytics, business analytics, all of those buzzwords that you've heard, that's what Power BI is all about. Working with your data and
getting the right answers very quickly. In fact, the mantra of Power
BI when it first came about, was five minutes to WOW, and it's true. And the actual history of
Power BI, it goes back, Microsoft is been involved
with business analytics and business intelligence for a long time. We've got reporting
services, analysis services, all of that came together as
the roots of Power BI itself. Microsoft Power BI is a cloud platform, for the sake of this video,
we're gonna stick with that. There are some on-premises options, but let's talk about the
cloud platform itself. You may be thinking, well, what kind of data can it actually handle? It can handle everything from
just your simple Excel file all the way to massive data amounts. If you've got data of any size, Power BI is an option for you. And security is also very important. I've got a link down in
the description below, to the Microsoft Trust Center, where you can go check out
all of the certifications that Power BI actually has, from regulatory and
compliance perspectives. So, if you're worried about that, check that out as well as
the security whitepaper, there's tons of great information there. Okay, so the actual journey of Power BI, you're gonna come at it
from two different ways. Either one, you're actually
creating those reports, or shaping the data,
working with the data, offering the reports themselves,
or you're coming at it, you're just consuming the reports, right? So, you're using those reports, actually make business
decisions with that data. Let's look at the offering piece first from an offering perspective, your journey is probably gonna
start with Power BI Desktop. This is a free download from powerbi.com. You can get going. If you are on a Mac platform, check the video I did a long time back, it is still applicable, it talks all about your options, if you're on a Mac versus a PC, so, definitely check that out. To begin that journey, you're gonna need to get some data, right? And Power BI can connect to a bunch of different data sources. Whether that's Excel,
SQL, relational databases, Cloud Sources or services that you use, like Salesforce or QuickBooks, or maybe it's just an API
that you wanna go get data, or even a webpage. You can scrape that tons of options, and when you don't even
know if it's even available, or maybe you don't see it in the list, check out the ODBC or OLE DB providers, those are always options, that you can go and connect to your data. After you've got your data, you're gonna want to clean
or transform that data using Power Query. This is about massaging your data, right? Getting it in that right format, if it's not already done
at your data source, you can do that transformation, with a lot of different actions, inside of Power Query
to really get your data in that right shape as you
pull that into Power BI, to make sure you can
get the most out of it. Once you've got the data in Power BI, then you're gonna wanna do
some additional modeling steps, just to tidy things up
to make sure everything is actually right. Whether that's hiding
fields from the report view, because they're just not
needed for actual reporting, to creating measures in DAX. Those are gonna really
bring your data up a level, to really make that data
shine inside of Power BI. And I will tell you, that the modeling step is super important. Typically, a lot of conversations
I have in a lot of videos you'll see on this channel, it's all about optimization
and making that data work, especially at scale. If you're working with a little
bit of data maybe tiny data, it may not matter, but if
you're going at scale of data, modeling step should not be overlooked, and you should absolutely
spend a lot of time there. Right, so once you get
all of that data shaped and modeled correctly, you're gonna wanna build
your awesome visuals, right? So, it's easy as dragging and dropping, learning the clicks, and being able to pick
the right visualization for your data, bringing that data in, and then laying it out
and keeping in mind things like accessibility. And just the story that you
wanna tell with your data. There's a wide range of
visuals to pick from, and also there are AI
visuals to even take it beyond the normal visualization. So, like, key influencers
and the decomposition tree and things of that nature. So, definitely check those out. Once everything is done, you're gonna publish it
to the Power BI service that's up in the cloud, and then, people will be
able to consume that report share it, all of those great items. Now, there is licensing
that comes in here, whether it's Power BI
Pro, Premium Per User, Premium Capacity, there's a ton of different options, we won't get into that in this video, there are other videos we
have that talk about this, but just know that you
will need to be mindful a little bit about that, when you wanna go to share
out with other folks, there are some implications there that need to be accounted for. You can take advantage of
integration with Microsoft teams. There's a personal app
that's available there, as well as just adding
a tab in your channel. And also just, quick link embedding, inside of chats themselves. You also have a ton of Embed options, with inside for reports and dashboards, whether that's Secure
Embed, Published to Web, actual full on Power BI embedding. You can do a lot with those reports, to put them where they need to be. And you can just share a
report inside of Power BI. And you can do that with internal
users in your organization or external folks. So, maybe they've got like
an outlook.com address, or a Gmail address. You can share reports with them as well. Again, with all of those options just be mindful of the
licensing that may be required for those items to work successfully. Right, so that's coming at it more from an offering perspective, but from if you're just consuming reports, and you just wanna get
the most out of Power BI, just be aware that there's concepts of like a Workspace versus an App. Those are different ways that
you can consume your reports and dashboards, and those are also different ways that you can share as well. Maybe you're a consumer
and you wanna share this with another colleague, that's where you would go to do that. Inside of those Workspaces and Apps, you are also going to be able
to work with those reports and dashboards and
interact with the reports, explore your data a little bit more, create bookmarks and customize
the report for yourself, or personalize it for yourself. And then also, there's the mobile app. So, you can even on the go,
you can connect your reports, and explore those reports on your devices. Whether it's your phone,
your tablet, what have you. The other great benefit of Power BI, is the speed of the cloud, right? So, Power BI has been
known for fast updates, regular updates, Power BI
Desktops updated once a month, and the actual services
potentially updated weekly. There's always new stuff coming out out, and you can check out the Power BI blog, for all of those great
announcements and releases that are done. All right, that's a ton of information but where do you go next? So, this YouTube channel has a ton of videos covering different features, looking at different topics, as well as answering your
questions in live streams. So, be sure to subscribe to
get all of that information and stay up to date. Also, if you are beginning
your offering experience, and you want to take it to the next level, we have a Blueprint
course available for you, that we'll walk you through
in a lot more detail. I also have a bunch of links
down in the description below, for different resources,
whether it's documentation, the learn platform, the
community site, and other items. So, check out the links
in the description below. And let me know in the comments below, if you have other questions also just, congratulations on beginning
your journey with Power BI. Hopefully, you get a lot of value out it, and it takes your organization
to the next level. If you'd like this video, be sure to hit that big thumbs up button, smash it if you so desire, if it's your first time here,
hit that subscribe button. And as always from both
Patrick and myself, thank you so much for
watching, keeping awesome, and we'll see you in the next video.
