Power BI

Concepts

The biggest parts of Power BI are datasets, reports and dashboards. They are all organised into workspaces, and they are created on capacities.

Capacities:

Capacities are the core Power BI concept made up of a set of resources used to host and display the Power BI data. Capacities are either shared or dedicated, I.e., shared with other Microsoft customers, or dedicated to 1 x customer. Dedicated capacities will require a MS power BI subscription, whereas Shared capacities do not require a paid subscription, and are enabled by default.

Workspaces:

Workspaces are containers for dashboards, reports and workflows. There are two types: My Workspaces and Workspaces.

My workspace is your own personal environment for any Power BI customer to work with their content. Only you can access your Workspace. You can share dashboards and reports from your workspace, but if you want other people to collaborate, then you will need to create a Workspace.

Workspaces are used to collaborate and share content with colleagues or workmates/partners. The only thing is if you want several people collaborating, they will all require Power BI Pro licenses.

You can also create apps for your business in Workspaces. An app is a collection of dashboards and reports built to deliver key metrics to power bi users in your business. Apps are interactive, but users cannot edit them. Users who wish to view apps but not edit them do not require Power BI licenses.

Datasets.

Datasets are a collection of data that you can connect to or import from. Datasets are associated with workspaces and a single dataset can be a part of many workplaces. Datasets can be from Salesforce, OneDrive, or an Excel Workbook.

Reports:

A power BI report is one or more visualisations such as line charts, maps, and tree maps., and are also called visuals. You can create visuals from scratch within Power BI, or Power BI can create them when you connect to datasets from Excel, Power BI Dashboards, databases and SAAS applications.

Dashboards:

A dashboard is a blank canvas you create in Power BI and add tiles and widgets to it that may be reports or Q&A which displays a single visualisation from a dataset and pinned to the dashboard.

The good thing about dashboards is they represent graphically all the information needed for people to make business decisions. You can monitor the most-important information about your business quickly also. It ensures all staff members are looking at the same info too.

You can easily monitor the health of a business, business product, social media campaign or advertising.

Work with Aggregates in Power BI Service:

To combine values in your data, you get an aggregate or average of the sums combined.

As when Power BI visualises your data, it is aggregating it. Sometimes aggregates may differ in that you require a SUM not an average.

Power BI may also aggregate textual not numerical date, this is called categorical data.

Working with aggregates in Power BI can be confusing, for example if you are working with a numerical field and it will not let you change the aggregate. Sometimes you may want several occurrences. The underlying issue may be the field definition of the dataset. The dataset owner may have defined the dataset as text. In this case, only the dataset owner can change the field definition.

Security and Administration:

Power BI is based on the Azure Cloud Computing Infrastructure and has the same level of high security as other MS products.

Users sign in with their credentials stored in the Azure Active Directory database, but it is their responsibility that they share the data safely, as users shared with is not checked against the Active Directory list of users. It is beneficial this way as it makes it easy to share data and visualisations with people outside of the organisation, but the editors must maintain safe sharing practices.

The administrator of the Power BI data is the protector of the data, processes, and policies of the Power BI tenant. The Power BI administrator is a key member of the team that incudes developers, analysts, and others. The administrator can help the organisation reach critical goals.