In this post you will find materials for the Power BI Mission Possible! session that I speak today in PASS BA Virtual Chapter. Thanks to all attendees of my session in PASS Business Analytics Virtual Chapter today. Unfortunately I hadn’t chance to respond all questions, So here in this blog post I write answers to your questions. But Don’t hesitate to ask if you have any other questions. Write your question in the comment section of this page and I will respond it to you here.

Session: Power BI Mission Possible!

Description:

Power Query, Power View, and Power Pivot has been in the BI market for a while. Microsoft combined these three products into a single product and service with a new designer called Power BI Desktop (Power BI Designer). Power BI gathered features of these three products all in one, so building dashboards and effective visualization items with this tool is much easier nowadays. In this session you will learn all new and great features of Power BI. You will learn how to work with different data source, and apply Power Query transformation on them. You will learn tricks and tips of modelling with Power BI Desktop, and then how to visualize effectively with this tool. You will also learn how to build dashboards on Power BI website. At the end of this session you will be able to use Power BI for your everyday data analysis as well as organizational data mash up and visualization. So expect lots of demos in this session.

References to Study More

Through this session you’ve learned about Power BI Desktop and it’s new features. I like to share you some links as references that would be useful for you to study more;

• Power BI from Rookie to Rockstar Online Book

http://www.radacad.com/category/power-bi-from-rookie-to-rockstar

• Power BI Videos

https://www.youtube.com/user/mspowerbi/featured

• Power BI website

https://support.powerbi.com/

• What’s New In Power BI:

http://www.radacad.com/whats-new-in-power-bi-august-2015-update

http://www.radacad.com/all-in-one-whats-new-in-power-bi-desktop-2-0-ga

Session Materials

Slides to download

https://radacad.com/files/20150626_PASSBAVC_PowerBIMissionPossible.pdf

Presentation recording is available here in PASS BA VC youtube channel.

Link to session materials in PASS BA VC website:

http://bavc.sqlpass.org/Home.aspx?EventID=3622

Questions and Answers

• Is OLAP a data source option?

Yes, SQL Server Analysis Services is one of the supported data sources for Power BI. Connection to Both SSAS Tabular and Multi-Dimensional is supported. You can connect to SSAS Tabular with Live connection as well. There is also a feature to write MDX/DAX code to fetch data from SSAS Model as explained in the session.

• What is the architecture of power bi desktop and mobile? are there excel add-ins?

Power BI Desktop is not an Excel Add-in. It is an stand-alone application that you can download from PowerBI website. Power BI Mobile Apps are just browser apps to the Power BI dashboards, they provide ability to modify security as well. Power BI components (Power Query, Power Pivot, and Power View) are available as Excel Add-Ins, But if you use Power BI Desktop you won’t need add-ins anymore. I strongly recommend you to read First Experience with Power BI Desktop to get better understanding of this tool and it’s requirement.

• Does this replace SSRS?

SSRS is a reporting tool that has built for different purpose. SSRS is great for operational reports and reports that needs to be printed with predefined layout. On the other hand Power BI is more self-service and Power User interactive data visualization with great mobility support. So short answer is no, Power BI is not replacement of SSRS, These are two different tools built for two different purposes.

• Can you publish power bi to sharepoint?

At the moment Power BI Desktop files (*.pbix) only can be published into Power BI website. But you can use Power Query, Power Pivot, and Power View excel add-ins and upload them into SharePoint.

• Are all DAX functions supported on power bi?

No. However most of functions are supported, and new functions will be added each month. For example in the previous update of Power BI about 25 functions of DAX (more statistical I believe) added to Power BI as well.

• Does end-users have to use power bi to view reports?

No. End user can view reports through any web browser, or Mobile Apps.

• What is the security ramifications of using powerbi.com? can the reports be published locally?

You can Share dashboards with other users, and only users who has access to report will see it. At the moment Power BI reports can be only published on Power BI website.

Thanks again to PASS BA virtual chapter for giving me the opportunity to speak, and also thank to all attendees for attending in my session.

Reza Rad

Trainer, Consultant, Mentor

Reza Rad is a Microsoft Regional Director, an Author, Trainer, Speaker and Consultant. He has a BSc in Computer engineering; he has more than 20 years’ experience in data analysis, BI, databases, programming, and development mostly on Microsoft technologies. He is a Microsoft Data Platform MVP for 12 continuous years (from 2011 till now) for his dedication in Microsoft BI. Reza is an active blogger and co-founder of RADACAD. Reza is also co-founder and co-organizer of Difinity conference in New Zealand, Power BI Summit, and Data Insight Summit.
Reza is author of more than 14 books on Microsoft Business Intelligence, most of these books are published under Power BI category. Among these are books such as Power BI DAX Simplified, Pro Power BI Architecture, Power BI from Rookie to Rock Star, Power Query books series, Row-Level Security in Power BI and etc.
He is an International Speaker in Microsoft Ignite, Microsoft Business Applications Summit, Data Insight Summit, PASS Summit, SQL Saturday and SQL user groups. And He is a Microsoft Certified Trainer.
Reza’s passion is to help you find the best data solution, he is Data enthusiast.
His articles on different aspects of technologies, especially on MS BI, can be found on his blog: https://radacad.com/blog.