Building Solutions with the Microsoft Power Platform

Chapter 6. Getting to Know Power BI

In Chapters 3, 4, and 5, we walked through ways that we can build applications, store information, and automate tasks. In the next step of our Power Platform journey, we will take a look at Power BI, a tool that allows us to gather insights that can be used to make informed decisions using data gathered for the business. The topic of business intelligence, or BI for short, can seem daunting at first, but as you’ve seen throughout this book, the Power Platform helps simplify it and allows anyone to get started without needing to have in-depth knowledge of the things that go into business intelligence.

In this chapter, we’re going to take a closer look at the tools that you’ll be using, how you can connect to your data, and how to build reports and dashboards quickly and easily. You don’t need to be a data engineer to do this either; you just need the data from your data source to be correct.

Understanding the Basics

Once again, we begin by looking at the home screen, shown in Figure 6-1. On the left, you have your navigation pane where you can go to create new reports and datasets. It also provides easy access to reports that you’ve set as your favorites, apps (including dashboards) that are publicly available for your use, and your workspaces, which we’ll talk about in the next section.

Figure 6-1. Power BI

Depending on your view, you may see ...