Navigating the Power BI Service: A guide for beginners
- May 14, 2024
- 3 min read
Updated: Jan 24
The Microsoft Power BI Service is a Software as a Service (SaaS) platform where users can view, interact, consume and share their reports via a web browser.
The Power BI Service allows you to:
Create Reports and Dashboards: Design and build reports and dashboards using various data sources.
Schedule Data Refresh: Schedule automatic data refreshes.
Share Insights: Collaborate with other users by sharing reports and dashboards securely.
Access Data Anywhere: View reports and dashboards from any device with an internet connection.
Embed Reports: Embed Power BI reports into other applications or websites.
In this article I will be giving a introduction to the Power BI Service and guide you on how you can get started on this platform.
In a typical Power BI workflow, you start by building a report in Power BI Desktop and then publish it to the Power BI service for the users to test, consume and share with other users.
To get started with the service you can use a free account but will need a work or school email address as you cannot access the platform with a generic email such as Gmail.
Workspaces
In the Power BI Service, a workspace is a container/location where reports are published to and related objects can be created. Think of a workspace as an area where you can store your reports for a specific department such as the Sales Team as an example. Workspaces allow you to control access to your reports by assigning specific roles to them.
When you publish a report from Power BI Desktop to the Service you will need to specify a workspace to publish to. The free license allows you to publish to "My Workspace" but not share any content. If you want to create additional workspaces you will need to purchase a license (more about that later).
Once published, you will see that two objects have been created in your workspace. These objects are the actual report and the semantic model (underlying data).
Main Components
1) Roles: Roles help manage who can do what within a Workspace.
Admin: Manages the workspace, members, and content.
Member: Collaborates within the workspace.
Contributor: Creates and edits content.
Viewer: Views content without editing permissions.
For a detailed breakdown of the Workspace roles you can visit the following link.
2) Objects: The following objects can be created/located within a workspace:
Dashboards
Reports
Semantic Models
Template Apps
Paginated Reports
Dataflows
Datasets
Explorations
3) Data Refresh: Data refresh schedules can be set up in the workspace under the Semantic Model.
4) Sharing: Users can share their reports from a workspace and control what the user can do with the report once it has been shared with them.
5) Semantic Model Endorsement: You can promote or certify your semantic model to help users discover quality content.
6) Deployment Pipelines: A deployment pipeline is a structured process that allows you to manage the content lifecycle within Power BI (Premium license needed). It assists the BI team to deliver updates faster and reduce manual work in the development, test and production environments.
If you have any questions around Workspaces or need help setting one up, please reach out to us here.
Licensing
Microsoft offer various options when it comes to Power BI licensing.
I have broken down the key options below.
Free | Pro | Premium (Per User) | |
Model Size Limit | 1GB | 1GB | 100 GB |
Mobile Application | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Refresh Rate | / | 8/day | 48/day |
Dataflows | No | Yes | Yes |
Deployment Pipelines | No | No | Yes |
Max Storage | 10GB/User | 10GB/User | 100TB |
Data Security & Encryption | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Sharing reports with other users | No | Yes | Yes |
Cost | Free | $10 per user/pm | $20 per user/pm |
Please note that there are more license options available and the full breakdown for each license can be found in the official Microsoft Power BI website.
The Power BI Service plays an important role in the BI space as it gives users the power to take control of their data, drive insight's and share findings with other users.
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Happy developing!
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