Power BI is a powerful suite of business analytics tools designed by Microsoft to analyze data and share insights across your organization or embedded within an application or website. Its ability to visualize data in real time, support collaboration, and offer smart predictions makes it a vital tool for data-driven decision making. Power BI is composed of three aspects: Power BI Desktop, Power BI Service and Power BI Mobile. This post will specifically delve into Power BI Desktop and Power BI Service.
Power BI Desktop
Power BI Desktop is a Windows-based desktop application that enables you to design reports and build data models on your local system. It’s an integrated environment for data preparation, data modeling, and report creation. It also allows you to publish your reports to the Power BI services. Here is a snapshot of what you can do with Power BI Desktop:
- Data preparation: Power BI Desktop allows you to extract data from various sources, such as Excel, SharePoint, SQL Server, and more. You can then clean, transform, and reshape this data as per your business requirements. You can also enrich your data with calculations, hierarchies, and KPIs. It harnesses the power of Power Query for data extraction and transformation, and the DAX (Data Analysis Expressions) formula language for calculated columns and measures.
- Data modeling: Power BI Desktop provides a modeling view where you can build and manage your data model. You can define relationships between tables, create hierarchies and manage table calculations.
- Report Design: With Power BI Desktop, you can create interactive, visually rich reports. It offers a plethora of charts, graphs, maps, and other visual elements to represent you data. You can customize how these visual elements look and behave. You can add slicers and drill-through actions to build interactive narratives.
- Publishing Reports: Once your report is ready, you can publish it to Power BI service. This allows you to share your insights with others, create dashboards, schedule data refresh and more.
Power BI Service
Power BI Service, also known as Power BI online, is a cloud-based service. It’s a platform where users can share, collaborate, and publish Power BI reports and dashboards which you created using Power BI Desktop.
- Sharing & Collaboration: Power BI service enables you to quickly share your reports and dashboards with others within your organization. You can create workspaces for dedicated teams or projects and collaborate with your colleagues on reports and dashboards.
- Creating Dashboards: While Power BI Desktop is more about creating detailed reports, Power BI Service allows you to create dashboards. A dashboard is a collection of visuals, reports, and other data in a consolidated view. You can pin visuals from your reports to your dashboards for high-level view.
- Scheduled Data Refresh: Power BI service allows you to refresh your data on a schedule. You can set up daily or weekly refresh cycles as per your needs.
- Consuming Reports: Another main function of Power BI Service is consuming reports and dashboards that were shared with you.
- Creating Simple Reports: Power BI Service also allows you to create simple reports, although it is not as powerful or flexible as Power BI Desktop in report creation.
Finally, it’s important to note that Power BI Desktop and Power BI Service are not standalone tools but they work best when used together. Typically, you start by preparing data and designing reports in Power BI Desktop, then publish them to Power BI Service for further sharing, collaboration, and dashboard creation.
Practice Test
True or False: Power BI Desktop is a web-based version of Power BI.
- True
- False
Answer: False
Explanation: Power BI Desktop is a Windows application that is used for report creation and publishing.
Which of the following are features of Power BI Desktop?
- a) Data shaping
- b) Data modeling
- c) Report design
- d) Data ingesting
Answer: All of the above
Explanation: Power BI Desktop is used for data shaping, data modeling, report design, and data ingesting.
True or False: Power BI Desktop allows you to share dashboards and reports with others in your organization.
- True
- False
Answer: False
Explanation: Power BI Desktop is primarily used for creating reports and dashboards. The sharing of reports and dashboards is done through Power BI service.
In Power BI, you can publish your reports and dashboards to which of the following?
- a) Power BI Service
- b) Power BI Dataflows
- c) Power BI Mobile
- d) Power BI Report Server
Answer: a, c, d
Explanation: You can publish your reports and dashboards to Power BI Service, Power BI Mobile, and Power BI Report Server but not to Power BI Dataflows.
True or False: In Power BI service, you can only view and interact with reports and dashboards created by others.
- True
- False
Answer: False
Explanation: In Power BI service, besides viewing and interacting with reports and dashboards created by others, you can also create your own reports and dashboards.
Power BI Service is also known as:
- a) Power BI cloud
- b) Power BI Online
- c) Power BI web
- d) All of the above
Answer: d) All of the above
Explanation: Power BI Service, being a cloud-based service, is often referred to as Power BI cloud, Power BI Online, or Power BI web.
Which of the following tasks can be performed using Power BI service but not using Power BI Desktop?
- a) Creating dashboards
- b) Sharing dashboards
- c) Both a and b
- d) Neither a nor b
Answer: c) Both a and b
Explanation: Power BI service is designed for publishing, sharing, and collaborating on dashboards and reports.
True or False: Both Power BI Desktop and Power BI service require an internet connection to function.
- True
- False
Answer: False
Explanation: Power BI Desktop does not require an internet connection to function, it is a Windows application for developing reports. However, Power BI service, being a cloud-based service, does require an internet connection.
Using Power BI Service, you can connect to data in real-time from where?
- a) Azure SQL Database
- b) Streaming datasets
- c) On-premises SQL Server
- d) All of the above
Answer: d) All of the above
Explanation: Power BI service allows real-time data connections from various sources like Azure SQL Database, streaming datasets, and on-premises SQL Server.
True or False: Power BI Desktop supports collaboration with others on the same reports and dashboards.
- True
- False
Answer: False
Explanation: Power BI Desktop is an individual authoring tool meant for creating reports and dashboards. For sharing and collaborating on the same reports and dashboards, Power BI service is used.
Power BI Desktop uses which language for data manipulation?
- a) SQL
- b) DAX
- c) Python
- d) R
Answer: b) DAX
Explanation: Power BI Desktop uses Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) language for data manipulation.
The Power BI service workspace is similar to a:
- a) Report
- b) Folder
- c) Dashboard
- d) Database
Answer: b) Folder
Explanation: The workspace in Power BI service serves as a container, similar to a folder, to hold your reports, dashboards, datasets, and dataflows.
True or False: Power BI service supports automatic data refresh.
- True
- False
Answer: True
Explanation: Power BI service supports automatic data refresh, allowing dashboards and reports to always display the most current data.
In Power BI, for sharing dashboards and collaborating with others in your organization, you should use:
- a) Power BI Desktop
- b) Power BI Service
Answer: b) Power BI Service
Explanation: For sharing and collaborating on dashboards and reports, Power BI Service is used.
True or False: Power BI Desktop supports scheduling reports to be run at specific intervals.
- True
- False
Answer: False
Explanation: Power BI Desktop is for developing reports. Scheduling reports to be run at specific intervals is a feature of the Power BI Service.
Interview Questions
What is Power BI Desktop?
Power BI Desktop is a Windows desktop application used for creating interactive reports and dashboards. It includes Query Editor for transforming data, Data View for browsing data, and Report View for visualizing data.
What are some key features of Power BI Desktop?
Key features of Power BI Desktop include data loading capabilities, data transformation, creating measures using DAX, and creating interactive visualizations. It allows the user to create a report with visual analytics and publish it to Power BI service.
What is Power BI Service?
Power BI Service, also known as Power BI online, is a cloud-based service where you can publish your Power BI reports and dashboards and share them with others. It also includes features such as Q&A, quick insights, and natural language queries.
Can you edit a report in Power BI Service that was created in Power BI Desktop?
Yes, you can edit a report in Power BI Service that was created in Power BI Desktop. The editing capabilities won’t be as extensive as in Power BI Desktop, but updates and minor changes can be made.
What is the difference between Power BI Desktop and Power BI Service?
Power BI Desktop is a robust, data preparation tool and report authoring tool. It’s a Windows application and must be installed on your local computer. On the other hand, Power BI Service is a cloud-based platform featuring data sharing, online collaboration among other features. It does not require an installation.
How do Power BI Desktop and Power BI Service work together?
Reports are typically prepared and published using Power BI Desktop, and then shared and collaborated upon using Power BI Service. Power BI Desktop is used for report creation, while Power BI Service is used for report viewing, sharing, and basic editing.
What is the primary purpose of Power BI Desktop?
The primary purpose of Power BI Desktop is to create reports. It provides a vast range of options for querying, transforming, and visualizing data.
What is the Power BI Service primarily used for?
The primary use of the Power BI service is sharing reports and dashboards, collaborative work, and publishing.
What data sources can Power BI Desktop connect to?
Power BI Desktop can connect to a wide variety of data sources such as Excel, SQL Server, SharePoint, and more, including cloud-based data sources and even big data sources.
Can you schedule refresh for datasets in Power BI Service?
Yes, you can schedule refresh for datasets in Power BI Service. This allows datasets to stay up-to-date automatically according to a schedule you set.
What is the difference between a dashboard and a report in Power BI?
A report is a multi-perspective view into a dataset, with visuals representing different findings and insights. A dashboard, on the other hand, is a collection of visuals, reports, and other data that provides a consolidated view of business data.
How does Power BI Desktop support data modeling?
Power BI Desktop supports data modeling by providing tools to create relationships between tables, to create hierarchies for use in report and visual drill-down paths, and to create calculated measures and columns.
How does Power BI Service support collaboration?
Power BI Service supports collaboration by enabling shared datasets, reports, and dashboards, joint editing, and the use of collaborative workspaces.
How secure is data in Power BI Service?
Power BI Service provides strong security through Azure Active Directory, providing advanced identity and access management. It also supports row-level security, and data is encrypted in transit and at rest.
What is Quick Insights in Power BI?
Quick Insights is a feature in Power BI Service that applies machine-learning algorithms to data in order to discover patterns, trends, and potential insights. These insights are presented as visualizations and can be saved to a dashboard.
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