The Power BI Service : In the clouds of Business Intelligence

Power BI service is a cloud based service (Software as a service) provided by Microsoft. It is a collaborative cloud based space to maintain datasets, reports, paginated reports, apps, dashboards, workspaces, etc. It supports administrative activities related to Power BI. This service is accessible through the browser app.powerbi.com or powerbi.microsoft.com. We can publish reports created from Power BI desktop to Power BI service, and using those reports dashboards and apps are created.

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Let’s see the first interface of Power BI service.

When we publish a report created on Power BI Desktop, it asks for the user ID of Power BI service, so it can publish the report in the user's selected workspace. When a report is published, the source dataset is also published. As you can see, there are a few different icons .

The first one is the Workspace icon, and the second is the semantic model of that report.

This is the dashboard icon, which is created by using different reports and visuals are pinned on the dashboard.

This icon is of a paginated report created by Power BI report builder which can be downloaded in the service. Paginated reports are reports which are printable, i.e. it should fit in a page.

By clicking on 'create' icon, on the home page of Power BI service, we can manually enter data or pick a published semantic model to create a new report.

Workspace and My Workspace:

Now, let us understand the differences between a workspace and My workspace in Power BI service.

My workspace is a personal space of the user, unless the user shares the content of My workspace, no one else can access it. Power BI Pro license is required to share the contents of My workspace.

Unlike My workspace, a workspace can be collaborative, that is, other users can also access it, if they have a pro license, and if the owner of that workspace has given access to collaborate.

This is one lake data hub, where we can find all our datasets at one place. It shows the location, type of data model, last refresh date and endorsement on that dataset.

Let’s explore how we can create a workspace in Power BI. When we publish a report, we have to specify on which workspace the report is to be published. Here is an example of how to create a new workspace and publish a Power BI report in that workspace.

First, we need to create a workspace in Power BI service and name that workspace.

The below window will open up when we click on New Workspace icon.

After creating the workspace, we can publish the report from desktop to this workspace.

From the desktop, we have to select the destination workspace to which we want the report to be published.

Now, we can access the report in Power BI service, set up refreshes and maintain the report as needed. We can collaborate and share reports and dashboards with other users as well.

Power BI has many other features to explore which include connection with different data sources, creation of reports, apps and dashboards, embedding reports on client's website and many more.

Thanks for reading!