IN THIS CHAPTER

»» Learning the ropes on Power BI

Desktop

»» Ingesting data

»» Working with models

»» Trying out Power BI Services

Chapter  4
Power BI: The Highlights

L
ike a state fair judge evaluating a prize cake layered with many ingredients,
Power BI requires that its users familiarize themselves with the features
baked into the business intelligence (BI) solution. Virtually all users who
interact with Power BI start with the Desktop version. Users can mold the data the
way they want by following the old saying “Practice makes perfect” by way of
ingestion and modeling. Whether you’re manipulating the data to make the model
just right, tackling data transformation via wrangling, or trying to create beautiful
visualizations, the heavy lift is desktop-based. Seldom does the Power BI partici-
pant start using online services unless the dataset was previously created for
sharing and collaboration. In this chapter, you learn the key features of Power BI
Desktop and Services to know precisely when and why you need to use a specific
product version.

Power BI Desktop: A Top-Down View

Power BI Desktop is the hub of all self-directed end user activities. The user
installs the application on a Windows based desktop to connect to, transform,
and visualize data. The data sources users can connect to aren’t limited to local
repositories — users can aggregate sources locally with third-party data that is
structured or unstructured to create data models. The data model lets the user
build a visual representation of the stored datasets. When you have many visuals,

CHAPTER 4 Power BI: The Highlights 47