Glossary
What is Power BI?
Power BI is Microsoft's platform for reporting and data analysis. You build reports in Power BI Desktop and share them through the Power BI service in the cloud.
Power BI explained
Power BI consists of a few parts that work together. In Power BI Desktop you load data, build a semantic model with relationships and measures, and design the report pages. In the Power BI service you publish that report to a workspace, schedule refreshes and share it with colleagues.
Sharing requires licences: within your own organisation usually a Pro or Premium Per User licence per user, or a capacity that hosts the reports. If you want to share dashboards with people outside your organisation, such as customers or franchisees, guest accounts and per-person licences quickly make it complicated.
Power BI is strong at interactive reports on a well-built data model. The quality of the figures therefore depends mostly on what sits underneath: a data warehouse, clear definitions and a model that makes everyone calculate the same way.
Example
Acme Groothandel builds a report in Power BI Desktop showing revenue, margin and open orders per branch. The report lives in a finance workspace and refreshes every morning, so branch managers see yesterday's figures.
Power BI in ENABLE
ENABLE shows Power BI reports embedded in your own portal, with page navigation, full screen, favourites and a "Last refreshed" status. Activating a portal currently still requires a linked Power BI workspace. End users sign in to the portal and do not need their own Power BI licence for it.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Power BI Desktop and the Power BI service?
Power BI Desktop is the free Windows application in which you build reports and data models. The Power BI service is the cloud environment in which you publish, refresh and share those reports. You usually build in Desktop and share through the service.
Do you need a licence to view a Power BI report?
Within the Power BI service you usually do: a Pro or Premium Per User licence, unless the report sits on a capacity that allows free viewing. When a report is shown in your own application through Power BI Embedded, that application handles access and end users do not need their own licence.
Can you share Power BI dashboards with customers outside your organisation?
Yes, but through the Power BI service that means guest accounts and per-person licences. A more common route is Power BI Embedded in a portal, where you decide who sees which report and which rows of data.
Further reading
- IntegrationPower BI embedded portal: share dashboards securelyPower BI reports embedded in your own portal, with access by role and RLS.Read more
- SolutionPower BI dashboard portal: share dashboards securelyShare your Power BI dashboards securely in your own portal, with role-based access.Read more
- ResourcesWhat is Power BI Embedded? Scenarios and optionsPower BI Embedded is the way to show Power BI reports and dashboards in your own application, website or portal, instead of in Microsoft's Power BI service. There are two variants: embedding for your organisation, where users sign in with their own Microsoft account, and embedding for your customers, where the application handles access through a service principal and end users do not need a Power BI licence. For that second variant, you need capacity in production.Read more
- SolutionPower BI dashboard development: our 5-step approachHow Data Analytics builds a Power BI dashboard: sketch first, then build.Read more
Use AI on your own data. Securely, and without the headache.
In an online demo we show how ENABLE makes your data securely available and how you build on it: describing an app in the AI Builder, plain-language questions, dashboards and APIs. And how we set it up and manage it for you.