What Is Power BI Desktop?

Microsoft Power BI Desktop is a free software application that you install on your computer to connect to, transform, and visualize your organizational data. The power of this application comes from enabling you to connect to multiple different sources of data. Additionally, you can combine them into a data model that allows you to build visuals. This means you can collect various visuals and turn them into powerful reports that can be shared within or outside of your enterprise.

A Popular Application

Most users who work in the business intelligence world tend to use Power BI Desktop to create reports, which they then share with all the interested parties and stakeholders. Whether you are a business analyst or not, you can utilize Power BI Desktop to pull data from various sources and create compelling reports that you can share with others.

Features of Power BI Desktop

There are three views that you can utilize in Power BI Desktop. These views provide different capabilities, namely Report, Data, and Model. In the Report view, you create reports and various visuals. In the Data view, you see the tables, measures, and other data used in the data model associated with your report. In the Model view, you understand and manage the relationships among tables in your data model.

Creating Visuals

Once you have created a data model, you can get to the exciting part of creating visuals for your organization’s data. A visual is a graphic representation of your data and can tell the whole story. Power BI Desktop is abundant with various visuals that you can create to tell your unique data story.

Creating Reports

Since most of the corporations have a large amount of data, more often than not, you will need to collect various visuals and consolidate them in a meaningful report. A collection of visuals in a Power BI Desktop file is called a report. A report can have one or multiple pages. When you utilize Power BI Desktop, you can create complex and powerful reports, displaying your data that comes from multiple sources.

Power BI Desktop is the primary tool for creating and sharing Power BI reports. You may have relied on other tools in the past to create business reports, but they are not as full-featured as the Power BI Desktop application. Additionally, when you utilize all the features of Power BI Desktop, you will be more equipped with informed decision-making in your business.

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