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Microsoft Power BI Documentation

repository·main·Indexed 20 days ago

https://github.com/microsoftdocs/powerbi-docs

Technical product documentation for Microsoft Power BI, covering report creation, data visualization, and integration with Microsoft Teams, PowerPoint, and Excel. Includes guides on exporting reports, using semantic models in the OneLake data hub, authoring with Power BI Desktop, and troubleshooting connectivity and export issues.

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What's inside Power BI

  1. What is the Power BI Semantic Model Authoring skill?

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    The semantic-model-authoring skill is a feature within the Skills for Fabric marketplace (bundled in the powerbi-authoring plugin) that enables AI agents to manage Power BI semantic models. It allows agents to interact with Power BI Desktop, PBIP projects, and the Fabric Service.

    Key capabilities include:

    • Creation: Building new models in Import, DirectQuery, or Direct Lake modes.
    • Editing: Modifying tables, columns, relationships, measures, and DAX.
    • Optimization: Analyzing DAX performance and checking models against best practices.
    • AI Readiness: Preparing models for consumption by Fabric Copilot and Power BI Data Agents.
    • Management: Deploying to Fabric workspaces, refreshing models, and managing data sources, parameters, and permissions.

  2. Overview of Power BI Information Protection and DLP planning

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    Information protection and Data Loss Prevention (DLP) in Power BI is an organization-wide initiative aimed at safeguarding data, reducing unauthorized sharing, and strengthening regulatory compliance.

    Target Audiences

    • Fabric administrators (formerly Power BI administrators): Responsible for overseeing Power BI and collaborating with information security teams.
    • Center of Excellence, IT, and BI teams: Responsible for organizational oversight and collaboration with security and administration teams.

    Core Focus Areas

    • Information Protection: Using sensitivity labels to classify and label content.
    • Data Loss Prevention (DLP): Implementing controls and policies to reduce the risk of data leakage.

    Key Implementation Considerations

    • Cross-functional involvement: Requires coordination between Power BI admins, IT, and information security teams.
    • Scope: This initiative extends beyond Power BI to the broader Microsoft Purview Information Protection framework.

  3. Overview of Embedded Analytics Accelerator Solutions

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    Microsoft partners provide accelerators to expedite the integration of Power BI embedded analytics into applications, particularly for multitenant, customer-facing ISV (Independent Software Vendor) applications. These solutions help reduce time-to-market, simplify implementation by abstracting complex Power BI details, and assist in managing capacity and billing.

    Key Advantages:

    • Enhanced Personalization: Flexible options for end-user authentication, authorization, multitenancy, and permissions management.
    • Simplified Implementation: Some accelerators provide backend functionality via an SDK, reducing the amount of custom code required.
    • Customization: Solutions can be white-labeled and the user interface can be tailored once installed.
    • Deployment: Accelerators are cloud-based solutions deployed in your Azure environment (utilizing Azure, Fabric, and Power BI services) and can be acquired via the Azure Marketplace.
    • Integration: They can function as standalone applications or be integrated into existing applications.

  4. Overview of Power BI content support and monitoring

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    In the Power BI content lifecycle, the fifth stage focuses on supporting and monitoring content after it has been deployed to production.

    Support involves enabling content viewers and consumers to use the deployed content effectively.

    Monitoring involves auditing and monitoring activities to track, measure, and manage how solutions are used by consumers.

    This stage is critical for ensuring effective adoption of your solutions and is primarily managed by:

    • Fabric administrators: Responsible for overseeing Fabric across the organization.
    • Center of Excellence (COE) and BI teams: Responsible for Power BI oversight, including decision-making on lifecycle management, release management, and engineering support components.
    • Content creators and content owners: Responsible for managing the lifecycle of the specific content they create and publish.

  5. Plan data-level auditing for Power BI

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    Data-level auditing in Power BI focuses on monitoring and auditing semantic models and dataflows to ensure performance, usage, and adoption. This is critical because report performance is directly dependent on the performance of the underlying semantic model and data sources.

    Target Audiences

    • Data creators and workspace administrators: To understand usage, adoption, and performance of created/shared semantic models and dataflows.
    • Power BI administrators: To oversee organizational Power BI usage and collaborate with IT, security, and audit teams.
    • Power BI capacity administrators: To troubleshoot performance within Premium capacities.
    • Center of Excellence (CoE), IT, and BI teams: For organizational oversight.
    • System administrators: To manage Azure Log Analytics resources and data source security.

    Implementation Context

    Data-level auditing is most relevant for Enterprise BI, Departmental BI, and Team BI content delivery scopes. It is recommended to implement shared semantic models (intended for reuse) before users begin creating individual reports. For a complete auditing strategy, this should be used in conjunction with Report-level auditing.

  6. Choose the right map visualization for your data

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    Power BI offers several map visualization types depending on your analytical needs:

    • Azure Maps: Enterprise-grade mapping with multiple layers including bubble, 3D column, heat map, filled, marker, path, and reference layers. Supports clustering and pie chart overlays.
    • Shape Maps (preview): Uses color-coding to compare regions. Supports standard geographic maps or custom TopoJSON or GeoJSON files (useful for floor plans or custom territories).
    • Basic Maps (Bing Maps): Displays data points as bubbles. Uses Bing Maps for geocoding (addresses, cities, states, etc.). Note: This visual is scheduled for deprecation; Azure Maps is the recommended upgrade path.
    • Filled Maps (Choropleth): Uses shading or color intensity to show regional variations across boundaries like countries or states.
    • ArcGIS Maps: Advanced spatial analysis and demographic data provided by Esri, including drive time analysis and professional GIS tools.

  7. Govern the Power BI service via Tenant Administration

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    Governing and managing the Power BI service is a core responsibility of a Fabric administrator. Administration is primarily handled through the Fabric admin portal, where you can control various organizational capabilities. Key areas of governance include:

    • Tenant settings: Control which features and capabilities are enabled for specific users or the entire organization.
    • Domains: Manage organizational data boundaries.
    • Workspaces: Govern how users create and manage workspaces.
    • Embed codes: Control the use of embedding.
    • Organizational visuals: Manage custom and organizational visual usage.
    • Azure connections: Govern connections to Azure resources.

  8. Identify roles for Power BI adoption tracking

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    Different stakeholders play specific roles in the adoption and tracking process:

    • BI and analytics directors and managers: Responsible for overseeing the BI program and strategy.
    • Fabric administrators: Responsible for overseeing Fabric in the organization. They use the admin monitoring workspace and Fabric Capacity Metrics app for adoption tracking and capacity management.
    • Center of Excellence (COE), IT, and BI teams: Responsible for promoting a healthy data culture and improving organizational adoption.
    • Subject matter experts (SMEs), content owners, and content creators: Individuals who champion analytics within departments and create or consume Power BI/Fabric content.

  9. Optimize Power BI solutions across architectural layers

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    To produce and maintain optimized Power BI solutions, optimization should be applied across four distinct architectural layers:

    1. Data Sources: The origin of the data.
    2. Data Model (Semantic Models): The structure and storage mode of the data.
    3. Visualizations: Including Dashboards, Power BI reports, and Power BI paginated reports.
    4. Environment: Including capacities, data gateways, and the network.

  11. What is a Power BI app?

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    A Power BI app (also known as a workspace app) is a packaged collection of related content—such as dashboards, reports, spreadsheets, and semantic models—distributed by designers to a broad audience.

    Key characteristics:

    • Bundling: Combines multiple content types into a single, organized unit.
    • Permission Management: App permissions can be managed independently of the underlying workspace permissions, allowing designers to control access for specific audiences.
    • Template Apps: A unique type of app published by Microsoft or the community. Installing and customizing template apps requires a Power BI Pro or Premium Per User (PPU) license.
    • Automatic Updates: When an author updates an app (changing names, themes, navigation, or content), users see the latest version automatically without receiving a new notification.

  12. Overview of Fabric Domains for workspace management

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    In Fabric, Domains are used to group two or more workspaces that share similar characteristics (e.g., grouping all 'Sales' workspaces into one domain).

    A domain acts as a single management boundary and facilitates distributed workspace ownership and management responsibilities across an organization.

    Note: Fabric domains are a distinct concept from Microsoft 365 domains.