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At the 2024 Microsoft Business Application Summit, Microsoft revealed that 97% of Fortune 500 companies now utilize Power BI.
Given such widespread adoption on its platform, an oft-asked question regarding Power BI features includes "What are the essential ones I should know?".
Because there are too many features for one article to cover them all, we curated our Top Power BI features into an accessible list, as outlined below.
Some features may only be accessible with Pro or Premium versions of Power BI; we indicate their presence accordingly.
Top Power BI Features
A set of BI tools for building intricate visualizations and shareable reports is called Microsoft Power BI. Some of Power BI's most notable features are as follows:
Analytics And Data Management
With the help of Microsoft Power BI's robust analytics, users can gain insightful knowledge and transform data into elements that inspire original answers to business problems.
Business users of Power BI can utilize advanced analytics to monitor critical performance metrics of their organization through enhanced monitoring capabilities and dashboards that produce beautiful interactive dashboards, finding trends using data mining technologies, as well as providing tools that support advanced analytics.
Power BI offers business users powerful data management solutions. Identify indicators that point towards future growth and success using predictive models with iterative models of development for optimal business management utilizing its advanced data analysis features and predictive versus descriptive capabilities for data.
Quick Insights
Users can gain exciting insights from different subsets of data by employing powerful algorithms. Quick Insights gives them fast, improved access to analytics results with just one click.
Intuitive Reports
Power BI reports are comprehensive dashboards that present users with information in various forms and visualizations related to an identified business issue, quickly making their knowledge readily shareable with other users.
Azure Machine Learning Integration
Users can now easily see the results of Machine Learning algorithms through drag-and-dropping data modules to visualize Machine Learning algorithms thanks to Power BI's integration of Machine Learning.
Data Analysis Expression
Data Analysis Expression examines the outputs produced by applying various formulas to the dataset being observed to extract one or more values from the dataset.
It functions similarly to Microsoft Excel, minus the rows and numbers. Reports on data analysis are easy to read and prepare.
Real-time data Analytics
Power BI dashboards update in real-time as new data arrives or streams into them, enabling users to immediately identify issues and solve them as soon as they arise.
Real-time images and data can be seen anywhere within any report or dashboard potential sources include factory sensors, social media platforms, or anything that collects time-sensitive information and streams it.
Visualization And Reporting
Power BI helps businesses and people gain real-time business insights and a deeper understanding of data in real-time.
Power BI features many pre-built visualizations that you can modify directly, as well as select from its ever-expanding library of pre-built visualizations.
Power BI's comprehensive analytics capabilities empower business users to easily evaluate data and deliver insights to all levels of an organization.
Through easily navigable dashboards, Power BI provides end-to-end visibility of crucial metrics and KPIs, all in real-time and from one central place.
Lively Dashboards
Visualizing all essential business data at one convenient point.
Pre-Existing Ready To Use Templates
Microsoft and the community have made hundreds of ready-to-go graphics such as matrices, charts, cards, KPIs, and maps available that come straight out of the box.
Security
Power BI offers industry-leading data security features like end-to-end encryption, sensitive labeling, and real-time access monitoring to protect your information.
Row-level security (RLS) in Power BI can help restrict data access for specific users.
You can set filters within roles to limit row-level data access.
Data Encryption
Power BI uses industry-standard encryption when handling both moving and stored data, by default using keys managed by Microsoft; you may use your keys when adding idle datasets into Power BI Premium datasets.
Monthly Product Updates
Since Power BI first debuted in July 2015, Microsoft has continued its investment in Power BI development by continuously unveiling new features monthly.
Through an active online community, you have the power to determine what new Power BI features get developed first; cast your vote for those you think deserve priority development here.
Extract Insights From Large Datasets [varies by version]
Excel worksheets typically support up to 1,048,576 rows. However, Excel's performance will deteriorate rapidly once this limit has been reached.
Users are commonly required to examine datasets larger than one million rows. With Power BI, you can compress large datasets to draw meaningful insights out of them you could potentially even analyze those with over 100 Million Rows with its help.
Power BI offers additional useful features for working with really large datasets exceeding several hundred million rows that require intensive processing power, like those exceeding 100 million rows.
Users of the tool can configure aggregation tables, which speed up queries by pre-calculated data, which reduces render time for reports.
Power BI Premium unlocks additional processing capacity. Your company can purchase specific cloud Power BI instances that offer faster query and refresh capabilities if they store large datasets within Power BI.
R And Python Allow You To Create Custom Visualizations (available in all versions)
Power BI offers many standard data visualizations out-of-the-box; however, custom visuals can also be created. R and Python open-source data-viz libraries enable analysts to build highly configurable visualizations they can include in future Power BI reports.
To Analyze Your Datasets, Use Excel (Pro or Premium only)
Excel remains one of the world's most-utilized data analysis tools, with nearly 750 million active users worldwide, so it comes as no surprise when users frequently request an Excel export of report data and dashboard dashboards displayed to them.
BI analysts face the daunting challenge of providing this level of flexibility while maintaining integrity within their reporting environments.
Microsoft launched Analyze in Excel specifically with this objective in mind, giving users access to perform tabular and ad hoc reporting using Excel's direct connection with Power BI data.
By utilizing the same datasets used for other Power BI reports, pivot tables in Excel enable you to easily slice and dice data to deliver reports tailored specifically for you.
Users can update Excel connections to Power BI datasets with the most up-to-date data, opening up access for companies caught between these platforms.
This makes a dramatic, impactful statement about company lifecycle planning.
With Your Data, Create Stunning Maps (available in all versions)
Power BI makes it simple and engaging to create stunning mapping data visualizations with three map types built-in by default: ArcGIS Maps for Power BI, Filled Map (choropleth), and Standard Map.
Power BI Service
Users can publish, share and collaborate on reports and dashboards using the Power BI cloud service. It has features like scheduling automatic refresh and workspace creation for group collaboration.
Data Security And Governance
Power BI offers strong security and governance features such as audit logs, data sensitivity labels, and role-level security to assist companies in maintaining compliance while controlling data access.
These functions help companies stay compliant while managing data access effectively.
Natural Language Queries
Users of Power BI can ask straightforward queries of their data using Q&A features and natural language queries, then let Power BI's AI capabilities interpret those inquiries to produce visual representations making the whole experience accessible, fast, and powerful.
Power BI Mobile
Users with Windows, iOS, or Android smartphones can interact with reports and dashboards while on the move with Power BI's mobile applications for phones providing users with an interactive user experience through touch controls for easier interaction.
The Power BI mobile apps deliver an outstanding touch user experience.
Conclusion
Power BI not only excels at data visualization and representation; it also features content packs with dashboard report samples, natural language with language selection options, custom visualization, and DAX functions.
Dashboards, data exploration, content distribution, and collaboration in Power BI are all built on top of Power BI reports. A wealth of data visualization features and options are available with Power BI Desktop, making it possible to create reports that are both highly targeted and easy to use on a variety of devices.
