Microsoft Power BI
Microsoft Power BI is now available for free to support analytics at Cornell. Power BI is intuitive business intelligence software designed for data analysis and visualization. It features a drag-and-drop interface for building interactive reports and dashboards, with support for writing custom Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) and Structured Query Language (SQL) to explore complex data relationships. Users can choose from a wide range of visualizations. Reports are created using Power BI Desktop and shared via the Power BI Service.
Benefits
Power BI, while having similar features compared to OAS and Tableau, is different in that it is more closely integrated with other Microsoft 365 products and services such as MS Teams, Copilot, and Office. In addition, among heavy Excel users, Power BI is often an effective choice since those users are already familiar with DAX.
Licensing
CIT's Enterprise Data Services (EDS) team administers and maintains the Microsoft Fabric environment, which includes PowerBI. However, EDS does not manage PowerBI licenses. PowerBI Free or Pro versions can be requested from the Cornell MS 365 team by completing the following form :
PowerBI Workspaces
PowerBI reports and datasets are published to workspaces. These workspaces reside in the Microsoft PowerBI service within what Microsoft refers to as an individual capacity, which consists of a dedicated amount of storage and resources in the Microsoft Fabric environment. By default, workspaces that PowerBI users create are located within a default capacity which contains only a limited amount of storage and resources which are not suitable for large-scale or enterprise use. It is not recommended that a default capacity is used for production or large-scale usage.
Alternatively, CIT's Enterprise Data Services (EDS) has available a large Microsoft Fabric (F64) capacity that can be used instead of the limited default capacity. A dedicated workspace within this EDS F64 capacity can be requested by completing the following form:
PowerBI Workspace Request Form
PowerBI Workspaces
PowerBI Training
A list of training options for PowerBI development and administration, as well as Microsoft Fabric can be found here.
Questions
Contact CIT's Analytics and Reporting team if you have questions.