Power BI Components

Power BI is Microsoft’s business intelligence (BI) family that includes online services and an on-premises server, report design tools, and client-side applications, which are used collectively to create and share reports, dashboards, and other forms of BI.

Report Design (left)

Power BI reports are created by authors and developers using Power BI design tools (left) that include data features (Power Query and Power Pivot) to access, combine, filter, and clean data and visualization features (Power View and Power Maps) to create sophisticated charts, maps, and other data visualizations.

Power BI Desktop is the cornerstone of report design in Power BI and includes unique features not available in the other report design tools, such as a design surface to assist users in creating interactive reports and custom visualization features that allow developers to create and include completely unique report types that run in the service and can be distributed to users.

Report developers can also create Power BI apps: sets of preconfigured organizational reports and dashboards that can be made available for Power BI users to select the data that is most important to them. For example, production metrics can be produced as a Power BI app, allowing users to select the products and departments that are most relevant to them, which can reduce the need for IT to build custom reports and dashboards.