Power BI Report Design Tools Overview

Power BI platforms can host reports, alongside datasets, data models, and integration pipelines. The illustration shows the report design tools used to create reports.

Each report design tool is able to create one type of report only and most have two versions: a version for creating reports destined for a cloud service and a version for creating reports destined for on-premises. This is because where a report is hosted determines the functionality supported, and building a report for one platform does not guarantee the report will work on another platform. For example, a report created for the Power BI Premium service that accesses Azure Machine Learning features (such as Smart Narrative, described in the report) will not work on-premises.

Power BI Desktop (top) is the main tool for building Power BI (PBIX) reports. It is a free Windows desktop application that contains data modeling capabilities and a report design canvas. Authors create reports (saved locally as .pbix files) with features to guide users through pages of data to help with data analysis. The tool also provides links to other Microsoft-hosted services, like Azure Machine Learning and Power Apps, that authors can use to perform advanced and custom data processes. Authors publish reports directly to several Power BI back-end services.