Power BI for Office 365

The Microsoft-hosted Power BI service is an Internet-based platform for sharing refreshable reports (Excel workbooks) with users, in a more timely and secure manner than distributing business intelligence (BI) reports by e-mail. Power BI is available as a subscription service in conjunction with Office 365. For most organizations, the service is less expensive to deploy than an outwardly facing on-premises solution. The current production version of Power BI relies on Excel and several other services (some on-premises and some in Office 365) that are used in various combinations to create, share, and interact with Power BI reports. However, a new preview version of the service delivers significant new capabilities and significant changes to both the underlying technology and the user interface.

Production Version Builds on Excel, SharePoint Online

Excel 2013 is the primary product for creating Power BI reports, although Excel 2010 workbooks can also be published to Power BI sites, but they will have limited interactive capabilities. Reports are typically created using several Excel 2013 features—Power Pivot, Power Query, Power View, and Power Map—that can be used stand-alone but will likely be most useful to organizations when used collaboratively. By making Excel the integration point for BI, Microsoft is enabling authors to leverage their knowledge of Excel and create solutions with minimal assistance from IT staff.