Overview of PowerBI Components

Quick reference

• 00:04 Now, let's talk about the components that make up Power BI, how does it work?
• 00:09 At the heart of everything is data.
• 00:12 Data can be stored stored locally, or
• 00:14 it can be stored in the cloud, in a hosted solution.
• 00:18 And somewhere between these two pieces is a great big firewall.
• 00:22 All the stuff on the left here will be on-premises.
• 00:24 So stuff that's stored in local servers and on your local desktops.
• 00:27 Everything to the right-hand side of the spread line will be hosted in the cloud.
• 00:31 And in between these things, there's a nice little firewall router
• 00:33 that protects us from the bad guys on the outside world.
• 00:37 Now to work with Power BI, we start first by downloading Power BI Desktop,
• 00:41 a nice little piece of software that we can get for free.
• 00:45 With the software, we can connect to our local data source and
• 00:47 actually start building reports.
• 00:49 We can also connect to the hosted data source, bring it in through the firewall,
• 00:53 and we can combine these things together to actually use them.
• 00:57 Once we're done building our report, we can push this out in
• 00:59 the PowerBI.com Service which allows us to actually host our reports.
• 01:05 What's cool about this is you can also schedule a refresh if
• 01:07 comes from hosted data, it's cloud-based, no big deal.
• 01:10 If it comes from local data though, we have to get it through our firewall.
• 01:14 And there's a little piece of software that we can actually do that with
• 01:17 which is called a data gateway.
• 01:19 And that data gateway will allow us to actually push it through the firewall in
• 01:22 an encrypted channel.
• 01:24 Once we have our reports in the service,
• 01:26 we can look at them there, or we could even download the Power BI mobile app so
• 01:30 that we can consume our reports on our phones.
• 01:33 So this is a pretty cohesive infrastructure,
• 01:35 which is really cool cuz it can allow you to get to your stuff any time,
• 01:38 anywhere no matter what device you're using.
• 01:41 If you're using your desktop and your computer, you can just go and
• 01:43 pick it up from your local report or you can go to the Cloud.
• 01:45 If you're on a WiFi cafe somewhere cuz you're on vacation,
• 01:49 you can pick it up inside the Internet cafe or
• 01:51 if you happen to have your mobile device, you're good to go.
• 01:55 Something else that's really important to understand about Power BI, though,
• 01:58 is the cadence of updates.
• 02:00 And this is actually really important for this course as well.
• 02:03 As you go through and
• 02:04 you start looking at the modules, you may see that you have new buttons.
• 02:08 And the reason being is because Power BI Desktop software is updated
• 02:12 every single month.
• 02:13 There's a new version that you can download with new features, and changes,
• 02:17 and fixes, and efficiency upgrades,
• 02:19 all that kind of stuff is all rolled into this nice, free piece of software.
• 02:23 Now one thing I would recommend to you is,
• 02:24 if you're in an organization where your IT department takes explicit control and
• 02:28 doesn't let you install software often, just bug them for it every three months.
• 02:31 Don't go back every single month, cuz you don't wanna get them tired of you.
• 02:34 But it's kind of a nice thing there that we get these new features
• 02:37 delivered to us for free.
• 02:40 Now the other side is that the PowerBI.com service is also updated, but
• 02:44 it's updated weekly.
• 02:45 There's new fixes that are pushed into that all the time.
• 02:49 So, how do we get started?
• 02:51 Well, the first thing we're going to need is we're going to need a PowerBi.com
• 02:55 account.
• 02:56 So to start with that, we're gonna go to PowerBi.com and
• 02:59 we're gonna click the big Start Free button.
• 03:02 That's gonna take us to a new page where we have two options here.
• 03:06 We have the option to click the big Download Free,
• 03:08 which will allow us to download Power BI Desktop, that's the software that we're
• 03:12 gonna need to author all of our business intelligence.
• 03:15 And then the second thing that we're going to need is we're going to need
• 03:18 a PowerBI.com account,
• 03:20 which we can collect by going to sign up free in the top right-hand corner.
• 03:26 A couple of important things about email when you go to sign up PowerBI.com.
• 03:30 Number one, you must use a work email address.
• 03:33 This means you can't use something like Gmail, or Live, or MSN, or
• 03:37 any other of those free personal email services.
• 03:40 Those are blocked by Power BI.
• 03:42 So what do you do?
• 03:44 Well if you have custom domain that you own or that your company is
• 03:48 working under so somecompany.com, at that point, it should just work.
• 03:53 On the other hand, if you're a small business and you purchased your domain
• 03:57 through your Internet service provider, you may need to go and contact support.
• 04:02 Sometimes, those get blocked, and that's something that you need to go
• 04:05 back to your ISP and say listen, I want to sign up for PowerBI.com.
• 04:08 You guys gotta unblock this thing because I've purchased
• 04:11 my domain through you and what not.
• 04:13 So that can sometimes happen.
• 04:14 I've seen this happen, certainly in the UK, that's been an issue.
• 04:19 Something else you want to consider about this too.
• 04:22 If you are the first person in your company to sign up for
• 04:26 a PowerBI.com account, it's no need for IT to do this.
• 04:29 You can do this on your own, but
• 04:30 the first person to sign up sets the region where you data is stored in.
• 04:33 And as of the time of shooting here, you could not change that later.
• 04:37 So this is important,
• 04:38 you wanna make sure that you're picking the right region to store your data.
• 04:42 The other thing that's nice to know, I said,
• 04:43 hey, you can sign up even if your IT department hasn't, and that's true.
• 04:47 If you do, and then IT signs up later, those accounts will be merged under
• 04:51 the same tenant, which is perfect because that will allow sharing later on.
• 04:54 So that happens automatically, which is great.
• 04:58 Now lets talk about the licensing tiers and costs.
• 05:01 How much does this stuff all cost?
• 05:02 Well, when you get started,
• 05:03 you download Power BI Desktop, you are using the plan called Power BI Free.
• 05:07 This is a personal use license, you can build your business intelligence,
• 05:11 you can publish to the web service.
• 05:12 The big kicker is you cannot share it with other people,
• 05:15 that's the kicker in this whole thing.
• 05:17 As soon as you get into sharing, you now need to move to a Power BI Pro account,
• 05:22 which is about ten bucks a month, US, per user, at the time of shooting here.
• 05:29 This has all of the free features, plus you can now share with other people,
• 05:33 both inside and outside of your overall tenant domain.
• 05:38 When your company starts getting bigger, this is one of the challenges
• 05:41 that we run into, is that it's a price per user per month.
• 05:44 So really large companies really struggle with this.
• 05:47 So they introduced a plan called Power BI Premium.
• 05:50 Power BI Premium essentially is a read-only license that allows you to
• 05:53 consume content only.
• 05:56 So, the challenge with this is that you cannot just buy a read-only license at
• 05:59 five bucks a month, it actually needs to be licensed based on server nodes,
• 06:03 which is right now about $5,000 US a month.
• 06:07 The break-even point is about 625 users is where it breaks even.
• 06:12 So it's a little bit of a challenge there.
• 06:13 You can actually go and take a look at all of the pricing and
• 06:16 see that here at powerbi.microsoft.com/pricing.
• 06:19 Will actually break these things down, but it's free to get started.
• 06:22 Once you start sharing, you can layer on the costs as you need them

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