What is Power BI Desktop?

Power BI Desktop is a free-for-lifetime app which can be installed on your local computer. This app is used to connect to, clean, transform, and visualize your data. It comes with powerful data transformation engine with simple GUI. Therefore, you don’t need any coding knowledge for data transformation.

Its versatile and ever-expanding set of native connectors help to connect with all popular data sources without any cost of ETL tools.  Hence with Power BI Desktop, you can create data model by connecting to multiple data sources and combine them. Then you can us this data model to analyze data and build Power BI Visuals. Thereafter you can publish these reports to Power BI service once you are ready to share within or outside your organization.

What is Power BI Service?

The Microsoft Power BI service (app.powerbi.com), sometimes referred to as Power BI.com or Power BI online, is the SaaS (Software as a Service) interface of Power BI.

Once you have created insightful and great looking Power BI report, you would publish it Power BI service to share it with different stakeholders. We will create a Power BI Implementation Plan for you so that you can also create dashboards to keep a finger on the pulse of your business. Power BI Dashboards display tiles, which you can select to drill down reports for exploring further.

As your Power BI Implementation Partner, Our Power BI consulting team will also help you to automate various tasks in Power BI service like updating the report at desired frequency, and auto emailing of the reports.

What is Power BI Mobile app?

Power BI offers a set of mobile apps for iOS, Android, and Windows 10 mobile devices. Therefore, you can access the reports published in Power BI service by using your mobile devices.

You have created reports in Power BI desktop and published these reports in Power BI service to share with your colleagues. These users can access these reports on the go on their mobile devices by using Power BI mobile app.

Power BI reports get automatically formatted for viewing on mobile devices.

Contact us if you need more information various Microsoft Power BI Products. Our Power BI consulting team will be happy to help you.

Power BI licensing can be confusing not only for new users but also for people who are using it for some time. Our Power Bi consultants regularly hear related questions from clients. Therefore here are the answers for FAQs to demystify the Power BI license types.

Do I need Power BI Pro license to use Power BI desktop?

You don’t need Power BI Pro license (or pay anything to Microsoft) for downloading and using the Power BI desktop. This free app is full version with all the functionalities and features of Power BI.

Therefore you can create Power BI reports without spending a penny.

Isn’t that awesome!

Do I need Power BI Pro license to upload the report in Power BI.com?

You also don’t need Power BI Pro license to publish the report to Power BI.com You just have to create a free account on Power BI.com

When do I need Power BI Pro license?

You have created beautiful Power BI report using Power BI desktop app and want to share it with your colleagues. Now the fun begins.

You need Power BI Pro license to share the report with anyone. Moreover, all the people with whom you want to share the report also need Power BI Pro license to access the reports.

Do I need license to share Power BI dashboard within organization or outside the organization?

You need Power BI Pro license to share report whether it is within organization or outside the organization.

All the above users also need Pro license

How many people need Power BI Pro license in my organization?

Every person in the organization who wants to share the report or see the report needs to have Pro license.

Similarly all people outside the organization also need Pro license

What is the Power BI Premium capacity

Power BI Premium or Premium Capacity is suitable for organization with large number of users. It costs $4,995 per month. Equivalent to 500 Pro licenses, though this is not exact comparison as Premium come with some other features which may be interesting for you.

No user needs Pro license if the report is created using Premium capacity.

Our Microsoft BI Consultancy team will help you to calculate ROI for Premium capacity.

Do I need license for Power BI embedding?

Power BI embedding is another way to get rid of licensing but it is costlier. Basic plan for 24×7 reports availability will cost you around $720 per month. This may go up significantly depending upon number of users and reports.

How can I buy Power BI Pro license?

If you are admin for your Office 365 account, it is quite simple to purchase and assign Pro license. You need to go to the Office 365 admin console to do that.   

Our Power BI Consultants will be able to clarify any more questions you have and will help you to make right choice.