What Power BI is: Desktop, Service, Mobile and the BI workflow

The business scenario

Summit's finance lead asks: 'Why not keep doing this in Excel?' Every Monday someone copies 30 monthly files into one workbook, fixes the dates and rebuilds the charts. Power BI does that once and refreshes it. In this lesson you follow Summit's raw files through the five stages inside the finished report and see where each stage lives in Power BI.

What you will learn

• Name the five stages: Get data, Transform, Model, Visualize, Publish
• Find each stage in Power BI Desktop: Get data, the Power Query Editor, Model view, Report view, Publish
• Tell Power BI Desktop, the Power BI Service and the Mobile app apart
• Explain Free, Pro and Premium Per User licenses in plain words

Key steps in this video

• Follow the BI workflow through the finished Summit report

Common mistakes to avoid

• Thinking Desktop and the Service are two different products to learn twice - you build in Desktop and share in the Service.
• Cleaning data in the source Excel file by hand each month instead of in Power Query, where it replays.
• Assuming a free license can share reports with colleagues - sharing needs Pro (or a capacity).