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Power BI

What you can do with Power BI

Power BI is Microsoft software to “bridge the gap between data and decision-making.” It connects to your data to let you create customized visualizations, and easily share those visualizations with others.  You can configure it to be interactive, and to update automatically. 

You can use these capabilities to gain insights from your data and operations, and to make decisions more easily.

You can think of Power BI as Excel graphs on steroids. Power BI reports are sometimes called dashboards. Like a car’s dashboard, the metrics reported on a Power BI dashboard let you know how your program, organization, or whatever else you are measuring is performing.

An example:

Watch this video for a quick overview:

Creating a Power BI Dashboard

There are two ways to use Power BI:

  • For personal use (including training, and exploring the software)
  • To create dashboards to share with others via the internet.

Either way, anyone can start using Power BI to create dashboards right away – all you need is to download and install the software:

  1. Download Power BI Desktop

    Download the Power BI application. When asked, choose the 64-bit version.

  2. Install it on your workstation

    After the application has finished downloading, open the Power BI Desktop Setup file and follow the installation prompts.

  3. Open the application

    When opening for the first time, you will be asked to sign in. If you have a license, you can sign-in. However, as previously noted, it is not necessary to have a license or sign in; you can safely ignore the prompts to sign in.

If your goal is to share your dashboards widely by publishing them to the internet (for an internal or external audience), you will need a license. To request a Power BI license and learn about the publishing process, follow the directions in Publishing your Power BI Dashboard.

Resources for learning Power BI

You can learn how to use Power BI through many free online resources such as Microsoft Learn. The Data Team compiled some helpful tutorials to get you started:

If you’re a strong Excel or GIS user – especially with creating charts, graphs, and maps – then you likely can learn to become a strong Power BI user.

Publishing your Power BI Dashboard

If, after reading the previous sections, you decide you want to share your dashboard with others by publishing to the internet, you can follow thes steps below. This multi-part process begins with you, and is supported by the Data Team and by IT.

When publishing your dashboard to the web, there are additional considerations to improve accessibility and usability. Please review the Power BI Tip Sheet for methods to standardize colors, keyboard navigation and mobile versions.

  1. Review your needs

    Consider whether Power BI is right for your needs, and whether you think you can build a dashboard. You can consult the above sections for more.

  2. Outline your business case

    Complete the request form to outline your business case and email it to datateam@cityofmadison.com.

  3. Data Team Review

    The Data Team will analyze your request, and respond within five business days. The response may include:

    • Providing direction
    • Further questions on what data is needed and where it can be obtained
    • Evaluating customer expertise/experience

    Following this iterative process with the Data Team, a Power BI license can be authorized.

  4. Provisional License

    The IT Net Admin team will provision a license.

  5. Connect to Data Source

    If your data will update frequently, and comes from a consistent and well-structured source, the IT Apps Team can work with you to connect the dashboard directly to your data source, so it automatically updates when new data is available. This is called a data gateway.

  6. Dashboard Review

    The IT Web Team will review your dashboards for user interface, and user experience. Accessibility and adhering to City style guidelines are an important part of each dashboard.

  7. Dashboard Location

    If you would like your dashboard to have a user-friendly URL, and to be part of a web page with additional context and information, the IT Web Team will also design that page.

    • This web page can be an internal web page on Employeenet, for all City employees or certain sub-groups.
    • Or, it can be an external, public page.

  8. Dashboard Made Public

    The IT Apps Team will then make your dashboard publicly available.

    • Technically speaking, your license allows you to publish your dashboard to an intermediate platform; the IT Apps Team will then publish from there to the internet.
    • The IT Apps Team will also publish any updates to the design of your dashboard.  (Note this doesn’t mean updates to the data – that should update automatically, per Step 5.)

Usually, departments/teams are able to efficiently manage a published dashboard having only one licensed member. This is because the only additional capability provided by the license is the actual step of publishing.

A typical workflow involves one or more people creating and editing the dashboard, and then the license-holder clicking Publish – which takes less than five minutes.  Exceptions will be identified by the Data Team during the license request process.

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