What is Power BI?
Microsoft documents Power BI Desktop, the Power BI service and related tools for reports and dashboards. A semantic model provides data prepared for reporting; governance and refresh design influence whether the same metric means the same thing across teams.
Read the full overview
Sources checked 27 September 2026: Power BI documentation, Semantic models.
Key capabilities
- Modeling: Prepare data and measures for repeatable reporting.
- Reports: Build and share interactive visualizations.
- Administration: Set access and refresh behavior for published content.
Data connection, semantic modeling, report creation and sharing form the main workflow.
Use Power BI when stakeholders need shared reporting from defined data sources. Establish measures, permissions and update cadence before building many visual pages.
A pilot should reproduce one contested business metric and confirm that different users see the right data and the same definition.
Technical details
- Access
- See vendor
- Source model
- Other license
- Founded
- 2013
- Headquarters
- Redmond, Washington, USA
- Pricing model
- Freemium
- API
- Available
- Website
- powerbi.microsoft.com ↗
Official resources
What to verify for your environment
Start from the users, systems and operating responsibilities the tool needs to support.
- Confirm current features, licensing and support terms with the publisher.
- Validate deployment, data location, access control, backup and recovery requirements.
- Test integrations, export paths and a representative operational workflow before committing.
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