Marwan, thank you again for joining us! We are all very excited to learn on the topic of the ‘PowerBI '. If you wouldn't mind, could you please give a brief introduction on the topic and about yourself?
Marwan Tarek
Hi everyone and thanks for your time today joining the SPChat. Thanks SharePoint community team for inviting me.
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starting with myself. my background is software development i have been building SharePoint solutions for the past 10 years in different industries.
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i used to work for Microsoft as a SharePoint technology specialist and currently i am at Hitachi Consulting in the UK responsible of driving the Office 365 and Azure technologies in our clients across EMEA
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you can follow me onhttps://twitter.com/marwantarek andhttp://ift.tt/1GKMYhu
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although my background is SharePoint. i started exploring the Power BI features mid last year because it was released as an app in Office 365.
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I found Power BI is very easy to use and customise even if the user doesn't have a BI background.
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Power BI is composed of desktop tool called Power BI dashboard designer or addons to excel
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and online Power BI portal for sharing and customising the data
- 12:11
Power BI dashboard designer allows the users to connect to a range of data sources and develop dashboards in a blank canvas using drag and drop controls
- 12:12
once dashboards are complete, the user can publish the dashboard to online portal and share it with other users who can browse, customise and even build new dashboard from the dataset available without any furthur IT request
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you can download the dashboard designer from http://ift.tt/1DVhHnJ
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**Next question**
Feel free to ask questions now folks!
Andres Fradkin
Do you recommend connecting this capability to SSAS?
yes you can do this
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it provides you with a range for capabilities.
David Smith
will you go over PowerBI in sharepoint
the current release supports tabular model only but the version will be released with Excel 2016 with support SSAS Multidimensional
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@David Smith Power BI and SharePoint are addressing different needs. initially Power BI was released as part of SharePoint as an app but now it is a separate product.
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i believe they will get more integrated under the wider umbrella of Office 365 and Azure
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**Next Question**
TheNCR
What does PowerBI holds over previous solutions like PerformancePoint and ExcelServices in a SharePoint based environment?
To be clear is this in SP2013 or SP2015?
- 12:17
@Andres no it is a separate product, available in the cloud only as a service from Microsoft. currently, it has a free version and paid version with additional features. there is no dependency on SharePoint at all.
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**Next Question**
Mary Angiela de los Reyes
Does PoweBI can be connected and JIRA? and if it is how can you extract a report for this one? thanks
- 12:19
@Mary Power BI support different range of sources. it is dependent on JIRA, i am not expert on it. however, if JIRA supports exposing the data as JSON or excel format or the database is accessible then you can extract data from it and create reports.
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the list of data sources is increasing over the time so keep an eye on it.
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**Next Question**
You need to have an Office 365 account first to use the product correct?
- 12:22
and I would say, DON'T use CHROME! lol (correct me if I am wrong)
you can use your work email address to subscribe for the free version and you will get all the power of Power BI
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see pricing herehttp://ift.tt/1CdWR4O
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I always use IE for Office 365 and Power BI demos and next it will be Microsoft Edge ;)
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**Next Question**
Is Power BI a good platfrom for distributing information on a secure basis? Is there a way to lock down the underlying data, and require login, or is this strictly for online publication of information that is intended to be public for all to see?
- 12:25
@Andres the platform is secure and not publicly available. any user must login with a valid username and password to be able to access the data. and this is up to the administrator to select the users.
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the data is not public
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**Next Question**
Mark Jones
What are the options for integrating Power BI into apps ?
@Mark what do you mean by "apps"?
specifically non SP Azure apps
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e.g. ASP.Net MVC
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(Hi btw ;) )
hi Mark :)
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Power BI need to connect to a data source. see available connectors herehttp://ift.tt/1GJidqn
Imagine an ASP.Net MVC site hosted in Azure ... Is it possible to embed Power BI charts direct into it ?
Ohhh got you
- 12:29
the Power BI preview doesn't support this yet
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**Next Question**
Brad Shannon
What would you tell someone who is used to having SSRS style reports (mostly line after line of data) that wants to use PowerBI? Is it still a good tool for something like that or would you stick to mostly graphical reporting?
- 12:31
@Brad my recommendation is to look at the use case. Power BI solves the self-service reporting problem where end users want to create a new report from existing data set that is available.
- 12:32
and they don't have experience in BI or SSRS. they can quickly connect to the data source (provided that it is published) and they can create a report quickly.
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nice example I always use.
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ATP ranking for tennis players is published herehttp://ift.tt/1ace2BR
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it is a standard table and provide with good information but what if you want to view how many players from Spain in the top 100 players?
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the data is there and available but you will need different layout. the user can easily connect and design a new report using the available data ;)
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hope this makes sense
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**Next Question**
That helps
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thanks
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Do you know when the new version of PowerBI will get out of Preview?
@Brad unfortunately we don't have a timeline
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**Next Question**
Waqas Sarwar
Hi, Marwan, IS Power BI really Successful in O365? Because if it successful their then we will get this feature down to On prem....do you have an idea if it will available in SharePoint 2016 on prem? we are on prem and no change for migration to 0365.
- 12:37
@Waqas from the strategy that Microsoft is following, I don't believe it will be available on prem.
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**Next question
Is there an easy way to manage who has access to the dashboards? Can you use AD? Also is there an easy way to tell when your users' use is going to require the upgraded (pro) service?
@Andres I will answer the second question first
- 12:40
you will need the Pro version if you want to more capacity, connection to on-premise data, data refresh or using Active directory ;)
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hence the answer to the first question yes you can connect to AD but you will need the pro version. check the comparison between the free and pro version herehttp://ift.tt/1CdWR4O
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**Next question
Remya Radhakrishnan
Will power BI respect the security settings of the datasource. Say I have a SP list as datasource with item level permissions. Will different users view different data or the same report?
to add to @Remya's question, is the data being gathered with a PowerBI login that has "super" powers or does it actually use the login of that person who has PowerBI open at the moment to grab data?
- 12:43
it is dependent on the connection type
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if you are using data management gateway it will use the account configured in the DMG
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if you using online connection like salesforce...etc. it will the login created the dashboard
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see example here http://ift.tt/1DYMfXK
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**Next question
Can the free users access reports that were published by the paid users? For example, could a paid user build a report using on-prem data and then make that report available to view by the free users?
@Brad I never tried this before. I will need to check and get back on this
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**Next Question
How similar is this to SSRS and it's report creator? I am downloading the PowerBI Designer program now, it sort of has the "vibe' of SSRS to me?
@Matthew because you are an expert :)
LOL, I am?
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How about another questions
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So I see that PowerBI has been adding different external data sources like Salesforce, ZenDesk, GitHub, Google Analytics and more. What kinds of "real-world" solutions have you seen customers using it for so far? What types of reports or solutions are they making with it?
the main differences to SSRS, the variety of data sources available, you can do manipulate the data after it is retrieved with any easy to use UI and easy to create visualization.
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in addition, the online Q&A feature is brilliant allows the users to create on the fly new report by simply asking questions
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the external data sources are configured with standard dashboard and reports ready once you connect
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but the users can ask more questions to generate additional reports and uncover more analytics from the data.
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**Next question
Is there any data limit or file size limit?
the limit is capacity per userhttp://ift.tt/1CdWR4O
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this is dependent on the amount of data retrieved from the data source
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**Next question
- 12:54
where is the "online Q&A" feature?
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also, did you mention the types of solutions people are using it for in the "real-world" so far?
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anything you have seen
when you publish the reports online you can see in the dashboard page a box for Q&A
ok
see this screen shothttp://ift.tt/1GJidGH
that looks like the kind of pretty graphical thing a CEO would love to see (but have no idea what it really means) - grin
Do Excel files that are uploaded need to be formatted in a particular way to be useable with the Q&A feature?
real-world examples i have seen it was for retail client who is mixing sales data with stores locations and weather data to identify a trend.
- 12:58
@Brad no it does not need to be format because Power BI picks the data model from the PowerPivot model created in excel to answer the questions ;)
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**Next question
Ok everyone any last questions as we start to wrap up our chat?
- 13:00
well I guess not
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Marwan, it is time for you to pick the best question asked today
Coke or Pepsi?
that person will win a $25 XBOX gift card
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COKE, you are near Atlanta, you should know better than to say such things!
Paul Choquette
Cheerwine
I always prefer coke. I just wanted to know whether Marwan and I could be friends.
LOL
See, that's why Paul and I can't be friends
ohh hard to to pick. I will pick Pepsi :D
NNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOO
Elena Schott
Diet caffine free pepsi sadly
i did see a billboard for some moonshine in N.C. yesterday...
I go with Mexican Coke.. real sugar is the bomb
I will pick "Brad Shannon" for his question on SSRS
Mexican Coke FTW!
Yes to @Andres
ooooh snap!
Yeah! Brad you win a gift card!
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awesome
Woohoo!
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My kids will enjoy that :D
;)
Well Marwan, thank you so much for coming today
Thanks Marwan
I learned some good basics about PowerBI
Thanks for everyone
thanks for the info
hope it is good stay in touch through twitter
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@marwantarek
we really appreciate it! I will have the chat transcript up on our website for everyone to read soon!
yes feel free to reach out to Marwan if anyone has more questions to
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everyone say "thank you"
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NOW!!!!!
Thank you!
Thank You
Thank you!
Ok bye!
thanks everyone
by Matthew J Bailey via Everyone's Blog Posts - SharePoint Community
