Energy BI is Microsoft’s interactive knowledge visualization and analytics device for enterprise intelligence (BI). With Energy BI, you possibly can pull in knowledge from a variety of programs within the cloud and on premises and create dashboards that monitor the metrics you care about essentially the most. You’ll be able to even drill down into your knowledge and (actually) ask questions on it.

Energy BI’s wealthy studies or dashboards may be embedded in reporting portals you already use. And whereas its dashboards, studies, and visualizations can go far past bar and pie charts, you don’t should be a designer to create them. You too can use Energy BI to arrange and handle high-quality knowledge to make use of throughout the enterprise in different instruments, together with low-code apps. Right here’s the best way to get extra insights from the knowledge you have already got, in additional areas than you would possibly anticipate.

1. Visualize the providers you employ

Energy BI has a whole bunch of content material packs, templates, and integrations for a whole bunch of information providers, apps, and providers that embody pre-set studies and visualizations. In the event you use Xero for accounting, or K2 Cloud to construct enterprise processes, or Adobe Advertising Cloud, SAP HANA, Salesforce, MailChimp, Marketo, or Google Analytics, you should use Energy BI to visualise the info you’ve got in these providers, create studies towards them, and convey them collectively in a customized dashboard. You too can arrange the on-premises gateway to make use of Energy BI to discover knowledge units by yourself servers. That manner you possibly can examine web site guests with gross sales, or see which promotions have introduced in new clients. You’ll be able to create your individual studies and visualizations, carry out calculations (Energy BI calls these calculated measures), and set entry ranges for particular person customers, knowledge sources, or particular dashboards and studies to regulate who can view extra delicate data.

2. Inform tales together with your knowledge

Charts are nice for numbers, however if you wish to present data that modifications over time in a manner that’s straightforward to know, Energy BI’s new Timeline Storyteller is for you. With this device, you possibly can create a linear checklist of dates or occasions, or lay them out in circles, spirals, grids, or customized shapes. You too can present a chronological checklist, a sequence that exhibits the length of occasions, or decide relative or logarithmic scales. Choose the best way to greatest characterize, scale, and lay out your knowledge, and Energy BI will construct a timeline from it. You’ll be able to then use that to inform the historical past of what you are promoting, present how demand is rising, or clarify anything by which the sequence of occasions issues.

3. Discover ‘What-ifs’

You’ll be able to examine eventualities in Excel, however Energy BI enables you to do it by dragging a slider bar to point out modifications. Add a calculated measure for a determine resembling income and you should use the New Parameter button in Energy BI Desktop so as to add parameters that change in your What-if situation. That creates a calculated measure you possibly can reference elsewhere; so when you create a What-if parameter for the variety of clients who reply to a selected promotion you possibly can plug that right into a components you create to point out what number of buyer assist tickets you possibly can anticipate to must take care of. Tick “Add slider to this web page” within the What-if parameter dialog so as to add a slider bar that you would be able to drag to point out the distinction when the variety of buyer responses is larger or decrease.

4. Ask questions in your individual phrases

You too can use the pure language options of Energy BI to ask questions and get visualizations in response. Specify how the info ought to be offered — ask for “complete gross sales by area by month as a line” — or let Energy BI decide a format that fits the info with a extra basic query like, “What had been the gross sales numbers for final quarter?”

If there are tiles pinned to the dashboard, Q&A will recommend these as questions, and as you sort a query it would recommend phrases you can add based mostly on the tables within the knowledge set. If the query seems to be extraordinarily helpful, you possibly can pin the visualization to the dashboard, making this a straightforward strategy to create visualizations for an information set. In the event you personal the info set, it’s also possible to add featured questions within the dashboard settings. Q&A makes use of the names of tables, columns, and calculated fields within the knowledge units; if the column known as “space” somewhat than “area,” it’s essential ask for “gross sales by space” except you add synonyms, and desk names resembling CustomerSummary will make Q&A much less pure than names like Prospects.

Energy BI Q&A works within the Energy BI web site and the iOS Energy BI app. It could possibly work on knowledge saved in an Excel desk (or in a database by way of the on-premises gateway when you allow Q&A for the info set) or you should use Energy Pivot to optimize the info set for Q&A. Be sure that all of the tables in your knowledge set are joined appropriately, verify knowledge sorts for dates and numbers, and create the default area set for columns and default label for tables to tweak the columns displayed and the kind of graph or chart Q&A will present.