Power BI

Copilot for Power BI uses generative AI to create report pages, generate DAX measures, and summarize reports in natural language. In Report Builder mode, Copilot suggests report layouts and creates visuals from prompts. In DAX Query View, Copilot generates and refines DAX measures from plain English descriptions. In the Service, the Summarize shortcut generates a text summary of key trends across report pages. Available since April 2025 on F2 Fabric capacity (~$262/month) or Power BI Premium Per User ($20/user/month).

Microsoft Fabric is a unified SaaS analytics platform that includes Power BI, Data Factory, Synapse Data Engineering, Synapse Data Science, Synapse Data Warehouse, and Real-Time Analytics — all sharing one OneLake storage layer. Power BI Premium was Power BI's enterprise tier; Fabric replaces and extends it. Fabric's DirectLake mode is the key Power BI improvement — it queries Delta Parquet files in OneLake directly without Import (stale) or DirectQuery (slow) tradeoffs.

DirectLake queries Delta Parquet files in OneLake/Fabric Lakehouse directly — it reads column data on first query (like DirectQuery freshness) but caches them in memory (like Import speed). Result: near-Import speed with real-time data freshness, without data duplication. Use DirectLake when your data is in Fabric Lakehouse or Azure Data Lake with Delta tables and you need real-time freshness without DirectQuery's per-query latency. For data sources outside Fabric, Import or DirectQuery modes remain applicable.

PBIR (Power BI Report format) stores report definition as a folder structure of JSON and metadata files rather than a binary .pbix file — enabling proper Git version control, readable diffs, PR reviews for report changes, and branch-based development. Microsoft made PBIR the default for new reports in January 2026. For BI teams with developer workflows, PBIR is a significant improvement: two analysts can work on the same report in separate branches and merge changes. Adopt it for any new report development.

Power BI Pro ($10/user/month): publish, share, and collaborate on reports with other Pro users. Adequate for most organizational BI scenarios. Premium Per User PPU ($20/user/month): adds Copilot, larger datasets, paginated reports, and more frequent refresh — for individual analysts needing Copilot. Fabric Capacity (F2-F128+, $262-$33,792+/month): pays for compute capacity rather than per-user — better economics for large deployments, enables DirectLake and all Fabric workloads. Embedded A/P SKUs pay for capacity serving application users without per-user licenses.

RLS is defined in the Power BI semantic model: create roles with DAX filter expressions that restrict which rows are visible. Static RLS: role named 'East Region' with filter [Region] = 'East'. Dynamic RLS: filter using USERNAME() or USERPRINCIPALNAME() against a security table — one role handles all users, filtering based on their identity. OLS (Object Level Security) hides specific columns from certain roles. Roles are assigned to Azure AD users or groups in Power BI Service. We design RLS schemas that handle hierarchical security (manager sees all reports) and multi-tenant isolation (each customer sees only their data).

Power BI advantages: Microsoft ecosystem integration, Copilot AI, Fabric/DirectLake, PBIR Git versioning, lower per-user cost ($10 vs $75), Teams/SharePoint native embedding. Tableau advantages: wider chart type library, native Python/R integration for statistical charts, more flexible visual formatting, stronger for advanced analytics teams. For most enterprise BI scenarios (operational dashboards, financial reporting, sales analytics), Power BI matches Tableau functionally at 7.5× lower cost. For data science-driven visualization and statistical charts, Tableau's library is broader.

Power BI Deployment Pipelines (Premium/Fabric) enable dev → test → production promotion of Power BI content. Each pipeline stage (Development, Test, Production) holds a separate workspace. Promoting from Development to Test copies reports, dashboards, and semantic models forward with one click. Rules allow overriding data source connections at each stage (dev uses dev database, production uses production database). Combined with PBIR Git integration, this creates a CI/CD workflow for BI content comparable to application deployment pipelines.

Yes — Power BI connects to 100+ data sources including PostgreSQL, MySQL, Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, Databricks, Salesforce, SAP, Oracle, MongoDB, REST APIs, OData feeds, and flat files. For cloud sources, connections are direct from Power BI Service. For on-premises sources, the Power BI Gateway proxies connections through a server in your network. Dataflows Gen2 in Fabric provides ETL transformation of external data before it reaches Power BI semantic models.

We offer support tiers covering: semantic model performance monitoring and optimization as data volumes grow, new report and dashboard development, DAX measure changes as business requirements evolve, Fabric migration planning and execution for organizations moving off Import mode, security model updates as team structures change, and monthly refresh failure investigation. We also provide quarterly model health audits using VertiPaq Analyzer to identify and address performance regressions before they affect user experience.