{"id":268,"date":"2013-07-08T10:01:00","date_gmt":"2013-07-08T02:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vm-officeblogs.cloudapp.net\/2013\/07\/08\/what-powers-power-bi-in-office-365\/"},"modified":"2022-06-28T10:25:52","modified_gmt":"2022-06-28T17:25:52","slug":"what-powers-power-bi-in-office-365","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/microsoft-365\/blog\/2013\/07\/08\/what-powers-power-bi-in-office-365\/","title":{"rendered":"What powers Power BI in Office 365?"},"content":{"rendered":"
Ari Schorr and Seayoung Rhee are product marketing managers in the Microsoft Office Division focused on Excel and Business Intelligence, respectively.<\/em><\/p>\n
Power BI for Office 365 is a new self-service business intelligence (BI) offering enabling businesses to gain insights from their data in powerful new ways within Excel and Office 365. Customers now have the ability to easily search, discover and access data inside and outside of their organization and, with just a few clicks, shape and transform that data. They can also analyze and create stunning interactive visualizations that uncover hidden insights to share and collaborate from virtually anywhere, on nearly any device.<\/p>\n
Key features are:<\/p>\n
Powerful Self-Service BI in Excel 2013:<\/b> We are taking our most powerful BI solutions and building them directly into Excel. These solutions package the data discovery, analysis and visualization process into one self-service BI solution, which is essential for business customers who are looking to get bigger returns on their data. Features include:<\/p>\n
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For data search and discovery, we’re introducing Power Query<\/b>, formerly “Data Explorer.” We’ve created a data search engine so customers can query data from within their business and from external data sources on the Internet, all within Excel. We’re also working with partners to provide an internal version of this search engine so businesses can customize the engine and index the data sources they commonly access. Power Query also cleans and merges data sets from multiple sources, enabling IT and BI customers to focus on data insights rather than data management. <\/div>\n<\/li>\n
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For analyzing and modeling data we will continue to offer Power Pivot<\/b>. Power Pivot enables customers to create flexible models within Excel that can process large data sets quickly using SQL Server’s in-memory database. Customers can customize the model as needed all within Excel – no extra coding needed. <\/div>\n<\/li>\n
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For visualizing and exploring data we’re introducing Power View<\/b> and Power Map<\/b>, formerly project codename “GeoFlow.” Using Power View, customers can manipulate data and compile it into charts, graphs and other visual means – great for presentations and reports. Power Map is a 3D data visualization tool for mapping, exploring and interacting with geographic and temporal data. Customers can visually plot up to one million rows of data in 3D on Bing Maps, view data in a geographic space, and share findings through screenshot slides and cinematic, guided video tours. <\/div>\n<\/li>\n
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Collaborate and stay connected with Office 365:<\/b> While all of these tools enable great self-service BI, asking business customers to work within a BI silo significantly decreases the potential value of their data to the entire organization. That’s why we’ve made all of these Excel capabilities available in the cloud with Office 365, so customers can share and access their BI reports and models across the desktop, Web and devices, all in a trusted, managed environment.<\/p>\n
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To share insights and help customers get answers quickly, we’ve created BI Sites<\/b>. Within their organization’s trusted environment, BI customers can quickly create workspaces in Office 365 to share worksheets with colleagues, collaborate over insights and results, and quickly find data and reports. A couple key features of the BI Sites include a natural language query engine <\/b>and a Data Management Gateway. <\/b>We’ve incorporated a natural language query engine that IT can customize to help their users search for specific datasets quickly and easily. Additionally, we’ve created a Data <\/b>Management Gateway, which allows IT to build connections to internal data sources so reports that are published to BI Sites in Office 365 will refresh either on-demand or on a scheduled basis, ensuring that customers are always looking at the latest view of their data. <\/div>\n<\/li>\n
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To better manage data, Power BI for Office 365 empowers a business’s IT organization to help its users become their own data stewards<\/b>. This means that customers can grant access to their published data sets based on their colleague’s credentials. In addition, customers can then track who’s accessing their data sets and how often to better understand what data is of most value to others. <\/li>\n
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To enable customers to stay connected to their data from virtually anywhere they are, we’ve created a connected BI experience. BI users can access and receive live updates on their reports through their browser with HTML5 or through a mobile application designed for their tablet or touch-enabled device, either Microsoft<\/b> Power BI for Windows <\/b>or Microsoft Power BI for iPad1<\/sup><\/b>. <\/div>\n<\/li>\n
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Business that can rapidly gain insights from their data will lead their peers in the industry in the next decade. The ability to easily access any kind of data, extend existing IT systems, empower users customers with familiar tools to gain insights and quickly deploy powerful self-service BI solutions will become a key enabler for these businesses to differentiate themselves from their peers. Microsoft is uniquely positioned to help the enterprise through this transition, and only Microsoft is able to offer these features together in one complete cloud-based offering. <\/p>\n