Service overview

Microsoft Power BI is a business analytics solution. It provides interactive visualizations and business intelligence capabilities which allow users to create and publish interactive reports, dashboards and a multitude of visual data representations to analyze business data and make informed decisions.

Currently, there are three key components in the McGill Power BI ecosystem:

• Power BI Desktop is a free software that needs to be installed on the user's computer; it is used to prepare data, create reports and publish reports to Power BI service or Power BI Report server. (There are two versions of the desktop application; see note below.)
  
  
• Power BI service is a SaaS (Software as a Service) based online service. It is used to create dashboards, share reports and dashboards with end users, and publish reports to the web applications.
  
  
• Power BI Report Server is an on-premises Power BI reporting solution. It is used to host and share reports based on data that won't or can't be stored in the cloud-based Power BI service.

With Power BI Desktop, users can connect to different sources of data (70+ types, including R and Python script transformation capability), and combine them into a data model, from which to build interactive visuals (charts, maps, etc). The visuals can be shared with other people inside their organization through Power BI service / Power BI Report Server, or shared with the public by publishing on the web through Power BI service.

The most common uses for Power BI Desktop are:

• Connect to data
• Transform, join and clean that data, to create a data model
• Create interactive visuals, such as charts or graphs, that provide visual representations of the data
• Create reports that are collections of visuals, on one or more report pages
• Export report data to CSV
• Export reports to PDF
• Publish reports to Power BI service or Power BI Report server. 

NOTES about versions of Power BI desktop

There are two versions of Power BI desktop. Both are free and don’t need a Pro license to use.

• Power BI desktop for Power BI service: is used to build and publish Power BI reports to Power BI service (a cloud based service). This version of Power BI desktop can’t publish reports to Power BI Report Server.
  
  • Users with the free licence can publish reports to their My Workspace in Power BI service.
  • However, a Pro license is required if you wish to share the reports or dashboards with other users.
• Power BI desktop for Power BI Report Server: is used to build and publish Power BI reports to Power BI Report Server (an on-premises server at McGill). This version of Power BI desktop can’t publish reports to Power BI Service.
  
  • A Pro license is required to publish reports to the Report Server.
  • Users who only want to view these reports do not need a Pro account.

NOTES about Power BI licensing

• The free Power BI license is available to McGill Office 365 users; it offers limited sharing & collaboration functionalities.
• The Power BI Pro license is available for a subscription fee. To obtain a Pro license, submit your request via the General Request form. Requests will be reviewed by the Portfolio Manager of the Business Intelligence, Data & Analytics unit and granted on a case-by-case basis.
• Power BI Premium is not currently available at McGill.

For more details on differences between Pro and free licenses, see the FAQ section.

Who can use it

This service is available to all active students, faculty and staff members who have proper licenses.

See the FAQs for additional information on what happens when you leave McGill.

How to request & access the service

To access Power BI:

1. Download the Power BI Desktop application, or, if you wish to use the report server, download the Power BI Desktop for Report Server (PBIDesktopRS.msi or PBIDesktopRS_x64.msi) from the Microsoft Power BI website.
2. Open the Power BI application; you will be prompted to sign in with your McGill/Office 365 username and password.
3. See Get started with Power BI on the Microsoft website. Videos are also available.

To request a Pro license:

You need a Pro license if you want to share your reports with others.

To obtain a Pro license, submit your request via the General Request form. Requests will be reviewed by the Portfolio Manager of the Business Intelligence, Data & Analytics unit and granted on a case-by-case basis.

Cost

There is no cost to use Power BI Desktop and the Power BI service with free license features.

Power BI Pro, with full access to the Power BI service, is granted on a case-by-case basis and with a monthly subscription.

Availability

The Power BI service and Report Server are available 24 X 7, except during planned maintenance or outages. Check the System Status page or the Microsoft 365 site for announcements regarding service interruptions.

Frequently asked questions

Are there any limitations for the Power BI free license?

It is worth mentioning that the Power BI desktop application is a free download from Microsoft and does not require a licence. However, once you have built your report and want to share with others through Power BI service, you will need a Power BI licence, either Free or Pro.

While Power BI Pro users can make full use of the sharing and collaboration features of the service, the power BI free license has several limitations:

• Users with the free licences can access some of the Power BI service features for their own personal content in their My Workspace. However, they are not able to share reports or dashboards with other users, nor can they view reports or dashboards shared from other Pro licence users.
  
  
• The only way for the free license users to share a report is to publish it to the web, either hosted on the Microsoft Power BI service through a public link, or integrated in a website owned by the user. Since this makes the report available to everybody on the internet, it is not secure and should not be used for confidential data.
  
  
• Other Power BI service features are not supported by free licenses include Apps, Embed APIs and controls, App workspaces, Email subscriptions, etc.

The chart shown below compares features of the free and pro versions of the Power BI service. See the Microsoft website for additional details.

What happens to my Power BI access when I leave McGill?

Your access to Power BI will end immediately, whether or not you graduate or retire.

Best practices & policies

• Your usage of Power BI service is governed by the Policy on the Responsible Use of Information Technology Resources. Therefore confidential/sensitive data must not be shared with unauthorized individuals. Published reports on the web are accessible to anyone having the web link.
• Never give your McGill credentials to another person to allow them access to your Power BI service space, or for any other reason. This is a violation of the Responsible Use Policy.
• Unless your report requires operational data in real-time or near real-time mode, it is best practice to use Data Warehouse as the data source to build your Power BI reports. By using Data Warehouse, the data in your report is refreshed overnight (or following a pre-defined schedule), and the data model can be optimized for reporting. For example, in McGill Oracle servers, data the in BANNER server is operational/real-time data, while data in BANREP server is data warehouse/overnight refreshed data. It is recommended to build your power BI reports based on data in BANREP server instead of BANNER server. If you need more guidelines on which McGill data source should be used to build your Power BI reports, please submit your request to BI team via the General Request form.

Security restrictions

Power BI features listed below are restricted for self-service users in McGill Power BI Tenant for security reasons.

1. Workspace:
   
   • Each Power BI user has a personal workspace known as My Workspace. Users are not authorized to create additional workspaces in McGill's Power BI Tenant.
   • Classic workspace creation is blocked from McGill Power BI tenant. Learn more on the Microsoft website.
2. Export and sharing:
   
   • Guest users (non-McGill users) are not authorized to edit and manage Power BI content in McGill's Power BI tenant. In addition, Power BI features Export to .csv, Export to Excel, and Download of a .pbix copy are not authorized to guest users.
   • Publishing public reports on the web is disabled in McGill's Power BI tenant (Publicly published reports don't require authentication to view them).
3. Integration:
   
   • ArcGIS Maps, Snowflake SSO and Azure Maps visual are disabled from McGill's Power BI tenant.
4. Power BI visuals:
   
   • Non-Microsoft-certified visuals are blocked from McGill's Power BI tenant.
   • Interact with and share R and Python visuals feature is disabled in McGill's Power BI tenant
   • Web Content on dashboard tiles feature is disabled in McGill's Power BI tenant

For users who need the listed features enabled, please submit your request via the General Request form. Requests will be reviewed by the Portfolio Manager of the Business Intelligence, Data & Analytics unit and granted on a case-by-case basis.

Training & documentation

Power BI training is well-documented on the Microsoft website:

• Get started with Power BI
• Microsoft Power BI guided learning portal (contains over 60 articles, most of them with videos)

Support

• For access/authentication issues, contact the IT Service Desk.
• For all other issues, see the Microsoft Power BI site.