Microsoft Power BI

Join our Business Analytics Community of Practice

Microsoft Power BI is the main reporting tool for the College. It is a part of the Office 365 offering and enables a wide range of reporting activities from official College reporting through to self-service options, all possible with no code more complex than an Excel formula. Power BI can also be used individually or in your team to help with your data needs. If you feel you’re reaching the limits of what Excel can offer you, Power BI is a good next step.

Power BI is already home to key College reporting and we are in the process of transferring Imperial College Analytics (ICA) content to make Power BI a single point of access for analytics. Anyone using ICA will be contacted as the project progresses to let them know about the transition.

Why would I use Power BI?

  • To access official College reporting, via Office 365
  • To build local reporting based on your local data
  • To mash up data from different sources
  • To process your data in a way you can repeat regularly
  • To produce better visuals, including maps and a large number of R visuals

If you would like to learn a bit more about Power BI, we recommend Microsoft’s own training options which contain content for people building and consuming reports. For those interested in building content, you can also join our Business Analytics Community of Practice to talk to other staff in the College doing the same thing.

How do I access Power BI?

To view reports you have been given access to you can navigate to Power BI within Office 365 and click on the Apps tab, or you can add Power BI to your teams by adding it as an app. Additionally. Power BI also has mobile apps that can be installed via your app store.

To use Power BI to build your own analyses, you will need Power BI Desktop. You can raise a request in Ask to get this installed.

FAQs

IP is unchanged by use of Microsoft Power BI. Microsoft does not appropriate the IP of any content uploaded to its services, and this is enshrined in our contract with them. Users should apply the same cautions to sharing data via Power BI as they would apply with any other platform.

Microsoft Power BI is an ISO27001 accredited product, meaning it is compliant with internationally agreed information governance standards. There are ample settings to ensure access to data is restricted only to those who need access to it. Additionally, users are encouraged to limit the use of personal identifiable data in any data sets they produce to only vital information. All users, including end users, are required to confirm they have undertaken College information governance training before being given access.

Microsoft Power BI is not being enabled for students at this time.