Power BI

What is Power BI?

Power BI is Microsoft's business intelligence and data visualisation platform. It connects to data sources — Excel files, SharePoint lists, SQL databases, cloud services, accounting software — transforms that data, and presents it as interactive dashboards and reports that can be shared across your organisation.

Power BI Desktop (the authoring tool) is free. Power BI Pro (required to share reports with others) is included in Microsoft 365 E3/E5 and available as an add-on for Business licences. Power BI Premium provides dedicated capacity for large-scale deployments.

What Power BI connects to

Power BI has native connectors for hundreds of data sources:

• Microsoft 365 — SharePoint lists, Excel files, Teams data, Dataverse
• Databases — SQL Server, Azure SQL, MySQL, PostgreSQL
• Cloud services — Azure, Salesforce, Google Analytics, Dynamics 365
• Finance and accounting — Xero, MYOB, QuickBooks
• Custom sources — REST APIs, OData feeds, web scraping

The difference between a report and a dashboard

In Power BI, a report is a multi-page document with detailed visualisations — charts, tables, maps — that users can interact with to explore data. A dashboard is a single-page summary of the most important metrics, typically pinned from one or more reports.

Most organisations benefit from both: detailed reports for analysts who need to explore data, and a dashboard for executives and managers who need a quick view of key metrics.

What makes a dashboard actually useful

The most common failure mode for Power BI projects is building dashboards that look impressive but don't get used. This usually happens when the dashboard is built around available data rather than the questions decision-makers actually need to answer.

The right starting point is working backwards from the decisions: what does the business need to decide, and what data would make those decisions easier? A dashboard that answers three important questions clearly is more valuable than one that displays twenty metrics nobody acts on.

Data modelling and Power Query

Power BI's real power is in its data transformation and modelling capabilities. Power Query (the ETL layer) can clean, reshape, and combine data from multiple sources before it reaches the visualisation layer. The data model defines relationships between tables and calculated measures.

Getting the data model right is the most important — and most underestimated — part of a Power BI project. A well-designed model makes reports fast and flexible. A poorly designed model makes every new report a struggle.

Getting started

The best starting point is a single, well-defined reporting need — financial performance, project status, or operational metrics — with clean, accessible data. Build one report that answers real questions, get it used, and expand from there.

I.T.S Canberra builds Power BI dashboards and data models for Canberra businesses, connecting your existing data sources — accounting software, project management tools, SharePoint lists — into reporting that supports better decisions.