Please note that if you are a regular user and your email address is not

associated with an Office 365 subscription, you will be required to fill in your
details so a new account will be created for you. The form you have to fill out
will look like the one below. Fill in the required details and click “Continue”
at the bottom of the page to sign up.
SUBSCRIBING TO POWER BI PRO
(PAID)

Why should you sign up for Power BI Pro when there is a free version of the
service? Because the Pro version gives you access to the following features
which are either limited or not available in the free version.

1. The data capacity limit for Power BI Pro is 10 GB as opposed to

the 1 GB limit for the free version. The Global limit for the entire
Power BI Pro tenant of an organization is 10 GB multiplied by the
number of user licenses purchased. So, if you purchased 5 user
licenses for example, the data limit for your tenant will be 10 GB
multiplied by 5 which is 50 GB. As a general rule, if you’re going
to have data greater than 1 GB on the Power BI Service portal, you
should subscribe for the Pro version.

2. The number of times you can refresh your data per day is up to eight
times, as opposed to once in the free version. This means that if you
have reports or dashboards that use data from your on premises
data sources, you can refresh your data up to eight times a day with
the Pro version and only once daily with the free version.
3. For those of you who will like to use the REST API to push data
from your applications into a Power BI dataset, you can push up to
 one million rows per hour with the Pro version as opposed to ten

thousand rows per hour in the free version.

4. Power BI supports the ability to connect to live data sources

without loading the data first into the Power BI service. For
example, you can use a gateway to connect directly to an on
premises SQL Server Analysis Services Server rather than

preloading the data into Power BI first. This functionality is only

available in the Pro version and you will need to purchase Pro
licenses to use it.
5. The ability to access on premises data from the Power BI service
using the Power BI Gateway is only available in the Pro version.
6. The ability to collaborate with your team using the Office 365
Groups in Power BI is only available in the Pro version.
7. Organizational content packs can only be created, published and
viewed using the Pro version of Power BI.

8. Managing Access Control and sharing through Active Directory

Groups is only available in the Pro version.
9. Using Shared Data Queries through the Data Catalogue is only
available in the Pro version.

If your organizational requirements include features available only in the Pro

version and you will want to use it, you can purchase it here for $9.99 per user
per month.

You should note that every user consuming Power BI Pro content requires a
Power BI Pro license, and your Power BI tenant can have a mix of free and
Pro licenses if you want to have that. Also, the price is listed per user per
month, but an annual commitment is required.

To subscribe to the Power BI Pro service, follow the steps below.

1. Browse to the Power BI pricing page here

2. Click on “Purchase”

3. Click “Yes” if your organization already uses Office 365 or “No or

unsure” if your organization does not.
4. If you clicked “Yes” in step 3, the page below comes up. Click
“Yes” if you are the administrator of your Office 365 tenant or “No”
if you aren’t.

5. If you clicked “Yes” in step 4, the page below comes up. Fill in the
required details and click “Continue”.
 6. If you will like to add the Power BI Pro subscription to your
existing Office 365 tenant, click “Sign in” at the top of the page to
do so. If not, just fill in the details and proceed to your Power BI
Pro account.

Please note that you will be required to fill in your debit or credit card details
to make the purchase.
INSTALLING POWER BI MOBILE
To install the Power BI app on your mobile device, follow the steps below.

1. Browse to the Power BI mobile page here.

2. Enter your email address and click “Get a link”.

3. You will get a success message that looks like this.

4. Open the email sent to you on your mobile device and click on the
appropriate store for your device in the list of app stores contained
in the email. You will be redirected to the appropriate store from
where you can download the Power BI app.
 CHAPTER TWO

CONNECTING TO DATA SOURCES

Every organization has data which is resident in different sources. These
sources can include Excel files, databases such as SQL Server and Oracle,
online locations such as Salesforce and Dynamics, as well as social media

sites like Facebook and Twitter.

To obtain the data from these different sources so that you can analyze and
produce useful insights from them, you have to connect your Power BI
application to these different sources.

Whether you’re making use of the Power BI Desktop application or the Power
BI online service, you can have a similar experience with connecting to your
data sources, and this section will show you exactly how to do that.
GETTING DATA FROM EXCEL FILES
This section shows how to connect to an Excel file in order to get data into
Power BI. Since this can be done using both the Power BI Desktop application
and the Power BI service, this section will show you how to use both.

USING POWER BI DESKTOP

To get data from an Excel file using the Power BI Desktop application, follow
the steps below.

1. Launch Power BI Desktop and click “Get Data”. You can also
access the “Get Data” icon from the ribbon on top the page.
2. Select “Excel” and click “Connect”.

3. Browse to the location of the Excel file and double click it or click
on it and select “Open”
4. Select the sheet containing the data you want and click “Load”. You
can select multiple sheets by checking the check box beside the
sheet. Once a sheet is selected, a preview of the data contained in
that sheet is generated on the right.

5. The loaded information appears to the right of the Power BI

 Desktop app

6. Click on the drop down arrow beside each sheet to view the data
columns inside them. Check the check box beside each column you
want to see in your report (from the ‘Fields’ section) and select the
visualization you want your data represented with, from the
‘Visualizations’ section.
That’s it. You have successfully connected to an Excel file and loaded the data
into Power BI, using the Power BI Desktop application.

USING THE POWER BI ONLINE SERVICE

To connect to an Excel file from the Power BI Service, follow the steps below.

1. Login to the Power BI Service here and click “Login”. Enter your
username and password and click Enter.

2. Click “Get” in the “Files” sub section of the “Import or Connect to

Data” section.
3. Choose where the Excel file is located. In my case, I selected
“Local File” because the file is stored in my computer.

4. Select the required Excel file either by double clicking on it or

clicking once and clicking “Open”.
5. Choose whether to import the data into Power BI or upload the
Excel file into the service. In my case, I selected the import option.
6. That’s it. Your dataset is ready.

7. You can choose to view the dataset by clicking “View dataset” or

you can start asking questions about your data right away. In my
case, I typed the question “What is the population by country?” The
image below came up but it didn’t look exactly like I wanted. I
went ahead to choose the fields I wanted to see from the results and
picked a visualization type. (Both options are available on the
 right). The second picture below was the final result.

You’re all done. You have successfully connected to an Excel file using the
Power BI Service.
GETTING DATA FROM A SQL SERVER

DATABASE
USING POWER BI DESKTOP
To get data from a SQL Server database using Power BI Desktop, follow the
steps below.

1. Launch the Power BI Desktop application and select “Get Data”.

2. Select “SQL Server Database” from the list and click “Connect”.
3. Input the SQL Server instance you want to connect to and
optionally, the database name. Click “Ok” once done.
4. Input the credentials to connect to the database and click “Connect”.

5. Once a connection is established, a preview of the tables in the

database is displayed in Power BI. Select the tables that contain
data needed for your report and click “Load”. The data is loaded
into Power BI and you can begin to create your reports from it.
GETTING DATA FROM AN AZURE SQL DATABASE
1. Launch the Power BI Desktop application and click “Get Data”.
Select “Microsoft Azure SQL Database” from the list and click
“Connect”.
2. Input the SQL Server connection details and click “OK”.
 3. Select the tables you need data from and load them into the
application. The data can then be used to create reports.

GETTING DATA FROM AN ORACLE DATABASE

1. From the Power BI Desktop application, click “Get Data”. Select
“Oracle Database” from the list and click “Connect”.
2. Enter the name of the server to connect to and click “Ok”.
3. Input the appropriate credentials and click “Connect”.
USING THE POWER BI ONLINE
SERVICE
To get data from a database using the Power BI online service, follow the steps
below.

1. Login to the Power BI online service with your username and

password.
2. From the “Get Data” screen, click on “Get” in the “Databases”
subsection of the “Import or Connect to Data” section.

3. You can choose either “Azure SQL Database”, “Azure SQL Data
Warehouse”, “SQL Server Analysis Services” (for on-premises
SQL server) or “Spark on Azure HDInsight”.

Please note that when connecting to the SQL Server Analysis Server instance
on-premises, you will require a Power BI Gateway.

4. Select which ever option is appropriate in your case and click

“Connect”.
INSTALLING THE POWER BI
GATEWAY
If you need to install the Power BI Gateway on your on-premises server,
follow the steps below. This gateway can be installed on the SQL server itself,
or a different server that can connect to the SQL server.

1. Login to the Power BI online service with your username and

password.
2. Click on the download icon and select “Power BI Gateways”.

3. Choose the gateway that best suits your needs (either ‘personal’ or
‘for enterprise use’) by clicking “Download” under the appropriate
option.
4. Launch the installer from the downloaded package.

5. Follow the wizard to complete the installation.