Power BI is Microsoft's enterprise-grade business intelligence platform that transforms raw data into interactive visualisations, dashboards, and reports. In 2026, Power BI is deeply integrated with Copilot, enabling natural language queries, AI-generated report summaries, and smart narrative generation.
| Component | Purpose | User |
|---|---|---|
| Power BI Desktop | Author reports locally with a rich drag-and-drop designer | Analysts, developers |
| Power BI Service | Cloud portal for publishing, sharing, and scheduling refresh | All users |
| Power BI Mobile | Consume reports on iOS and Android devices | Executives, field workers |
| Power BI Embedded | Embed interactive reports inside your own applications | Developers (ISVs) |
Copilot in Power BI allows users to create entire report pages from natural language prompts, generate DAX measures by describing what they need, and produce executive narrative summaries of data trends — all without writing a single formula. In early 2026, Microsoft introduced Power BI Agent Skills, allowing agents to execute dynamic DAX queries and Python-based UDFs (User Defined Functions) to answer complex ad-hoc analytics questions beyond static dashboard visuals.
Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) is the formula language for Power BI. Key concepts include:
Total Sales = SUM(Sales[Amount]))TOTALYTD, SAMEPERIODLASTYEAR for temporal analysisPower BI connects to 200+ data sources including SQL Server, Azure Synapse, SharePoint, Excel, Dataverse, REST APIs, and third-party services like Salesforce and Google Analytics.