Along with SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS), SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) and SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) is it part of the Microsoft suite of business intelligence / data tools. Power BI is part of the Office 365 suite of tools.
PowerBI is targeted toward the same audience that uses the rest of the Microsoft suite of business intelligence / data tools. Primarily, this will be business intelligence developers ... people whose full-time job it is to develop and publish business intelligence dashboards and reports. It should not be considered a "replacement" for Microsoft Access or Microsoft Excel.
PowerBI will be a significant technical investment for most people.
- You will need to invest in a PowerBI training course.
- Anything beyond very rudimentary data sets will require knowledge of data modeling, because you will need to define the relationships between tables.
- To make use of many PowerBI features, you'll need to understand how to write at least basic DAX.
- You will need to install ODAC drivers if you plan to connect to the University Data Warehouse (which runs on Oracle).
- You will need to install the correct PowerBI Desktop for the environment to which you want to deploy (there are multiple versions).
- If you are planning to connect to the University Data Warehouse you will need to know how to write SQL queries, as the tables are simply too large to import the entire table.
- The University Data Warehouse requires multi-factor authentication for HawkID authentication. Because of the way queries run in parallel in PowerBI, connecting with a HawkID can be challenging due to the number of simultaneous DUO prompts.
- You will likely need to secure a service account to make PowerBI queries work from your desktop, and you will absolutely need them if you want to implement automatic refresh of data.
If you're up for the technical challenge, more information is available about this service on the BISSC Power BI Site.
Support: UIHC: Log into the self service portal at https://service.uiowa.edu/ | All Other Users: Email PowerBI-Support@uiowa.edu
Power BI Training Resources from Microsoft.com
- Microsoft Power BI Guided Learning - Start your learning journey through Power BI with this sequenced collection of courses, and understand the extensive and powerful capabilities of Power BI.
Support
UIHC: Log into the self service portal at https://service.uiowa.edu/
All Other Users: Email PowerBI-Support@uiowa.edu
Current Status
Maintenance
Past 90 Days
Alert History
Power BI will be unavailable during this time, but afterwards, users may need to restart sessions. Mobile app users may need to update their app and sign in again.
To support upcoming security enhancements to Oracle systems, we will upgrade Oracle drivers on a variety of centrally hosted SQL Server services. During this maintenance window, services will become sporadically unavailable. Please pause scheduled processes that run against these systems during this time.
Systems impacted include:
SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) systems:
IOWASSISHOST1
IOWASSISHOST2
IOWASSISHOST3
IOWASSISHOST4
SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) systems:
IOWAREPORTS1
IOWAREPORTS2
IOWAREPORTSHOST3
IOWAREPORTS4
BISSCREPORTS1
IOWABIREPORTS1
Contact the ITS SQL Server Database Administration Team at ITS-SQL-Help@uiowa.edu if you have questions or concerns.
The Microsoft Power BI service will be down for scheduled maintenance.
Microsoft Power BI Contact Information
ITS Power BI Support – PowerBI-Support@uiowa.edu