Glossary
Power BI
Microsoft's business analytics platform for reports, dashboards, and semantic models.
Power BI is Microsoft's business analytics platform. Authors build reports and semantic models in Power BI Desktop (Windows), publish them to the Power BI Service (app.powerbi.com), and share them with colleagues through the browser, Teams, or mobile apps. Hundreds of data connectors feed the in-memory engine; DirectQuery and Direct Lake allow live queries against large external sources. Power BI Pro is required to share content; Premium Per User and Microsoft Fabric capacities unlock larger models, paginated reports, and the broader Fabric data platform. Power BI is the default analytics layer for Microsoft 365 customers.