Microsoft Power BI Demo

Yesterday attended the Microsoft Power BI introductory demo.  The presentation given was a bit shaky, but I did like what I saw in the simplicity of the approach for setting up data visualizations on easy to use dashboards.  This is NOT an advanced data viz tool, but looks to be an easy way to create basic dashboards.  Sign up here.    This is still an alpha version that may be changing.  

Several examples are shown of how to create dashboards.  Easy to do.  Most intriguing was the ability to use a natural language search or query about the data you are connected to,  then you can pin the query results to a dashboard.  Might be a good way to have a non-analyst iteratively create a dashboard.

Easy to connect to Excel and many other database forms.  Easy to selectively share resulting dashboards. They have also connected to a number of outside data resources.   A separate package called Power BI Designer lets you create more advanced visuals.  A Mobile App for the iPad has been created to display mobile dashboards.  (other mobile devices to come)  That App has alerting capabilities to update your data and alert you to specified data changes via notifications.  An advanced API exists as well.  Currently PowerBI is entirely free for use.  They say there will always be a free tier for experimentation, it appears a 1 GB restriction will be used.

Once this is complete it appears it will be competitive for basic visualization.

Pointer to the presentation.  Don't know how long this will be available.

Warning:  you need now to create an access ID based on an email address that is corporate or .edu, not  Gmail or other 'non business' email addresses.   I note here that other entry points to MS services do not have this restriction.  Poor, inconsistent restriction.