PowerBI BI

The Power of Subscriptions in Power BI

Divyesh Poojara
By Divyesh Poojara
Aug 29, 2024
The Power of Subscriptions in Power BI

The Power of Subscriptions in Power BI: Automating Data Insights Delivery. 

In today's data-driven world, staying updated with the latest insights is crucial for informed decision-making. Power BI, Microsoft's powerful data visualization tool, offers a feature that streamlines this process: Subscriptions. This feature allows users to automate the delivery of reports and dashboards directly to their inbox, ensuring that they never miss out on critical updates. In this blog, we'll explore the benefits of using subscriptions in Power BI, how to set them up, and some best practices to get the most out of this feature. 

 

Use of Subscriptions in Power BI: 

  1. Automation of Reporting:  
    Subscriptions in Power BI allow users to automate the delivery of reports and dashboards on a regular basis. Instead of manually logging into Power BI to check for updates, users can receive the latest data directly in their email. This automation saves time and ensures that important stakeholders are always informed. 
     

  1. Timely Insights:
    In fast-paced environments, timely insights are crucial. With subscriptions, you can schedule reports to be sent at specific times, ensuring that decision-makers have the most up-to-date information when they need it. For instance, a sales report can be scheduled to arrive first thing in the morning, giving the team a clear view of the previous day's performance. 
     

  1. Customization and Flexibility:  
    Power BI allows users to customize their subscriptions. You can choose to receive only specific pages of a report or a particular visual from a dashboard. This flexibility ensures that users get exactly what they need, without being overwhelmed by unnecessary information. 
     

  1. Easy Collaboration:  
    Subscriptions make it easier to share insights with a broader audience. Whether it's a daily sales report or a weekly performance dashboard, you can set up subscriptions for multiple recipients, ensuring that everyone is on the same page. 

 

Setting up a New Subscription in Power BI:
 
     Setting up a subscription in Power BI is straightforward. Here’s a step-by-step guide: 

  • Navigate to the Report or Dashboard:
    After that, open the report or dashboard you want to subscribe to. On the top menu, you’ll find an option labeled “Subscribe.” Click on it to open the subscription settings. 
     
     
     

  • Configure the Subscription: 

  • Title:
    Give your subscription a meaningful title so that it’s easily identifiable. 

  • Add Recipients:
    You can add multiple email addresses if you want to share the report with others. Ensure that recipients have access to the report in Power BI to view the details.  

  • Frequency:
    Choose how often you want to receive the report. Frequency has few options that you can select based on your requirements.

    • After data refresh (Once daily): It means that the report will be shared once the dataset has been refreshed, but if the dataset is scheduled for multiple times a day, the subscription will only send it once per day.

    • Hourly

    • Daily.

    • Weekly. 

    •  Monthly.

  • Time:

    •  Set a scheduled time for the subscription: 

    • On the hour, or at 15, 30, or 45-minutes past.

    • AM or PM.

    • The time zone. 

  • Page Selection:
    If subscribing to a report, you can select specific pages you want to include in the subscription. 

 

 

  • Save and Activate:

    • After configuring all settings, click “Save and Close.” Your subscription will now be active, and reports will be delivered as per the schedule.

    • After you save it, you can edit the subscription, turn it on or off, or delete the subscription. 

  •   Considerations and limitations:
    •  You can add up to 24 subscriptions per scorecard, each with unique recipients, times, and frequencies.
    • You can subscribe to scorecards if you have a Pro license or PPU license, or if the scorecard is in a workspace backed by Premium capacity.
    • You can subscribe to other team members if, in addition to the above, you have a Contributor, Member, or Admin role in that workspace.
    • If the scorecard is hosted in a Premium capacity:
      • You can subscribe to group aliases, whether they're in your domain or not.
      • You can subscribe to external users.
    • If the scorecard isn't hosted in a Premium capacity others must also have a Pro license.
    • You can add other email addresses in the same domain to the subscription.
    • You can't subscribe to a scorecard from within a Power BI org app. 
  •  Best Practices for Power BI Subscriptions: 
    To maximize the value of Power BI subscriptions, consider the following best practices:
    1. Keep the Audience in Mind:
      Ensure that the content of the subscription is relevant to the recipients. Tailor the reports to meet their specific needs and avoid overwhelming them with too much information.
    2. Regularly Review and Update Subscriptions:
      Business needs evolve, and so should your subscriptions. Regularly review the subscriptions to ensure they are still delivering the most relevant insights.
    3. Use Filters and Slicers Effectively:
      Power BI allows you to use filters and slicers to customize the data displayed in your reports. Make sure these are set appropriately in your subscriptions to deliver focused insights.
    4. Monitor Subscription Performance:
      Keep an eye on how the subscriptions are performing. Ensure that emails are being delivered on time and that the reports are generating the expected insights.
    5. Leverage Mobile-Friendly Reports:
      Since many users access their emails on mobile devices, ensure that the reports are mobile-friendly. Power BI offers responsive designs, so take advantage of this feature to improve accessibility.

 

  • Conclusion:
    Subscriptions in Power BI are a powerful tool for automating the delivery of insights, ensuring that decision-makers have timely and relevant data at their fingertips. By setting up and managing subscriptions effectively, you can enhance collaboration, improve decision-making, and keep your team aligned with the latest business trends. Whether you’re a business analyst, a data manager, or an executive, Power BI subscriptions can significantly streamline your reporting processes, allowing you to focus on making informed decisions based on the latest data.
TAGS trending Business-Intelligence-Development Trend PowerBI
Power BI Q&A: A Beginner’s Guide to Mastering Natural Language Queries
Microsoft-Business-Intelligence
Power BI Q&A: A Beginner’s Guide to Mastering Natural Language Queries
Divyesh Poojara
Aug 20, 2024

Welcome to the world of Power BI! If you're new to Power BI, you've probably heard about its powerful data visualization and analysis capabilities. Power BI Q&A, a natural language query tool that enables users to interact with their data using ordinary language, is a notable feature. In this beginner’s guide, we will walk you through the basics of Power BI Q&A and show you how to get started.  What is Power BI Q&A?  With Power BI Q&A, an easy-to-use feature, customers can ask straightforward questions in simple English regarding their data. Instead of manually creating complex queries or navigating through multiple dashboards, you can simply type or speak your questions and Power BI will generate visualizations based on your query. It's a significant change for users who want quick insights without requiring advanced technical skills.  Getting started with Power BI Q&A: 1. Setting up your data:   Before you can use Power BI Q&A, you need to have data in Power BI. Here's an overview of how to proceed:    Import your data: Load your data into Power BI from various sources such as Excel, SQL Server or online services.  Create dataset: Organize your data into datasets and and build data data models using appropriate relationships. Create a report: Create a basic report with some visualizations to make sure your data is structured and ready for Q&A.   2. Enabling Q&A in your report:  Once you've set up your report, follow these steps to enable it:   Open Power BI Desktop: Once your basic report is created, in Power BI Desktop, navigate to your Visualizations pane and search for the icon that looks like a speech bubble.     After adding this visual to your report, it will review your data and suggest some questions for you.  There are multiple ways to enable Q&A feature: From the Visualizations pane. (as shown above)  You can double click on the blank space of your Power BI page where you have added some visuals.  In the Insert tab, you have an option called “Buttons”, click the down arrow below that and you will be able to see the Q&A button, that will activate the same. Add a question and answer scene: Once you have Q&A visual on your screen, you can either create your own question by typing in the “Ask a question about your data” box or clicking on the pre-made questions below. The Q&A visual can also present more question options by selecting “Show all suggestions” at the bottom.  Configure Q&A: Click on the Q&A setting button for setup and training it to get best out of it. You may also need to provide some configuration to help Power BI better understand your data. 3. How to ask questions: Once Q&A is enabled you can start asking questions about your data. See how here:    View Results: Power BI will process your query and display the results in a separate visualization. If your question is clear, the system will generate specific and relevant charts or tables. 4. Improve your Q&A experience:  To get the most out of Power BI Q&A, consider these tips:  Use natural language: Power BI Q&A is designed to understand natural language, so ask your questions conversationally. You don’t have to be a technical person to ask questions, you can use very simple language that comes to your mind, and it will give you the desired output.   In the above example, you can clearly see that I have simply asked it a question in a very normal language and, asked it the visual in which I wanted the data to be represented, and Q&A immediately understood my question and gave the output accordingly.  Refine your query: If the initial results aren't what you expected, try rewriting your query or adding more contextual information. You can try with some different meaningful words so that it can have a better understanding of your question.  Train Q&A: You can train Q&A by providing questions and answers that you suggest, improving the system's understanding of your data. You can select the configuration (setting) button, and you will get a new window with multiple options.   In the above image you can see, you have a Teach Q&A option, in that you can train the Q&A by giving the input of any specific word to give it an understanding that the word refers to the specific column or any conditions, and once you select the desired column, you will be able see the output on the right side ”preview your result”, and if the output is correct you can save it. After saving it will always use the select column when you enter that word.    5. Customize Q&A for better results:  For more advanced users, Power BI allows customization to enhance Q&A functionality by:  Create Synonyms: Add synonyms used in your data to make the Q&A feature more flexible. To add synonymous, again go to the “Q&A setup” window, and you’ll find an option named synonymous.   In the listed dataset you can drop down the dataset you want to work with and give other meaningful names to the fields in that dataset.   Here you already have suggestions for each field present in the data set, you can directly select meaningful names from the suggestions, or you can enter other synonyms manually and you can use those names in the questions and the Q&A will refer to that same field. For example: Here in the above image, I have selected ”TotalAmt” column and given multiple names to it, and in the question if I say” sales” it will show me the values from ”TotalAmt” column. You can also turn off the extra fields that will not be in use.  Set Spelling Phonetically: This helps and provides correct details if your data contains names or words that users may misspell.   Review and refine: Continuously review how Q&A interprets the questions and refine the dataset or visualization to ensure accurate responses. After publishing the report to Power BI workspace, you can keep a track of the questions asked in the report by the end users and you can fix them if some user has asked or any fix is needed to the question, and you can also keep a track of questions frequently asked.  Suggest Questions: This helps to add a list of questions that are frequently asked by end users, that will be prompted when you open the Q&A.  Common Questions and Answers  Here are a few frequent questions you might ask using Power BI Q&A, along with the type of visualizations you might see:  Question: “What were the total sales last year?” Answer: Visualization: A bar chart or line graph showing sales trends over the year.  Question: “Which products had the highest revenue?”  Answer: Visualization: A pie chart or column chart displaying revenue distribution by product.  Question: “How many new customers were added this quarter?”  Answer: Visualization: A KPI card or a simple count displayed on a table.  Question: “Top 10 discounts given by order id”  Answer: Visualization: A matrix will be displayed with a list of discount column sorted in descending with order id.  Question: “Count of orders by year”   Answer: Visualization: A bar chart will be displayed with Years in Y-axis and count of order in X-axis.  Troubleshooting Tips  If Power BI Q&A isn't working as expected, consider these troubleshooting steps:  Check data quality: Make sure your data is clean and well-structured.  Update data model: Make sure your data model is up-to-date and properly configured.  Synonyms: Use the Synonyms feature to train your Q&A, give the fields multiple meaningful names that a normal user can use, and it will give you the accurate output.  Consult the documentation: Refer to Power BI's official documentation for detailed troubleshooting and guidance.    Conclusion  Power BI Q&A is a powerful tool that simplifies data analysis by allowing you to interact with your data using natural language. By following this beginner's guide, you should now have a basic understanding of how to set up and use Q&A in Power BI, the information we just discussed. As you gain more experience, you can explore advanced features and customization options to further enhance your data exploration capabilities.  Feel free to experiment with different queries and visualizations, and don't hesitate to seek additional resources or community support as you continue your journey with Power BI. If you need further training or specialized assistance with Power BI Q&A, contact us for professional support and services. Happy querying! 

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Divyesh Poojara

About the Author

Divyesh Poojara

I’m a Microsoft Business Intelligence Developer with experience in designing and implementing data-driven solutions. I specialize in leveraging tools like Power BI, SQL Server, SSRS, SSIS to turn complex data into actionable insights, driving business performance and strategic decision-making.

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