Power BI Q&A

1. Q: Can Power BI read SSAS cube?
   A: Yes, both tabular (link) and multidimensional (link)
2. Q: Can Power BI display SSRS reports?
   A: Yes but on-premise only, by installing Power BI Report Server (link)
   SSRS (paginated) reports are not available in the Power BI Cloud/Service, but we can pin SSRS (paginated) reports on Power BI Dashboards (link)
3. Q: Can I use natural language to query the data in Power BI, e.g. “What were the total sales last year?”
   A: Yes, only in the cloud version, only in English language. On a Power BI dashboard, we can type our question in the “Ask a question about your data” box. Power BI Q&A uses the names of the tables, columns, and calculated fields (link).
4. Q: What is the difference between a Power BI Dashboard and a Power BI Report?
   A: Dashboard is 1 page, whereas Report is multiple pages. Dashboard is only available in the cloud/service version, whereas reports are available on both cloud and on-prem/desktop version. You can subscribe to a report, but not to a dashboard (link).
5. Q: What is the difference between the “free” version and the “pay” version of Power BI?
   A: On the “free” version we can’t publish and consume app, can’t share dashboard or subscribe to dashboard (link).
6. Q: Can we view Power BI reports on Android, or just iPads?
   A: We can view Power BI reports on iPad and iPhone (link) as well as on Android tablets and phones (link) and Windows 10 devices (link)
7. Q: How can Power BI in the cloud connect securely to an SQL Server on-prem?
   A: By installing a data gateway on-prem, which protects the on-prem SQL Server.
8. Q: What’s the best way for inputing simple data into Power BI report?
   A: Using embedded PowerApps (link)
9. Q: Can I run R scripts in Power BI?
   A: Yes, Get Data > More, Other > R script. You can then use the output (data frame) in the Power BI visualisation (link).
10. Q: How much is Power BI?
    A: Power BI Desktop is free. Power BI Pro is $9.99/month per user. Power BI Premium is $5000 to $6000/month for 1 to 1000 users, if only 100 users are authoring reports (link), i.e. the rest are just consuming the reports/dashboards.