Well, we have a new generation of cloud based business intelligence tools available.  You have had option from Qlik and Tableau.  Microsoft is throwing it’s hate into the game with Power BI.  I signed up to use Microsoft’s Power BI this morning.  They have a pretty slick signup process that make it so easy, I think your Mom and Dad could do this.

The default report that comes up is very nice.  There is some simple help to get you started.  I found the dashboard components very rich in presentation.  But that is never enough, how about loading your own data and building your own dashboards?

Power BI supports a lot of different data sources.  You can do all kinds of drag and drop building of reports in your browser. But I think I’m going to use the Power BI Designer Windows app on the desktop and then publish the file up and see what happens.

I’m going to pull some data from my Plus One social analytics harvester and bring it in and see what I can do.  Stay tuned for Part 2.

Enjoy, Patrick