Power BI Online Service and AI - Half Day

Course Description

Build on your Power BI Desktop skills and learn how to make your reports available to colleagues through the Power BI online service. This practical half-day course is designed for participants who have completed Power BI Desktop Essentials or have equivalent experience creating reports and visualisations. Using a prepared report and guided exercises, you will explore workspaces, publish and interact with reports, create a dashboard and understand the essentials of sharing content with the right people. You will also be introduced to Microsoft Copilot and other AI-assisted analysis features, including asking questions about data, summarising reports and checking the reliability of generated insights. The emphasis is on everyday reporting tasks and confident use of the online service. Most activities take place in a web browser at app.powerbi.com, with Power BI Desktop used for the publishing exercise. Participants may use a suitable existing account; a demonstration account will be provided where needed. Copilot and some sharing features depend on licences, capacity, permissions and administrator settings. AI activities will use the available training environment, with trainer demonstrations where participant access is unavailable.
Half Day (3.5 hours)
Contact us for pricing
 

Prerequisites

Participants should have completed Power BI Desktop Essentials or have equivalent practical experience. You should be able to open and navigate a Power BI Desktop report, connect to a simple dataset, create basic visualisations and use filters and slicers. No previous experience of the Power BI online service or AI tools is required.

A computer with a current web browser and internet access is required. Power BI Desktop should be installed on a Windows computer for the publishing exercise; participants without Desktop can use a prepared published report for the online activities. Use a suitable work or school Power BI account where available, or the demonstration account provided for training. Please check organisational access restrictions before the course.

Sharing and editing require appropriate licences and permissions. Hands-on Copilot access additionally requires supported paid Microsoft Fabric or Power BI Premium capacity and relevant administrator settings; a Pro or Premium Per User licence alone is insufficient. Where these features are unavailable to participants, the trainer will demonstrate them.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:
Explain how Power BI Desktop and the online service work together, and distinguish reports, dashboards, workspaces and semantic models.
Publish an existing Power BI Desktop report to an authorised workspace, or locate and work with a prepared published report.
Interact with an online report using filters, slicers and bookmarks, and make simple edits where permissions allow.
Create a dashboard and pin appropriate report visualisations to it.
Choose an appropriate way to share reports and dashboards, recognising the implications of permissions and licensing.
Set up a report subscription and identify suitable dashboard alert options where supported.
Describe how Copilot can help answer data questions and summarise reports, and assess its output against the underlying report and data.

Introduction to Power BI Online Service

Understanding Power BI Desktop and the Power BI online service
Getting started at app.powerbi.com
Navigating the Power BI online interface
Understanding workspaces, reports, dashboards and semantic models
Understanding Power BI licensing and AI feature availability

Publishing and Managing Reports Online

Publishing reports from Power BI Desktop
Viewing and interacting with published reports
Making simple report edits in the online service, subject to permissions
Understanding web and phone layouts
Managing and organising reports in workspaces

Creating Dashboards and Sharing Reports

Creating a dashboard from published reports
Pinning visualisations to dashboards
Using filters, slicers and bookmarks in reports
Sharing reports and dashboards with authorised users
Understanding access permissions and sharing licence requirements
Creating subscriptions and introducing dashboard data alerts where supported

Introduction to AI in Power BI

Understanding AI capabilities in Power BI
Introduction to Microsoft Copilot in Power BI
Asking questions about data using natural language with Copilot
Using AI to summarise reports and identify insights
Introduction to AI-powered visualisations
Understanding AI access requirements and limitations
Checking AI-generated results against report filters, measures and source data
Using AI responsibly with organisational data
Copilot activities are subject to training-environment availability, with trainer demonstrations where required

Practical Exercises

Exercise 1 - Publishing a Power BI Desktop report to the online service, or exploring a prepared published report
Exercise 2 - Creating and sharing an interactive dashboard within the training environment
Exercise 3 - Using AI to explore data and generate insights, then reviewing the results (guided exercise or trainer demonstration, depending on access)
Power BIPower BI OnlinePower BI ServicePower BI dashboardsMicrosoft CopilotAI in Power BIPower BI sharing