Introduction

Microsoft Power BI is a complete reporting solution that offers data preparation, data visualization,
distribution, and management through development tools and an online platform.

Power BI can scale from simple reports using a single data source to reports requiring complex data
modeling and consistent themes. Use Power BI to create visually stunning, interactive reports to serve as
the analytics and decision engine behind group projects, divisions, or entire organizations.

Power BI is an essential tool to data analysts and their organization; however, all data professionals
benefit from understanding how Power BI works to explore and present data insights within
organizations.

Use Power BI
In order to create reports with Power BI, you must first understand the tools necessary. There are three
primary components to Power BI:

 Power BI Desktop (desktop application)

 Power BI service (online platform)

 Power BI Mobile (cross-platform mobile app)

Power BI Desktop is the development tool available to data analysts and other report creators. While the
Power BI service allows you to organize, manage, and distribute your reports and other Power BI items.
Power BI Desktop is available to download for free either through the Windows store or directly online.
You can access the Power BI service at app.powerbi.com with a school or work account. If your
organization doesn't already use Power BI, you can still explore the service by getting a free trial or
signing up for a free Microsoft 365 Developer account.

Power BI Mobile allows consumers to view reports in a mobile-optimized format. You can create these
optimized report views in Power BI Desktop.

Explore the flow of Power BI

There's a common flow when creating reports with Power BI. First, you start with Power BI Desktop to
connect to data and create the report. Then you publish the report to the Power BI service and distribute
to consumers.

The flow of Power BI is:

1. Connect to data with Power BI Desktop.

2. Transform and model data with Power BI Desktop.

3. Create visualizations and reports with Power BI Desktop.

4. Publish report to Power BI service.

5. Distribute and manage reports in the Power BI service.

The Power BI service also allows you to create high-level dashboards that drill down to reports, and apps
to easily group related reports to users in a simple format.

Building blocks of Power BI

The building blocks of Power BI are semantic models and visualizations. Create a semantic model and
then use visuals to build a report. Let's explore these items in more detail and how they relate to the
flow of Power BI.

Create a semantic model

A semantic model consists of all connected data, transformations, relationships, and calculations. To
follow the flow of Power BI, you first connect to data, transform data, and create relationships and
calculations to create a semantic model.

First, connect to as many data sources you need. Then clean and transform the data to your needs. Add
relationships between tables and calculations to extend the semantic model. After all of that, now you
can create a report.

Create visualizations in a report

In Power BI Desktop, when you create a visualization (also called visual), you add it to the canvas for a
report page. Choose your visualizations to build pages in your report. It's ideal to keep each page simple
with related data, so consumers can easily see the insights.
Power BI is a low-code solution, which means that you can "drag and drop" data field directly onto the
canvas. Power BI will choose a visual for your data field. You can easily change between visuals for the
same fields, and add or remove data fields to the visual.

One of the most valuable features of Power BI reports is the interactivity between visuals. Consumers
can select different data points in the visual and see how that affects the other visuals. Depending on
your design, they can also drill through from one visual to more detail or filter based on different fields in
the report.

Once you're satisfied with your report, you publish it to the Power BI service.

Create a dashboard

In the Power BI service, you can also create dashboards after you've published a report. Dashboards
consist of a single page made up of tiles. Add tiles to a dashboard by pinning a visual in a report to the
dashboard. Tiles aren't interactive like visuals, so when a user interacts with the tile, they go to the
underlying report for more information.

Dashboards are an excellent way to provide high-level information to consumers. Similar to a dashboard
in a vehicle, include the most important information in a dashboard. Then consumers can go to the
report for more details.
To recap, the building blocks of Power BI are semantic models and visuals. Using Power BI Desktop, you
create the semantic model and use visuals to create reports.

In the Power BI service, you can distribute content to your consumers and use reports to create
dashboards
Tour and use the Power BI service
Now that you understand how to create a report, let's explore the Power BI service. The Power BI service
provides a simple and interactive user experience to take your data analytics to the next level.

Organize items with workspaces

Workspaces are the foundation of the Power BI service. When publishing any report, you must choose a
workspace. By default, every user has access to My workspace, which is ideal only for testing. When you
want to share content with others, always create and use a shared workspace.

Explore sample reports

If you haven't created a report yet, Power BI offers several sample reports for you to explore. These
reports load to My workspace so you can explore privately. You can access sample reports in the Learn
section of the navigation pane.
Distribute content

In a workspace, you can create an app, which provides consumers a simplified interface to access reports
and dashboards. In the app configuration, you set up the app, select the content to include (limited to
the current workspace), and choose your audience.

Once you create an app, you must update the app after each change to items in the workspace. The
requirement to update the app allows you to control what version of the content is visible to your
audience.
Apps are the ideal sharing solution within any organization. While you can grant access to the
workspace, workspace permissions may grant users access to more content than desired. Sharing
individual items also presents a problem if you make changes you don't want consumers to see yet.
Explore template apps

Now that you understand what an app is, let's look at template apps. Template apps allow you to find an
existing app that suits your needs and then you connect your data. These apps can be a great way to
quickly share insights with minimal effort.

Tip

To access template apps, select the Apps icon from the left navigation pane > Get apps > Template apps.

In the following screenshot, we've installed the GitHub template app and have expanded the report. We
can see different report pages, including Top 100 Contributors and Pull Requests. If your organization is
using GitHub, using this template app can easily support your needs without starting from the beginning.
Refresh a semantic model

In order to support your ever-changing data, you can configure scheduled refreshes of your semantic
models in the Power BI service. On-demand refreshes are also available.
Tip

For more information about all refresh schedules, see the Refresh data documentation.
Intermediate

Overview of Power BI Desktop

Power BI Desktop is a free application for PCs that lets you gather, transform, and visualize your data. In
this module, you'll learn how to find and collect data from different sources and how to clean or
transform it. You'll also learn tricks to make data-gathering easier.

Power BI Desktop and the Power BI Service work together. You can create your reports and dashboards
in Power BI Desktop, and then publish them to the Power BI Service for others to consume.

The following are the tasks that you will complete in this module:

Video: Introduction to Power BI Desktop

To perform the exercises in this module, you’ll need to have Power BI desktop installed and have a Power
BI Service account set up.

Download Power BI Desktop

You can download Power BI Desktop from the web or as an app from the Microsoft Store on the
Windows tab.

Download Strategy Link Notes

Windows Store App Windows Store Will automatically stay updated

Download from web Download .msi Must manually update periodically

Sign in to Power BI service

Before you can sign in to Power BI, you'll need an account. To get a free trial, go to app.powerbi.com and
sign up with your email address.
For detailed steps on setting up an account, see Sign in to Power BI service.

Download sample data

To follow along with the examples in the videos and on the pages, download the sample Excel workbook
here and import into Power BI Desktop (Get Data > Excel).

Explore Power BI Desktop

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The idea of building and sharing reports is an abstract concept. It will make more sense if you explore
Power BI Desktop hands-on. The first step is to launch and explore the user interface (UI).

In this unit, you will:

 Launch the Power BI Desktop.

 Explore the UI.

Note

To follow along with the examples in this module, download the sample Excel workbook here and import
into Power BI Desktop (Get Data > Excel) if you haven't already.

Launch Power BI Desktop

When you launch Power BI Desktop, the Getting Started dialog box will appear, which provides useful
links to forums, blogs, and introductory videos. Close this dialog box for now, but keep the Show this
screen on startup option selected so that you can explore it later.

Explore the report building environment

In Power BI Desktop, you'll begin to build reports in the Report view. You'll be working in five main areas:

1. Ribbon - Displays common tasks that are associated with reports and visualizations.

2. Report view, or canvas - Where visualizations are created and arranged. You can switch between
Report, Data, and Model views by selecting the icons in the left column.

3. Pages tab - Located along the bottom of the page, this area is where you would select or add a
report page.

4. Visualizations pane - Where you can change visualizations, customize colors or axes, apply
filters, drag fields, and more.

5. Fields pane - Where query elements and filters can be dragged onto the Report view or dragged
to the Filters area of the Visualizations pane.

Tip

You can collapse the Visualizations and Fields panes to provide more space in the Report view by
selecting the small arrow, as shown in the following screenshot.
Create a visual

To create a visual, drag a field from the Fields list onto the Report view.
For example, Power BI Desktop automatically created a map-based visualization because it recognized
that the Country field contained geolocation data.

Publish a report

After creating a report with a few visuals, you're ready to publish to the Power BI service. On the Home
ribbon on the Power BI Desktop, select Publish.

You’ll be prompted to sign in to Power BI. When you've signed in and the publish process is complete,
the following dialog box will appear. You can select the link below Success!, which will take you to the
Power BI service, where you can see the report that you published.

Pin a visual to a dashboard

When you view a published report in the Power BI service, you can choose the Pin icon to pin that visual
to a dashboard.
You can choose whether to pin the visual to an existing dashboard or to create a new dashboard.

For more information, see Report View in Power BI Desktop.

Connect to data sources

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Power BI Desktop connects to many types of data sources, including local databases, worksheets, and
data on cloud services. Sometimes when you gather data, it's not quite as structured, or clean, as you
want it to be. To structure data, you can transform it, meaning that you can split and rename columns,
change data types, and create relationships between columns.

In this unit, you will:

 Connect to data.

 Import data into Power BI Desktop.

You can connect Power BI Desktop to many types of data sources, including on-premises databases,
Microsoft Excel workbooks, and cloud services. Currently, there are about 60 Power BI-specific
connectors to cloud services such as GitHub and Marketo. You can also connect to generic sources
through XML, CSV, text, and ODBC. Power BI will even extract tabular data directly from a website URL.

Connect to data

When you start Power BI Desktop, you can choose Get Data from the ribbon on the Home tab.

In Power BI Desktop, several types of data sources are available. Select a source to establish a
connection. Depending on your selection, you'll be asked to find the source on your computer or
network. You might be prompted to sign in to a service to authenticate your request.
Choose data to import

After connecting, the first window that you'll see is the Navigator. The Navigator window displays the
tables or entities of your data source, and selecting a table or entity gives you a preview of its contents.
You can then import your selected tables or entities immediately by selecting Load, or you can select
Transform Data to transform and clean your data before importing.
After you've selected the tables that you'd like to bring into Power BI Desktop, select the Load button.
You might want to make changes to those tables before you load them. For example, if you only want a
subset of customers or a specific country or region, select the Transform Data button and filter data
before loading.

No matter what type of data you need, you're likely to find a way to import it into Power BI Desktop.

Get data from Excel

Likely, you've used Microsoft Excel to create or view reports or to build pie charts or other visuals.
Getting your Excel data into Power BI is a straightforward process.
In this unit, you will bring Excel workbooks into Power BI.

This unit explains how you can import an Excel workbook file that contains a simple table from a local
drive into Power BI. You'll then learn how to begin exploring that table's data in Power BI by creating a
report.

Note

Up until now, we've been importing data through Power BI Desktop. This unit page is done from the
Power BI service.

Make sure that each column has a good name in Excel; it will make it easier for you to find the data that
you want when creating your reports in Power BI.

Import from a local drive

Wherever you keep your files, Power BI makes importing them simple. In Power BI, you can go Get Data
> Files > Local File to select the Excel file that you want.

After you click Local file, you have two options. You can import Excel data into Power BI or you can
upload your Excel file to Power BI.
Import will connect to the data in your workbook so you can create Power BI reports and dashboards.
Upload will bring your Excel file into Power BI so you can view and interact with it as you would in Excel
Online

After the file has been imported into Power BI, you can begin creating reports.

Your files don't have to be on a local drive. If you save your files on OneDrive or SharePoint Team Site,
that's even better.

Create reports

After your workbook's data has been imported, a dataset is created in Power BI and it will appear under
Datasets.
Now, you can begin exploring your data by creating reports and dashboards. Select the (...) icon next to
the dataset and then select Create Report. A new blank report canvas appears. On the right-hand side,
under Fields, are your tables and columns. Select the fields for which you want to create a new
visualization on the canvas.
You can change the type of visualization and apply filters and other properties under Visualizations.

If you use any of Excel's advanced BI features like Power Query, Power Pivot, or Power View, you can
import that data into Power BI, too.

For more information, see Get data from Excel workbook files.

Transform data to include in a report

Sometimes, your data might contain extra data or have data in the wrong format. Power BI Desktop
includes the Power Query Editor tool, which can help you shape and transform data so that it's ready for
your models and visualizations.

In this unit, you will transform data with Power Query Editor.
Launch Power Query Editor

To begin, select Transform data from the Navigator window to launch Power Query Editor. You can also
launch Power Query Editor directly from Power BI Desktop by using the Transform data button on the
Home ribbon.

After loading your data into Power Query Editor, you'll see the following screen.
 1. In the ribbon, the active buttons enable you to interact with the data in the query.

2. On the left pane, queries (one for each table, or entity) are listed and available for selecting,
viewing, and shaping.

3. On the center pane, data from the selected query is displayed and available for shaping.

4. The Query Settings window lists the query’s properties and applied steps.

Transform data

On the center pane, right-clicking a column displays the available transformations. Examples of the
available transformations include removing a column from the table, duplicating the column under a
new name, or replacing values. From this menu, you can also split text columns into multiples by
common delimiters.
The Power Query Editor ribbon contains additional tools that can help you change the data type of
columns, add scientific notation, or extract elements from dates, such as day of the week.

Tip

If you make a mistake, you can undo any step from the Applied Steps list.

As you apply transformations, each step appears in the Applied Steps list on the Query Settings pane.
You can use this list to undo or review specific changes, or even change the name of a step. To save your
transformations, select Close & Apply on the Home tab.
After you select Close & Apply, Power Query Editor applies the query changes and applies them to
Power BI Desktop.

For more information, see Quickstart: Using Power Query in Power BI Desktop.

Combine data from multiple sources

With Power BI Desktop, you can use the Power Query Editor tool to combine data from multiple sources
into a single report.

In this unit, you will combine data from different sources by using Query Editor.
Add more data sources

To add more sources to an existing report, from the Home ribbon, select Transform data and then select
New Source. You can use many potential data sources in Power BI Desktop, including folders. By
connecting to a folder, you can import data from multiple Excel or CSV files at once.

Power Query Editor allows you to apply filters to your data. For example, selecting the drop-down arrow
next to a column opens a checklist of text filters. Using a filter allows you to remove values from your
model before the data is loaded into Power BI.
Important
Filtering in the Power Query Editor changes which data is loaded into Power BI. Later, when you apply
filters in the Data View or Report View, those filters only apply to what you see in visuals but do not
change the underlying dataset.

Merge and append queries

You can also merge and append queries. In other words, Power BI pulls data that you select from
multiple tables or various files into a single table. Use the Append Queries tool to add the data from a
new table to an existing query. Power BI Desktop attempts to match the columns in your queries, which
you can then adjust as necessary in Power Query Editor.

Write customized queries

You can use the Add Custom Column tool to write new customized query expressions by using the
powerful M language.
For more information, see Tutorial: Shape and combine data in Power BI Desktop.

Clean data to include in a report

While Power BI can import your data from almost any source, its visualization and modeling tools work
best with columnar data. Sometimes, your data won't be formatted in simple columns, which is often the
case with Excel spreadsheets.

In this unit you will learn how to clean columnar data with Power Query Editor just like the example in
the following video.

This page is purely informational, the Excel file seen below is not provided.

Video:
A table layout that looks good to the human eye might not be optimal for automated queries. For
example, the following spreadsheet has headers that span multiple columns.

Clean data

Fortunately, Power Query Editor has tools to help you quickly transform multi-column tables into
datasets that you can use.

Transpose data

By using Transpose in Power Query Editor, you can swap rows into columns to better format the data.
Format data

You might need to format data so that Power BI can properly categorize and identify that data. With
some transformations, you'll cleanse data into a dataset that you can use in Power BI. Examples of
powerful transformations include promoting rows into headers, using Fill to replace null values, and
Unpivot Columns.

With Power BI, you can experiment with transformations and determine which will transform your data
into the most usable columnar format. Remember, the Applied Steps section of Power Query Editor
records all your actions. If a transformation doesn't work the way that you intended, select the X next to
the step, and then undo it.

After you've cleaned your data into a usable format, you can begin to create powerful visuals in Power
BI.
For more information, see Tutorial: Combine sales data from Excel and an OData feed.
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2. Training

3. Browse

4. Get started with Microsoft data analytics

5. Discover data analysis

   

Introduction

Completed 100 XP

 5 minutes

As a data analyst, you are on a journey. Think about all the data that is being generated each day and
that is available in an organization, from transactional data in a traditional database, telemetry data from
services that you use, to signals that you get from different areas like social media.

For example, today's retail businesses collect and store massive amounts of data that track the items you
browsed and purchased, the pages you've visited on their site, the aisles you purchase products from,
your spending habits, and much more.

With data and information as the most strategic asset of a business, the underlying challenge that
organizations have today is understanding and using their data to positively effect change within the
business. Businesses continue to struggle to use their data in a meaningful and productive way, which
impacts their ability to act.

A retail business should be able to use their vast amounts of data and information in such a way that
impacts the business, including:

 Tracking inventory

 Identifying purchase habits

 Detecting user trends and patterns

  Recommending purchases

 Determining price optimizations

 Identifying and stopping fraud

Additionally, you might be looking for daily/monthly sale patterns. Common data segments that you
might want to examine include day-over-day, week-over-week, and month-over-month so that you can
compare how sales have been to where they were in the same week last year, for example.

The key to unlocking this data is being able to tell a story with it. In today's highly competitive and fast-
paced business world, crafting reports that tell that story is what helps business leaders take action on
the data. Business decision makers depend on an accurate story to drive better business decisions. The
faster a business can make precise decisions, the more competitive they will be and the better advantage
they will have. Without the story, it is difficult to understand what the data is trying to tell you.

However, having data alone is not enough. You need to be able to act on the data to effect change within
the business. That action could involve reallocating resources within the business to accommodate a
need, or it could be identifying a failing campaign and knowing when to change course. These situations
are where telling a story with your data is important.

The underlying challenge that businesses face today is understanding and using their data in such a way
that impacts their business and ultimately their bottom line. You need to be able to look at the data and
facilitate trusted business decisions. Then, you need the ability to look at metrics and clearly understand
the meaning behind those metrics.

This requirement might seem daunting, but it's a task that you can accomplish. Your first step is to
partner with data experts within your organization, such as data engineers and data scientists, to help
get the data that you need to tell that story. Ask these experts to participate in that data journey with
you.

Your journey of telling a story with data also ties into building that data culture within your organization.
While telling the story is important, where that story is told is also crucial, ensuring that the story is told
to the right people. Also, make sure that people can discover the story, that they know where to find it,
and that it is part of the regular interactions.

Data analysis exists to help overcome these challenges and pain points, ultimately assisting businesses in
finding insights and uncovering hidden value in troves of data through storytelling. As you read on, you
will learn how to use and apply analytical skills to go beyond a single report and help impact and
influence your organization by telling stories with data and driving that data culture.

Overview of data analysis

Before data can be used to tell a story, it must be run through a process that makes it usable in the story.
Data analysis is the process of identifying, cleaning, transforming, and modeling data to discover
meaningful and useful information. The data is then crafted into a story through reports for analysis to
support the critical decision-making process.

As the world becomes more data-driven, storytelling through data analysis is becoming a vital
component and aspect of large and small businesses. It is the reason that organizations continue to hire
data analysts.

Data-driven businesses make decisions based on the story that their data tells, and in today's data-driven
world, data is not being used to its full potential, a challenge that most businesses face. Data analysis is,
and should be, a critical aspect of all organizations to help determine the impact to their business,
including evaluating customer sentiment, performing market and product research, and identifying
trends or other data insights.

While the process of data analysis focuses on the tasks of cleaning, modeling, and visualizing data, the
concept of data analysis and its importance to business should not be understated. To analyze data, core
components of analytics are divided into the following categories:

 Descriptive

 Diagnostic

 Predictive

 Prescriptive

 Cognitive

Descriptive analytics
Descriptive analytics help answer questions about what has happened based on historical data.
Descriptive analytics techniques summarize large semantic models to describe outcomes to
stakeholders.

By developing key performance indicators (KPIs), these strategies can help track the success or failure of
key objectives. Metrics such as return on investment (ROI) are used in many industries, and specialized
metrics are developed to track performance in specific industries.

An example of descriptive analytics is generating reports to provide a view of an organization's sales and
financial data.

Diagnostic analytics

Diagnostic analytics help answer questions about why events happened. Diagnostic analytics techniques
supplement basic descriptive analytics, and they use the findings from descriptive analytics to discover
the cause of these events. Then, performance indicators are further investigated to discover why these
events improved or became worse. Generally, this process occurs in three steps:

1. Identify anomalies in the data. These anomalies might be unexpected changes in a metric or a
particular market.

2. Collect data that's related to these anomalies.

3. Use statistical techniques to discover relationships and trends that explain these anomalies.

Predictive analytics

Predictive analytics help answer questions about what will happen in the future. Predictive analytics
techniques use historical data to identify trends and determine if they're likely to recur. Predictive
analytical tools provide valuable insight into what might happen in the future. Techniques include a
variety of statistical and machine learning techniques such as neural networks, decision trees, and
regression.

Prescriptive analytics

Prescriptive analytics help answer questions about which actions should be taken to achieve a goal or
target. By using insights from prescriptive analytics, organizations can make data-driven decisions. This
technique allows businesses to make informed decisions in the face of uncertainty. Prescriptive analytics
techniques rely on machine learning as one of the strategies to find patterns in large semantic models.
By analyzing past decisions and events, organizations can estimate the likelihood of different outcomes.

Cognitive analytics

Cognitive analytics attempt to draw inferences from existing data and patterns, derive conclusions based
on existing knowledge bases, and then add these findings back into the knowledge base for future
inferences, a self-learning feedback loop. Cognitive analytics help you learn what might happen if
circumstances change and determine how you might handle these situations.

Inferences aren't structured queries based on a rules database; rather, they're unstructured hypotheses
that are gathered from several sources and expressed with varying degrees of confidence. Effective
cognitive analytics depend on machine learning algorithms, and will use several natural language
processing concepts to make sense of previously untapped data sources, such as call center conversation
logs and product reviews.

Example

By enabling reporting and data visualizations, a retail business uses descriptive analytics to look at
patterns of purchases from previous years to determine what products might be popular next year. The
company might also look at supporting data to understand why a particular product was popular and if
that trend is continuing, which will help them determine whether to continue stocking that product.

A business might determine that a certain product was popular over a specific timeframe. Then, they can
use this analysis to determine whether certain marketing efforts or online social activities contributed to
the sales increase.

An underlying facet of data analysis is that a business needs to trust its data. As a practice, the data
analysis process will capture data from trusted sources and shape it into something that is consumable,
meaningful, and easily understood to help with the decision-making process. Data analysis enables
businesses to fully understand their data through data-driven processes and decisions, allowing them to
be confident in their decisions.

As the amount of data grows, so does the need for data analysts. A data analyst knows how to organize
information and distill it into something relevant and comprehensible. A data analyst knows how to
gather the right data and what to do with it, in other words, making sense of the data in your data
overload.

Roles in data
Telling a story with the data is a journey that usually doesn't start with you. The data must come from
somewhere. Getting that data into a place that is usable by you takes effort that is likely out of your
scope, especially in consideration of the enterprise.

Today's applications and projects can be large and intricate, often involving the use of skills and
knowledge from numerous individuals. Each person brings a unique talent and expertise, sharing in the
effort of working together and coordinating tasks and responsibilities to see a project through from
concept to production.

In the recent past, roles such as business analysts and business intelligence developers were the
standard for data processing and understanding. However, excessive expansion of the size and different
types of data has caused these roles to evolve into more specialized sets of skills that modernize and
streamline the processes of data engineering and analysis.
The following sections highlight these different roles in data and the specific responsibility in the overall
spectrum of data discovery and understanding:

 Business analyst

 Data analyst

 Data engineer

 Data scientist

 Database administrator

Business analyst

While some similarities exist between a data analyst and business analyst, the key differentiator between
the two roles is what they do with data. A business analyst is closer to the business and is a specialist in
interpreting the data that comes from the visualization. Often, the roles of data analyst and business
analyst could be the responsibility of a single person.

Data analyst

A data analyst enables businesses to maximize the value of their data assets through visualization and
reporting tools such as Microsoft Power BI. Data analysts are responsible for profiling, cleaning, and
transforming data. Their responsibilities also include designing and building scalable and effective
semantic models, and enabling and implementing the advanced analytics capabilities into reports for
analysis. A data analyst works with the pertinent stakeholders to identify appropriate and necessary data
and reporting requirements, and then they are tasked with turning raw data into relevant and
meaningful insights.

A data analyst is also responsible for the management of Power BI assets, including reports, dashboards,
workspaces, and the underlying semantic models that are used in the reports. They are tasked with
implementing and configuring proper security procedures, in conjunction with stakeholder
requirements, to ensure the safekeeping of all Power BI assets and their data.

Data analysts work with data engineers to determine and locate appropriate data sources that meet
stakeholder requirements. Additionally, data analysts work with the data engineer and database
administrator to ensure that the analyst has proper access to the needed data sources. The data analyst
also works with the data engineer to identify new processes or improve existing processes for collecting
data for analysis.
Data engineer

Data engineers provision and set up data platform technologies that are on-premises and in the cloud.
They manage and secure the flow of structured and unstructured data from multiple sources. The data
platforms that they use can include relational databases, nonrelational databases, data streams, and file
stores. Data engineers also ensure that data services securely and seamlessly integrate across data
platforms.

Primary responsibilities of data engineers include the use of on-premises and cloud data services and
tools to ingest, egress, and transform data from multiple sources. Data engineers collaborate with
business stakeholders to identify and meet data requirements. They design and implement solutions.

While some alignment might exist in the tasks and responsibilities of a data engineer and a database
administrator, a data engineer's scope of work goes well beyond looking after a database and the server
where it's hosted and likely doesn't include the overall operational data management.

A data engineer adds tremendous value to business intelligence and data science projects. When the
data engineer brings data together, often described as data wrangling, projects move faster because data
scientists can focus on their own areas of work.

As a data analyst, you would work closely with a data engineer in making sure that you can access the
variety of structured and unstructured data sources because they will support you in optimizing
semantic models, which are typically served from a modern data warehouse or data lake.

Both database administrators and business intelligence professionals can transition to a data engineer
role; they need to learn the tools and technology that are used to process large amounts of data.

Data scientist

Data scientists perform advanced analytics to extract value from data. Their work can vary from
descriptive analytics to predictive analytics. Descriptive analytics evaluate data through a process known
as exploratory data analysis (EDA). Predictive analytics are used in machine learning to apply modeling
techniques that can detect anomalies or patterns. These analytics are important parts of forecast
models.

Descriptive and predictive analytics are only partial aspects of data scientists' work. Some data scientists
might work in the realm of deep learning, performing iterative experiments to solve a complex data
problem by using customized algorithms.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that most of the work in a data science project is spent on data wrangling
and feature engineering. Data scientists can speed up the experimentation process when data engineers
use their skills to successfully wrangle data.

On the surface, it might seem that a data scientist and data analyst are far apart in the work that they do,
but this conjecture is untrue. A data scientist looks at data to determine the questions that need answers
and will often devise a hypothesis or an experiment and then turn to the data analyst to assist with the
data visualization and reporting.

Database administrator
A database administrator implements and manages the operational aspects of cloud-native and hybrid
data platform solutions that are built on Microsoft Azure data services and Microsoft SQL Server. A
database administrator is responsible for the overall availability and consistent performance and
optimizations of the database solutions. They work with stakeholders to identify and implement the
policies, tools, and processes for data backup and recovery plans.

The role of a database administrator is different from the role of a data engineer. A database
administrator monitors and manages the overall health of a database and the hardware that it resides
on, whereas a data engineer is involved in the process of data wrangling, in other words, ingesting,
transforming, validating, and cleaning data to meet business needs and requirements.

The database administrator is also responsible for managing the overall security of the data, granting
and restricting user access and privileges to the data as determined by business needs and
requirements.

Tasks of a data analyst

A data analyst is one of several critical roles in an organization, who help uncover and make sense of
information to keep the company balanced and operating efficiently. Therefore, it's vital that a data
analyst clearly understands their responsibilities and the tasks that are performed on a near-daily basis.
Data analysts are essential in helping organizations gain valuable insights into the expanse of data that
they have, and they work closely with others in the organization to help reveal valuable information.

The following figure shows the five key areas that you'll engage in during the data analysis process.

Prepare
As a data analyst, you'll likely divide most of your time between the prepare and model tasks. Deficient
or incorrect data can have a major impact that results in invalid reports, a loss of trust, and a negative
effect on business decisions, which can lead to loss in revenue, a negative business impact, and more.

Before a report can be created, data must be prepared. Data preparation is the process of profiling,
cleaning, and transforming your data to get it ready to model and visualize.

Data preparation is the process of taking raw data and turning it into information that is trusted and
understandable. It involves, among other things, ensuring the integrity of the data, correcting wrong or
inaccurate data, identifying missing data, converting data from one structure to another or from one
type to another, or even a task as simple as making data more readable.

Data preparation also involves understanding how you're going to get and connect to the data and the
performance implications of the decisions. When connecting to data, you need to make decisions to
ensure that models and reports meet, and perform to, acknowledged requirements and expectations.

Privacy and security assurances are also important. These assurances can include anonymizing data to
avoid oversharing or preventing people from seeing personally identifiable information when it isn't
needed. Alternatively, helping to ensure privacy and security can involve removing that data completely
if it doesn't fit in with the story that you're trying to shape.

Data preparation can often be a lengthy process. Data analysts follow a series of steps and methods to
prepare data for placement into a proper context and state that eliminate poor data quality and allow it
to be turned into valuable insights.

Model

When the data is in a proper state, it's ready to be modeled. Data modeling is the process of determining
how your tables are related to each other. This process is done by defining and creating relationships
between the tables. From that point, you can enhance the model by defining metrics and adding custom
calculations to enrich your data.

Creating an effective and proper semantic model is a critical step in helping organizations understand
and gain valuable insights into the data. An effective semantic model makes reports more accurate,
allows the data to be explored faster and efficiently, decreases time for the report writing process, and
simplifies future report maintenance.

The model is another critical component that has a direct effect on the performance of your report and
overall data analysis. A poorly designed model can have a drastically negative impact on the general
accuracy and performance of your report. Conversely, a well-designed model with well-prepared data
will ensure a properly efficient and trusted report. This notion is more prevalent when you are working
with data at scale.

From a Power BI perspective, if your report is performing slowly, or your refreshes are taking a long time,
you will likely need to revisit the data preparation and modeling tasks to optimize your report.

The process of preparing data and modeling data is an iterative process. Data preparation is the first task
in data analysis. Understanding and preparing your data before you model it will make the modeling step
much easier.
Visualize

The visualization task is where you get to bring your data to life. The ultimate goal of the visualize task is
to solve business problems. A well-designed report should tell a compelling story about that data, which
will enable business decision makers to quickly gain needed insights. By using appropriate visualizations
and interactions, you can provide an effective report that guides the reader through the content quickly
and efficiently, therefore allowing the reader to follow a narrative into the data.

The reports that are created during the visualization task help businesses and decision makers
understand what that data means so that accurate and vital decisions can be made. Reports drive the
overall actions, decisions, and behaviors of an organization that is trusting and relying on the information
that is discovered in the data.

The business might communicate that they need all data points on a given report to help them make
decisions. As a data analyst, you should take the time to fully understand the problem that the business
is trying to solve. Determine whether all their data points are necessary because too much data can
make detecting key points difficult. Having a small and concise data story can help find insights quickly.

With the built-in AI capabilities in Power BI, data analysts can build powerful reports, without writing any
code, that enable users to get insights and answers and find actionable objectives. The AI capabilities in
Power BI, such as the built-in AI visuals, enable the discovering of data by asking questions, using the
Quick Insights feature, or creating machine learning models directly within Power BI.

An important aspect of visualizing data is designing and creating reports for accessibility. As you build
reports, it is important to think about people who will be accessing and reading the reports. Reports
should be designed with accessibility in mind from the outset so that no special modifications are
needed in the future.

Many components of your report will help with storytelling. From a color scheme that is complementary
and accessible, to fonts and sizing, to picking the right visuals for what is being displayed, they all come
together to tell that story.

Analyze

The analyze task is the important step of understanding and interpreting the information that is
displayed on the report. In your role as a data analyst, you should understand the analytical capabilities
of Power BI and use those capabilities to find insights, identify patterns and trends, predict outcomes,
and then communicate those insights in a way that everyone can understand.

Advanced analytics enables businesses and organizations to ultimately drive better decisions throughout
the business and create actionable insights and meaningful results. With advanced analytics,
organizations can drill into the data to predict future patterns and trends, identify activities and
behaviors, and enable businesses to ask the appropriate questions about their data.

Previously, analyzing data was a difficult and intricate process that was typically performed by data
engineers or data scientists. Today, Power BI makes data analysis accessible, which simplifies the data
analysis process. Users can quickly gain insights into their data by using visuals and metrics directly from
their desktop and then publish those insights to dashboards so that others can find needed information.
This feature is another area where AI integrations within Power BI can take your analysis to the next
level. Integrations with Azure Machine Learning, cognitive services, and built-in AI visuals will help to
enrich your data and analysis.

Manage

Power BI consists of many components, including reports, dashboards, workspaces, semantic models,
and more. As a data analyst, you are responsible for the management of these Power BI assets,
overseeing the sharing and distribution of items, such as reports and dashboards, and ensuring the
security of Power BI assets.

Apps can be a valuable distribution method for your content and allow easier management for large
audiences. This feature also allows you to have custom navigation experiences and link to other assets
within your organization to complement your reports.

The management of your content helps to foster collaboration between teams and individuals. Sharing
and discovery of your content is important for the right people to get the answers that they need. It is
also important to help ensure that items are secure. You want to make sure that the right people have
access and that you are not leaking data past the correct stakeholders.

Proper management can also help reduce data silos within your organization. Data duplication can make
managing and introducing data latency difficult when resources are overused. Power BI helps reduce
data silos with the use of shared semantic models, and it allows you to reuse data that you have
prepared and modeled. For key business data, endorsing a semantic model as certified can help to
ensure trust in that data.

The management of Power BI assets helps reduce the duplication of efforts and helps ensure security of
the data.
 Get started with Power Automate
Beginner

Business User

App Maker

Functional Consultant

Microsoft Power Platform

Power Automate

Power Automate is an online workflow service that automates actions across the most common apps
and services.

Learning objectives

In this module, you will:

 Create a flow that automatically saves email attachments.

 Learn how to create a button flow to send yourself a reminder.

Introducing Power Automate

Completed 100 XP

 10 minutes

Welcome to Power Automate! In this module, you'll learn how to build flows.

If you're a beginner with Power Automate, this module will get you going. If you already have some
experience, this module will tie concepts together and fill in the gaps.

Learning objectives

In this module, you will:

 Learn what Power Automate is and how it can be used

 Create a flow that runs on a schedule

 Create a flow that automatically saves email attachments

 Share a flow that your team can use

 Troubleshoot flows

What is Power Automate?

Power Automate is an online workflow service that automates actions across the most common apps
and services. For example, you can create a flow that posts a message on a Microsoft Teams channel
whenever an issue is created in Jira or your favorite planning tool. These types of integrations can help
the various tools you use everyday work better together.

When you sign up, you can connect to hundreds of services, and can manage data either in the cloud or
in on-premises sources like SharePoint and Microsoft SQL Server. The list of applications you can use with
Power Automate grows constantly.

What can you do with Power Automate?

You can use Power Automate to automate workflows between your favorite applications and services,
sync files, get notifications, collect data, and much more.

For example, you can automate these tasks:

 Instantly respond to high-priority notifications or emails.

 Capture, track, and follow up with new sales leads.

 Copy all email attachments to your OneDrive for Business account.

 Collect data about your business, and share that information with your team.

 Automate approval workflows.

A common use of Power Automate is to receive notifications. For example, you can instantly receive an
email or a push notification on your phone whenever a sales lead is added to Dynamics 365 or
Salesforce.

You can also use Power Automate to copy files. For example, you can ensure that any file that's added to
Dropbox is automatically copied to SharePoint, where your team can find it.
You can monitor what people are saying about your business by creating a flow that runs whenever
someone sends a tweet with a certain hashtag. The flow can add details about each tweet to a Facebook
post, a SQL Server database, a Microsoft Lists list, or even a Microsoft Excel file that's hosted on
OneDrive for Business–-whichever service works for you.

You can create actions to connect the data you collect to Microsoft Power BI, spot trends in that data,
and ask questions about it.

The following example shows a flow that saves tweets with the hashtag #PowerAutomate to an Excel
file.
Also, you can automate approval loops for things like vacation requests on a list.

For more ideas, browse our list of templates. Templates help you build flows by making a few
configuration changes. For example, you can use templates to easily build flows to send yourself weather
forecasts, reminders at regular intervals, or phone notifications whenever your manager sends you mail.

Have an idea for a flow that you don't see in the list? Create your own from scratch and, if you want,
share it with the community!

Where can I create and administer a flow?

You can create a flow and perform administrative tasks in a browser or, if you download the Power
Automate mobile app, on your phone.

Here are some of the tasks you can perform with the mobile app:

 Turn flows on or off from wherever you are.

 See when a flow has failed.

 Review detailed run history reports.

 View and filter runs by notification type.

A brief tour of Power Automate

Let's jump into Power Automate, and we'll show you around. We have tons of information for you to
learn about how to use Power Automate.
When you sign in to Power Automate, you'll find these options:

 Create, where you start a new flow.

 Templates, where you can take a look at some of the most popular templates. These should give
you some great ideas for flows you want to try.

 Learn, where you can find information that will help you quickly ramp up on Power Automate.

 My flows, where your flows reside.

 Approvals, where you can manage approvals and business process flows.

 Solutions, where you can manage your solutions.

 Process mining, where you can create processes to help your organization better understand
places to streamline workflows.

For now, let's focus on the ? menu next to your sign-in, which has these options:

 Documentation is where our advanced topics reside. If you want to really understand a feature
or function, you can do a deep dive here to figure out things.

 Learn has learning paths to guide you through using Power Automate, all the way from
beginning techniques to advanced scenarios.

 Support is a great landing place to find help.

 Roadmap is where you can get a glimpse into what will be made in the next product update.

 Community is a place to plug into and find out how other people use Power Automate.

 Give Feedback taps into a community of power users, and is where you can send comments and
questions to developers and other experienced users.

 Blog keeps you up to date about the most recent developments and releases in the Power
Automate ecosystem.

 Desktop flows provides an introduction to Power Automate for desktop.

 Pricing can help you choose the right plan for you or your business.

 Power Automate for desktop is where you can download Power Automate for desktop and
install it on your machine.

 Power Automate for Mobile provides information about the mobile app and the platforms it's
available on.

 Data Gateway provides an overview of the on-premises data gateway.

What's next?

Let's take a look at the different types of flows that are available in Power Automate.
Create your first flow

Completed 100 XP

 8 minutes

In the previous unit we learned about the key concepts such as templates, connectors, actions, and
conditions. Here we'll put all of those concepts into practice by building your first flow.

Since it can be time consuming to search for attachments in your emails, creating a flow can save you
time by storing all your email attachments in a folder in your Microsoft OneDrive account.

If you would like to see the process of creating different types of flows, watch the following video.

Important concepts in Power Automate

Every flow has two main parts: a trigger, and one or more actions.

Triggers

You can think of the trigger as the starting action for the flow. The trigger can be something like a new
email arriving in your inbox or a new item being added to a list in Microsoft Lists.

Actions

Actions are what you want to happen when a trigger is invoked. For example, the new email trigger will
start the action of creating a new file on OneDrive. Other examples of actions include sending an email,
posting a tweet, and starting an approval.

Every flow has one trigger and one or more actions. Trigger and actions will come into play later when
you build your own flows from scratch.

Exercise - Create recurring flows

Completed 100 XP

 5 minutes

In this unit, you'll learn how to build prescheduled flows by using a trigger called recurrence. Contoso has
an annual event and they receive phone calls inquiring on the details. The Contoso team answering the
phone calls places the contact information in a Microsoft Excel workbook on Microsoft OneDrive. You'll
build a flow for the Contoso event team that automatically pulls customer email addresses from a
Microsoft Excel workbook on Microsoft OneDrive. You'll then set up the flow so that any email addresses
that anyone adds to the workbook will receive an event information email once a day.

Prerequisites

For this scenario, you'll create an Excel file with a table that contains the following columns:
ContactEmail, FirstName, and LastName. Save the Excel file in OneDrive. You'll connect to this file in step
9. Use your organization email address as the ContactEmail, using your email will make testing the flow
easier.

Format an Excel Table

1. Highlight all the cells that contain data.

2. Select the Insert tab.

3. Select the Table option.

4. Make sure "My table has headers" is checked.

5. Select Ok.

6. Save the file in OneDrive.

Here’s what the Excel table looks like after being formatted:

Create a scheduled flow

1. Sign in to Power Automate by using your organizational account.

2. Make sure you are in the correct environment.

3. In the middle of the screen, type Create a flow that runs daily, gets a list of excel rows and for
each row, send an email. Select Generate.
 4. Copilot will do its best to come up with a flow and its actions from the description.

1. If Copilot provided incorrect actions, you can continue to refine the flow actions in this
top box.

2. In this example, Copilot added a List rows present in a table (Excel) action, a For Each
action and within the For Each, a Send an Email action.

3. Review the actions Copilot generated and select Next.

5. Select the Recurrence trigger to open the properties panel on the left and to verify Copilot set
the correct parameters.

Note

Be mindful of the repeating module you select and how often you would like the flows to run. In the
below example, the flow runs daily at 10:00 a.m. You can set these options however you like.

6. Select the List rows present in the table action to open the properties panel on the left.

1. In the Location field, select OneDrive for Business.

2. In the Document Library field, select the drop-down arrow and select OneDrive.

3. In the File name field, select the folder button, and then select the Excel file to use. In
this case, it's Book1.xlsx

4. In the Table name box, select the drop-down arrow, and then browse to and select the
table to use. In this case, it's Table1

7. Next, we want an email to be sent to each contact in the Excel file. Copilot automatically puts
our Send an email action inside of a For Each action so we only need to configure the Send an
Email action.

1. Select the Send an email action to open the properties panel on the left. Click inside the
To field and select Enter custom value.

2. Type / and then select Insert Dynamic Content.

3. Select ContactEmail.
 4. Enter Contoso Event Information for Subject.

5. Type Dear in the Body and then type /, and select the Insert Dynamic Content button.

6. Select FirstName from the dynamic content pane.

7. Press ENTER and then type Thank you for your interest in Contoso's annual event. As
information becomes available, you'll be the first to know!

8. The Send an email step should now look like the image below.

8. Select Save and wait for the flow to be saved.

9. Your cloud flow should now look like the image below. Select Test.

10. Select Manually and then select the Test button.

11. Select Run flow.

12. Select Done.

13. The flow should run successfully.

14. You should receive and email like the one below.

And there you have it!

This flow will now run once a day. It will:

  Get the rows from the Excel worksheet

 Grab the email address and name from each row

 Enter the email address and name in the email, and send them an event information email

 Save you from manually composing emails to each interested caller.

Exercise - Monitor incoming emails

Completed 100 XP

 5 minutes

You can create a flow that automatically performs one or more actions after it's triggered by an event.
For example, the flow can monitor your Outlook inbox and when an email with a specific subject line and
email address arrives, the flow will take the attachment and save it to a SharePoint library.

Prerequisites

Microsoft Office 365

Specify the SharePoint site and library

You can use any SharePoint site of your choice and can also use an existing library.

In this scenario, we'll use the following SharePoint site and its default Documents library, which is
available out-of-box.

Specify an event to start the flow

First, you must select the trigger (event) that starts the flow.

1. Sign in to Power Automate by using your organizational account.

2. Select My flows.

3. Select New flow, and then select Automated cloud flow.

4. Under Choose your flow's trigger, enter Outlook, select the When a new email arrives (V3)
trigger and select Create.

5. Select the trigger and then select the Show all button.
 6. Add the following:

From - 'your org email'

Include Attachments - 'Yes'

Subject Filter - 'Daily report'

Importance - 'Any'

Only with Attachments - 'Yes'

Folder - 'Inbox'

Specify an action

1. Select Insert a new step and select Add an action.

2. Search for Create file, and then select the SharePoint Create File action.

3. For Folder Path select /Shared Documents

4. Click in the File Name field, and select the lightning bolt to pull up the Dynamic Content.

5. Select Attachments Name from Dynamic Content.

6. Click in the File Content field and then select the lightning bolt to pull up the Dynamic Content.

7. Select Attachments Content from Dynamic Content. The result should look like the image below.

8. Once the Attachments Name is added, the Create file action is automatically added inside of an
Apply to each action. This means that if there are multiple attachments with the email, the flow
will create a file for each attachment.
You have successfully built a Power Automate flow, which will monitor your Outlook inbox for any
emails that have the text Daily report in their Subject line and have Attachments.

Exercise - Share flows

Completed 100 XP

 7 minutes

Shared flows extend the potential of Power Automate to groups of people. After all, why should just one
person enjoy the benefits of increased automation in his or her work environment?

Here are some advantages of shared flows:

 Multiple people can own and manage a flow together.

 If the creator of a shared flow leaves the organization, the other owners of the flow can continue
to run it.

 All owners of a shared flow can view its history, manage its properties, edit it, add and remove
owners, and delete it.

If you're the creator or an owner of a shared flow, you'll find it listed on the Shared with me tab in Power
Automate.

Note

 Shared connections can be used only in the flow in which they were created.

 Owners can use services in a flow, but they can't change the credentials for a connection that
another owner created.

Prerequisites

To create a shared flow, you must have a paid Power Automate plan. Also, to add more owners to a
shared flow or remove owners from it, you must be the creator or an owner.

Create a shared flow

You create a shared flow by adding more owners to an existing flow. After new owners are added to a
flow, the flow appears on the Shared with me tab.

1. Sign in to Power Automate using your organizational account.

2. Select My flows.

3. Select the Share button for the flow that you want to change.
 4. In the Owners section, enter the name, email address, or group name of the person or group
that you want to add as an owner.

5. In the list that appears, select the user or group to add.

The user or group becomes an owner of the flow.

Keep in mind that when you share a flow, it appears on the Shared with me tab. It no longer appears on
the Cloud flows tab.

Add Microsoft Lists as a co-owner of a flow

You can add a list created using Microsoft Lists as a co-owner of a flow. In that way, everyone who has
edit access to the list automatically gets edit access to the flow. After the flow is shared, you can just
distribute a link to it.

Important

SharePoint users must have Edit permission or be a member of the Members or Owners group to run
flows in SharePoint.

Restrictions on changes to flows

Adding an owner to a cloud flow is the most common way to share a cloud flow. The new owner of the
cloud flow can also perform these actions:

1. View the run history.

2. Manage the properties of the flow (for example, start or stop the flow, add owners, or update
credentials for a connection).

3. Edit the definition of the flow (for example, add or remove an action or condition).

4. Add or remove other owners (but not the flow's creator).

5. Delete the flow.

Once a flow has been shared, it's no longer in the Cloud flows but in the Shared with me.

Important

Owners can use services in a cloud flow but can't modify the credentials for a connection that another
owner created. Also, shared connections can be used only in the flow in which they were created.

Remove an owner

Important

If you remove an owner whose credentials are used to access Power Automate services, be sure to
update the credentials for those connections, so that the flow continues to work correctly.
 1. On the Shared with me tab, select the Share button for the flow that you want to change.

2. Select the Delete button for the owner that you want to remove.

Embedded and other connections

The connections that are used in a flow fall into two categories:

 Embedded: These connections are used in the flow.

 Other: These connections have been defined for the flow, but they aren't used in it.

If you stop using a connection in a flow, that connection appears in the Other connections list. It will
remain there until an owner includes it in the flow again.

To view the list of connections, change the shared flow.

 On the Shared with me tab, select the Share button for the flow that you want to change.

The list of connections appears under the list of owners in the flow's properties.

Troubleshoot flows

Completed 100 XP

 8 minutes

In this unit, you'll learn how to troubleshoot common issues that might occur while you run your flows.

Identify the error

Before you can fix a flow, you must identify why it failed. You'll get an email with a list of failures each
week.

1. Select the More ... and then Cloud flow activity on the left menu (or select the Activity tab in
the mobile app), and then select your flow in the list that appears.

2. Details about the flow appear, and at least one step has a red exclamation point (!) symbol. Open
that step, and review the error message.

Authentication failures

In many cases, flows fail because of an authentication error. If this type of error occurs, the error
message includes the word "Unauthorized," or an error code of 401 or 403 appears. You can usually fix
authentication errors by updating the connection.
 1. You can view the connections by opening up the flow details by selecting the flow from My
Flows.

2. Scroll to the connection that you saw the "Unauthorized" error message for.

3. Next to the connection, select the Fix connection link in the message that states that the
connection hasn't been authenticated.

4. Verify your credentials by following the instructions that appear. Then return to your flow-run
failure, and select Resubmit.

The flow should now run as expected.

Action configuration issues

Flows sometimes fail if a setting in one of the flow's actions doesn't work as expected. In this case, the
error message includes the phrase "Bad request" or "Not found," or an error code 400 or 404 appears.

The error message should indicate how to fix the failure.

1. Select the Edit button, and then fix the issues inside the flow definition.

2. Save the updated flow, and then select Resubmit to try to run the flow again with the updated
configuration.

Temporary issues

If error code 500 or 502 appears, the failure is temporary or transient.

 Select Resubmit to try to run the flow again.

Issues with your pricing plan

Sometimes your flows might behave unexpectedly because you aren't using the correct plan.

 To view your plan, in Power Automate, select Pricing.

Learn more about pricing and how to switch plans.

Issues with data usage

You might have run out of data that you can use.

 If you're on a free plan or a trial plan, select the Settings button (the gear symbol) to show your
current usage against your plan.

 If you're on a paid plan, runs are pooled across all users in your organization. We're working on
features that will show information about available quotas and usage across an organization.
Important

If you exceed your data limit, Power Automate throttles your flow runs.

Learn more about usage limits.

You might be running flows too often

Your plan determines how often your flows run. For example, your flows might run every 15 minutes if
you're on the free plan. If a flow is triggered less than 15 minutes after its last run, it's queued until 15
minutes have passed.

Whenever a flow is triggered, whether by an automatic trigger or because you manually start it, the
action counts as a run. Checks for new data don't count as runs.

Learn more about usage limits.

You might be using an incorrect account

If you sign in by using a Microsoft account (for example, an account that ends with @outlook.com or
@gmail.com), you can use only the free plan. To take advantage of the features of the paid plan, sign in
by using your organizational account or school email address.

To upgrade, use an organizational account or a school account, or create a Microsoft Office 365 trial
account.

Some flows run more often than expected

Some flows might run more often than you expect. For example, you create a flow that sends you a push
notification whenever your manager sends you an email. That flow must run every time you get an email
from anyone, because the flow must check whether the email came from your manager. This action
counts as a run.

Other issues that are based on limits, and caveats

You might have issues that are based on other limits:

 Each account can have up to:

o 600 flows.

o 50 custom connectors.

o 20 connections per application programming interface (API) and 100 connections total.

 You can install a gateway only in the default environment.

 Some external connectors, like Twitter, implement connection throttling to control the quality of
service. Your flows might fail when throttling is in effect. If your flows are failing, review the
details of the run that failed in the flow's run history.