Power BI
In support of EDBI’s strategy, “Premier Data Adoption”, Power BI has been made available to all Rice faculty and staff. Together with Rice’s Enterprise Data Platform (EDP), Power BI helps address a key university need: making reliable data easier to access, understand, and use in operational and strategic decision-making.
Timely, Accessible Data for Decision-Making
Power BI offers several benefits for creating and sharing reports, dashboards, and data visualizations. With Power BI, Rice can:
- Connect to centralized workspaces, lakehouses, semantic models, and shared data products managed and governed by EDBI, in addition to your own sources
- Publish dashboards for personal, departmental, and university-wide viewing, sharing, and collaboration
- Use Copilot features for deeper understanding and faster visual development where available
Want to use Power BI today?
Start with the Rice-specific Power BI 101 guide.
Want to go beyond the basics?
Use the Power BI training page for guided learning, report-building help, connection references, and workspace support.
Power BI Frequently Asked Questions
Who can use Power BI at Rice?
Power BI is available to Rice faculty and staff through Microsoft 365. Some reports, dashboards, workspaces, lakehouses, and semantic models require additional approval because they contain governed university data.
Where can I find Power BI training?
Start with Power BI 101 for Rice-specific onboarding, then use the Power BI Training page for Microsoft resources, connectors, sharing guidance, and best practices.
What is the Power BI service?
The Power BI service is the browser-based Microsoft platform for viewing, sharing, publishing, and collaborating on reports and dashboards. At Rice, access to workspaces, apps, reports, and datasets is managed based on business need and data governance requirements.
What is Power BI Desktop?
Power BI Desktop is the Windows application used to build reports. Report authors can connect to data, shape queries, create models and measures, design report pages, and publish finished work to the Power BI service.
How do I publish a report for others?
Reports intended for department, business-area, or university-wide use should be published through an approved workspace with the appropriate access, data source, refresh, and governance setup. DATA @ Rice and EDBI can help determine the right path before content is broadly shared.
Are there licensing requirements or costs?
Power BI is available to Rice faculty and staff through Rice’s Microsoft 365 environment. Some publishing, sharing, Fabric, premium, or Copilot-enabled capabilities may depend on workspace configuration, licensing, and governance approval.
How is data security handled?
Access to governed reports and datasets should follow Rice data governance requirements. Workspace membership, report sharing, semantic model permissions, and lakehouse access should be limited to approved users with a business need.