Want To Know More About Power BI? You’re Not Alone!

The topic of Power BI seems to come up more often in conversations with customers lately. Many times, it’s crazy, wicked talented people sharing the reporting they already do with Power BI; other times it’s inquiries about what is possible with these tools. To set the record straight, I want to share some of the business intelligence and reporting Blackbaud customers currently accomplish using Power BI, and give you tips for how to learn more.


Hint: For the most part, it’s not hype. Power BI represents a viable option for advanced reporting and analysis, and it’s for good reason that savvy database managers and business analysts want to know more about it.

Opportunities to Learn More

Two perfect opportunities to learn more and see how peers are using Power BI to drive transformation at their organizations include:

Webinar: Blackbaud NXT Solutions + Power BI = Next Level Reporting – April 20 at 1 p.m. ET

Join Barton Dyson from npAutomate in exploring how Power BI can help you create next level data insights, modeling, and reporting for Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT and Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT. In addition to an orientation to the tools available, he’ll share real-world examples and explain how to get started creating your own Power BI visualizations. Join this webinar as part of our Connected Modern Office Series. (If you can’t make it, register and we’ll send you the recording.)

Blackbaud Developers’ Conference - June 7-9, 2022 – This Blackbaud learning event brings together all levels of developers and technology enthusiasts. #bbdevdays will feature an entire day of thought provoking, educational sessions and skills labs on Power BI. Consider joining us for the entire event – you’ll experience three days packed with practical “how-I-built-this” sessions, educational skills labs, code swaps, user groups, partner meet-and-greets, and peer networking. Learn new dimensions to the tools you use every day – and discover new techniques you want to try right away! Learn more.

The TL/DR: Background on Power BI

Microsoft Power BI is a data insights tool (think reporting, visualization, modeling) appropriate for beginner, intermediate and advanced users. Its capabilities accommodate all experience levels.

• Database managers can derive complex performance analysis and drive strategic actions to be taken.
• Executives, fundraising, and marketing users can spot patterns and trends to gain more insights into campaign performance.
• Low-code developers can even embed Power BI charts and and reports into Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT and other applications for maximum efficiency.

Key Power BI Features

Power BI will help you represent your organization’s data in ways that answer the questions your business users have been asking. These capabilities form the core of this system:

• Combine data sets into models: Power BI lets you bring together data from different departments within your organization and external systems to do unified reporting and analysis. The Power Query tool, familiar to Excel users, makes it easy to ingest, transform, and integrate business data in Power BI. For more advanced users, Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) formula language can dig deeper into data and find patterns easily with Power Pivot features such as quick measures, clustering, and grouping.
• Create live dashboards and visualizations: Create dynamic, drill-through insights within minutes. Power BI includes loads of standard data visuals – like bar, column, line, map, matrix, and pie charts – to use in interactive reports. You can also select from free custom visuals shared with the Power BI community by other developers.
• Leverage built-in analytical tools and AI models: Power BI includes tools to detect changes in data patterns and spot trends, allowing for data discovery based on predictive “what if” scenarios and forecasting. My absolute favorite template right now is Key Influencers - wow! What is this? According to Microsoft, “The key influencers visual helps you understand the factors that drive a metric you’re interested in. It analyzes your data, ranks the factors that matter, and displays them as key influencers.” What does this mean for you? Suppose you want to determine key factors that influence retention of sustaining donors. The Key Influencers feature might help you explore variables like the marketing channels you use to acquire sustainers and the number of emails these donors open from your organization. Knowing which factors yield best results helps you focus on channels and activities that truly lead to sustainer program health – and saves you time and effort.
• Drive action from data: Business users want convenient insights and reports in real-time. You can embed Power BI visualizations directly into Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT for them – without knowing code (this is “no-code development” you might have heard us talk about). You can embed performance dashboards that complement native RENXT Lists and Reporting tools. You can also add visualizations at a more focused level, to individual gifts, constituents, events, etc. Then take it to the next level: Let’s say one of your business users identifies a segment of constituents or a single constituent who looks promising for outreach. You can integrate Power Automate and Power Apps with Power BI to automate a workflow that assigns RENXT Actions for gift officer followup.

Community

A growing community of social good users connects regularly to share experiences. [You’ll meet them in June at Blackbaud Developers’ Conference!] The massive Microsoft Power BI Community is a central location to learn about features, address issues, connect with other users, and suggest new features. Check out the Microsoft Power BI Blog for articles, guides, and information created and submitted by community members.


You’ll find seemingly unlimited options for upskilling and certification on Power BI from Microsoft, on YouTube, and from a large ecosystem of partners. Check out some of these in our Blackbaud SKY Developer community.


The formulas you craft and the visualizations you create are portable! Blackbaud evangelists and partners passionate about Power BI are working to create more opportunities for onboarding, training, and support. Disclaimer – Power BI isn’t a free service but can be a powerful, low-cost option for social good organizations.


Curious? Microsoft offers a 60-day free trial, so make sure you take advantage of it!