Power BI Service Interview Questions 2025

1. What is Power BI Service?

Power BI Service is a cloud-based business intelligence (BI) platform that allows users to publish, share, and collaborate on reports and dashboards. It enables secure data access and provides scheduled refreshes to keep reports updated. Users can work with datasets, reports, and dashboards in a centralized environment. Power BI Service supports workspaces for team collaboration and allows role-based access control using Row-Level Security (RLS). It integrates seamlessly with Microsoft services like Azure, Power Automate, and Teams. Additionally, it offers dataflows for ETL, Power BI Apps for report distribution, and Deployment Pipelines for version management. Power BI Service is essential for enterprise-wide reporting and analytics, ensuring data-driven decision-making.

2. How is Power BI Service different from Power BI Desktop?

Power BI Service and Power BI Desktop serve different purposes in the Power BI ecosystem. Power BI Desktop is a free, Windows-based application used for data modeling, transformation, and report creation. It allows users to import, clean, and visualize data using built-in tools like Power Query and DAX (Data Analysis Expressions). On the other hand, Power BI Service is a cloud-based platform where users can publish, share, and collaborate on reports and dashboards. Unlike Power BI Desktop, Power BI Service provides scheduled data refreshes, security controls, and role-based access management. It also integrates with Power Automate, Azure, and other Microsoft services. While Power BI Desktop is mainly used for development, Power BI Service is essential for enterprise-wide sharing, collaboration, and accessibility.

3. What are Workspaces in Power BI Service?

Workspaces in Power BI Service are collaborative environments where users can store, manage, and share reports, dashboards, and datasets. There are two types of workspaces:

My Workspace – This is a personal space available to every Power BI user for creating and storing reports and dashboards. It is private and not meant for team collaboration.
Shared Workspaces – These are designed for team collaboration, allowing multiple users to work together on Power BI content. Users can have different roles, such as Admin, Member, Contributor, or Viewer, with specific permissions.

Workspaces enable controlled access, scheduled refreshes, and integration with other Microsoft services, making them essential for managing and distributing Power BI content efficiently.

4. How do you schedule data refresh in Power BI Service?

To schedule a data refresh in Power BI Service, follow these steps:

Go to Power BI Service, navigate to the dataset that needs to be refreshed.
Click on “Settings” and then go to the “Scheduled Refresh” section.
Enable the scheduled refresh option.
Set the refresh frequency (Daily, Hourly, or based on specific time slots).
Add or update data source authentication credentials to ensure access.
Configure refresh failure notifications to get alerts if the refresh fails.
Click Apply to save the settings, and Power BI will automatically refresh the dataset as scheduled.

5. What is a Power BI Gateway, and why is it needed?

A Power BI Gateway acts as a bridge between on-premises data sources and the Power BI Service in the cloud. It is essential for securely transferring data from local databases like SQL Server, SharePoint, and other on-premises sources to Power BI Service. The gateway allows users to refresh datasets, establish live connections, and enable scheduled refreshes without manually uploading data. There are two types of gateways: Personal Mode, which is used by individuals for personal data connections, and Enterprise Mode, designed for shared environments where multiple users can access and manage data sources. This ensures seamless data integration while maintaining security and efficiency.

6. What are the different sharing options available in Power BI Service?

In Power BI Service, there are multiple ways to share reports and dashboards. The Share Dashboard option allows users to directly share dashboards with specific users via email. Publish to Web enables public access to reports but is not secure for sensitive data. Power BI Apps let users package multiple reports and dashboards into an application for easy distribution. Reports can also be embedded in Microsoft Teams for seamless collaboration within the organization. Additionally, users can export reports to PDF or PowerPoint (PPT) to share them offline. These sharing options help ensure flexibility and accessibility while maintaining security based on the chosen method.

7. What is Row-Level Security (RLS) in Power BI Service?

Row-Level Security (RLS) in Power BI Service is a feature that restricts data access based on user roles, ensuring that users can only view data relevant to them. It is implemented by defining roles in Power BI Desktop using DAX FILTER() functions to create filters on datasets. Once the report is published to Power BI Service, these roles are assigned to specific users or security groups. RLS helps enforce data security, ensuring that sensitive information is only accessible to authorized individuals. This feature is especially useful in multi-user environments where different users require different data views.

8. What are the different types of Power BI licensing options?

Power BI offers three main licensing options based on user needs. Power BI Free is designed for individual users, allowing them to create and view reports but with limited sharing capabilities. Power BI Pro enables users to share, collaborate, and access advanced features like content sharing, app workspaces, and peer-to-peer sharing. Power BI Premium is designed for enterprise-level users, offering larger data capacity, AI features, paginated reports, and advanced dataflows. Premium also includes dedicated cloud capacity and allows users without Pro licenses to view shared content. These licensing options ensure flexibility for both individual users and organizations.

9. What is Deployment Pipeline in Power BI Service?

Deployment Pipeline in Power BI Service is a feature that helps manage and promote reports, dashboards, and datasets across different environments: Development, Test, and Production. It ensures a structured approach to deploying Power BI content by enabling version control, allowing teams to track changes efficiently. It also facilitates performance testing, ensuring that reports and datasets function correctly before moving to production. Deployment Pipelines help in making seamless updates without disrupting existing reports. This feature is particularly useful for enterprise users who need a controlled, secure, and automated process for managing Power BI content.

10. What are Power BI Dataflows?

Power BI Dataflows enable self-service ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) within Power BI Service, allowing users to prepare and manage data efficiently. They help store pre-processed data in the cloud, reducing the need to repeatedly load and transform data in individual reports. Dataflows allow users to reuse data transformations across multiple reports, ensuring consistency and reducing redundancy. By offloading transformations to the cloud, they also help improve data refresh performance. Dataflows integrate with Azure Data Lake, making them useful for large-scale data management and enhancing collaboration across teams.

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