Power BI Training: Integrating SharePoint and Automating Reports

At the Team Academy Training Centre, we recently held a detailed training session on how to integrate SharePoint with Power BI and automate reporting tasks. The training was designed to teach participants how to use Power BI effectively for data integration, automation, and reporting, even if they were new to these tools.

Introduction to Power BI Services and SharePoint Integration

The session started by explaining how Power BI services work, focusing on publishing dashboards and sharing data with others. We also looked at SharePoint integration—showing participants how to connect Power BI to SharePoint to pull in data, select specific columns, and filter that data for reports. The cool part? You can automate weekly reports by appending data from multiple SharePoint files, which makes managing large datasets much easier.

Collaborating with Power BI Dashboards and Reports

One of the session highlights was learning how to collaborate using Power BI dashboards. You can easily share reports and dashboards with your team, and even set up alerts to notify you when specific KPIs change. This allows everyone in the company to stay up-to-date without needing manual updates or constant emails.
We also talked about semantic models, which allow you to reuse data models in Power BI. This means once you’ve set up a model for a report, others can use it to create new reports without starting from scratch—saving a lot of time and effort!

Next, we introduced Power Automate, a tool that helps you automate workflows. For example, you can automate tasks like retrieving email attachments from Outlook and saving them to OneDrive, or sending notifications based on changes in a SharePoint list. We even showed how to use Co-pilot to set up these flows easily with pre-generated prompts and simple configurations.

In addition to Power BI and Power Automate, we also touched on Power Apps, which is great for creating mobile apps that connect with SharePoint. For instance, you can build an app for your sales team to manage customer leads on the go. They can update lead information directly from their phones, and Power Automate can handle follow-up actions like sending emails to customers automatically.

The session wrapped up with participants asking questions and sharing ideas on how to apply what they learned. We emphasized the importance of using Power BI, Power Apps, and Power Automate together to create an efficient and automated workflow in any business. The training was accessible to everyone, from beginners to those already familiar with these tools.

For those in Qatar, taking a Power BI certification course can be a game changer for improving data management and reporting in your business. Whether you're just starting or looking to advance your skills, Power BI offers a range of tools to help you streamline your business operations and make better data-driven decisions.