Power BI Terms Explained: A Glossary for Beginners

Power BI has its own jargon and language.

Whether you’re exploring a dashboard, chatting in a team, or diving into Power BI training, understanding key terms helps you make sense of it all – fast.

Here’s your go-to guide!

⚙️ Common Power BI Terms

Power BI Desktop

The Windows app designers use to connect, clean, model, visualise, and publish data – saved as .pbix files.

Power BI Service

The cloud-based platform (web/mobile) for sharing and viewing dashboards and reports.

Workspace

A shared container in the Service that holds dashboards, reports, and datasets—supports collaboration and management.

App

A bundled Power BI package of dashboards, reports, and data models designed for sharing across groups.

Pro Tip: A Power BI course with a good instructor will be able to teach you any terms you don’t understand.

📈 Data & Modelling Terms

Data Connector / Connector

Pre-built links that let Power BI import data from sources like SQL Server, Excel, web APIs, and more.

Dataflow

ETL workflows built within Power BI Service to prep and reuse transformed data.

Data Model / Semantic Model

A structured definition of tables, fields, and relationships that underpins all your visuals and analytics.

Measure / Explicit Measure

A custom formula (using DAX) created and saved in the data model for calculations like sums or averages.

Implicit Measure

An automatic aggregation created by dragging a field into a visual (sum, count, etc.) without writing DAX.

🎨 Reporting Terms

Report

A multipage collection of visuals based on a data model—designed in Desktop and published to the Service.

Dashboard

A single-page canvas in the Service that aggregates visuals (tiles) from one or more reports.

Visual / Visualization

Any chart, table, or visual element (bar chart, map, KPI card) you add to a report or dashboard.

Tile

A single visual that’s pinned from a report onto a dashboard.

Bookmark

A snapshot of current filters, slicers, drill state, and view mode in a report—used for storytelling.

🔄 Interaction Terms

Filter vs Highlight

• Filter removes data not meeting the criteria

• Highlight dims unselected data points while keeping the rest visible

Drill Down / Drill Up / Drill Through

Navigate through data hierarchies – drilling down reveals detail drill up shows summarises, and drill-through opens a focused page.

Q&A

Natural-language feature, letting users ask questions (e.g., “total sales by region?”) and get visuals instantly. This is also known as Q&A visuals.

🔧 Advanced & Admin Terms

Gateway (On-premises Data Gateway)

A secure bridge that refreshes Service data with on-premises sources.

Row-level Security (RLS)

Restricts dataset rows based on user roles, ensuring people only see what they’re allowed to.

Capacity / Premium Capacity

Dedicated compute resources in the Microsoft Cloud—required for large deployments and sharing with free users.

🧮 DAX & Power Query Essentials

Power Query

Microsoft’s ETL engine used in Power BI (and Excel) for extracting, transforming, and loading data.

DAX (Data Analysis Expressions)

The formula language for writing measures, calculated columns, and tables across Power BI and related tools. This is a more advanced feature of Power BI, which is why we have specific Introduction To DAX courses.

Why This Matters

Knowing these terms empowers you to:

• Navigate Power BI confidently

• Understand training materials and documentation

• Communicate clearly with teammates and stakeholders

Your Next Steps

1. Bookmark this page as a quick reference.

2. Try spotting these terms in your next Power BI project.

3. Learn one new feature a week – like setting up a Gateway or writing a simple DAX measure.