IoT And Power BI: Real-Time Reporting - Blog

Power BI is one such solution that makes it easy for businesses to extract useful data and then transform into knowledge using predictive analysis, various data visualizations, and advanced analytics.

Here, we are talking about Power BI’s real-time IoT dashboard feature.

Before we understand this feature in details, there are few things you might want to take a look at:

What Are Real-Time Dashboards?

Real-time dashboards display real-time data i.e. time-sensitive, live data from IoT devices. This feature helps businesses to leverage the power of real-time reporting to make quick and instantaneous decisions based on the live data and identify trends as they take place.

For more clarity, here are some examples of real-time data use:

1. Media agencies can monitor live social media campaigns
2. Factories can monitor equipment using IoT sensors
3. The weather control system can use real-time data from sensors to predict accurately
4. Home devises management in real-time using sensor data

Sources of data can be sensors, usage metrics, social media, or any device from which real-time (time-sensitive) data can be collected.

Power BI enables you to create dashboards using real-time data and visuals with an easy setup process. In Power BI, there are three types of real-time datasets that can be used to present on dashboards. These are:

1. Push Data set – data is pushed into the Power BI service
2. Streaming Data set – quickly display real-time data using streaming dataset source by adding a tile and setting up custom streaming data
3. PubNub streaming dataset – a popular real-time streaming service using PubNub SDK and configuring a PubNub data stream as the source

Now, once the source of data is decided, there are three ways you can push data into a data set.

1. You can use Power BI REST APIs
2. Use Streaming Dataset UI
3. Use Azure Streaming Analytics

In the first approach, you can use Power BI REST APIs to push data into data sets and, in the second method, you can use the API approach to push data.

Transform Live Data Into Insightful Information With Power BI

IoT and business intelligence are being popular among developers, organizations, and industry verticals to strategically improve data analysis, creating a way towards improvised decisions and actions.

The potential of data in IoT devices and the performance of real-time analytics could bring many opportunities to many of the industry verticals.

‘Data is the new oil’ and such solutions are enabling smart use of data to maximize the growth rate. IoT-driven economies are still evolving and we yet to see what impact it could bring into the IT industry. But, having tools and technologies that support real-time data analytics is quite interesting to explore.