Power BI has a number of parts which are used to collate and report on data. The data may be spread across Excel spreadsheets, Access or SQL Server databases, SharePoint lists or a wide variety of other sources. Power BI allows you to connect to various data sources and create reports without having to copy-and-paste between programmes. Power BI is a relatively young programme, first released in 2015. Much of the core functionality of the programme had been previously developed for SQL Server and the “Power” add-ins for Excel, previously known as PowerQuery, PowerPivot and PowerView.