>Couple of things...
>
>First, PBI can read from many data sources (including SQL server).
>
>Second, it's more important to identify what you would show in a dashboard. You can build a good dashboard in a shared Excel sheet or an SSRS report, and a really crappy dashboard using PBI.
>
>Dashboards are about (among other things) surfacing business anomalies/major items of interest.....for instance, a product cost/price jumping up 15% in one market from last month to this month (while other markets stayed constant).....
>
>Many moons ago I did some work for Apress and sat in on their sales calls....want to know the first topic every week? Returns. That was a major topic.
>In the world of manufacturing, it's things like damages and scrap.....finding the data that represents the the worst things that hurt a business (or best things that help, depending on the focus)
>
>As much as I love PBI and SSRS....don't worry so much about the tool....focus on what things you can surface to the business in the course of the day/week/month that they might not always be aware of.

First, thank you so much for your message.

My application is a work order system, nothing to do with profit

Here is why I am thinking of learning Power BI and creating a Dashboard:
1. I want to show any customer the work order assignment either by employee or by trade. That is, to show them that, for example, last month Electrical trade got 200 work orders, and Mechanical Trade got 100 work orders. And pretty much the same, by employee.
2. I could (and probably will) create the above-type reports in my app, using the good old VFP. But the reports in VFP would not show the data in a graph and/or chart. And I feel that many customers would ask for a graphical representation of the report.
3. I need to learn something new; just to avoid complete brain atrophy :)

On the item, 3 above, I do a lot of learning; French, new piano pieces, tennis technique and strategy, but nothing technical. Hence I thought I need to learn something. The key: thought :)

Today I watch a Power BI tutorial. 27 minutes of YouTube video. Very interesting. But the presenter did not address the following questions (that I have):
1. He pulled the data from excel spreadsheet and said that the data can be pulled from a SQL Server just as well. But he did not address my question: what if the data in excel or SQL Server changes. How does a resulting PBI view address it?
2. How does deployment work. If you create a PBI view, can people see it only in a URL on the PowerBI web site? Or any web site?

Again, thank you!