Where does the excel file data go?

brendaivett

We're new to Power BI, and when we got its non-free version we understood we could build a Dashboard with data from an Excel file, thinking that as it was a local excel file, the data would never leave our own servers, is this a correct assumption?

No. The file will be uploaded to Azure when you publish to the Service. The Power BI Service is a SaaS solution, and as such will store anything that you import into a desktop file or directly into the Service via the "Get Data" section. Full security white paper listed here will describe all actions, and level of security

I have doubts now because as I'm reviewing the "guided learning" section, in the part of working with an Excel file it does ask if I want to upload it or import it...and both things sound the same to me, could somebody please explain the difference?

Upload will load your Excel file, Import will pull the data into Power BI from the Excel file. Both methods are still pushing your data into the cloud.

- is my data "going somewhere else other than my own server" when doing either one of these options? and if that is the case, is it going to the cloud? Yes, Yes

- what if I need a dashboard with sensitive/confidential information? there's no way to keep it local? how could we do that?

There are a couple methods. One is Direct Query - which allows you to query a SQL database, either on Premises, or in Azure. The other is Live Connection - This allows you to directly query a SSAS instance (Tabular or Multidimensional)

Both these solutions will only query the data, all your data stays on your servers and is not pushed to the cloud.

The other part that made me concerned is that if we "Publish" the dashboard in order to share it, it'd be in the internet, so that sounds to me like anybody could access it, is this correct?

If you "Share" a dashboard, your end consumers will be authenticated via your Azure AD. You can share outside the company, but there are admin level settings to prevent that. Other features like "Publish to the Web" would expose your data, but that can also be restricted by admins, and isn't currently available for Direct Query/Live Connections.

The long and short is you need your data in a database or model in order to keep it on your servers using Power BI. Otherwise it will be pushed into Azure. I would read the security document to understand the current levels of security provided, or explore these other options if your data is not to be pushed to the cloud.

(side note) - When you work with the Power BI Desktop, all your data is in your servers. It is only when you push to the Service that imported data is sent to the cloud.