Introduction

When discussing Power BI, the focus often shifts to exploring new technical possibilities. How often do we think about how we drive and better adoption support?

This article will delve into user support and how the Power BI Service can be utilized by customizing the 'Get Help' section. You can also read this article to better understand why this is an important topic.

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NOTE

I will recommend also going through other articles part of the Fabric adoption roadmap, or implementation planning like adoption maturity levels and adoption tracking.

Why it matters?

Given today's data volumes, only small companies can rely exclusively on the Center of Excellence (CoE) model. Self-service users (or citizen developers) and content consumers play a vital role in the adoption process and more importantly, in driving the data culture within the company.

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I've often encountered questions like, 'How can I request a Power BI Pro license?', 'Where can I start learning Power BI?', or 'What should I do if I have a Power BI question?', all valid questions, if this kind of information is not easily accessible.

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How can the Power BI Service help us?

Let's begin by exploring the features of the Help & Support section.

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Our focus will be on the Other Resources section, which offers various customization options. Now let's first try to understand the default options and what we can customize:

• Submit an idea - External Link - Not Customizable - Home (microsoft.com)
• Ask the community - External Link - Customizable - Power BI forums - Microsoft Fabric Community
• Get help - Internal Link - Customizable - https://app.powerbi.com/admin-portal/supportCenter
• Accessibility shortcuts - External Link - Not Customizable - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/create-reports/desktop-accessibility-consuming-tools

Now let's see how we can customize this. To customize, navigate to:

Settings -> Admin Portal -> Tenant Settings Tab -> Help and support settings section -> Publish "Get Help" information (of course this option also needs to be enabled)

This opens 4 options that we can customize, for which some of them have a corresponding default value:

Now let's see our approach and the rationale:

• Training Documentation - This can be either a link towards the Microsoft learning path, or a customized learning path if the company uses a dedicated training & development platform, which would allow combining external learning sources into guided learning structure.
• Discussion Forum - This needs to be a place accessible to everyone in the organization (e.g. in our case this is public MS Teams). An important aspect comes from the fact that the Fabric community is also a very resourceful place, however by having an internal community, people can also ask data specific questions that they would not be able to ask externally.
• Licensing Requests - This can be as straight forward as direct link towards the IT system of engagement in which licenses can be requested. For us, this is managed via Power Apps, which includes an excellent free IT Helpdesk application template to get started.
• Help Desk - Going back to the previous point and to add on it, the default option was going into the admin side of the Fabric platform, however how can citizen developers raise a request for support or when they face an important issue? Through this, we create a system, where issues or questions can be resolved.

After applying the changes, allow some time for them to take effect (in some cases, it may take a few minutes). The Other Resources section will then display the updates as shown:

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By customizing the 'Get Help' section in Power BI, you're not just enhancing user support—you’re driving the data-driven culture within your organization. Start implementing these changes today and watch your Power BI adoption!

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