BGSU Information Technology Services (ITS) manages a variety of technical and business process projects that support BGSU academic, physical, and digital operations, as well as specific portfolios of strategic objectives defined by Vice Presidents/Provosts and C-level staff across campus. Using Project Management Institute’s (PMI) guide to best practices, this process includes sourcing and aligning project requests to University strategic objectives through various levels of governance, providing project management and resourcing guidance to approved initiatives, delivering appropriate levels of communication throughout the project and technical lifecycles, and providing ongoing support of technical services and digital applications. ITS is built around delivering new, and maintaining existing, technologies in the classroom, in the field and throughout administrative offices by defining objectives and projects, facilitating governance and executive prioritization of initiatives and guiding each approved project to successful completion using industry standard methodologies.

BGSU Implementation of Power BI
BGSU implemented Microsoft Power BI in 2020 as part of its Microsoft licensing agreement. Power BI is a data visualization tool that can connect to data from multiple sources. Reports and dashboards can then be shared securely within designated user groups (workspaces), or publicly on websites. The ITS project management reports featured on the Project Reporting page within the ITS Projects website are written in Power BI.
Power BI Examples
Example of an internal ITS report:

Example of a public facing project management report:

Features of Power BI
- Available to any BGSU department at no additional cost
- Interactive analyses allow users to drill into detail
- Mobile-friendly reporting
- Many types of available visualizations
- Large support group and forum on Microsoft’s website
- Some methods of sharing reports include: Power BI app, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams
Power BI User Groups
BGSU started an internal Power BI user group in January 2021. This group is composed of data experts from different departments and meets monthly to share ideas and accomplishments. BGSU is also involved in forming a user group collaboration with other universities in Ohio, which is planned to begin this year.
If your department is interested in using Power BI, please contact the ITS Enterprise Reporting team at falconinfo@bgsu.edu.