Dashboards and reports
Power BI Reports
Description: A report is a multi-perspective view into a semantic model, with visuals that represent different findings and insights from that model. A report can have a single page or many pages, allowing for a deep dive into specific datasets.
Why: Reports are the primary environment for data exploration and discovery. They are highly interactive, allowing users to "slice and dice" data, drill down into specific details, and see the relationships between different metrics across various visual formats.
Characteristics of a Report
Reports are built in Power BI Desktop or the Power BI Service and offer the following capabilities:
| Feature | Benefit |
|---|---|
| Interactivity | Clicking one visual filters the others on the same page. |
| Multiple Pages | Organize data into logical sections (e.g., Overview, Regional Analysis, and Inventory). |
| Deep Exploration | Supports advanced features like "Drill-through" and "Tooltips" for detailed investigation. |
Example: A 10-page report that tracks monthly sales, salesperson performance, and product stock levels across three different regions.
Power BI Dashboards
Description: A Dashboard is a feature exclusive to the Power BI Service (the cloud platform). It is a single-page canvas—often called a "pinboard"—that contains tiles pinned from one or more reports. It acts as a "high-level" view of your most important business metrics.
Why: Dashboards are designed for quick monitoring. Because you can pin visuals from different reports onto a single dashboard, it allows executives to see the "big picture" of the entire organization in one glance without having to open multiple reports.
The Power of Dashboard Tiles
Each visual on a dashboard is a "tile." When you click a tile, it takes you directly back to the specific report page where that visual was originally created.
| Dashboard Feature | How it Works |
|---|---|
| Single Page | Forces simplicity—only the most critical KPIs are displayed. |
| Cross-Report Visuals | You can pin a chart from a "Sales" report and a chart from a "HR" report onto the same dashboard. |
| Q&A Feature | Allows users to ask questions about the data using natural language (e.g., "What were sales in India last month?"). |
Example: The Management Dashboard
Creating a Quick View:
- Open your Sales Report and Pin the
Total Revenuecard. - Pin the
Monthly Trendline chart. - Pin the
Profit by Countrymap.
The result is a single management screen that stays updated automatically as the underlying reports refresh.
Key Notes
- Where they live: You create reports in Desktop or Service, but you can only create dashboards in the Service.
- Data Sources: A report is built on a single semantic model. A dashboard can display data from multiple different reports and models.
- Interactivity: Reports are highly interactive (slicing and filtering). Dashboards are less interactive; they are primarily used as a gateway to navigate into reports.
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