Dashboards and Reports are the two main components of the Power BI solution. There is a misconception about Report that it is a detailed tabular report, and about the dashboard is that it is an interactive visualisation with the chart.
There is a difference between them, and understanding differences will help you leverage their power in the best way.
In this blog, we will cover:
Reports
A Report is a multi-perspective view of a dataset, with visuals representing different findings and insights.
A report can have one visual or pages full of visuals. Depending on the role of your job, you may be someone who designs reports.
Reports In Power BI Desktop
In the Power BI Desktop Report view, you can create any number of report pages with visualizations. Report view in Power BI Desktop provides a similar design experience to the Report’s editing view in the Power BI service.
The difference between them is that in Power BI Desktop, you can work with your model and queries your data to make sure your data supports the best insights in your reports.
Reports In Power BI Service
A report usually consists of one or more pages of visuals. Reports are created by Power BI designers and shared with the business users directly or as part of an app.
- This is the navigation pane, where you can navigate into different configure.
- When you open My workspace, in the report section, you can open your report pages. In the above example, there are three pages, and in that Overview page is opened.
- The different visuals of the overview tab are shown in the above image.
- The Filters pane shows us that one filter applied to all the report pages. To hide the Filters pane, select the arrow (>).
- The Power BI banner shows the name of the Report and the last updated date. If you want to open a menu, select the arrow that also shows the name of the report owner.
- The action bar contains actions you can take on the reports. For example, you can view a bookmark, add a comment or export data from the report. Select More options (…) to pin the report to the dashboard and reveal a list of additional report functionality.
Advantages of Reports
- PowerBI bases a report on a single dataset. Report designers create the visuals in the report to represent nuggets of information.
- The visuals are not static. They update as the underlying data changes.
- You can interact with the filters and visuals as you dig into the data to discover insights and look for answers.
- The extent of what you do with the report will depend on the permissions and roles assigned by the report designer.
Dashboards
A PowerBI dashboard is a single page, often called a canvas, telling a story through visualizations. Because it is limited to only one page, a well-designed dashboard contains only the highlights of that story.
Dashboards aren’t available in the Power BI Desktop, and they are only available in the Power BI Service. You can also view a dashboard on mobile but can’t create dashboards on mobile.
The below image is an example of a dashboard
Create Dashboards from Reports
- After opening the Report page, you will see an icon when you hover your cursor on the tile. Click on that to pin the tile into the dashboard.
- After selecting the pin visual icon, Select the New dashboard option, enter the dashboard name, and select pin. If you have a dashboard and want to add to that, select the Existing dashboard option.
- When you select the Pin button, Power BI creates a new dashboard in the current workspace. After getting Pinned to dashboard message, select Go to the dashboard. If you are prompted to save the Report, choose Save.
![Screenshot shows a success message with the Go to dashboard option called out.]()
- Power BI opens the new dashboard. It has one tile: the visualization you just pinned.
- You can also add the entire page to the dashboard by selecting the Pin to dashboard option.
- When the Pin to dashboard window appears, select Existing dashboard.
Advantages of Dashboards
- Dashboards are a better way to monitor your business and see all of your most important metrics at a glance.
- The visualizations on the dashboard can come from a single underlying dataset or many and one underlying Report or many.
- A dashboard combines cloud data and on-premises, providing a consolidated view regardless of where the data lives.
- A dashboard isn’t just picturing. It is highly interactive, and the tiles update as the underlying data changes.
Dashboards vs reports
| Item | Dashboards | Reports |
|---|---|---|
| Pages | Dashboards are created on only one page | Can be created in one or more pages |
| Data sources | Dashboards are created from multiple datasets or reports. | Reports are created from a single dataset |
| Visualization | Dashboards always concentrate on building insights into the data by using graphs, attractive visuals, charts, etc. | Reports are not concentrated on the visualization part of the data rather it looks to create summary pages. |
| Available in Power BI Desktop | Dashboards can not be created in Power BI Desktop | Reports can be built and viewed in Power BI Desktop. |
| Filters and Slicers | You cant add Slicers and Filters as Dashboards are limited to a single page. | In reports, we can use many different ways to filter, highlight, and slice. |
| User Interactivity | Dashboards allow a user to pin visuals from different reports and datasets onto a single canvas, making it simple to group what’s essential to the user. |
Reports are more focused on being able to visualize and apply transformations to a single dataset. |
| Favourite | Yes. Can set multiple dashboards as favourites. | Yes. Can set multiple reports as favourites. |
| Q&A Feature | Yes | Yes, provided you have edit permissions for the report and underlying dataset. |
| Alerts | In dashboards, alerts to emails are created, when specific condition or criteria is met or limit crossed. | We can’t create Alerts in Reports. |
| Subscribe | Yes. Can subscribe to a dashboard. | Yes. Can subscribe to a report page. |
| See underlying dataset tables and fields | In dashboards, you can’t see the underlying dataset tables but can export data. | While in Reports you can see a dataset under the Data tab in Power BI Desktop. |
References
- Microsoft Certified Data Analyst Associate [DA-100]: Everything You Need To Know
- Microsoft Certified Data Analyst Associate [DA-100] Step By Step Activity Guides (Hands-On Labs)
- Everything You Need Know About Microsoft Power BI Service
Next Steps to begin with DA-100 Certification:
In our Microsoft Data Analyst Associate Certification Training Program, we’ll cover 11 Hands-On Labs. If you wish to start your journey towards becoming a Microsoft Certified: Data Analyst Associate, try our FREE CLASS.
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