Forum Discussion
Power BI Desktop missing features
Some questions (using Power BI Desktop and PBIRS ON premises server, Oct 2017).
- Pin - this seems to work only in Power BI Services, not in Desktop. Why? Seems to me Microsoft is keeping features out of Desktop/ON premises landscape to force users to the Cloud, and make more money.
- Dashboard/embedding - this may be similar to the pinning issue. How can I create a Dashboard like summary view in Power BI Desktop. For example, I recently created a new solution with 2 views. I would like to create a 3rd view with a preview of the other 2 views (like when you embed subreports into a Main report in SSRS Reports).
- Hyperlinks - why can't I create a hyperlink or shortcut to a local file? When I do this in Power BI Desktop it work, as soon as I save my solution to the on premise server it no longer works (you can see the text of they Hyperlink, but the link doesn't work).
- Documents - is there any way to upload documents to a folder in PBIRS (like uploading/sharing in Sharepoint)? I would like to store PowerPoint or PDF tutorials in the same server and have them available via hyperlinks in the Dashboards.
Hi Anonymous
For you 2 first questions, it's because PowerBI Desktop is only there to create report, not dashboards.
Creating reports on Desktop is more easy and it's more powerful with a lot more options.
For you last 2 questions, I will someone else answer them because I've never used PBI for that yet
Do you think Power BI Desktop will ever have such capabilities/features? If our company already pays for an on premise Power BI Report server, then I would expect being able to use this functionality. Making this only available in the Cloud, for a company requires additional money as you need to pay for users/licenses, plus you still encounter the security concerns of moving your reports/dashboards to the cloud, something that many companies are not prepared to do yet. Thanks for your response and help.
5 Replies
Hi Anonymous
For you 2 first questions, it's because PowerBI Desktop is only there to create report, not dashboards.
Creating reports on Desktop is more easy and it's more powerful with a lot more options.
For you last 2 questions, I will someone else answer them because I've never used PBI for that yet
Do you think Power BI Desktop will ever have such capabilities/features? If our company already pays for an on premise Power BI Report server, then I would expect being able to use this functionality. Making this only available in the Cloud, for a company requires additional money as you need to pay for users/licenses, plus you still encounter the security concerns of moving your reports/dashboards to the cloud, something that many companies are not prepared to do yet. Thanks for your response and help.
I fully understand what you are saying, because my company is going to use the cloud for my reports.
But as the gateway system is very strong and we are not displaying private datas (such a phone number / e mail) it will be ok.
Maybe in the future we will have such options, you can still try to post your idea here.
Quentin