Forum Discussion
Dashboard Vs Report
Will someone please explain what the differance is between a Dashboard and a Report.
I cant see any other than, everything i build in BI Desktop publishes as a report.
Which then seems to just limit the sharing options?
Its the most pointless usless headache i have had in learning PowerBi. Every video i watch says "build a dashboard in 5mins" or whatever actually builds a report.
I dont get why there is this odd split that has no real differance for an end user, its driving me nuts and no where can i find an explination as to why this even exists.
Can someone tell me how i change the report i have built to be a dashboard so that i can then share it?
BI knowledge base said to share a report, share the link, but of all the 10 people i shared it with, none can open the link, it takes them to their own workspace and is not an option under reports.
confused to hell!
Thanks,
Ben
ah ok! and yes i have those books already.
Ok when you publish to the Power BI service, it creates 2 objects a dataset and a report. Even though technically what you have already created is a dashboard you need to pin that 'report' aka dashboard into a dashboard.
What you need to do is in the Power BI service, manually create a dashboard in the dashsboard workspace by clicking the + where it says dashboard. Basically what you doing it creating a shell to dump your 'report' into. Then open your report, at the top of the screen you should see pin live dashboard, pin it to the dashboard you just created.
You might want think about creating a group workspace for the group you created, in other words the default will be your work space. Create a group workspace to share your content with the group that are going to consume the dashboard. You can do that under my work space at the top. Then add all the users into that, unless there is already an defined group in your office 365 domain that you can add it to. There is a way of linking those groups to power bi i think.
hope that makes sense.
12 Replies
A dashboard is more of a high level view of something specific that you want to monitor ;
1. gives you a high level view of what it is you are monitoring
2. alerts you to issues that might be happening
3. gives you information in order to action something
Reports, as in Standard type reporting tends to be more detailed in nature and more for day to day operational type activities. You can have a dashboard that drills down into a detailed report, however it depends.
Power BI is not necessarily the right solution for all reporting, it really just depends on what your requirements are.
Thanks, my requirement is to share some charts with 10-50 other users. I seem to be struggling to do this.
Tableau made this a lot simpler to manage..i guess its just about understanding the differences between power bi and tableau.
You can create a dashboard in a power bi desktop file and then publish that to the power bi service which you can then share with your users.
What is it that you are struggling with exactly, its very easy to share power bi but you just need to know where to do it.
Things to consider
1. How often does the data need to be refresh
2. are all these users on your office 365 domain
3. how will you update your data.
4. Are you set up on the Power BI service yet?
etc
