Why on Earth can I not create a dashboard in PowerBI Desktop?

[gbrauer]

I am new to PowerBI. I have connected PowerBI desktop to a very large dataset that I have been creating visuals and reports with. I want to create a dashboard for the visuals and apparently you cannot setup a dashboard in PowerBI Desktop? Why is this? I am connecting to a Access database for the majority of the data, and from what I am seeing, that is not an option with the online version of PowerBI? Am I out of luck? Why can't I build a dashboard in PowerBI Desktop?

Thanks,

Greg

[Amgad]

Hi @gbrauer

You will need to create your Dashboard as a report from Power BI desktop and then publish it . 

Once you have it on a Worspace under reports , open it and on the top menue you will find "Pin Live Page" click it and you will have the option to pin it to an existing Dashboard or a new on .  Detialis in this link. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-dashboard-create.

---

---

@gbrauer wrote:

I am new to PowerBI. I have connected PowerBI desktop to a very large dataset that I have been creating visuals and reports with. I want to create a dashboard for the visuals and apparently you cannot setup a dashboard in PowerBI Desktop? Why is this? I am connecting to a Access database for the majority of the data, and from what I am seeing, that is not an option with the online version of PowerBI? Am I out of luck? Why can't I build a dashboard in PowerBI Desktop?

Thanks,

Greg

---

---

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Hi @gbrauer,

The feature that create dashboard is only available in Power BI Service rather than Power BI Desktop, an idea about the feature that directly create dashboard in Power BI Desktop has been submitted in this link, please vote it up.

Currently, you can publish your Power BI Desktop file to Power BI Service following the steps in this article, then create dashboard in Power BI Service to monitor your import data.


Thanks,
Lydia Zhang

[LindaC]

I want to create a dashboard in shared app workspace.

However, I don't want the person I am sharing with to get all of the data in the power BI file.  I can't figure out how to create a dashboard in my app workspace and move it to a shared space.  Therefore, this is what I think I have to do, but would welcome any other suggestions:

1) Publish the power bi file to the shared app workspace

2) Create the dashboard in the shared workspace 

3) Delete the power bi file in the shared app workspace

Thanks!

Linda

[GilbertQ]

Hi there

As mentioned before this is a by design feature of the product offering.

The other reason that you can only have the dashboards online, is that having an online dashboard you can have items from multiple datasets on one dashboard.

You also get the additional functionality which is built into the online dashboard offering, which enables you to use Q&A, real-time updating of dashboard tiles if the underlying data updates, sharing of the dashboards to other users. As you can see there is a lot of other additional reasons why it is only available online.

[KHorseman]

@brains in this case "dashboard" has a very specific standard meaning. What you are describing is simply a page in a report.

Standard terminology* in Power BI:

Report: the visible interactive part of a Power BI file, including charts, slicers and other visuals displayed on one or more tabs/pages

Data model or dataset: the set of queries, tables, relationships, custom columns, and measures on the back end of a Power BI file. Once published online, a single dataset can potentially power multiple reports. If you use "Save As" online, you are creating a new report that is fed by the same dataset, meaning that you don't have to refresh the same set of queries twice to update both reports.

Dashboard: a shareable online canvas where you can pin visuals or live pages from one or more reports. Potentially adds functionality such as Q&A. Generally intended as a landing page or quick view, dashboards are usually the first and sometimes only interaction point for end users, depending on how you share content in your organization and how your users consume it. Dashboards often are a simplified overview set of important visuals from a larger report, but a dashboard can potentially have visuals or pages from many different reports powered by many different datasets if you're a masochist who loves tedious maintenance.

* Not necessarily the officially official definitions of these terms, but a good enough paraphrasal because I'm too lazy to search for the page where Microsoft described these. If you were pedantic you could quibble about a slight difference between "data model" and "dataset" but it's close enough for this discussion.

[KHorseman]

Dashboards are online landing pages for selected components of one or more reports. They do not exist outside of the online service.

[brains]

Hi ,

As a newbie my self too. I managed to create a dashboard in couple of hours. It depends what you mean my dashboard.

For me it means having a few visual charts that can be interactive to each other.

Hence, to begin with have you tried any  sample Excel sheet as your data source, and create a few charts. I have a pie chart and other charts, when I click on a segment on the pie chart , the others change aswell. and vice versa.

Dashboards or Interactive Visuals ?

Sure it is possible

[brains]

As a newbie, and if you have not already, I would try and create a some charts based on some sample Excel Data as a taster.

I managed to create some visuals (charts) which I am able to interact with as Dashboards. I.e I click on a segment of pie chart and the other charts drill to it.