Executives and high-level stakeholders require a holistic yet streamlined view of the top metrics, or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), established by their organization. While Power BI reports deliver a rich, self-service analytical experience, optionally at a very detailed level, Power BI dashboards provide an integrated and simplified consumption layer. From a technical architecture standpoint, Power BI dashboards are exclusive to the Power BI online service and are primarily composed of tiles representing visuals from one or many reports. Although each Power BI report is limited to a single source dataset, a dashboard's tiles can represent multiple datasets from highly disparate sources to help provide a 360 degree view on a single canvas.
To less experienced users and BI team members, the terms and capabilities associated with dashboards and reports can be misunderstood.
For example, the data-driven alert is exclusive to Power BI dashboards, while embedding in SharePoint online is specific to reports. More fundamentally, the user experience with slicer selections, bookmarks, and cross-highlighting available in reports and Power BI Desktop is not available in dashboards, exclusive of pinned live report pages.
Although several capabilities, such as email subscriptions and printing, are common to reports and dashboards, BI teams are well served to design dashboards and reports according to their distinct roles in Power BI. For example, a dashboard should not contain granular details or complex visuals, but rather the essential metrics describing the stakeholder's area of responsibility or influence.
The following table compares dashboards to reports across 19 capabilities:
|
Capability
|
Dashboard
|
Report
|
|
Visualization pages
|
One page
|
One or multiple pages
|
|
Authoring environment
|
Power BI service
|
Power BI Desktop and Power BI service
|
|
Viewing environment
|
Power BI service and Power BI mobile apps
|
Power Desktop, Power BI service, and Power BI mobile apps
|
|
Pinning
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Can pin existing dashboard tiles to other dashboards in the current workspace
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Can pin report visualizations as tiles in dashboards, and can also pin report pages as tiles in dashboards
|
|
Email subscriptions
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Can subscribe to a dashboard
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Can subscribe to a report page or multiple report pages
|
|
Filtering
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Can only filter or interact with live report page tiles
|
Can filter, cross-highlight, and slice
|
|
Data alerts
|
Can configure data-driven alerts for standard KPI, card, and gauge tiles
|
Can’t set alerts on report visuals
|
|
Customization
|
Can alter layout, tile size, names, and links, and also the data and visualization types are read-only
.
|
Can control visual types, visualization data field inputs, and report formatting in Edit mode of the Power BI service and Power BI Desktop
|
|
Natural language queries (Q and A)
|
Available for dashboards based on import mode Power BI datasets and Live connections to SSAS Tabular Models.Not available for DirectQuery datasets
|
Currently available as a preview in Power BI Desktop
|
|
Visibility to data detail
|
Can export data for a dashboard tile
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Can export both summarized and underlying data, also have Show Data option to view data of visual in a tabular format.
|
|
Printing
|
Can print currently-selected dashboard
|
Can print current report page
|
|
Featured and favorites
|
A dashboard can be set as featured and as a favorite. A user's default landing page in Power BI is a featured dashboard.
|
Reports can only be set as favorites
|
|
Publish to web
|
Not supported—exclusive to reports
|
All pages of a report can be published online for public access
|
|
Embed in SharePoint
|
Not supported—exclusive to reports
|
A report page can be embedded in a SharePoint online site page via the Power BI web part
|
|
Mobile optimized
|
Can optimize dashboards for phones
|
Can optimize reports for phones
|
|
Create visuals
|
Limited to adding tiles containing text, image, video, web content, and streaming data
|
Can create many report visuals using both standard and custom visuals
|
|
Dataset sources
|
A dashboard can contain tiles pinned from Excel Workbooks, SSRS, and Power BI datasets
|
A Power BI report exclusively creates Power BI visuals
|
|
Datasets
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The tiles on a dashboard can reflect one or multiple datasets
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A Power BI report is limited to a single source dataset, however, this dataset can represent the integration of multiple data sources
|
|
Data caching
|
Dashboard tiles store and represent cached query results, and the cache is updated on a schedule
|
Power BI reports generate queries against their source dataset when opened and based on user interactions with the visuals
|
Per the preceding table, data-driven alerts are exclusive to Power BI dashboards in the Power BI service. Data alerts and their corresponding notifications are not available to Power BI reports, including reports published to the Power BI Report Server. The ability to embed custom alert rules and the deep integration of data alerts with the Power BI mobile apps is a top reason to leverage dashboards in the Power BI service. Data alerts and email subscriptions to reports and dashboards in the Power BI service is reviewed in Chapter 11, Creating Power BI Apps and Content Distribution.
The subsequent sections of this chapter describe many core dashboard features and capabilities including dashboard tiles, mobile optimizations, and alternative sources, including Excel and SSRS.