For some users, the self-service data exploration experience provided within Power BI report pages is the most valuable use case of Power BI content. Although a dashboard of tiles may initiate or contribute to an analysis, these users often have more complex and unpredictable analytical needs such that greater flexibility is needed. Additionally, these users are generally much more comfortable and experienced in interacting with Power BI content, such as modifying slicer selections and drilling up and down through hierarchies.
To provide both the self-service experience of a report page as well as the consolidation benefits of a dashboard, an entire report page can be pinned as a single tile to a dashboard. In the following dashboard for the United States, a live report page of eight visuals has been pinned to supplement the corporate standard KPI tiles:
In this dashboard, the user can leverage the robust filtering options on the sales and margin live page to explore the dataset while maintaining visibility to standard metrics via the top six tiles. In the preceding example, the user has filtered on the Southwest sales territory region, the second and third quarters of the year (2017-Q2 and 2017-Q3), and also selected the Bikes product category via the bar chart. These selections impact the other five visuals on the page via either highlighting, in the case of the Net Sales by Calendar Month column chart, or filtering, in the case of the other four visuals. Filter selections on the live page do not, however, impact the dashboard tiles outside of the live page.
Like standard dashboard tiles, a live page tile can be moved around the canvas and the title and subtitle can be configured via the Tile details window. However, custom links cannot be configured for live report pages. In the United States dashboard example, the report page itself included a textbox with a title and thus the display title and subtitle property of the dashboard tile has been disabled.
Unlike the snapshot behavior of normal dashboard tiles, any saved changes to the report containing the live report page, such as a different filter condition, are automatically reflected by the live page tile on the dashboard. This automatic synchronization avoids the need to delete dashboard tiles reflecting the original state of the report and re-pinning visuals to reflect changes in the source report.
Just like individual visuals within reports, a report page can be pinned from both the Reading view and the edit mode in the Power BI service. The Pin Live Page menu icon, next to the refresh icon in Reading view, generates the following window:
Live report page tiles can also be included in mobile-optimized views of dashboards. However, given their size, live pages are generally more valuable in larger form factors and with full screen mode.