You now have a basic understanding of the different types of content that can be created in Power BI. Dashboards, reports, and apps can all be used to visualize data and make better business decisions.
Dashboards are a great way to get a quick overview of your data. They can be used to display key metrics and trends and be customized to fit your specific needs.
Reports provide more detailed information about your data. They can be used to drill down into specific metrics or explore different data sets.
Apps are a way to combine dashboards and reports into a single, cohesive experience. They can be used to share content with others or make finding the information you need easier.
Dashboard
A Power BI dashboard is a visual representation of data that tells a story. It is made up of tiles, which are individual visualizations of data. The tiles are arranged on a single page, so they must be carefully chosen to tell a clear and concise story.
You cannot edit a Power BI dashboard, but you can interact with it by clicking on the tiles. This will allow you to drill down into the data and see more detail. You can also use the dashboard to monitor your business and make data-backed decisions.
For example, if you are the Marketing Manager for a clothing manufacturing company named Van Arsdel, you can use the following Marketing and Sales Dashboard to monitor how your company is doing versus the competition.
The dashboard shows a high-level snapshot of your business, including:
Sales by product: This tile shows how much revenue each product has generated. This information can help you identify your best-selling products and focus your marketing efforts on them.
Website traffic: This tile shows how many visitors your website has received each month. This information can help you track the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.
Social media engagement: This tile shows how many people are engaging with your brand on social media. This information can help you identify which social media platforms are most effective for your business.
By viewing this dashboard, you can get a quick overview of how your company is doing and make data-backed decisions about your marketing strategy.
The tiles on your dashboard are visualizations of data from reports. They are a quick and easy way to see the most important information from your reports.
Open a report from dashboard
To open a report, simply select a tile. The report will open to the page that contains the visualization that you selected. You can then interact with the report to see more detail or to drill down into the data.
Visit Report Page
When you receive a new report, you can quickly familiarize yourself with the data and insights it contains by visiting each of the report pages. The report page names are now listed in a vertical pane, so you can easily select the page you want to view.
Each page in a report contains a different set of visualizations that tell a story. For example, the Sentiment page in the example report compares how customers feel about the Van Arsdel company and industry, by month and geography. The visualizations on this page show that the company's positive sentiment is at an all-time high after a dip mid-year.
By visiting each of the report pages, you can get a quick overview of the data and insights that the report contains. This will help you understand the report and identify the areas that you want to explore further.
Change report view options
Reports can be viewed on many different devices, with varying screen sizes and aspects. By default, Power BI sets reports to Fit to page, which means you don't have to scroll, but the type might be small. On the View menu, select Actual size to view the information on the report at full size. You might need to scroll.
The View menu has many options that control how your report page displays. Select the option that works best for your screen size, the audience you're presenting to, and your personal preference.
To meet your accessibility needs, use the High contrast colors option.
View bookmark in your report
A report designer can create bookmarks to give you alternative views of the same data. For example, one bookmark might show data for the Central region, while another bookmark might show data for the Southern region, and a third bookmark might show data for the Northern region. By selecting a bookmark, you can switch between the three different views of the same report page.
Not all reports have bookmarks. To determine if your report does, open the Bookmarks pane from the View menu. The Bookmarks pane will list all of the bookmarks that are available in the report.
Understand the way reports are filtered
When a colleague shares a report with you, be sure to look at the Filters pane. Filters let your colleagues highlight specific data, usually by not showing all of the available information.
Filters are used to limit the data that is displayed in a report. They can be applied to the entire report, to individual pages, or to individual visuals.
The Filters pane shows the filters that are applied to the current report, report page, and visual (if one is selected). In the following example, the column chart is selected. Notice that there are three page filters (Segment, Year, Region), one filter applied to all report pages (Date), and three visual filters (Manufacturer, Month, and Total Units YTD Var %).
To fully understand the story that a report page tells, it is important to know which filters are applied and what those filters are. The Filters pane can help you to understand the story by showing you which data is being included and which data is being excluded.
If the filter has the word All next to it, that means every value in the field is included in the filter. On this page, all segments are included, and in the column chart, all months are included. The Filters on the page Year is 2014 tell us that this report page only includes data for the year 2014.
Enlarge a dashboard tile
Focus mode is a feature in Power BI that allows you to zoom in on a single visual. This can be useful when you have a dashboard or report that is crowded with visuals and you want to focus on one particular visual.
To use focus mode, hover over the visual that you want to zoom in on. A menu will appear with two options: "Open in focus mode" and "Focus icon." Click on either option to enter focus mode.
In focus mode, the visual will fill the entire screen and all other visuals will be hidden. You can then interact with the visual as you normally would.
Focus mode allows you to zoom in on a single visual so that it fills the entire canvas. You can still hover to view details and access the Filters pane. However, if the view is still not large enough, you can open the visual in full screen mode. This will fill your entire screen with the visual, making it even easier to see the details.
Full screen mode is often used for presentations because you can even display entire dashboards and entire report pages in full screen mode. This allows you to share your data with others in a clear and concise way
SWETA SARANGI