Build a dashboard
There are all sorts of interesting visuals you can create from your report in the Power BI service, which you can pin to a dashboard. A dashboard is something you create in the Power BI service or something a colleague creates in the Power BI service and shares with you. It is a single canvas that contains zero or more tiles and widgets. Each tile pinned from a report or from Q&A displays a single visualization that was created from a dataset and pinned to the dashboard. Entire report pages can also be pinned to a dashboard as a single tile. There are many ways to add tiles to your dashboard; too many to be covered in this overview topic.
Why do people create dashboards? Here are just some of the reasons.
to see, in one glance, all the information needed to make decisions
to monitor the most-important information about your business
to ensure all colleagues are on the same page, viewing and using the same information
to monitor the health of a business or product or business unit or marketing campaign
to create a personalized view of a larger dashboard; all the metrics that matter to you
When you open a workspace, the associated dashboards are listed under the Dashboards tab. To open a dashboard, select it. When you open an app, you'll be presented with a dashboard. Each dashboard represents a customized view of some subset of the underlying dataset(s). If you own the dashboard, you'll also have edit access to the underlying dataset(s) and reports. If the dashboard was shared with you, you'll be able to interact with the dashboard and any underlying reports but won't be able to save any changes.
A dashboard:
is associated with a single workspace.
can display visualizations from many different datasets.
can display visualizations from many different reports.
can display visualizations pinned from other tools (for example, Excel).
If you clicked on the link from publishing your report in the previous unit, your report should be open in your browser. Let's use this report to create a dashboard.
Visit Page 2 named Sales Analysis, of your report. Hover over the column chart and a small push pin will appear in the upper right corner of your visual.
Press the pin. In the dialogue box, make sure New Dashboard is selected. For the dashboard name, enter Cronus Sales. Select PIN.
A message will pop up with the option to Go to Dashboard. Click it. You should see the tile and live page you pinned. You can think of a dashboard like a cork board. All your pinned visuals exist in a one-page scrollable platform from which you can collaborate.
Hover over the chart tile and select the ellipses in the upper right corner. Select Add a Comment. From here you can type specific comments and even call out individuals in your company by using the @ symbol.
Type a comment and then close the comments pane. You will notice that a small text bubble symbol has appeared by the title of the visual. Press it to see your comment appear.
Close the comment pane again and select Add Tile. Select Text Box. Select Next.
Scroll down and add text. You can increase the font size or format the style. Select Apply. The tile you just added is at the bottom of the report. Click and drag it to the top beside the column chart.
Hover over the visual and you will see two small lines at the bottom right corner. Click and drag them to resize the tile to be smaller (About a quarter the size of the column chart tile).
Click on the section Ask a question about your data. A new pane will open over your dashboard where you can ask questions in real language of your data. Type What is the largest sales. The resulting visual is known as a data card.
Select Pin Visual, and click Pin. Exit Q&A. The visual you created from the Q&A is at the bottom of your dashboard. Drag it up and resize it as you did with the text tile.
Select Mobile View in the top right. Here you can change the size and order of tiles to view them better on mobile. Pin the text tile and data card tile to the mobile view and drag them to the top.
Now you have your very first dashboard with both a web and mobile view. The only remaining step is sharing your dashboard with others.