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Create scorecards and manual metrics in Power BI (preview)

  • Article
  • 3 minutes to read

APPLIES TO: ❌ Power BI Desktop ✔️ Power BI service

Metrics in Power BI let customers curate their metrics and track them against key business objectives, in a single pane. In this article, you complete the following steps:

  • Create your first scorecard.
  • Create a manual metric.
  • Edit a metric.
  • Share the scorecard with others.

You can also connect metrics to an existing report visual in Power BI. See Create connected metrics for details.

Screenshot of Northwind scorecard with metrics and submetrics.

Prerequisites

You need a Power BI Pro license to author and share metrics in standard workspaces. You also need:

Step 1: Create a scorecard

  1. Sign in to the Power BI service (app.powerbi.com) in your browser.

  2. Select Metrics in the navigation pane to open the Metrics hub.

    Screenshot of Select Metrics in the left nav.

  3. In the Metrics hub, select New scorecard. The scorecard creation pane opens.

  4. Name your scorecard, provide a description, and select the Power BI workspace where you want to store the scorecard.

    If you don’t have a workspace, you can create one using this article, Create the new workspaces in Power BI.

    Screenshot of Complete the Create Scorecard pane.

  5. Select Create. Power BI creates the scorecard and opens it.

    Power BI creates these items in the workspace: the scorecard itself, and a dataset associated with your scorecard that houses all the metrics data.

    Screenshot of The new scorecard and dataset that Power BI created.

Step 2: Create a manual metric

  1. In the scorecard, select New Metric.

  2. Decide on a Metric name and an Owner.

    Owners can be individuals or distribution groups within your organization’s Azure Active Directory.

  3. Set Current and Target values for your metrics. In this article, you enter the number manually. You can also connect it to an existing report visual in Power BI. See Create connected metrics for details.

  4. Set the format for your values, and choose a Status, Start date, and End date.

    Screenshot of In the New metric, select a number format.

    Power BI automatically represents values in numeric notation. For example, 2044 is represented as 2 K.

  5. Select Save.

    Metric name is the only required field for your metric. You can leave the remaining fields blank and come back to edit it after defining all your metrics.

Step 3 (Optional): Create submetrics

You can also define one or more submetrics for your metric. There are two entry points to create a submetric.

  1. Open a scorecard and select Edit.

    Screenshot of Select the Edit pencil to edit the scorecard.

  2. Select the metric you want to create a submetric for, and select Add submetric on top of the scorecard.

    Screenshot of Select the Add Submetric button.

    Or Hover over the metric you want to create a submetric for, select More options (...) > New submetric.

    Screenshot of Select more options, then add submetric.

  3. Repeat the first step as needed to create more submetrics.

    Make sure you have the metric selected so you can create submetrics.

Step 4 (Optional): Update the metric tracking cycle

All new metrics created within scorecards have a default daily tracking cycle, which means that the data and progress are calculated on a day-to-day basis. However, many metrics and metrics demand to be tracked on a different cadence. In those cases, you can change the default tracking cycle on the metric through metric settings. The tracking cycle doesn't impact data refresh.

  1. Open a scorecard and select Edit.

    Screenshot of Select the Edit pencil to edit the scorecard.

  2. Select the name of any metric or submetric. Power BI opens the Details pane.

  3. Select the Settings tab.

  4. Set the tracking cycle frequency for your metric, and select Track.

    Screenshot of Set the tracking cycle for your metric.

Step 5 (Optional): Share your scorecard

Sharing is the easiest way to give people access to your scorecard in the Power BI service. You can share with people inside or outside your organization.

When you share a scorecard, the people you share it with can view and interact with it. They can also edit it if they have an Admin, Member, or Contributor role in the workspace. Users that have access to the scorecard see the same data you see in the scorecard. The coworkers you share with can also share with their coworkers, if you allow them to. The people outside your organization can view and interact with the scorecard, but can't share it.

  • To share, select the Share button in the scorecard action bar and follow the steps outlined in the experience. It's the same as sharing a dashboard.

    Screenshot of Share a link to a scorecard.

    When you share scorecards, whether inside or outside your organization, your recipients need Power BI Pro licenses, unless the content is in a Power BI Premium capacity.

Next steps

More questions? Try the Power BI Community.