5C. Create dashboards in Power BI

Question 2

What are dashboards and how are they different from reports?

Answer 2

Microsoft Power BI dashboards are different than Power BI reports.
- Dashboards allow report consumers to create a single artifact of directed data that is personalized just for them.
- Dashboards can be comprised of pinned visuals that are taken from different reports.
- Where a Power BI report uses data from a single semantic model, a Power BI dashboard can contain visuals from different semantic models.
- Well-built dashboards capture the main, most important highlights of the story that you are trying to tell.

Question 3

Where do you build dashboards?

Answer 3

• Power BI dashboards is a feature that is only included in Power BI service. You can also view dashboards on mobile devices, though you can’t build them there.

Question 4

What are some differences between dashboards and reports to consider when deciding on whether to build a report or dashboard?

Answer 4

• Dashboards can be created from multiple semantic models or reports.
• Dashboards do not have the Filter, Visualization, and Fields panes that are in Power BI Desktop, meaning that you can’t add new filters and slicers, and you can’t make edits.
• Dashboards can only be a single page, whereas reports can be multiple pages.
• You can’t see the underlying semantic model directly in a dashboard, while you can see the semantic model in a report under the Data tab in Power BI Desktop.
• Both dashboards and reports can be refreshed to show the latest data.

Question 5

From where can you source (pin) tiles (the elements) for a dashboard?

Answer 5

• Reports
• Semantic models
• Other dashboards
• Excel
• SQL Server Reporting Services
• and more

When pinning a report element to a dashboard, you create a direct connection between the dashboard and the report that the snapshot came from. When you make changes to the visuals in the report, and then re-publish to Power BI Service, changes will be reflected on the dashboard.

Question 6

How do you pin tiles to a dashboard?

Answer 6

Navigate to the element you want to pin, right click, click Pin, and select a new or existing dashboard to pin it to.

Question 7

What are data alerts, what are they good for, and where are they configured?

Answer 7

• Data alerts can be used to notify you or a user that a specific data point is above, below, or at a specific threshold that you can set.
• These alerts are features that are only available on Power BI service?

Question 8

For what kind of elements can you configure data alerts?

Answer 8

• Alerts can only be set up Dashboard tiles
• Only on KPI visuals, gauges and card visuals

Question 9

How do you set up data alerts for a pinned tile on a dashboard?

Answer 9

Select the ellipsis (…) in the corner of the tile you want to set an alert for and then select Manage Alerts.

Question 10

Who can set up data alerts for tiles on a dashboard?

Answer 10

This feature is available to whomever has access to the dashboard, not just the dashboard owner.

Question 11

What is one way to make a dashboard more dynamic, and allow users to interact with it and ask it questions that may not have answers in the existing tiles?

Answer 11

Pin the Q&A search par to the top of the dashboard.

Question 12

What is Quick Insights?

Answer 12

The Quick insights feature in Power BI uses machine learning algorithms to go over your entire semantic model and produce insights (results) for you quickly. This feature is a great way to build dashboards when you don’t know where to start. It also helps you find insights you might have missed when building your reports. From the insights that Power BI discovers, you can generate appealing, interactive visualizations.

Question 13

What are two important limitations to remember about Quick Insights?

Answer 13

• This feature is available in the Power BI web service only.
• Also, this feature doesn’t work with DirectQuery; it only works with data that is imported to Power BI.

Question 14

How do you get Quick Insights on a semantic model?

Answer 14

To get quick insights on your semantic model, open your Power BI web service and then select the Content tab. Locate your report for which you want to get quick insights. Then, select More options (…) > Quick insights.

Question 15

What type of content does Quick Insights produce?

Answer 15

The Quick Insights page contains up to 32 separate insight cards, and each card has a chart or graph plus a short description.

Question 16

How can you use Quick Insights in your workflow?

Answer 16

If you see an insight card that is particularly compelling, you can add it to your dashboard. On the Quick Insights page, hover over the card, then select the pin icon. The visual is added to your dashboard, where you can reposition it as required.

Question 17

How can you interact with insights cards produced by Quick Insights?

Answer 17

You can:
- Filter the visualization by using the available options in the Filters panel.
- Pin the insight card to a dashboard by selecting Pin visual.
- Run insights on the card (scoped insights) by selecting Get insights in the upper-right corner. The scoped insights allow you to drill into your data.
- Return to the original insights canvas by selecting Exit Focus mode in the upper-left corner.

Question 18

How can you make sure that your dashboards look cohesive?

Answer 18

When building dashboards, you should consider ensuring that the same theme is applied to your dashboards to create a cohesive picture. You could also apply a specific theme to reports and dashboards so that all report elements or tiles are uniform. This consideration is particularly important when you are building multiple dashboards. Power BI has the functionality to apply a theme directly to all visuals of a report.

Question 19

What does it mean to pin a live report page to a dashboard, and what are its benefits and potential drawbacks?

Answer 19

• From the navigation bar of a report (in Power BI service) you can pin an entire page as one tile on a dashboard.
• If you “pin live,” whenever you edit the report page in Power BI Desktop and publish to service, the dashboard will automatically update.
• This is helpful, because if you update a lot, you don’t have to keep editing both a report and a dashboard.
• A word of caution: Dashboards are intended to be a collection from various sources, not just as a “launching pad” for reports. We recommend that you pin at the tile level first and foremost, and if needed, the entire report page can also be pinned. Seeing an entire report page in a dashboard tile can be difficult.

Question 20

How can you show real-time data on a dashboard, and how is this different to pinning tiles from reports?

Answer 20

• On dashboards, showing realtime data is referred to as streaming data.
• Streaming data can come from a variety of sources, including from social media, factory sensors, service-usage metrics, and other sources that contain a constant stream of data points.
• Data that comes from a streaming semantic model isn’t stored in a Power BI semantic model; instead, it’s stored in a temporary cache. Consequently, you cannot model the data with this type of semantic model.
• The only way to visualize the data from a streaming data source is to create a tile directly on a dashboard and use a custom streaming data source. These tiles are optimized for displaying the data quickly and, because no database exists to pull the data from, these types of tiles have low latency and are best suited for data that doesn’t need additional transformations, such as temperature or humidity.
• To add streaming data to a dashboard you have to begin by adding a tile from within the dashboard.

Question 21

How can streaming data be displayed on a dashboard?

Answer 21

Streaming semantic model tiles can be in the form of
- line charts
- stacked bar charts
- cards, and
- gauges
and are formatted similarly to any other kind of tile.

Question 22

Why is it so important to think about security when building and sharing dashboards?

Answer 22

Because they can be seen by anyone who has been given access or a link, an important concern is security.

Question 23

How can you let users of a dashboard know how they should treat the data, i.e. its security requirements and sensitivity?

Answer 23

Data classification helps the dashboard owner raise security awareness to viewers of a dashboard so that they know what level of security should be considered when viewing or sharing a dashboard.

Because you can personalize them in any way that your organization requires, data classification also adds a layer of personalization to your dashboards.

Question 24

How do you add data classification to a dashboard?

Answer 24

Data classification is a feature that can be turned on and off in accordance with your organization’s business needs. All dashboards are defaulted to a certain classification type; however, the dashboard owner can manually make changes to the classification. To manually make changes, admin rights are required in Power BI service.

Next, you will have three classifications to choose from: High Impact, Low Impact, and Medium Impact, which can be added directly as well as the shorthand versions of these classifications. To access data classification on a dashboard, go to a specific dashboard in Power BI service. Hover over the ellipsis (…) by the name of the dashboard and then select Settings.

In the resulting window, under Dashboards, you can use the drop-down menu under Data classification to choose how you want the data to be classified. The Tickets dashboard contains highly sensitive information, so it must be marked as High Impact. After you have made this selection, the dashboard will follow the default data rules or the rules that you have established under Tenant settings.

When you open the dashboard, it will now be marked by this new data classification

Question 25

Where can you configure dashboards for mobile view, and what is different about these options?

Answer 25

• In Power BI Desktop, i.e. configuring a report for mobile view that you can then turn into a dashboard
• In Power BI service by selectingthe Edit drop down arrow on the home ribbon and select Mobile layout, as shown in the following Sales dashboard. This phone view is customizable for each person who uses the dashboard; selecting Phone view will allow you to create a new view that you can see on your phone when signing in to Power BI service.

Question 26

How can you add a new visual to a dashboard based on semantic model if the visual does not yet exist in a report?

Answer 26

Use the Ask a question feature to bring up Q&A, find the visual, and pin directly from there to the dashboard without creating the visual in a report.