PL-300 – Section 35: Part 4 Section 4 – Dashboards

258. Differences Between Dashboards and Reports

Hello. In this section, we’re going to have a look at Dashboards in the Power BI Service.

Now, dashboards and reports sound similar. So, what we’re going to do first of all, in this video is look at the differences between dashboards and reports. Then we’re going to look at the options associated with dashboards and then we’re going to take each of the requirements in the DA 100 exam as a separate video. So, some of these videos might be very short, but it’s supposed to be more convenient if you had a separate video for each item. So first of all, what are the differences between dashboards and reports? Because as I say, the two can be fairly similarly confused.

So, let’s just remind ourselves what a dashboard looks like. So, a dashboard are excerpts from reports that you pin into a dashboard. So, I’ve got this one from a previous section, I went into a pulse and I just pinned it. So, if I go to this role level security one the time just done. And I go to say this particular item, this visualisation, and I click on the pin visual. So, I can pin visual to an existing dashboard, or I can select here new dashboards. So, I’ll pin to the existing dashboard and then hey, we have two bits. So as a reminder, reports are files that you make either in Power BI Service, which contained visualisations, or ones more usually that it creates in Power BI desktop and upload into the Power BI Service.

Dashboards are excerpts from reports. So, how many pages do they have? What dashboards can have only one page whereas reports can have multiple pages? So, these just have pop into have one page, but you remember some of the things that we have done such as this one that we had to look at in part one level four. Multiple pages linked together with buttons and also we had the drill throughs. So, reports can have multiple pages, dashboards have just the one page. However, you can have additional dashboards if you so wish. So, you’re not just restricted to one dashboard you can have a high level dashboard and then one looking, say, just of bikes and one looking at not bikes for instance or you can have different dashboards for different people. So, you’ll very head and then head of finance, head of purchasing, that sort of thing. So dashboards are just one page reports, multiples.

Now, reports, have just got one dataset per report. Now, a dataset of course may contain multiple data sources. So, you’ve got multiple data sources going into one dataset going into one report. Though actually a dataset may go to multiple reports, but each report will only have one dataset. However, a dashboard, because it is pinned elements, pin visualisations from lots of reports. They could be more than one report, that could be more than one dataset in a particular dashboard.

Now, in reports we can do filtering. So, if you had any photos set up, we could use them over here. We could do slicing, so all possible in reports. This is not possible in dashboards. Dashboards you can see the options are very limited going into focus mode and that sort of thing. Wave reports. You can’t see the underlying data. You can export it, but you can’t see the dataset tables and fields in the dashboard itself. Whereas in reports, you can see any dataset tables and fields and values that you have permission to see. In reports, in addition to being able to filter and expose, you can also view related content, you can also add bookmarks, you can also generate QL codes, analyse in Excel and so on. None of these are possible in dashboards.

However, in dashboards, they’ll also things that you can do that you can’t do in reports. You can create alerts, which will email you when a dashboard meets certain conditions. The data changes and suddenly you’re spending too much money, you need an email alert for that.

Additionally, you can set one dashboard to be your feature dashboard, and we’ll see what that means later on in this section. You can’t do that with reports and there are no such things as a feet trip report. So, hopefully that has cemented your knowledge of dashboards and reports. You now know more about the differences between reports and dashboards. What reports can do, that dashboards can’t and the other way around.

In the next video, we’re going to have a look at some of the options associated with.

259. Manage Tiles on a Dashboard, Set Mobile View, and Other Tiles Options

In this video, we’re going to have a look at some of the options associated with dashboards. So, these are tiles, which you can resize by going to the bottom right hand corner, and you can drag them, however, you wish. Some sizes will be too small for you to be able to go any narrower. And of course, sometimes you won’t be able to see all of the information anyway.

Now, you’ve seen several times how to add, to pin a tile into a dashboard from a report. You just go to a particular report and you click on pin.

Now, you can also pin tiles from the Power BI Q and A, we’ll have a look at that in a few videos time, from another dashboard. So, let’s go into this dashboard and let’s duplicate this dashboard. So, you can see the dot-dot-dot (…), we have duplicate dashboard. So, I’m going to call this just a copy, and I may well delete this after this particular video. So, what I can do is I can say for this particular one, I want to pin the tile into my copy. So that gives me two of identical, or near identical tiles.

Now, I should say that the tiles that you’ve got retain the same structure, the data might change, but the structure remains the same. So, let’s say for instance, I go into this. If I click on a tile, it takes me to wherever it was created, a report say. And if I change this, if I edit this report so that this is no longer a pie chart, but let’s say a bar chart, and I go back into my dashboard, so I’ll save the changes, my dashboard still retains the pie chart.

Now, if the data changes, then this dashboard figure will change, this dashboard to pie chart. However, changing the actual element, for example, changing from a pie chart to a bar chart, won’t actually be reflected in the dashboard.

Now, we could use this to your advantage. Suppose you had a bar chart here and said, this is perfect for this report, but for the dashboard what I really need is a pie chart. Well, you alter the report, you pin it into the dashboard and then you change it back in the report. So tiles can come from another report, another dashboard, the Q and A, they can also come from an Excel workbook on OneDrive for business. They can also be used with quick insights. That’s why you can get lots and lots of tiles about a particular data centre, you won’t be able to use that with row level security, however,. And you could also get it from an on premises paginated report from power BI report server or SQL server reporting services, but if you don’t have SSRS SQL server, you won’t be getting those. And you can also add a tile right at the top.

So, suppose I wanted to add some web content or an image. It doesn’t have to be for a report. Maybe, you want your company logo or something. Then absolutely, and you could also add a video, maybe, from YouTube, in which case, clicking on the tile won’t take you to the video itself in a different web page, it will actually start playing the video inside your dashboard. So, let’s have a look at some of the options that you’ve got for the individual tiles. So, if I go to my dashboard and click on the dot-dot-dot (…), so be careful not to get near it and not click on it because you will go to the report itself. You can add a comment, you can copy it into your clipboard, which will just look like a JPEG, a graphic. You can share it to Microsoft teams, you can go to the report, you can open it in focus mode, so you just see that tile and nothing else, but you can also then see the photos as well. So, it’s a bit like a mini report. You can edit any of the details or the title and the subtitle, and you can display when the data was last refreshed, or you can set a custom link. So, if I’ve got a custom link, say microsoft.com, and I can choose to open the link in the same tab or not, and it needs to start with HTTP:// or HTTPS://, then when I click on the tile, it won’t take me to report, it will take me to whatever the custom link is that you have just arranged. So that’s in the edit tiles section. You can pin the tile to another dashboard or you can delete the tile. So, these are all options that you’ve got with individual tiles.

260. Dashboards: Options

With regards to the dashboard itself, we’ve seen that you can add a tile, you can share the dashboard to team, you can add a comment.

So, let’s add a comment for this particular tile, and say, look at me and post that. So, now, you see all the comments there for each for the entirety of the dashboard. So add a comment works on a per tile basis. So, this over table, let pull that. So, you can either see the comments for a particular tile or you can see a comments for the entirety of the dashboard. You can see usage statistics. So in other words, wait, how many people have use it? How often do they use it? So, we can see a little bit of preparation, so how many visitors, that sort of thing. You can see what to related to, so in other words, what reports are required for this dashboard to work and then what datasets are required? And again, you can see it in lineage view as well. You can set as featured. So, if I click on this as my featured dashboard, yes please, then every time you open the Power BI Service, instead of starting at home, it will start with that dashboard displayed. You can only have one dashboard as a featured obviously, if you open Power BI Service, it can’t display two or more dashboards. However, you can favourite more than one dashboard and then there we’re going to your favourite section which will also be in your home section. Here you can see now I have favorited that. You can subscribe, we’ll be looking at that in another video. We can’t do this in this particular dashboard, because it has RLS. The alternative is it could be going to SQL Server an analysis services.

Now, we’re looking at the web view, but there is also a form view. So, if you’re looking at this dashboard on a mobile phone, then this is how it will be displayed, and you can say, actually, I don’t want this particular table to be on the phone, it just wouldn’t work. So, I’ll unpin it or, maybe, actually, I will repin it because I quite like it. And you can adjust where the tiles are. So, to go back from the default view, go to the web view. And you’ll notice also you can reset the tiles or put them back in their original position. And you can unpin your tiles so you’re starting off with a blank slate. In addition, dashboard frame, we’ll have a look at that as a separate video because it’s one of the specific questions in the DA-100. We’ve seen duplicate dashboard. So, I’ll give you a second copy, you can print the dashboard so that just put your printer dialogue box there, you can refresh the dashboard tile so that will get any updated data that might be needed. Performance inspector, so that shows how you are doing in terms of how much time is required to generate this dashboard. Here you can see is looking good. And then there are some final settings which allow me to change the dashboard name, the owner description, whether it is featured. For me, I don’t have permission to do that, except I would’ve done over there where I can use question and answer, allow comments and whatever. I just want Power BI to be able to do all of the dashboard tile flow so when I add a new tile, Power BI will automatically rearrange the tiles. And then finally, for the dashboard itself, over here we have a menu and is very simple menu, open, rename, remove, share, to share with other people, just the same as this share over here and then.

261. Configure Subscriptions

In this video, we’re going to talk about subscribing to dashboards or reports. Maybe, you need notification when a report has been updated or, maybe, you need a link every single day or week. Well, we can do this by using the Subscribe at the top. So, if I click on this, you can see that we can add a new subscription. So who do you want to subscribe? Well, I’m going to subscribe Jane, for instance. So, you can see that the data was based on what data you’ve got. It’s based on your permissions. So, here’s the updated data. Please, enjoy.

So, there’s my subject, there’s my message. I can say it should be only when the data’s been refreshed. That will be a maximum of once per day. Or hourly, daily, weekly and monthly and if it’s daily, weekly or monthly, then you can schedule a time and a time zone. So, maybe, you want it at 2:15 p.m. every day or, maybe, you want to arriving for the first thing when people get in. You can specify a start date and an end date. And if you specify hourly, by the way, that’s the first time it will happen and then it will happen every hour thereafter. You can also specify if it’s weekly, how many times a week do you want? So daily will mean seven days a week. Weekly can mean you can choose how many days a week. So, maybe, I want it on Mondays and Wednesdays.

Now, let’s have a look at this bottom thing. You can include in your email a link to the dashboard and you can also allow people to have access to the dashboard. So, I’m going to click Save and Close and there is a subscription made. I’m also going to just click inside this visualisation to get to this report and I’m going to subscribe to this report as well. And we’ll see at the bottom, there are a couple of additional things. You could have a thumbnail preview of the report. And you can also, if you have got Power BI Premium, send it as a PDF or PowerPoint. No more than 20 pages and it’s got to be less than 25 megabytes. At the top, you can see run now, whether it is on or not, so whether it’s active, and you can also delete a subscription. So, I’m going to click save and close. So, if you want to edit this subscription, you can go into subscribe and you can see here we’ve got this subscription but also bottom left, you can manage all subscriptions, so if I click on that, we’ll get to the subscriptions and you can see that we have got a subscription to an individual report and to a dashboard. And then I can click on the actions, there’s only one action, it’s edit and that will take me to the edit screen.

Now, there’s just a few ifs. First of all, if you’ve got row-level security, then you won’t be able to see that in dashboard email subscriptions. There are certain tiles which are not supported, for example, streaming tiles, video tiles, custom web content tiles and the report subscriptions are tied to the actual name. So, if you rename the report, then you’ll have to recreate your subscription. And of course, this is only available for pro-level licences or premium-level licences only.

So, these are subscriptions. You can go to a dashboard, then click on subscribe and you can subscribe yourself and others to a dashboard, to a report, you can say you want it once a day, as many times a day as you want. You can have it monthly on a particular day or days of the month. And if you are subscribing to a report and you’ve got Premium licence, you can also view the report as an attachment to the email.

262. Pin a Live Report Page to a Dashboard

In this video, we are going to pin tiles to dashboard. And before you say, “Hang on. We’ve already discussed that report. You can have visualisations, you can pin them into dashboard,” there are two specific points I want to mention in this particular video.

So, I’ve now deleted any existing tiles. So, this dashboard is completely empty. And I’m going to go into my original report and I am going to de-select any slices that I’ve got, and I’m going to go to this pie chart again, and I’m going to pin it. So pin the visual to our existing dashboard. So, we go into the dashboard. We can see that it is a pie chart.

Now, at the top, we have another thing we can do. and it is pinning, this page of this report as a tile. So, it’s not just pinning one visualisation, it’s doing the entire page.

Now, notice what it’s also saying. We now save reports as you last left them, including photos and slices. In the past it didn’t do that. So, if you want to go back to the original state, I will click on reset to default. I’ll just do that first. I’m just going to reset everything and now I’ll pin this page of this report, to my existing dashboard. So, let’s expand this now, go to my dashboard, and there it is. You might have to scroll down to find it.

Now, you can, interact with this as if it was a report. So, I can select different slices. I can select different photos. I can remove the photo or slice up. I can click, on any slice of the pie chart, and you can see this is helmets, and then this is hydration packs. I can do cross filtering, cross highlighting over visuals. As you can see, we’ve got high hydration packs now selected. If I click on clothing, then we will just have clothing. None of this is being reflected in the above. You can see bikes, are still the big spender, the big values in this pie chart.

Now, this is a live tile. What does that mean? Well, let’s go back, into this report, that it comes from. And I’m going to edit this report, and I’m going to change this, from a pie chart into a bar chart. Okay so, we’re going to save the report, so now my report doesn’t have a pie chart, it has a bar chart. Let’s go back into the dashboard. What are you going to be expecting? Well, the top item, which was taken from one of the tiles, still remains a pie chart. So, this pinned visualisation, will only change when the data changes. However, because this is a live page. Anything I change to the formatting, anything I change to where the tiles are, will be reflected in this live tile. And this is reflected when we go to the reports, and click on pin the live page. It says pin live page enables, changes to reports to appear in the dashboard tile, when the page is freshed. So, that’s not just the data, that’s also the formatting. So that’s the major big point about this video, that you can have an entire page of report. The second point, I’m just going to go to my Susan’s account. And this is one of these reports, that I shared category and subcategory. And you may notice, a lack of pinning capabilities. So, there is a pin there, but it is greyed out, I can’t click on it. And you notice pin a live page, has also been greyed out. So, read only content, items that have been shared with you, cannot be pinned.

So, these are a few more things, about pinning live pages, and pinning visualisations and reports that’s being shared with you.

263. Use the Q&A Feature

In this video, we’re going to have a look at the question and answer, the Q&A for Dashboards.

Now, firstly, you might not be able to see the Q and A on your dashboard. If you can’t, then I’ve clicked the dot-dot-dot (…) and go to Settings, and you can see Show the Q and A search box on this dashboard is selected, or you have to go to the dot-dot-dot (…) Settings, and here you’ve got to the Q and A. So allow people to use natural language or ask questions about the data. And let them create new visuals from it. So click Save. And then, at the top, we have Ask a question about your data.

Now, the question is, what data? This is a dashboard. A dashboard has got either live pages from reports or it’s got visualisations pinned from reports, each report has got a different data set. So, there may be multiple datasets that you can use.

Now, which dashboard are we in? Well, at the top, next to Power BI, that is where we are currently in. So, it is in the My workspace we have an overall dashboard. So, let’s ask a question and if you’ve used the Q&A in Power BI desktop, there’ll be very little here that will be of news to you. So, for instance, what is the, and product name. So he’s saying, “Oh, do you mean English product name?” Yes, even better. Which has the highest sales price. And it will give you an answer, so which has the highest fact Internet sales unit price. So that is in fact all of these. So, maybe, I’ll say, “Which is the highest customer key.” Whatever the answer is, you could always change the question and go, “No, actually, I want a different one.” So, I want the highest customer key. There we go. And I’m going to say, “I’m going to pin the visual of this.” So, this isn’t exactly the best visual. So, English a product name and sale price by order date key, for instance. And, if you’ve got a visual you like, you can pin the visual and say existing dashboard or a new dashboard, there you go. And it reminds you, make sure you create a phone for you as well, I will go back to my dashboard and there it is and, I can rearrange it, manipulate it how I want.

So, question analysis. First of all, make sure it’s enabled. If you want it that’s in the settings and they’re not the answer to your questions, if you’ve got a good one, then you can pin it to your dashboard. Saves you from having to create it in a report, and then pinning it from the report into the dashboard.

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