Create Reports and Dashboards with Power BI: Part 2

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Learn how to create a dashboard based off of report data.

Quick reference

Create Reports and Dashboards with Power BI: Part 2

Publish a Power BI Report to the Power BI service to make it accessible to others and create a dashboard to display key metrics. 

When to use

We publish our Power BI report to the Power BI service whenever we want others to be able to view the report. We create a dashboard to present key metrics from across our report pages to gain insight. 

Instructions

Let's make some final changes to our report before publishing it to the Power BI Service. 

Change Text

We can change any text on our report pages. Text is contained within text boxes, and much like other Microsoft applications, we can click in the text box to make formatting changes. 

In Power BI, a floating text formatting toolbar will appear and we can use this to change the font style, font size, font color, etc. 

Format Visualizations

We can use the Format visual tab in the Visualizations pane to change the look and feel of our charts, graphs, tables, and cards. Each element is customizable. We can change the colors, the format of text, the way text is displayed and laid out, and other design elements. 

Some visualizations, like tables, have preset styles we can choose to quickly change the look. 

Update Project Report

Project data usually does not stay static. If a project is in progress, tasks will constantly be updated and new tasks might be added. We need to make sure we keep our report up to date with the latest changes so it doesn't fall out of sync. 

  • Make the changes in Project for the Web. 
  • Open the report in Power BI. 
  • From the Home tab, in the Queries group, click Refresh. 

Publish to the Power BI Service

Once we've created our report, we can share it with others by publishing it to the Power BI Service. Before we publish, we need to set up a workspace to publish it to the Power BI Service. 

  • Open Power BI from Microsoft 365. 
  • In the left-hand menu, click Workspaces. 
  • Click Create a workspace. 
  • Give the workspace a name.
  • Add a Description (optional). 
  • Click Save. 

The new workspace will store not only the report, but the report data and any dashboards we create. 

  • Go back to Power BI Desktop. 
  • Click Publish. 
  • Save the changes if required. 
  • Choose the workspace from the list. 
  • Click Select. 

The report will now be published to the Power BI Service. 

Create a Dashboard

A dashboard is a way to present key metrics, the data our audience is most interested in. We can choose visualizations from any of our report pages and pin them to the dashboard. 

  • Go to Power BI in Microsoft 365. 
  • From the left-hand menu, open the report from the workspace. 
  • Hover the mouse over any visualization. 
  • Click the pin icon to pin it to the dashboard. 
  • Repeat this process for each visual you want to pin. 

To go to the dashboard, click on the name in the Dashboard section of the left-hand pane. 

Hints & tips

  • Power BI files save with a .pbix file extension. 
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  • 00:04 In this last lesson,
  • 00:05 we're going to make a couple more changes to this particular report.
  • 00:08 And then I'm going to show you how you can publish it to the Power BI service and
  • 00:12 create an interactive dashboard.
  • 00:14 So the final few changes I want to make here are basically just related to
  • 00:18 the look and feel.
  • 00:19 So I can change the text at the top here.
  • 00:22 So my report title is currently portfolio dashboard,
  • 00:26 I'm just going to change this to team dashboard.
  • 00:29 Now, notice when I change this text, I get this little floating menu, which allows
  • 00:35 me to change the font size, the alignment, the font color, things like that.
  • 00:40 So you can really customize every single element of your report.
  • 00:44 If I decide that I want to change the colors of this donut chart, for example.
  • 00:49 Again, I can go across to the formatting area in this visualizations pane.
  • 00:54 And if I go to general, sometimes you have to hunt through these a little bit to find
  • 00:58 exactly what you're looking for.
  • 01:00 But if I expand sizes, you can see here are the colors.
  • 01:04 So I could change this to something completely different.
  • 01:07 So let's just make that red.
  • 01:08 Similarly, if I select this table at the bottom here and
  • 01:12 go to formatting, I have some style presets.
  • 01:16 So if I want to quickly change the look and feel of a table,
  • 01:19 I have lots of different presets in here.
  • 01:21 So I can change it to minimal bold header.
  • 01:24 Let's see what that looks like.
  • 01:25 I can go through these and see which one it takes my fancy.
  • 01:29 So just for quickness sake, I'm going to leave it on flashy rows.
  • 01:34 And of course, you could go further and change the color of these rows as well.
  • 01:38 So it's worth having a little explore through some of these formatting options.
  • 01:43 Now, the final thing that's worth noting here is what happens when you update
  • 01:46 your data.
  • 01:47 Because our project data isn't going to stay static,
  • 01:50 we're always going to be making changes to it.
  • 01:53 Tasks will be completed, tasks will have their priority changed, so on and
  • 01:57 so forth.
  • 01:58 So we need to make sure that our report is always up to date.
  • 02:02 And this is very simple, because we've created that connection between
  • 02:07 Power BI and our project for the web data using those data verse tables.
  • 02:11 So let's make some changes to the kitchen renovation project, so
  • 02:15 you can see how we can update it quickly in Power BI.
  • 02:18 Now, I'm quickly going to go through and
  • 02:20 I'm going to complete quite a few of these tasks.
  • 02:23 So let's just start selecting a few of them here, you'll see as I do this,
  • 02:27 the percentage column is changing.
  • 02:29 And this is just the quickest change I can make to really illustrate this
  • 02:33 point to you.
  • 02:34 So we've got a few tasks that are now showing as 100% complete.
  • 02:38 So I want that to be reflected in my Power BI report.
  • 02:42 Let's jump back to Power BI.
  • 02:44 On the Home tab, we have a Refresh button in the middle.
  • 02:48 So all we need to do is refresh all of the visuals.
  • 02:51 So let's click this button, again, this sometimes takes a few minutes.
  • 02:55 Because it needs to refresh all of the tables of data,
  • 02:58 and you can see that the number of completed tasks has been updated.
  • 03:02 So really simple.
  • 03:03 Make your changes in project for the web and click on the refresh button.
  • 03:07 Now, the final part I want to show you in relation to Power BI report is how
  • 03:12 you can share your report with others and also create a dashboard.
  • 03:17 And you might be familiar with dashboards in an application like Excel.
  • 03:21 It allows us to take specific visuals from across different reports and pin
  • 03:26 them to a dashboard to display key metrics that maybe as CEO is interested in.
  • 03:31 Now, in order to share our reports with other people,
  • 03:35 we need to publish them to the Power BI service.
  • 03:37 And you'll see that within Power BI on the Home tab we have
  • 03:41 a Publish button just here.
  • 03:43 Now, before we publish this and
  • 03:45 effectively what we're doing there is publishing it to Power BI online.
  • 03:49 We need to create a workspace to put this report into.
  • 03:52 So let's go back to Power BI from Microsoft 365.
  • 03:57 Now, notice here in the left hand menu, we have a workspaces section and
  • 04:02 you can see some workspaces that I've already created.
  • 04:06 So what I'm going to do is I'm going to create a brand new workspace,
  • 04:11 Team Workspace.
  • 04:12 I could add a description if I wanted to.
  • 04:15 I'm not going to, just to save a bit of time, I'm simply going to click on Save.
  • 04:19 So now, I have this new workspace.
  • 04:23 And I can store in this workspace not only the dashboard that I create,
  • 04:28 but also the reports and the original source data.
  • 04:31 So everything is really kept in one place within the Power BI service.
  • 04:36 So if we jump back to Power BI Desktop,
  • 04:38 I can now click the Publish button to publish this report.
  • 04:42 I'm going to say, yes,
  • 04:43 I want to save my changes because I haven't actually saved this report.
  • 04:46 So let's just save it.
  • 04:47 And I'm just going to call it Team Projects.
  • 04:53 Notice it's going to save as a .pbix file.
  • 04:57 And I'm just going to put this in downloads for the time being.
  • 04:59 So now, it's asking me to select a workspace to publish this report to.
  • 05:04 So I'm going to choose the one I've just created, which is Team Workspace and
  • 05:08 click on Select.
  • 05:09 And now, it's going to publish this report and all of the data.
  • 05:13 Once we have success just here, I can say, got it and jump back to Power BI online.
  • 05:19 Now, notice because I'm in my team workspace,
  • 05:22 it will take a couple of seconds for these to come through, but now, I have my data.
  • 05:26 But just to get this all to pull through nicely, I'm going to refresh my browser.
  • 05:30 And if I expand team workspace, I can see that I do not have any dashboards yet.
  • 05:35 I do have a report and
  • 05:36 if I click on Team Projects is going to open up this report that we created.
  • 05:41 And you can see the different pages displaying different
  • 05:45 key visuals from in here as well.
  • 05:47 And also notice it includes the dataset as well.
  • 05:50 So if I click on Team Projects, it's gonnashow me all of the tables from
  • 05:55 the database that this report was built from.
  • 05:58 So everything is here in one place.
  • 06:02 Now, if we go back to Team Projects what we might choose to
  • 06:05 do is take some of these visuals from any of these report pages.
  • 06:09 And pin them to a dashboard to display key metrics.
  • 06:13 So to do that, we simply find the visual we want to add to the dashboard,
  • 06:17 let's just say this donut chart for example.
  • 06:20 And notice just above, we have pin visual.
  • 06:23 So if I click on Pin it's going to ask me if I'd like to pin this to
  • 06:27 an existing dashboard or a new dashboard.
  • 06:31 So I'm going to keep this consistent and call it the Team Projects Dashboard,
  • 06:35 click on Pin, and it's going to pin that visual.
  • 06:38 Now, I can choose to go straight to the dashboard or
  • 06:41 I can carry on pinning different visuals.
  • 06:43 So let's pin a few, let's go to portfolio milestones.
  • 06:47 Actually, not too much on there.
  • 06:49 Let's go to this little table here, I'm going to click Pin Visual, we're going to
  • 06:54 pin it to an existing dashboard this time, which is team projects.
  • 06:57 Let's pin, I'm going to go to Resource Allocation, let's grab this table.
  • 07:03 I'm going to click on Pin Visual and Pin, and now, I'm going to go to my dashboard.
  • 07:09 So let's click on Go to dashboard, notice,
  • 07:12 those are the visuals that I just pinned and I can move these around.
  • 07:16 So I can drag and drop them,
  • 07:18 I can click on the visuals to drill in and see the data.
  • 07:22 And if I want to get back to my dashboard,
  • 07:25 I can always select it from the left hand pane.
  • 07:28 So if I click on team projects, I'm back there.
  • 07:31 I can click the three dots on any of these visuals, and
  • 07:34 I have a contextual menu full of different options.
  • 07:37 So I can add comments, I can go directly to the report,
  • 07:41 I can edit the details, things like that.
  • 07:44 And if I click this Edit button at the top,
  • 07:46 I can do things like change my dashboard theme.
  • 07:49 So currently, I have the light theme applied, but I could go for
  • 07:53 a dark theme here just to make that look a little bit different.
  • 07:56 And this is just a really nice way of picking those key metrics out of a number
  • 08:01 of different reports and presenting them in one dashboard.
  • 08:05 And this is obviously a very rough example that I've shown you just here.
  • 08:08 I'm sure you can take the time to make your reports look a lot nicer than what we
  • 08:12 have going on here.
  • 08:13 But hopefully, that gives you enough information, so
  • 08:17 you know how to create reports quickly based of your project for the web data.
  • 08:22 How you can keep them updated, how you can format them and switch out the visuals,
  • 08:27 and how you can create dashboards to display those key metrics.

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