Introduction To Microsoft Power BI Dashboards

In keeping up with digital transformation, Microsoft has created an analytics service called Power BI. It’s basically their answer to Google Analytics, it operates via cloud computing and it’s pretty impressive.

Power BI offers users and businesses an extensive spectrum of reporting functions that support analytical data measured from your web properties. One of the highlights of Power BI is the number of intuitive and interactive dashboards that businesses can access in order to fully understand their performance in all areas of their technology.

What is a Microsoft PowerBI dashboard?

A Power BI dashboard is also called a canvas, and it’s a collection of data visualisations that map out of clear view of what is happening in your analytical reports. Each visualisation is pulled from a report. A dashboard has a limited amount of available space, so it’s important to only house visualisations that are relevant to important business metrics. Dashboards are only available in Power BI and are not a feature of Power BI Desktop. 

How does a dashboard work?

Power BI dashboards are put together with visual elements from reports. Each visualisation clicks through to the report that it is pulled from should you wish to drill down deeper into that data. Dashboards are able to represent multiple datasets in one view, but each visualisation represents a single dataset.

Where is the best location for your PowerBI dashbaord ?                      

Dashboards can be shared with co-workers, or if multiple people need to collaborate on it, an app workspace can be created with the relevant permissions. Dashboards can then be shared to the workspace as an app granting multiple people the opportunity to view and work on the dashboard. If you choose to simply share your dashboard, recipients can only view it but can’t edit it.

What data should you display on your PowerBI dashboard? 

Pin multiple tiles to any dashboard and customize it completely to suit the data you need access to. Incorporate bar graphs, pie charts, maps from multiple sources and reports. Each report is underpinned by a dataset. Integrate it with data from various sources such as Google Analytics, Excel, Internet of Things, or any other data sources in the office or in the cloud. Transform data into visual dashboards that deliver proper views of the way your business is performing using Microsoft Power BI.

How to build your first PowerBI dashboard

Certain permissions need to be available to you in order to create a dashboard that is relevant and informative. You can start by using an existing report. Take the report and pin visualisations from it onto your dashboard to get a feel for how this works. Make the important information stand out while supporting data can take up a smaller space on the canvas. 

This video from Microsoft Power BI will walk you through creating your first dashboard in a few easy steps. 

Whether you find Power BI dashboards easy to create or not, this technology is enabling us to gain incredible insight into our businesses and how they perform. Being able to manage these tasks easily is an integral part of running a successful business. 

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How can Powernet help?

Here at Powernet, we take great pride in forming helpful and valuable relationships with organisations. Our teams across Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane are Microsoft Certified and can help you get started, get in touch to learn more.