Updated March 1, 2023
Difference Between Power BI Dashboard vs Report
Power BI dashboards are one placeholder to display the most important decision-making facts to run a business. But reports are more detailed data displayed in many formats like chart, graphs list and in tabular, etc. Dashboards are a business key performance indicator view where it displays key values that can change business profits and can be glanced at one screen. Reports are based on one dataset or one business unit data for example reports of a store belonging to California. Reports and dashboards are dependent on each other because of any operational value or from a metric value Power BI report has a feature that they can be drilled down to report level detail granularity.
Head to Head Comparison Between Power BI Dashboard vs Report(Infographics)
Below are the Top 8 Comparison Between Power BI Dashboard vs Report
Key Differences Between Power BI Dashboard vs Report
Below is the list of items, explain the Differences Between Power BI Dashboard vs Report
- Power BI dashboards screen size page consists of key information’s collected and combined across different reports and their datasets and facts, whereas reports are collected display of different data sets and different pages are available to view report data.
- Power BI dashboards are not available for desktop, but reports can be created and viewed in a desktop.
- Different data sources are used by the power BI dashboard in each dashboard consists of maps, graphs, etc but only one dataset can be used as a source for power BI reports
- Power BI dashboard capabilities of pinning existing visualization are only from the current dashboard to other dashboards normally called as dashboard navigation, but Power BI reports can pin or navigate to any reports or dashboards.
- Email subscription or power BI dashboard is not available, but reports can be subscribed to by users to be delivered to their email box at any given point in time.
- Power BI dashboards have alerting feature where attention needed condition arise dashboards raise an alert but in reports, we cannot have this feature.
- Power BI dashboards cannot slice and dice, but reports have many ways to filter and slice.
- Natural language queries are available only available from the dashboard but for reports, it’s not available.
- Power BI visualization cannot be changed but reports visualization can be changed and saved but it all depends on user role and permissions involved to access dashboards and reports.
- In power BI dashboard only, data can be exported not the visualization but in reports, data can be exported to any formats like excels tabular formats.
- Power BI dashboards can be set as featured or as favorites but cannot create a featured power BI reports
- Reports are information providers to dashboards and these information’s can be in many formats like text, Table, chart, number, etc
- The dashboard is on page screen display but in a report, we have multiple pages to navigate as reports are detailed information of data for example location store sales for the current year which may have a large amount of data and needs many pages to accommodate the data.
- Power BI reports can be drilled down to different levels of data sets on which reports are built. Reports can be exported to any format and download it to a local desktop for further analysis. Reports can be published on the web and subscribed through email.
- Dashboards have the same features of reports, but dashboards can be exported to limited formats, so dashboards are used to visualize the important data rather than analyze data which can only be done with reports.
Comparisons Table Power BI Dashboards vs Report
Below are the lists of points, describe the comparisons Between Power BI Dashboards vs Report
| Basis of Comparison | Dashboards | Reports |
| Definition | Dashboard is a high-level business data view from where navigation to reports originates. | Reports are built based on datasets where each dataset can be viewed from the multi-perspective view. |
| Usage | View business insights and key performance indicators to make business decisions by owners or senior management by web or via Mobile applications. | Analyzing data by a business analyst or a sales manager to know more on business which further helps business owners to make decisions on cumulative information provided by reports. |
| Benefits | Business owners can make a business profit and loss decisions by analyzing high-level view of KPI’S. | Detailed analysis across dimensions and facts are achieved with the use of Power BI reports. |
| Real Time Usage | Dashboards are used to analyze high visibility data. Real-time medical dashboards provide information on the count of heart patients and their daily used tablets which helps medicine manufacturing companies to produce as required tablets and deliver in on time. | Power BI reports are used to analyze real-time data in detail in an example Heart patient and the different medicines they use and treatment from hospitals are analyzed using power BI reports helps businesses to make long-term business decisions in real time. |
| Academics | Started after evaluation of Power BI and exists in the market for less than five years. Study guides developed recently by Power BI providing companies to educate users and Power BI developers. | Evolved from past years with Power BI evolution. Many study materials are available on the internet. |
| Industry | Computer IT industry’s next level after application development is Power BI dashboard. | Computer science and its technologies created power BI reporting model to report business in detail. |
| Applications | Power BI dashboard is used by all modern business owners on this internet and mobile world. | Reports are used everywhere when it comes to business starting from sales to services. |
| Field | Power BI dashboards can be used in all decision-making by business owners to earn profit. | Power BI reports help all field professionals like business owners, analyst, sales, marketing for their detailed data needed to perform jobs. |
Conclusion
Dashboards and reports are part of Power BI online service, Here is a conclusion to one of the main questions that people ask during initial stages of building a Power BI solution. Wrong miscommunication saying power BI dashboards and reports are same is normally heard during onsite interviews. But understanding the differences is important to leverage knowledge on Power BI.
So, Power BI dashboards are a collection of different data set and cubes displayed in one-page display format with high visualization capabilities where users can make decisions by just looking at the key performance indicators in power BI dashboards by bringing together data from different reports to create an overview or summary.
Power BI dashboards are a way of displaying headline or most important data. But reports are individual datasets data displayed but power BI dashboard is dependent on reports, but reports do not depend on dashboards as reports have its own attributes and metrics to display with drill-down and drill up capabilities spread across multiple pages.
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