Dashboards vs Reports: Tiles, Q&A, Alerts & Subscriptions
In the Power BI Service a “dashboard” is a different thing from a report — built by pinning tiles, asked in plain English, and set to alert you.
What you will learn
- Tell a Service dashboard apart from a report
- Build a dashboard by pinning tiles and using Q&A
- Set a data alert and an email subscription
A word that means two things
So far we have used “dashboard” loosely to mean a good report page. But inside the Power BI Service the word has a precise, different meaning. Knowing the distinction matters because the exam and your colleagues use the terms exactly. Here is the difference, side by side:
| Report | Dashboard (Service) | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | One or more interactive pages you build in Desktop | A single canvas of pinned tiles, built in the Service |
| Pages | Can have many pages | Always one page |
| Built where | Power BI Desktop | Power BI Service (the website) |
| Made from | Visuals on a canvas | Tiles pinned from one or more reports |
| Data sources | Usually one dataset | Can combine tiles from several reports/datasets |
| Filters/slicers | Yes — fully interactive | No slicers; tiles are snapshots that link back |
In one line: a report is the detailed, interactive thing you build; a Service dashboard is a one-page summary wall you assemble by pinning the best tiles from one or more reports so leaders see everything important together.
Building a dashboard by pinning tiles
You do not “design” a dashboard from scratch — you pin pieces of existing reports onto it. A tile is one pinned visual. Here is the flow in the Service:
- Open a published report in the Service.
- Hover over a visual and click its Pin icon (a little pushpin).
- Choose New dashboard, name it (e.g. “Sales Overview”), and pin.
- Repeat for other visuals — even from different reports — onto the same dashboard.
Report A: Sales by Region --pin--> ┐
Report A: Total Sales card --pin--> ├─> Dashboard "Sales Overview"
Report B: Website Visits --pin--> ┘ (one wall, tiles from 2 reports)Note: Output: The “Sales Overview” dashboard now shows three tiles together — two from the Sales report and one from a Website report — on a single page. Clicking any tile jumps you back to the full report it came from. That ability to gather tiles from several reports into one view is the main reason Service dashboards exist.
Q&A — ask your data a question in plain English
Q&A lets you (or a viewer) type a plain-English question and get an instant visual. On a dashboard there is a Ask a question box; type something like total sales by region and Power BI builds the chart and lets you pin that answer as a new tile.
Q&A box: "total sales by region as a bar chart"
-> Power BI draws a bar chart of Total Sales by Region
-> click "Pin visual" to add it to the dashboardNote: Output: Typing “total sales by region as a bar chart” produces a bar chart immediately, with North highest — no field-dragging needed. Q&A understands your table and column names, so the cleaner your names (Region, Total Sales), the better it answers. You can pin the result like any other tile.
Data alerts — get told when a number crosses a line
A data alert watches a single-number tile (a card or gauge) and emails you when its value crosses a threshold you set — no need to keep checking. Alerts work only on dashboard tiles, which is one more reason to pin your KPIs.
- On a dashboard, hover a card/KPI tile and click its … → Manage alerts → Add alert rule.
- Set the condition, e.g. above 50,000 or below 1,000.
- Choose how often to check and tick email me too, then Save.
Note: Output: If you set “alert when Total Sales is above 50,000”, Power BI checks on each data refresh and, the moment the tile crosses 50,000, sends you a notification (and an email if ticked). You learn about the milestone without opening the report — handy for targets, stock levels or error counts.
Subscriptions — a scheduled snapshot in your inbox
A subscription emails you (or others) a picture of a report page or dashboard on a schedule — say every Monday at 8am. It is the “send me the numbers automatically” feature managers love.
- Open a report page or dashboard in the Service and click Subscribe.
- Set the frequency (daily/weekly) and time, and add recipients.
- Save — Power BI now emails a snapshot image with a link on that schedule.
Note: Output: A weekly subscription drops a snapshot of the Sales dashboard into chosen inboxes every Monday morning, each with a “View in Power BI” link to open the live version. Stakeholders who never log in still stay informed, and you set it up once.
Tip: A practical rule of thumb: build and explore in reports; summarise and monitor in dashboards. Pin your few headline KPIs to a dashboard, add alerts on the ones with targets, and subscribe the people who want them pushed to email.
Watch out: Alerts and subscriptions are Service-only features (you cannot set them in Desktop), they fire on data refresh not in real time, and most need Power BI Pro. Also remember a dashboard tile is a snapshot with a link — it does not have its own slicers, so deep filtering still happens back in the report.
Q. In the Power BI Service, how is a dashboard different from a report?
✍️ Practice
- Pin two visuals from a published report onto a new dashboard and click a tile to jump back to its report.
- Use the Q&A box to ask “total sales by region” and pin the result as a tile.
🏠 Homework
- On a KPI tile, set a data alert with a threshold and create a weekly subscription, then write the difference between a report and a Service dashboard in your own words.