Creating and Sharing Reports

Power BI supports a wide range of data sources, including:

1. Excel files
2. CSV files
3. SQL databases (e.g., Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle)
4. Online services (e.g., SharePoint, Dynamics 365, Salesforce)
5. Web sources (e.g., HTML tables, JSON files)
6. Azure services (e.g., Azure SQL Database, Azure Data Lake Storage)
7. Big data sources (e.g., Hadoop, Spark)
8. On-premises data gateways for connecting to on-premises data sources.

You can also use Power Query to connect to custom data sources or perform data transformations before loading the data into Power BI.

Power BI offers a wide range of visualizations to present your data effectively. Some of the commonly used visuals include:

1. Bar chart
2. Column chart
3. Line chart
4. Pie chart
5. Donut chart
6. Area chart
7. Scatter chart
8. Map
9. Table
10. Matrix
11. Card
12. Gauge
13. KPI
14. Slicer

These visuals can be customized with various formatting options, colors, and interactive features to enhance the user experience.

To customize the appearance of a report in Power BI, you can:

1. Change the theme: Power BI provides built-in themes and allows you to create custom themes to change the overall look and feel of the report.
2. Format visuals: You can customize the colors, fonts, backgrounds, borders, and other visual properties of individual visuals.
3. Apply conditional formatting: You can highlight data based on certain conditions using conditional formatting options.
4. Add images and logos: You can insert images, logos, or icons to personalize the report.
5. Use custom visuals: Power BI supports custom visuals created by the community, which can be downloaded and added to your report.

These customization options help you create visually appealing and engaging reports.

In Power BI, you can add filters to a report in the following ways:

1. Visual-level filters: You can apply filters to individual visuals to focus on specific data points.
2. Page-level filters: You can apply filters to an entire page to control the data displayed in all visuals on that page.
3. Report-level filters: You can apply filters to the entire report to control the data displayed in all pages and visuals.
4. Drillthrough filters: You can define drillthrough filters to allow users to navigate from one visual to another based on specific data points.
5. Cross-filtering: Power BI automatically applies cross-filtering between related visuals, allowing you to filter data by selecting data points in one visual.

These filtering options help you analyze and explore your data in different ways.

There are several ways to share a report in Power BI:

1. Share via email: You can send an email invitation to specific recipients, allowing them to access the report.

2. Publish to web: You can publish a report to the web and generate an embed code. This allows you to share the report on a website or blog.

3. Share with specific users or groups: You can share a report with specific users or groups within your organization, giving them access to view and interact with the report.

4. Share with everyone in your organization: You can share a report with everyone in your organization, making it accessible to all users with a Power BI account.

When sharing a report in Power BI, you can set the following permissions:

1. View: Users with view permission can only view the report and its visualizations. They cannot make any changes to the report.

2. Edit: Users with edit permission can view and edit the report. They can make changes to the report's visualizations, filters, and other settings.

3. Share: Users with share permission can share the report with others. They can send email invitations, publish the report to the web, and share it with specific users or groups.

4. Full control: Users with full control permission have complete control over the report. They can view, edit, share, and delete the report.

No, you cannot share a report with someone who doesn't have a Power BI account. In order to access a shared report, the recipient must have a Power BI account. They can sign up for a free Power BI account or use an existing account to access the shared report.

When you share a report with a user who has a Power BI free license, they will be able to view and interact with the report, but they will have limited capabilities compared to users with a Power BI Pro license. Users with a free license can view and filter the report's visualizations, but they cannot perform certain actions such as exporting data, creating new visualizations, or sharing the report with others.

Yes, you can convert a report into a dashboard in Power BI. To do this, you can pin visualizations from the report to a new or existing dashboard. Pinned visualizations retain their interactivity and can be resized, rearranged, and customized within the dashboard. This allows you to create a personalized dashboard using the visualizations from the report.

While dashboards in Power BI provide a quick and concise view of data, they have certain limitations compared to reports. Some of the limitations include:

• Dashboards are limited to a single page, whereas reports can have multiple pages.
• Dashboards have limited interactivity and filtering options compared to reports.
• Dashboards cannot contain all types of visualizations available in reports.
• Dashboards cannot have complex calculations or custom visuals like reports.

Despite these limitations, dashboards are still useful for presenting key metrics and summaries in a visually appealing and interactive manner.

To share a dashboard in Power BI, you can use the 'Share' feature. This allows you to give access to specific individuals or groups within your organization. You can share a dashboard by:

1. Opening the dashboard you want to share.
2. Clicking on the 'Share' button in the top-right corner.
3. Entering the email addresses or names of the people you want to share the dashboard with.
4. Choosing the access level (view or edit) for each person.
5. Adding an optional message.
6. Clicking on the 'Share' button to send the invitation.

Once shared, the recipients will be able to view or edit the dashboard based on the access level you have granted them.

Yes, you can customize a dashboard in Power BI to suit your needs. Some of the customization options include:

• Adding or removing visualizations: You can pin or unpin visualizations from the report to the dashboard.
• Rearranging visualizations: You can drag and drop visualizations to rearrange their position on the dashboard.
• Resizing visualizations: You can resize visualizations to make them larger or smaller.
• Applying filters: You can apply filters to the visualizations on the dashboard to focus on specific data.
• Adding text boxes or images: You can add text boxes or images to provide additional context or branding.

These customization options allow you to create a personalized and visually appealing dashboard in Power BI.

Some advantages of using Power BI Desktop over Power BI Service for creating reports are:

• Power BI Desktop provides more advanced data modeling capabilities, allowing users to create complex relationships between tables and define calculated columns and measures.
• Power BI Desktop allows users to perform advanced data transformations and data shaping operations using the Power Query Editor.
• Power BI Desktop provides more flexibility in report design, allowing users to customize the visualizations and layout of the report.
• Power BI Desktop can be used offline, allowing users to work on reports without an internet connection.

However, it's important to note that Power BI Desktop is primarily a development tool, and reports created in Power BI Desktop need to be published to the Power BI Service for sharing and collaboration.

No, you cannot share a report directly from Power BI Desktop. Power BI Desktop is primarily a development tool used for creating reports. To share a report, you need to publish it to the Power BI Service. Once the report is published, you can share it with others by providing them with the appropriate access permissions.

Some limitations of Power BI Desktop compared to Power BI Service are:

• Power BI Desktop does not provide real-time data refresh capabilities. To have real-time data in your reports, you need to use Power BI Service.
• Power BI Desktop does not support automatic data refresh. To keep your reports up to date, you need to manually refresh the data in Power BI Desktop.
• Power BI Desktop does not provide collaboration features like sharing and commenting on reports. These features are available in Power BI Service.
• Power BI Desktop does not provide web-based access to reports. To view and interact with reports, you need to use Power BI Service or embed the reports in other applications.

It's important to note that Power BI Desktop and Power BI Service complement each other, and both have their own strengths and use cases.

No, you cannot create a dashboard directly in Power BI Desktop. Power BI Desktop is primarily used for creating reports and visualizations. However, once you have created the reports in Power BI Desktop, you can publish them to the Power BI Service and then create a dashboard using those reports. In Power BI Service, you can pin visualizations from different reports to a dashboard, arrange them, and add additional elements like images and text boxes to create a customized dashboard.

In Power BI, there are different options for scheduling a report refresh:

1. Manual Refresh: You can manually refresh the report data by clicking on the 'Refresh' button in the Power BI service or Power BI Desktop.
2. Scheduled Refresh: You can schedule a report to refresh at specific intervals, such as daily, weekly, or monthly.
3. DirectQuery: If your report is using DirectQuery mode, the data is always up to date as it is directly queried from the data source.

Note: The availability of these options may vary depending on your Power BI subscription.

When a scheduled report refresh fails in Power BI, the following actions can be taken:

1. Email notification: You can configure Power BI to send an email notification when a refresh fails. This can be done in the 'Schedule Refresh' dialog box by enabling the 'Notify me when this refresh fails' option.
2. Error details: You can view the error details by clicking on the 'Refresh history' link in the 'Schedule Refresh' dialog box. This will show you the refresh history and any error messages associated with failed refreshes.
3. Troubleshooting: You can troubleshoot the issue by checking the data source connection, credentials, and any other dependencies that might be causing the refresh failure.

Yes, you can schedule a report to refresh more frequently in Power BI Pro than in Power BI Free. Power BI Pro allows you to schedule refreshes as frequently as every 30 minutes, while Power BI Free only allows for daily refreshes. The ability to schedule more frequent refreshes is one of the benefits of having a Power BI Pro subscription.

The maximum frequency for a report refresh in Power BI is every 30 minutes. This frequency is available for Power BI Pro users. Power BI Free users can only schedule daily refreshes. It's important to note that the availability of this feature may vary depending on your Power BI subscription.