8. Lighthouse

Level 3 · Desktop, Service and Mobile, reports and dashboards

From Catherine Hale, CEO

“I don't want to open two reports every morning. On my phone, I want one screen with this month's sales from the sales report and the return rate from the returns report. And if the return rate goes above 8%, I want to be told without having to look.”

Your goal

Pick the setup that gives Catherine one screen on her phone with numbers from two reports, and an alert on the return rate.

How do you give Catherine one phone screen with numbers from two different reports, plus an alert when the return rate passes 8%?

Pick one answer, then check it.

The lesson

Power BI is not one program but three, plus a handful of words that mean something precise. Mix them up and you build the wrong thing for the person who asked.

Three parts that work together

  • Power BI Desktop is a free Windows application where reports are built: you connect to data, clean it in Power Query, model it and design the pages. The work is saved as a .pbix file.
  • The Power BI Service (app.powerbi.com) is the website where reports are shared. From Desktop you choose Home → Publish and pick a workspace; colleagues open the report in a browser, the data refreshes on a schedule, and you control who has access. Sharing content with others needs the right licence (Pro or Premium Per User, or a workspace on a capacity).
  • Power BI Mobile is the iOS and Android app for consuming: it opens the reports and dashboards you have access to in the Service, laid out for a phone.

The normal flow: build in Desktop, publish to the Service, read in the browser or on the phone.

Semantic model, report, dashboard, tile

Item What it is Where it’s made
Semantic model (formerly dataset) The tables, relationships and measures Desktop; published with the report
Report One or more pages of interactive visuals, built on one semantic model Desktop (or the Service)
Dashboard A single page of tiles, pinned from one or more reports Service only
Tile One pinned visual on a dashboard; clicking it opens the source report Service

One semantic model can feed many reports: the sales model can sit behind a sales report for managers and a different one for finance. A report, on the other hand, always reads one semantic model. That is why Catherine’s two numbers can’t simply live on one report page: sales and returns come from two models.

Building Catherine’s screen

  1. Publish both reports to the same workspace.
  2. In the Service, open the sales report, hover over the card with this month’s sales and click the pin icon (Pin visual). Choose New dashboard and name it.
  3. Open the returns report and pin the return-rate card to that same dashboard.
  4. On the dashboard, open the return-rate tile’s More options (…) menu → Manage alerts → Add alert rule: condition Above, threshold 8%.
  5. Catherine installs Power BI Mobile, signs in with her work account and marks the dashboard as a favourite. The alert arrives as a phone notification.

Data alerts work on dashboard tiles showing a single number: cards, KPIs and gauges.

About this level

Power BI Desktop runs only on Windows and the Service needs a work account, so this quiz has nothing to click. The steps above are the real ones.

Common mistakes

  • Emailing .pbix files. They need Desktop to open, they go stale, and they carry all the data with them. Publish instead.
  • Calling any report page a dashboard. In Power BI the word means the Service item made of tiles.
  • Expecting slicers on a dashboard. Dashboards don’t filter; click a tile to reach the report, where slicers work.

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