8. Lighthouse

Level 3 · Workspace, app or dashboard?

From Derek Thompson, VP of Sales

“Forty regional and store managers should get our three sales reports in one tidy place. Store managers only need two of them; the margin report is for regional managers. The analysts keep changing things during the week, and I don't want managers seeing half-finished pages. How do we hand this out?”

Your goal

Pick the way of sharing that gives Derek's managers a finished, read-only set of reports, with the margin report only for regional managers, while analysts keep working.

Which set-up gives the managers a stable, read-only package, shows the margin report only to regional managers, and lets analysts keep editing without managers seeing drafts?

Pick one answer, then check it.

The lesson

There are three ways to put a finished report in front of readers in the Power BI Service, and they solve different problems.

What you are working in

This is a quiz: apps and dashboards live in the Service, which needs a work account. The menu paths are below so you can do it at work.

Workspace: where builders work

The workspace holds the report, its semantic model, dashboards and everything else the team builds. Anyone with a role in it sees every item there as soon as it is saved, including the page an analyst is halfway through. That is right for the people who build, and wrong for the forty people who only read.

App: what readers get

An app packages chosen items from one workspace into a clean, read-only experience with its own navigation. Each workspace can publish one app.

In the Service: open the workspace and select Create app. On Setup, give it a name, a description and a logo. On Content, add the reports and dashboards, order them and group them in sections. On Audience, create audiences, for example Regional managers and Store managers, choose which items each one sees and who belongs to each (people or groups). Then Publish app. Readers open it from Apps in the left pane, or from the link you send.

The key behaviour: when analysts change a report in the workspace, app readers see nothing new until someone selects Update app. Builders get a workshop; readers get the finished shelf. Readers of an app need Pro or PPU, unless the workspace is on Premium capacity or Fabric F64+.

Dashboard: one page of tiles

A dashboard exists only in the Service. You build it by pinning visuals from reports with the pin icon on a visual (Pin visual) or a whole page (Pin to a dashboard). Tiles from different reports can sit side by side, and selecting a tile opens the report behind it. Card, KPI and gauge tiles can have data alerts, which email you when a number crosses a threshold. A dashboard is a single-screen overview, not a way to hand out several full reports.

Choosing

  • People who build or fix content: a workspace role.
  • People who read a set of reports: an app, with an audience per group that needs a different set.
  • One page of headline numbers from several reports, with alerts: a dashboard, usually added to the app.
  • A single report for one or two colleagues: Share on the report, which needs Pro on both sides on shared capacity.

Common mistakes

  • Readers as workspace Viewers. They see drafts and every test report.
  • Forgetting Update app. The workspace is fixed, and the managers still see last week’s version.
  • A dashboard instead of an app. Tiles are summaries; readers still need the reports behind them.

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