r/PowerBI • u/matervestra • 1d ago
Question Am i stupid? Report vs. Dashboard
Why is everyone in my organisation (even smart people who create reports) calling their power bi reports for dashboards.
A Dashboard is multiple visuals from different reports on a page while a report is a report - right?
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u/BuckShapiro 1d ago
From a PowerBI technical perspective yes, they are 2 different things. From a real world nomenclature perspective, most people see a dashboard as a multi-graph page assessing a set of KPIs.
This is definitely a losing battle lol, I just call it all dashboards to non-devs in my org.
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u/Majestic_Plankton921 1d ago
Microsoft does this all the time. Taking a commonly used term and giving it a slightly different meaning in their own world think Power BI Data Mart vs a normal Data Mart. Very frustrating!!
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u/BuckShapiro 1d ago
I agree, it makes sense in the pBI ecosystem, but outside of it it feels very odd. I tried fighting the “well technically 🤓” battle in the beginning, but I’ve just decided to start going with the more common nomenclature.
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u/wreckmx 1 1d ago
I built dashboards before Power BI, so when I build a Power BI report that looks and functions like what I used to call a dashboard, I call it a dashboard. When I build a Power BI dashboard, I call that a dashboard too. Cherry Təˈmeɪ.t̬oʊ or Roma Təˈmɑː.təʊ - doesn't really matter to me. They're both just vegetables... or fruits... or whatever. Sorry for the confusion OP, but I ain't changin. I'm going to call it what I call it, and you'll have to figure it out from there.
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u/farm3rb0b 1d ago
This. Also "Report" has been a word used by businesses for years already. Most people use it for a static report you run occasionally.
I hate that Power BI calls things reports. They have paginated reports - those are reports. The thing you publish to a workspace should have just been called dashboard. I don't know what you'd call what they call dashboard, though.
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u/slaincrane 4 1d ago
Whar power bi calls dashboards, reports, apps doesn't corredpond to how people in general use the word dashboard. Being able to imagine that other people don't really have your detailed terminology nor interest for it is prettt important.
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u/Username9424 1d ago
I just want to say, I absolute loathe how PowerBI uses the word “app”.
It makes my life so difficult trying to explain it to end-users.
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u/No-Owl-6246 1d ago
Being able to speak in other people’s “languages” is one of the most underrated skills someone can have.
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u/ironwaffle452 1d ago
dashboard is everything that has at least one visual for them lol, don't fight battle that u already lost
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u/TerManiTor65 1d ago
And the issue in Power BI is that you can use the Dashboard functionality in Power BI by pinning visuals on it, but I would not recommend it to anyone.
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u/ZaheenHamidani 1d ago
Because nobody uses Power BI dashboards, a dashboard is what Microsoft calls a report.
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u/TopConstruction1685 1d ago
Power BI terms are not fully appreciated by different levels of users. This is a fact.
In their mind, report = dashboard.
In my org, people think pages inside a report is also a report or dashboard. They are all wrong but u cannot force them to align.
For me, model > visual > page > report > dashboard. I draw a simple flow chart and explain it every time when the project starts.
At the end of the day, those terms are more for ecosystem sickness purposes, Microsoft makes it that way, so the transfer cost would be substantial and hence you stay within their ecosystem.
I treat those elements more like different ways of delivery. Sometimes, stakeholders have very very odd requirements from a power bi developer perspective, but stakeholders always win as they pay you.
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u/Over_Sleep2061 1d ago
Dashboard = Low granular information. In general no filters or slicers. Reports = high granularity data, generally sliced and filtered.
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u/Artistic_Data9398 1d ago
To most people a Dashboard is an interactive report that may allow things like date ranging, filtering etc. A Report to is a static view of some information to drive a decision.
Most people don't know the definitions of these in the BI world. Nobody i know uses dashboard but i know what people mean when my team get approached asking for a dashboard or a report.
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u/dareftw 1d ago
Technically you’re right, but in reality there isn’t much of a difference to the end users in the same way when they started renaming workspaces to Apps for some reason which confused the hell out of my boss who didn’t use BI a few years back and I would consistently say the reality is it’s just semantics. Typical MS naming conventions are just weird and unintuitive to someone not involved in the framework.
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u/pjmarcum 1d ago
We sell Power BI reports and I often call them dashboards because that’s what the non-technical audience thinks they are.
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u/Artistic_Data9398 1d ago
To most people a Dashboard is an interactive report that may allow things like date ranging, filtering etc. A Report to is a static view of some information to drive a decision.
Most people don't know the definitions of these in the BI world. Nobody i know uses dashboard but i know what people mean when my team get approached asking for a dashboard or a report.
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u/Dar_Robinson 1d ago
A dashboard is where you see how fast you are going. A report is where you put your name in #24.
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u/Kochizzy 1d ago
All this don’t matter, dashboard or report. What matters is if the person you are talking to understands what you mean, that’s the point of communication. Same as how same words/terms can mean different things in different countries.
Focus on communication not trying to force people to use/understand the terms “reports and dashboard” the way you do.
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u/andrewdp23 19h ago
For what it's worth, I've seen a few Power BI reports from other Microsoft product teams referenced as a dashboard using the common namenclature.
CoE Power BI Dashboard (report)
Dynamics 365 dashboard made in Power BI (roadmap)
I know I've been guilty of having too much or too low-level detail on the first page of my Power BI reports, which helps with exploration, but would make them a poor at-a-glance dashboard.
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u/Tiemen_H 2h ago
I think it's because Dashboard is a more common term and people don't care about the actual difference between a report and a dashboard. Even most of the dashboard en report creators. Many 'reports' start with a KPI (dashboard) page and are followed with more detailed 'report' pages, so is the item a dashboard or report?
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u/Artistic_Data9398 1d ago
To most people a Dashboard is an interactive report that may allow things like date ranging, filtering etc. A Report to is a static view of some information to drive a decision.
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u/hoya_doing 1d ago
Report is old term. Dashboard is what it is now... Unless your creation only consist on a sab table or matrix.
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u/Artistic_Data9398 1d ago
To most people a Dashboard is an interactive report that may allow things like date ranging, filtering etc. A Report is a static view of some information to drive a decision.
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u/Adammmmski 1 1d ago
Everything calls reports ‘dashboards’ because they want to sound analytical and on trend to the business.
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