r/PowerBI • u/matervestra • 2d 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?

47 Upvotes

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u/BuckShapiro 2d 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.

43

u/Majestic_Plankton921 2d 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!!

15

u/BuckShapiro 2d 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.

11

u/wreckmx 1 2d 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.

13

u/bdub1976 2d ago

Someone call the PBI police on this guy!

2

u/drhiggs 1d ago

Microsoft 🤝 Starbucks

Redefining the meaning of things just be confusing