How to create Power BI reports people really care about

Power BI is an extremely powerful data visualization tool. It can handle a wide variety of reporting needs, but if you’re just starting out designing reports, or if you’ve already gotten a handle of Power BI, you may be wondering how you can use all these cool visuals and tools to create something that someone—your coworker, your manager, whomever—can get real value and insight from.

So let’s discuss some general rules that you can consider when you design in Power BI to remove barriers to use. After all, at the end of the day, we just want to make sure all our hard work goes somewhere useful.

Design with your audience in mind

Our first point is the biggest one. At every step of our design process, we need the person for whom we’re building the report front of mind. Sometimes, a general, multi-purpose report will do the job, but if you’re building a new report for a job role or person, they are going to have different needs than someone in another job role or at another company.

That brings us to our first major pitfall that designers can run into: ego. You’ve probably heard it said before that life would be much simpler if everyone thought exactly the same as you, but that’s always the problem, is it? Even if your design and the way the data looks is perfect in your opinion, that will likely not be the case when brought to someone else. There are limitless options to display data, but the job of the report designer is to find the best setup for the user’s needs. At the end of the day, you’re not the one who is going to be using the report. The user has to understand the way the data is represented and how to use the report, and if it’s confusing to them or takes a new skill to use, that’s a barrier we want to remove.

Read Five best practices for designing data visualizations in Power BI→

Design and redesign

The easiest way to hammer out these major differences of opinion and need is to iterate as part of the report designing process. As with all development, iteration is an essential part of the process to get to a finished product that people enjoy using. Begin by discussing the needs of the report with the user themselves, then build a mockup of what you think would work. It’s unlikely that your first draft will be perfect, and that’s totally fine. Share the mockup, and accept feedback of what works and does not work. Then create another draft.

But you don’t have to spend a ton of time on these iterations. They aren’t meant to be finished products, and attaching yourself too closely to one iteration (and working on it too long) is not the best use of your time. Build mockups early and quickly (don’t rush, but don’t labor over every detail) so you can get feedback, adjust, and repeat. You’ll get closer to the ideal product for your specific audience, and you won’t spend too long on any one iteration, giving you more time to work on that final version they will end up using.

Use the right tool for your needs

Power BI is a wonderful tool able to handle lots of data/data sources in a way that not a lot of other tools can. But, it’s not the end-all, do-all solution for every need. It does require licenses to use and it also has a learning curve (like every app) and requires training. Before buying a license and training a new user on Power BI, consider if this is the best tool for this specific need, or if we’re shoehorning ourselves into Power BI because we like it, or already have a license, or don’t want to add another tool to our tech stack.

For instance, paginated reports. Until recently, pagination was not available in Power BI, but now that it is, we have to ask ourselves whether a currently-used report that is already paginated (like an invoice that exists inside Business Central) really needs to be put into Power BI. What will be gained from moving invoice printing/sending from Business Central to Power BI, and what will be lost? In this instance, users who print/send invoices might work solely in Business Central. They would find it much easier to stay in one system and generate invoices with the click of a button. The invoices will not significantly improve by swapping them to Power BI. So the lesson here is: just because Power BI is a possible solution it is not necessarily the best, most practical, or only option.

This is something we need to consider for any tool, whether it’s a data visualization tool like Power BI (a similar example would be Jet Reports) or other business apps.

Less is more

Our fourth point is that less is more. We need to make sure we’re not overcomplicating things with extraneous data the user doesn’t want or need. We need to make sure that our user is able to look at the report and interact with it in a meaningful way. Most of the time, this will involve trimming down the amount of available data to just what is needed.

An easy way to overwhelm your user is to reuse or duplicate the same visuals. We only have a limited amount of space on our dashboard, and duplication is just going to take up space with no benefit. Duplication is only acceptable in places where a user wants it, or if the data is represented in a different way.

Similarly, we don’t want to pull in too much data. Power BI can pull data from virtually anywhere, but don’t pull data unless you’re going to use it in the report, which is an ill use of space and refresh time.

Finally, we’ll make just a general note that slicers are almost always better than filters because we’re granting the user control over their reports. Even unpracticed users tend to understand slicers better than filters, which can handle a wide variety of needs and provide greater readability for the report. If you need to use a filter, though, you can hide it from view so the end user cannot see or use it, and therefore won’t be confused by it.

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5 Best Practices for Data Visualizations

Control report access

Our final point is to control access. We have to remember that our reports are designed for specific people in mind, so we need to make sure that only those people who need to use the report can see it, and that they don’t see other reports they don’t need. Most report users are not Power BI experts, and their knowledge of Power BI is limited to what they need to know to do their job. It’s easy to get lost in an expansive system like Power BI and get confused as a result.

Of course, the security of data is a concern we are considering here. But we also have to consider usability. As we stated before, remove barriers to using this tool so it’s more likely to be used instead of abandoned.

Power BI is a versatile, flexible tool that can help businesses collect, organize, and present data from many sources in easy-to-understand ways. As a report designer, your goal is to build reports for teams or individuals to provide the data they need, organized in the best way for their end goals. So keep your specific audience in mind from start to finish of the report’s design, iterate your design until it’s ideal for that user, remember that less is more (there’s usefulness in simplicity if it’s the right data), and be sure to control the access to reports so your users aren’t getting lost in reports not built for their needs.

And finally, remember that Power BI is an excellent and flexible tool, but it isn’t the end-all-do-all, and you don’t need to use if for absolutely everything. You may get more return on investment (ROI) from using the built-in reports in your ERP, CRM, or other business system rather than building a fresh Power BI report. That said, the right Power BI report in the right circumstances can make a huge difference in your data analysis, processes, and ultimate business success.