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How to Create a Business Dashboard in Power BI

Cody Schneider•

Creating a Power BI dashboard is the best way to turn rows of raw data into a clear story about your business performance. Instead of getting lost in spreadsheets, you can see your most important metrics at a glance and make smarter decisions. This guide will walk you through the essential steps to build your first dashboard in Power BI, from connecting your data to sharing your finished product with your team.

Understanding the Building Blocks: Dashboards vs. Reports in Power BI

Before you start building, it's important to understand the difference between a "report" and a "dashboard" in the Power BI ecosystem, as they serve different purposes.

  • A Report is a detailed, often multi-page deep dive into a specific dataset. This is where you do your heavy lifting - cleaning data, creating dozens of charts, adding filters, and exploring different angles. Think of it as your complete research paper.

  • A Dashboard is a single-page summary view that displays the most critical highlights from your reports. It’s designed for at-a-glance monitoring. Think of it as the executive summary or the cover of the book.

The workflow is simple: you first create visuals in a report, and then you "pin" the most important ones to a dashboard to create a centralized view. You cannot create visuals directly on a dashboard.

Step 1: Get Started and Connect Your Data

All Power BI projects begin in the Power BI Desktop application. This is the workshop where you connect to data, transform it, and design your reports before publishing them online.

First, open Power BI Desktop. In the Home ribbon, click on "Get Data." You'll see a list of dozens of data sources. For this example, let's use a common and simple file type, an Excel workbook.

  1. Select Excel workbook and navigate to your sales data file.

  2. A "Navigator" window will pop up, showing you all the sheets and tables within your file. Select the sheet containing your data.

  3. Power BI will show you a preview. Instead of clicking "Load," it's always best practice to click "Transform Data."

This action opens the Power Query Editor, the engine room of Power BI where you clean and prepare your data for analysis.

Preparing Your Data in Power Query Editor

The quality of your dashboard depends entirely on the quality of your data. The "garbage in, garbage out" saying is especially true here. The Power Query Editor is where you ensure everything is pristine.

Here are a few quick, common transformations:

  • Check Data Types: Power BI is good at guessing data types, but you should always double-check. Ensure your Sales column is a Decimal Number, your Order Date is a Date, and your Customer ID is Text (to avoid accidental summarization). Just click the icon next to the column header to change it.

  • Remove Errors or Empty Rows: Use the "Remove Rows" option in the ribbon to easily clean out any junk data that might skew your results.

  • Promote First Row to Headers: If your column names are showing up as the first row of data, find the "Use First Row as Headers" button in the Home tab to fix it instantly.

Once you’re happy with the basic cleanup, click "Close & Apply" in the top-left corner. Power Query will apply your steps and load the clean data model into your report.

Step 2: Build Visualizations in a Report

Now that your data is loaded, you'll be taken to the Report view in Power BI Desktop. This is your canvas. On the right, you'll see three important panes:

  • Filters: Where you can filter data for the entire page or a specific visual.

  • Visualizations: A palette of available chart and table types.

  • Fields: A list of all the data columns from your connected source.

Let's build a few essential visuals for a simple sales report. Our sample data includes columns for Order Date, Sales, Product Category, and Region.

Create Your First Visual: Sales Over Time

A line chart is perfect for showing trends. To create one:

  1. Click on the Line chart icon in the Visualizations pane. A blank box will appear on your canvas.

  2. Resize it as needed. With the visual selected, drag the Order Date field from the Fields pane into the "X-axis" box in the Visualizations pane.

  3. Next, drag the Sales field into the "Y-axis" box.

Instantly, you have a line chart showing total sales over time. Power BI automatically creates a date hierarchy (Year, Quarter, Month, Day) that allows you to drill up or down to see the data at different granularities.

Create a Second Visual: Sales by Product Category

A bar chart is excellent for comparing values across different categories.

  1. Click on a blank space on your canvas to deselect the line chart, then click the Stacked bar chart icon.

  2. Drag Product Category to the "Y-axis" box.

  3. Drag Sales to the "X-axis" box.

You now have a clear comparison showing which of your product categories generates the most revenue.

Add Key Metrics with Cards

Cards are used to display a single, highly important number - a Key Performance Indicator (KPI).

  1. Click on a blank space and select the Card visual.

  2. Drag the Sales field into the "Fields" box.

This will show you the grand total of sales. You can create more cards for other important metrics like "Total Units Sold" or "Number of Customers" to add headline numbers to your report.

Step 3: Publish Your Report and Create the Dashboard

Once you've saved your Power BI Desktop file (.pbix), it’s time to move from your local machine to the cloud-based Power BI Service. This is where you create dashboards and share your work.

How to Publish to Power BI Service

In Power BI Desktop, go to the Home tab and click the Publish button. You’ll be prompted to sign in to your Power BI account and choose a destination, called a "Workspace." For personal use, simply select "My workspace." Once publishing is complete, you'll get a link to open the report in Power BI Service.

Pinning Visuals to Your Dashboard

Now that your report is online, turning it into a dashboard is easy.

  1. Navigate to your published report in the Power BI Service (app.powerbi.com).

  2. Hover your mouse over any visual you want to feature on your dashboard.

  3. Find the small pin icon that appears in the top-right corner of the visual and click it.

  4. A pop-up will ask you to "Pin to dashboard." Choose "New dashboard," give it a name like "Executive Sales Overview," and click "Pin."

  5. Repeat this process for every visual you want on your dashboard summary. You can pin visuals from multiple different reports to the same dashboard.

These pinned visuals are called "tiles." Each tile on the dashboard links back to the original report, so if a stakeholder wants to explore the data behind a sales number, they can simply click the tile to be taken directly to the detailed report page.

Step 4: Arrange and Share Your Dashboard

After pinning your visuals, navigate to the dashboard from the left-hand menu in Power BI Service. Here, you’re in presentation mode.

You can drag and drop the tiles to arrange them in a logical layout and resize them by dragging the corners. It's common practice to put your most important KPIs in large cards at the top-left, as that's where a user's eye naturally goes first. You can also add other elements like text boxes for extra context or company logos for branding.

Sharing Your Work

A dashboard isn't useful if no one else can see it. To share your dashboard, click the Share button at the top of the screen. You can enter the email addresses of your colleagues to give them read-only access. Note that for others to view content you share (and for you to share it), both you and the recipient typically need a Power BI Pro or Premium license.

Tips for an Effective Business Dashboard

Building a dashboard is easy, but building a good dashboard takes thought. Here are a few quick tips:

  • Define the Purpose: What one to three questions should this dashboard answer immediately? Every visual on the dashboard should contribute to answering them.

  • Know Your Audience: A marketing manager needs different metrics (e.g., campaign ROI, cost per lead) than a CFO (e.g., profit margin, operating expenses). Tailor the dashboard to its end-user.

  • Keep It Simple: Avoid cluttering the screen with too many flashy colors or insignificant charts. The best dashboards provide clarity, not confusion. If it takes more than 10 seconds to understand, it's too complicated.

  • Choose the Right Chart: Don't use a pie chart to show a trend over time. Use a line chart for trends, a bar chart for categorical comparisons, and a treemap for part-to-whole relationships across many categories.

  • Provide Context: A chart showing "9.4M" is meaningless without a title that says "$9.4M in YTD Revenue." Use clear, descriptive titles so anyone can understand the visuals without needing you to explain them.

Final Thoughts

By connecting your data, creating visuals in Power BI Desktop, and pinning them to a dashboard in the Power BI Service, you can build a powerful and centralized view of your business's health. It transforms complex data sources into a shareable tool that empowers everyone on your team to make more informed decisions.

While Power BI is an incredibly robust tool for teams with dedicated data analysts, we know it has a steep learning curve. The process of cleaning data, finding the right visualization, and a dozen other steps can become a bottleneck when your marketing or sales team just needs a fast, clear answer. That’s why we built Graphed. You can connect your marketing and sales data sources in seconds, then simply ask for what you need in plain English - like "create a report comparing our Facebook Ad spend to Shopify revenue this quarter" - and it builds a real-time dashboard for you instantly.