How to Include a Report in Power BI App

Building a great report in Power BI is one thing, but sharing it effectively with your team or stakeholders is a whole different ballgame. If you're looking for a polished and professional way to distribute your insights, Power BI Apps are the answer. This guide will walk you through exactly how to add your reports to a Power BI App, from setting up your workspace to configuring access for your audience.

Graphed

Still Building Reports Manually?

Watch how growth teams are getting answers in seconds — not days.

Watch the Demo

First, What is a Power BI App? (And Why Use One?)

Think of a Power BI App as a curated package of your data insights. Instead of sharing individual links to five different reports and two dashboards, you can bundle them all together into a single, clean interface with its own navigation. It’s like creating a mini-website for your data that’s easy for your audience to consume.

You might be wondering, "How is this different from a workspace or a dashboard?" It’s a great question, and the distinction is important:

• Workspaces are for collaboration. This is your staging area, the "kitchen" where you and your colleagues build, refine, and edit reports and dashboards. It can be messy, with multiple versions and datasets lying around.
• Reports and Dashboards are the individual items. Sharing a single report is perfect for a one-off analysis, but it becomes cumbersome when you have a collection of related content.
• Apps are for distribution. This is the polished, "front-of-house" experience for your consumers. They get a read-only view of the specific content you’ve chosen, with simple navigation and controlled access.

Using an app creates a much better user experience. It centralizes information, so users aren't hunting for links, and it gives you granular control over who sees what - all without giving them access to your messy backend workspace.

The Foundation: Preparing Your Workspace and Content

Before you can add a report to an app, it needs to be in the right place. Apps are always published from a workspace, so your first task is to ensure your report is saved in the correct one.

Graphed

Still Building Reports Manually?

Watch how growth teams are getting answers in seconds — not days.

Watch the Demo

Step 1: Create or Select Your App Workspace

Every app is tied to a specific workspace. You cannot publish an app without one. A workspace acts as the container for all the reports, dashboards, and datasets you plan to include in your app.

In the Power BI service (the browser version of Power BI), navigate to Workspaces in the left-hand menu. Here you can either:

• Select an existing workspace that already contains the content you want to share.
• Create a new workspace by clicking the "New workspace" button. Give it a descriptive name (e.g., "Marketing Campaign Analytics") and a brief description.

Remember, this is where you'll collaborate with teammates who are building the content. Your end-users for the app will not see what’s inside this workspace directly.

Step 2: Publish Your Report from Power BI Desktop

With your workspace ready, the next step is to get your report into it. For most people, this process starts in Power BI Desktop, where the reports are built.

Follow these quick steps:

1. Open your finalized report in Power BI Desktop.
2. In the "Home" ribbon at the top, find and click the "Publish" button.
3. A dialog box will appear, listing all the workspaces you have access to. Select the workspace you designated in the previous step.
4. Click "Select" and Power BI will begin publishing the report and its underlying dataset. You’ll see a success message with a link to open the report directly in the service once it's done.

Your report now lives inside the workspace and is ready to be included in an app.

Step-by-Step: Creating and Configuring Your Power BI App

Now for the main event. With your report safely inside your chosen workspace, you're ready to build the app package that will deliver it to your audience.

1. Navigate to Your Workspace and Click "Create app"

Go to your workspace in the Power BI service. In the top-right corner, you’ll see a prominent button that says "Create app". Click it to launch the app creation wizard. This wizard is broken down into three simple tabs: Setup, Content, and Audience.

2. The "Setup" Tab: Define Your App's Identity

This first tab is all about branding and providing context. It sets the first impression for your users, so take a moment to fill it out thoughtfully.

• App name: Make this clear and user-friendly. "Q3 Sales Performance" is much better than "Sales_V2_Final_Report."
• Description: Add a sentence or two explaining what the app contains and who it's for. This is extremely helpful for users discovering the app for the first time.
• App logo: Uploading your company or team logo adds a professional touch.
• App theme color: Choose a color that aligns with your brand to give your app a consistent look.
• Contact information: You can add a link to a support site or an email distribution list so users know who to contact with questions.

Once you’re done, click "Next: Add content" at the bottom to move to the next step.

Graphed

Still Building Reports Manually?

Watch how growth teams are getting answers in seconds — not days.

Watch the Demo

3. The "Content" Tab: How to Include Your Report

This is the core of the process. Here, you'll select exactly which reports and dashboards get included in your app and how they are organized.

1. Click the "+ Add content" button.
2. A panel will slide out from the right, showing you all the content available in that workspace.
3. Check the box next to the report(s) and dashboard(s) you want to include in the app.
4. Click "Add".

Your selected content will now appear in a list. But don't stop there! One of the most powerful features of Power BI Apps is the ability to customize navigation for a better user experience.

Organizing Your App Navigation

Once your content is added, you can customize how it appears to your users:

• Reorder items: Simply drag and drop the reports in the list to change their order in the app’s navigation pane. Put the most important report at the top.
• Rename items for clarity: Your report might be named "Sales_Report_Final_V4_with_updates". You can rename it in the app navigation to something simple like "Overall Sales Summary" by clicking on the name and typing a new one. This does not change the original file name.
• Create sections: Use the "New section" option to group related reports. For example, you could have a "Marketing Channels" section with separate reports for "Email Performance" and "Paid Social." This helps users quickly find what they're looking for, especially in apps with a lot of content.

4. The "Audience" Tab: Control Who Sees What

Flexibility with permissions is a key benefit of using apps. In this final tab, you’ll define who gets to see your app and what they can do.

By default, you have one "Audience" group. You can go as simple or complex as you need:

• For simple sharing: Enter the names or email addresses of specific individuals or Office 365 groups (like "Marketing Team" or "Sales Leadership") who should have access to the entire app. This is the most common use case.
• For advanced sharing: You can create multiple audiences. For example, you might create an "Admins" audience that sees all 10 reports in the app and a "Sales Reps" audience that only sees three specific reports related to their territories. To do this, create a new audience, give it a name, and then use the eye icon next to each piece of content on the right to show or hide it for that audience.

Below the user access list, there are advanced options to let users share the app or build with the underlying data. For most consumer-facing apps, keeping these unchecked is the safest option.

Publishing and Sharing Your Power BI App

Once your audiences and permissions are set, you're ready to go live. Click the "Publish app" button in the bottom-right corner. Power BI will take a moment to package everything up and will then present you with a confirmation message.

This confirmation pop-up is important because it contains the direct link to your newly published app. You can copy this link and share it directly with the users you added in the "Audience" tab via email, Teams, or any other channel.

Users can also find all apps shared with them by navigating to the "Apps" section from their main Power BI service menu.

Graphed

Still Building Reports Manually?

Watch how growth teams are getting answers in seconds — not days.

Watch the Demo

Tips and Best Practices: Updating Your App

Data is never static, and neither are your reports. So what happens when you need to change something? The process is simple, but there's one critical step that people often forget.

1. Make your changes to the report in Power BI Desktop as usual.
2. Re-publish the report from Desktop to the exact same workspace, choosing to overwrite the existing version.
3. This updates the report inside your collaboration workspace, but your app users will not see the change yet.
4. To push the changes to your published app, you must return to the workspace in the browser and click the "Update app" button in the top-right corner.
5. Review the Setup, Content, and Audience settings (if you need to make changes) and click "Update app" again to publish the changes.

Forgetting to click "Update app" is a common pitfall. The app is a separate, published version of your content, and it needs to be explicitly updated to reflect changes made in the workspace.

Final Thoughts

Power BI Apps are an incredibly effective way to package and distribute your data insights in a structured, professional, and secure manner. By bundling related content into a single interface, you provide a clear and simple experience for your audience, allowing them to focus on the data, not on finding the right link.

At Graphed, we aim to eliminate the heavy lifting involved in getting from raw data to valuable insights. The process of building, publishing, and updating reports in traditional BI tools can be time-consuming, especially for busy teams that need answers fast. We built a platform that allows you to create entire dashboards in seconds just by describing what you need in plain English. By connecting your sources like Google Analytics, Shopify, and Salesforce directly, Graphed gives you real-time reports that are always up-to-date, without ever needing a desktop app or a manual publishing workflow. To get straight to the insights, you can try Graphed today.