How to Pin Power BI Report to Dashboard

Transforming complex data into a clear, scannable summary is one of the most powerful features of Power BI. You do this by pinning visuals from a detailed report onto a single-page dashboard. This article provides a straightforward guide on how to pin your Power BI reports to a dashboard, creating an at-a-glance view of your most important metrics.

First, What's the Difference Between a Report and a Dashboard?

Before we get into the "how," it's important to understand the fundamental difference between Power BI reports and dashboards. People often use the terms interchangeably, but they serve distinct purposes within the Power BI ecosystem.

Think of it this way:

A Power BI Report is like a detailed, multi-page financial document from a company. It's designed for deep analysis and interaction. You can have multiple pages, dozens of visuals, and complex slicers and filters to dig into the details. A report is an in-depth A to Z on a specific dataset.
A Power BI Dashboard is like the executive summary of that document, presented on a single slide. It gives you the high-level, need-to-know information instantly. Dashboards are a single-page canvas made up of "tiles" that act as snapshots of your most critical data points. Each tile can link back to the report it came from for deeper exploration.

In short, reports are for analyzing, and dashboards are for monitoring. Your goal is to curate the most essential visuals from your reports to build a focused, easily digestible dashboard.

Why Should You Pin Reports to a Dashboard?

Pinning visuals might seem like an extra step, but it’s the core process for building a truly effective business intelligence hub. The practice offers several key advantages:

A Single Source of Truth: Dashboards allow you to consolidate Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) from multiple different reports and data sources into one centralized view. You can have one tile from a sales report, another from a marketing report, and a third from web analytics, all living harmoniously on the same page.
At-a-Glance Monitoring: Executive and leadership teams often don't have time to slice and dice multi-page reports. A dashboard provides a clear, high-level overview of business health, helping them make quick, data-informed decisions.
Simplified Sharing: Sharing a dashboard is often more straightforward than sharing an entire complex report. It gives stakeholders the main headlines without overwhelming them with unnecessary detail.
Audience Tailoring: You can create multiple dashboards from the same set of reports, each tailored to a specific audience. The finance team's dashboard might focus on revenue and profit margins, while the marketing team's dashboard highlights campaign ROI and lead generation metrics.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Pinning a Visual to a Dashboard

Pinning an individual visual - like a chart, graph, or KPI card - is the most common way to build out your Power BI dashboard. The process is simple and intuitive.

Follow these steps:

Step 1: Open Your Power BI Report

Begin by navigating to the Power BI service (app.powerbi.com). In the navigation pane on the left, find your Workspace and open the report containing the visual you want to pin.

Step 2: Find the Visual to Pin

Browse through the pages of your report and identify the specific visual that represents a KPI you want to monitor. When you find it, move your cursor over it to reveal the visual header at the top of the container.

Step 3: Click the "Pin Visual" Icon

In the visual's header, you'll see a small thumbtack icon. This is the "Pin visual" button. Click on it to begin the pinning process.

Step 4: Choose Where to Pin the Visual

After clicking the pin icon, a dialog box will appear. Here, you have two choices for where the visual will go:

Existing dashboard: If you've already created a dashboard and want to add this visual to it, select this option. Then, choose the correct dashboard from the dropdown list.
New dashboard: If you're starting from scratch or want to create a new, dedicated dashboard, select this option. You'll then be prompted to give your new dashboard a name.

Once you've made your selection, click the "Pin" button.

Step 5: View Your Pinned Visual

Power BI will confirm that the visual has been pinned. A small pop-up notification will appear at the top-right of your screen, offering a button to "Go to dashboard." Click this to see your newly pinned tile in its new home. It will appear at the bottom of the dashboard by default, but you can click and drag it to rearrange it as you see fit.

How to Pin an Entire Report Page to a Dashboard

Sometimes, a single visual isn't enough. You may want to pin an entire, fully interactive report page to your dashboard. This technique, known as pinning a "live page," keeps the cross-filtering and slicer capabilities of the original report page intact directly on the dashboard.

This is especially useful when a group of visuals are closely related and need to be analyzed together.

Here’s how to do it:

Navigate to the report you want to pin and go to the specific page.
In the top menu bar of the report, click the ellipsis (...) for "More options."
From the dropdown menu, select "Pin to a dashboard."
A dialog will pop up validating that you're pinning a live page. Choose an existing dashboard or create a new one.
Click "Pin live."

When you go to the dashboard, you'll see the entire report page added as a single, large tile. You can resize it, but you won't be able to move the individual visuals within that tile. The key benefit is that all the slicers and filters on that page will work just as they did in the original report.

Best Practices for Effective Power BI Dashboards

Pinning visuals is easy, but creating a dashboard that's truly effective takes a bit of planning. Keep these tips in mind as you build:

Tell a Coherent Story: Don't just pin visuals randomly. Group related metrics together. Arrange your tiles logically, often with the most important, high-level KPIs placed in the top-left corner, as that’s where most people look first.
Keep It Clean and Simple: The purpose of a dashboard is clarity, not clutter. Avoid overloading it with too many tiles. A well-designed dashboard should have between 5 and 10 key visuals that convey the essential information quickly.
Customize Your Tiles: Once a visual is pinned to a dashboard, you can edit its details. Hover over the tile, click the ellipsis (...), and choose "Edit details." Here you can change the title to be more descriptive, add a subtitle for context, and even set a custom link.
Use Data Alerts: For specific tiles showing a single number (like cards and gauges), you can set up data alerts. This feature notifies you via email or in the mobile app when a metric crosses a certain threshold, enabling you to be proactive.
Check Mobile View: Many stakeholders will view dashboards on their phones. After building your dashboard, check the mobile layout view in Power BI to ensure it’s optimized for a smaller screen.

Final Thoughts

Pinning visuals from your Power BI reports to a dashboard is how you elevate raw data into a strategic business asset. By carefully selecting and arranging your key metrics, you can create a centralized command center that provides clear, actionable insights for your entire team.

While Power BI is an incredibly robust tool, the process of connecting data sources, building reports, and arranging dashboards can feel time-consuming. At Graphed, we’ve simplified this entire workflow. Instead of going through manuals, you can just connect your data (like Shopify, Google Analytics, or Salesforce) and use plain English to ask for the dashboard you need. We use AI to instantly build real-time, interactive dashboards - skipping the hours of manual report building so you can get straight to the insights.