How to Use Power BI Mobile App

Carrying your company's key metrics in your pocket gives you a massive advantage, turning idle moments into opportunities for insight. The Power BI mobile app makes this possible, letting you access and interact with your critical dashboards no matter where you are. This guide will walk you through everything from getting set up to using advanced features that make you a data-driven powerhouse on the move.

Getting Started: Your First Steps with the Power BI Mobile App

Before you can start analyzing data from your phone, you need to get the app set up and understand the basics of its layout. This process is straightforward and takes just a few minutes.

Downloading and Installing the App

First things first, you need to get the app on your device. The Power BI mobile app is available for all major platforms. You can find it by searching "Power BI" in:

• Apple's App Store for iOS devices (iPhone and iPad)
• The Google Play Store for Android devices

The download and installation process is just like any other app. Once it's installed, you’ll see the Power BI icon on your home screen and you're ready to log in.

Logging In To Your Account

Tap the newly installed Power BI app icon to open it. You'll be prompted to sign in with your Power BI account credentials - this is the same work or school email and password you use to access Power BI Service in your web browser.

If your organization uses multi-factor authentication (MFA), you may need to complete an extra verification step, like entering a code sent to your phone or approving the login via an authenticator app. Once signed in, the app connects directly to your Power BI account, syncing all your reports, dashboards, and apps.

An Overview of the Home Screen

The first time you log in, you'll land on a home screen that acts as your personalized data command center. It’s designed to get you to your most important data as quickly as possible. You'll typically see a few primary sections:

• Recents: This section shows a list of the reports and dashboards you've recently viewed, making it easy to pick up where you left off.
• Favorites: Any dashboards, reports, or apps you've marked as a "favorite" in Power BI will appear here. This is the best way to keep your most critical data front and center.
• My Workspace: This is your personal sandbox in Power BI, where reports and dashboards you've created for yourself reside.
• Workspaces: If you're part of collaborative teams, those shared workspaces will be listed here, giving you access to team-specific reports.
• Apps: This area contains curated collections of dashboards and reports that have been packaged together and shared with you or your entire organization.

Viewing Your Data on the Go

With the app installed and set up, you can now start interacting with your data. The mobile app offers an intuitive experience for exploring powerful, interactive visuals.

Navigating to Your Reports and Dashboards

Finding the report you need is simple. The bottom navigation bar provides quick access to everything. You can browse through your favorite reports, check your recents, or explore the content within a specific workspace. Just tap on a tile or a report name to open it.

Dashboards in the mobile app are presented as a series of tiles, each representing a key visual from a complete report. Tapping a tile on a dashboard will take you to the underlying report page where that visual originated, letting you dive deeper into the details.

Interacting with Your Visuals

This is where the Power BI mobile app truly shines. Your reports aren't static images, they are fully interactive canvases. Here’s what you can do:

• Tap to Cross-Filter: Tapping on a value in one visual (like a bar in a bar chart or a slice of a pie chart) will instantly filter all the other visuals on the report page by that selection. For example, tapping on "Canada" in a sales by country chart will filter the product sales chart and the monthly trendline to show only data for Canada.
• Tap and Hold for Tooltips: For a quick look at the data points behind a visual, just tap and hold on it. A tooltip will appear, displaying the precise numbers and details for the area you touched.
• Focus Mode: If a visual is too small or complex, tap its ellipsis (...) menu and select "Expand to focus" (or look for a dedicated focus mode icon). This brings the single visual into a full-screen view so you can see it clearly without anything else on the page.
• Drill Down and Up: If the data has a hierarchy (e.g., Year > Quarter > Month), you can drill down to see more granular detail. Look for arrows at the top of a visual - these allow you to navigate through the different levels of your data.
• Slicers and Filters: Any slicers or filters created in the report's desktop version are fully functional on mobile. You can tap on a slicer to change the time period, select a different product category, or filter by a sales representative, and the entire report will update instantly.

Unlocking Powerful Mobile Features

The Power BI mobile app isn't just a viewer - it has a unique set of features that make it an indispensable tool for staying on top of your business performance.

Setting Data Alerts for Key Metrics

Data alerts are one of the most proactive features available. You can have Power BI notify you automatically when a metric on a dashboard crosses a threshold you've set. This is perfect for monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs) without having to manually check them.

How to Set a Data Alert:

1. Navigate to a dashboard and find a tile with a single number, like a KPI, a card visual, or a gauge.
2. Tap the tile to open it, then tap the bell icon (Manage alerts).
3. Tap to add a new alert rule.
4. Set the condition (e.g., alert me when the value is "Above" or "Below" a certain number).
5. Define the frequency, such as "At most once an hour" or "At most once a day."
6. Save the alert.

Now, if that metric crosses your set threshold during the next data refresh, you'll receive a notification directly on your phone.

Asking Questions with Q&A

Think of the Q&A feature as having a data analyst in your pocket. It allows you to ask questions about your data using natural language, and Power BI will generate a visual to answer it on the fly.

To use it, look for the Q&A icon on a dashboard or report. Tap it, and you can start typing questions like:

• "Total sales last month by product category"
• "Show top 10 customers by revenue as a bar chart"
• "What was the conversion rate trend for Q2?"

It's an incredibly fast way to get answers to ad-hoc questions that might not be explicitly shown in your existing reports.

Annotating and Sharing Insights

When you spot something interesting in a report, you often need to share it with your team immediately. The annotation feature lets you do this with context. You can take a screenshot of a report tile or page, draw circles or highlights directly on it, add text notes, and then share the image through email, Microsoft Teams, Slack, or any other app on your phone.

Imagine seeing an unexpected dip in sales on a Monday morning report. You can circle the data point, type "Let's look into this," and send it to your sales manager in seconds, starting the conversation before you've even gotten to your desk.

Scanning QR Codes and Barcodes

For businesses with physical products or locations, this feature is a game-changer. In the Power BI Service, a report owner can create a QR code that is tied to a specific report filter. For instance, a retail manager could place QR codes in different store departments. When a staff member scans the code for the "Electronics" department, it opens the Power BI mobile app and automatically filters the store's sales report to show only data for electronics. A similar process works with inventory barcodes, helping a warehouse manager scan a product and instantly see its sales history and stock levels.

Best Practices for a Smooth Mobile BI Experience

To really get the most out of the app, keep these few pointers in mind. They can dramatically improve usability for both you and your team.

Design Reports for Mobile Viewing

While most reports are usable on mobile, the best experiences come from reports designed with mobile in mind. In Power BI Desktop, there's a "Mobile layout" view where creators can arrange and resize visuals specifically for a vertical phone screen. This ensures that nothing is too small to read and that the most important information is right at the top. If you create reports, take a few minutes to configure this view - your mobile users will thank you.

Leverage Favorites Liberally

Don't be shy about using the "favorite" feature. If you have five dashboards you check daily, mark them as favorites. This pins them right to your opening page, saving you from navigating through workspaces every time you open the app.

Understand Offline Capabilities

The app caches some of your dashboard data. This means that even if you're on a plane or in an area with no internet connection, you can still open the app and view your most recently loaded data. It's a lifesaver when you need to access numbers but are offline.

Pull-to-Refresh for the Latest Data

Your data is refreshed in the Power BI service on a set schedule. If you want to make sure you're looking at the absolute latest data available, simply use the "pull-to-refresh" gesture: drag your finger down from the top of a report or dashboard screen. The app will fetch the most current data for you on the spot.

Final Thoughts

With features like interactive filtering, real-time alerts, and natural language Q&A, the Power BI mobile app is far more than just a way to view your reports. It's a complete analytics tool that allows you to monitor your business and make faster, more informed decisions from anywhere.

Of course, the Power BI mobile app works best when the reports and dashboards are already built. For many marketing and sales teams, the biggest struggle is connecting data from different platforms and getting it into a BI tool in the first place. Tying together platforms like Shopify, Google Analytics, and Facebook Ads is often hours of manual work. We built Graphed to remove that friction. It connects to all your platforms and lets you create powerful, real-time dashboards just by asking questions in normal English, giving you a faster path from data to decision without touching a single spreadsheet.