Enabling report discovery

1. Enabling report discovery

In this lesson, we will look at three ways to make discovering and acting upon data easier for our users.

2. Endorsing content

One great way of helping users find high-quality content in your organization is to endorse content. We are able to endorse four types of content: Datasets, Dataflows, Reports, and Apps. This means we cannot endorse content like Dashboards. There are two methods for endorsing content. The first method is to promote content, in which users highlight content they believe is valuable and ready to use. The other method is to certify content. Certified content meets the organization's quality standards. Let's talk more about these two methods.

3. Promoting content

The key concept behind promoting content is when a user thinks, "this content is good enough to share." The content does not need to be perfect but it should be of high enough quality that others will find it valuable. The only requirement for promoting content is that you must be a content owner or a member with write permissions on the content's workspace. Promotion is a "bottom-up" exercise, something many employees at an organization can do.

4. Certifying content

By contrast, certifying content has an entirely different meaning. Here, certification means that this content is reliable, authoritative content ready to use across the organization. Because certification is a higher level of endorsement than promotion, only a select group of persons may certify content for an organization. Power BI administrators can decide which security groups are allowed to certify content. By default, content certification is disabled. In addition to creating relevant groups, a Power BI administrator will need to enable certification for the tenant before anybody is able to certify content.

5. Subscribe to a report

The second method to make a report discoverable is via subscription. Report subscriptions allow users to receive an e-mail version of a report on a regular schedule. There are subscriptions available for regular reports as well as paginated reports. In order to schedule a report, the user must have a Pro or Premium Per User license, or the report's workspace must be backed by Premium capacity. When creating a subscription, you can add yourself to the subscription but you can also add other people as well, making it great for ensuring infrequent Power BI users are aware of report developments. Along with choosing who gets a report, you can decide how frequently and when those reports are delivered. You can also control other factors, such as whether people with the link should get access to the report, whether the e-mail should include a preview image, and with Premium capacity, you can even send out the full report as an attachment.

6. Create a data alert

In addition to endorsement and subscription, we can also create data alerts. Data alerts allow you to receive a notification if certain criteria are met after a dataset refresh. In addition to adding a notification in the Power BI app, you may optionally send an e-mail when a data alert triggers. Data alerts only work on gauges, KPIs, and cards which are hosted in dashboards. This limits the set of visuals you can create and also means that you cannot create a data alert directly on a Power BI report. To get around this limitation, you can create a dashboard tile based on a Power BI report visual. In order to create a data alert, you will need a Pro or Premium Per User license.

7. Let's practice!

Let's take this new-found information and help others discover our great datasets and reports.

Create Your Free Account

By continuing, you accept our Terms of Use, our Privacy Policy and that your data is stored in the USA.