What are the primary goals of any reporting? In working with customers, I have found a majority are looking for two things:
- To be able to quickly visualize the overall health of their company.
- To spot potential issues that need to be addressed and be able to communicate this quickly.
Power BI has quite a few features that allow for easy communication and collaboration within and outside an organization. The following features are available in the online version of Power BI which requires a Power BI pro license for each user.
Export
A huge benefit to Power BI is the capability to view reports online with multiple devices; however, some companies still need to present the reports in meetings or send as attachments with a proposal or project plan. The export function in Power BI allows you to present your report via PowerPoint, attach as a PDF document or print for handing out to others.
Share
Once a report is created it can be shared in two different ways, individually sharing the report or publishing to a shared workspace.
Reports and dashboards can be shared both within and outside an organization and you can choose if recipients will be allowed to further share the report or use the dataset to build new reports.
If you are creating multiple reports that need to be shared with a group of people it would be beneficial to set up workspaces for these groups. That way a report can be published directly to a specific workspace and all members of that workspaces would automatically have access to the report.
Subscribe
Some find it beneficial to be reminded to view a report or want to have the data sent directly to them. With the subscribe option you choose how often (hourly, daily, weekly, monthly) and when you want the report data to be emailed out. Each report or dashboard can have up to 24 different subscriptions.
Comments
The comments section works similar to social media, you can enter comments and mention people directly to get their attention for specific questions. Using comments eliminates the need to email questions and answers back and forth.
Share to Teams
If your organization uses Microsoft Teams on a consistent basis sharing your Power BI data within Teams allows you to discuss the data in a tool already being used.
Usage Metrics
Reports and dashboards are only beneficial if people are viewing them. With usage metrics in Power BI you can see how many times and who is viewing the reports. This can help you work with the teams on using the reports that have been created.
How quickly data can be shared, viewed and discussed is of paramount importance within any business. Power BI provides multiple options for communication and collaboration so you can find something that will work for the individual needs of your team.
-Jerica Coleman, CRM and Power BI Consultant
