Dashboard tiles in Power BI

APPLIES TO: Power BI service for business users Power BI service for designers & developers Power BI Desktop Requires Pro or Premium license

Dashboard tiles are snapshots of your data that designers pin to dashboards in the Power BI service. This article helps business users understand how to open, interact with, and troubleshoot different types of tiles, including those from SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS).

In addition to tiles pinned from reports, designers can add standalone tiles directly to the dashboard using Add tile. Standalone tiles include text boxes, images, videos, streaming data, and web content.

Need help understanding the Power BI building blocks? See Basics of the Power BI service.

Interact with tiles on a dashboard

1. Hover over the tile to show the ellipsis.

   

2. Select the ellipsis to open the tile action menu. Available options vary based on your permissions, visual type, and how the tile was created.

   

   Available actions include:

   • Open the report used to create the tile
   • View the tile in focus mode
   • View insights
   • Add a comment to start a discussion
   • Export data to Excel

3. Select a blank area on the canvas to close the action menu.

Select a tile

When you select a tile, what happens depends on how it was created and whether it has a custom link. If it has a custom link, you're taken to that link. Otherwise, you're taken to the report, Excel Online workbook, on-premises SSRS report, or Q&A question used to create the tile.

Considerations and troubleshooting

• If selecting a tile does nothing or shows an error, possible reasons include:
  • The report used to create the visualization isn't saved or is deleted.
  • The tile comes from an Excel Online workbook and you don't have at least Read permission to that workbook.
  • The tile comes from SSRS and you lack permission to the SSRS report or to the network that hosts the SSRS server.
• If you created the dashboard, rearrange tiles. Viewers can't rearrange tiles. To change tile order, contact the dashboard creator.
• For tiles created directly on the dashboard with Add tile, if a custom hyperlink is set, selecting the title, subtitle, or tile opens that URL. Otherwise, selecting an image, web code, or text box tile does nothing.
• If the original visualization changes, the tile doesn't. For example, if the designer pins a line chart from a report then changes it to a bar chart, the dashboard tile still shows the line chart. The data refreshes, but the visualization type doesn't.
• If a workspace moves to Premium capacity, its existing dashboard refresh cache doesn't move. The service creates a new cache the first time a user opens the dashboard in Premium. Each data refresh then refreshes the cache and updates the data.
• If a tile is pinned from a workbook, you can't turn off its title and subtitle. The Edit details > Display title and subtitle option is grayed out.

Mobile

In the mobile apps:

• Tap a tile to open its source, like a report, Q&A result, or workbook, under the same rules as the service.
• Use focus mode to enlarge and interact. Then annotate with mobile sharing features.
• Tile data freshness and live behavior match the service. You don't need extra mobile settings.

Related content

• Data refresh in Power BI
• Basics of the Power BI service