Build one dashboard per team, each answering its few recurring questions with targets and comparisons: pipeline and win rate for sales; orders, on-time delivery and backlog for operations; revenue, margin, cash and receivables for finance; leads and cost per lead for marketing. Use reports for detail, row-level security for access, and a refresh schedule that matches the decisions.
Dashboards and reports in Power BI
Microsoft's guide to dashboards defines a Power BI dashboard as a single page, often called a canvas, that uses visualizations to tell a story; its tiles are pinned from reports. A report is a multi-page collection of visualizations built on one semantic model. Dashboards do not support filtering or slicing, but they support Q&A and data alerts. So the dashboard is the summary page; reports hold the detail people drill into.
Example 1: Sales dashboard
Data from the CRM. Questions: are we on track, and where do we act?
- Revenue this month and quarter against target.
- Pipeline by stage, and coverage against the quarter's target.
- Win rate and average deal size, against last quarter.
- Deals at risk: past their expected close date or stalled in a stage.
- By rep or region, with each manager seeing their own team.
Example 2: Operations dashboard
Data from the ERP, order system or production records. Questions: are we keeping promises, and where is the bottleneck?
- Orders received and shipped today, this week and this month.
- On-time delivery rate, against target.
- Backlog in days of work, by line or team.
- Quality: defects, returns or rework, as a share of output.
- Stock of critical items against reorder points.
Example 3: Finance dashboard
Data from accounting and banking exports. Questions: are we profitable, and will we have the cash we need?
- Revenue and gross margin by month, against budget and last year.
- Operating expenses against budget, by department.
- Cash position and a 13-week forecast.
- Receivables by age, and the largest overdue accounts.
Example 4: Marketing dashboard
Data from the CRM, ad platforms and web analytics. Count leads as people in the CRM, not analytics events. Questions: which channels bring buyers, and at what cost?
- Qualified leads from the CRM, against target.
- Spend and cost per qualified lead by channel.
- Pipeline and revenue influenced by marketing.
- Website sessions and conversion by channel, from analytics.
Who sees what
One dashboard can serve many viewers with row-level security: filters defined in roles restrict which rows each viewer sees, so a regional manager sees only their region. Microsoft notes it applies to viewers, not to workspace admins, members or contributors. Plan roles before sharing.
Keeping it fresh
Match refresh to the decisions: daily for sales and operations, weekly or monthly for finance summaries. Microsoft's scheduled refresh guide allows up to 8 scheduled refreshes a day with Pro and up to 48 with Premium Per User or capacity, and pauses refresh after two months without views. Licenses also decide sharing: Pro is $14 and Premium Per User $24 per user per month on Microsoft's page.
Design rules that keep dashboards trusted
Five rules:
- Few tiles: the five to eight numbers the team acts on.
- Every number with a comparison: target, last period or last year.
- Definitions: what each measure means, in one line.
- One data model per subject, so the same measure means the same thing everywhere.
- An owner who fixes a wrong number within a day.
Conclusion
A Power BI dashboard is a single page of tiles pinned from reports, answering a team's few recurring questions with targets and comparisons. Sales dashboards track pipeline, win rate and revenue; operations dashboards track orders, on-time delivery and backlog; finance dashboards track margin, cash and receivables; marketing dashboards track qualified leads and cost per lead. Use row-level security for access and a refresh schedule that matches the decisions.
PromotEdge International is an international strategy, technology, marketing and design company, and our delivery team is in India. We are not a Microsoft partner. Our team builds Power BI dashboards with a sound data model, refresh and access set up right.
Facts we rely on: see our company facts for what we state about ourselves and where each fact comes from.