Report Portal in Power BI

This also ensures native wrapping of longer report names. You can also set a uniform colour for the text to match the colour of the icon. This was not desirable in our case due to the colour spectrum of the icons. The result can be seen in the image below.

Now, when we set the web URL, it will be possible to click on both the image and the title, and the click-through will work in both cases.

We then focused on the colour of the icon according to the group of reports. To do this, we added an icon colour column to the source table and inserted the hex code of the appropriate colour.

The next step was to modify the metric and replace the default colour of all icons with the colour filled in the control table.

The result already looks very nice. All you have to do is add the correct URL to your reports.

Then we started testing. We tested several reports to make sure that the click-throughs were working and that we were really getting to the right report. Then came more advanced scenarios.

What happens if a user does not have permissions for one of the report areas? If the user only has access to reports in the Management, Operations and Sales areas, they will see the view shown below.

We see that the behaviour is fine.

However, if we look at the second scenario, where the user should not have permissions for some reports in the given group, the result does not look good. This can be seen in the picture below.

By filtering out some reports, whitespaces appear and group affiliations are no longer visible. This is not the behaviour we expect. The goal is for reports to be ordered from left to right, top to bottom, under all circumstances. All that remains is to dynamically calculate the X and Y position for the location of the reports after filtering the displayed set of reports.

To achieve this behaviour, we completely redesigned the matrix. We deleted the Col and Row table references and removed the Row_ID and Col_ID columns from the source file. In the new solution, the X and Y positions are calculated dynamically in the virtual table using the DAX metric. The Y position is calculated as follows: after applying the RANKX function at the row level, we number the remaining reports in each group and divide the number by the maximum number of columns. From the result, we keep only the whole number, i.e. the number before the decimal point, and we add 1, otherwise the numbering would start from 0. The calculation of the X position is similar, except that the numbering using the RANKX function is not only related to the group of reports, but also to the row number that we calculated in the previous step. The result is the dynamic assignment of the X and Y position to each report after each filtering of the reports, and therefore the rearrangement of the layout of the icons in the matrix table.

The result is the desired behaviour, as you can see in the example.

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It is important to note that the URL must be calculated in the same way for each position (and with the same numbering logic as for the icons, so that the URL does not lead to a different report than the one indicated in the title). For this purpose, it is also necessary to specifically prepare a similar metric that returns a URL instead of an image.

The advantage of this solution is that you can freely change the layout of the icons within the grid. It is therefore very easy to arrange the icons in a 3x3, 4x2, 5x1, etc. structure.

For example, 2x4

Or 3x3 (the third row is only displayed if the previous two are full and if there is a report that can be placed in the third row)

Or 7x2 (the second row will never appear in this case because there are no more than seven reports in each group).

It is also possible to add a metric that automatically calculates the number of groups of reports that fit into a visual underneath each other when the grid is set up X to Y. Then it is possible to display reports in two matrix visuals side by side, for example like this:

This is the setting we consider optimal from a design point of view. We have ensured that the number of report rows is calculated dynamically according to the maximum number of reports in a given group. It must not happen that we are missing a window in the final grid for the report. The report prepared in this way can then be combined with the logic of filtering reports according to user permissions for reports or groups of reports.

A few more tips

- When preparing the URL in the control table, it is possible to add URL parameters that can be used to achieve different settings of the browser window. For example, you can hide some Power BI Service control panels that are not needed by the user. Therefore, it is advisable to consider which URL address to prepare in the source data. The embedded URL mentioned above is easily accessible in the Power BI Service. Simply open the relevant report, click File > Insert Report > Web or Portal > and copy the link. However, whether you use this embedded URL or a classic URL in the source data, the reports will open in a new window, which is very handy for returning to the Report Portal. Then, when you deploy the Report Portal into production, consider adding a button to each report that links to this Report Portal. This small detail will take your entire solution one step further in terms of a pleasant user experience.

- If you are using live connection / direct query and import mode at the same time, a small icon next to each report with the symbol of a specific connection could be useful.

- At the same time, it is possible to ensure that a red dot lights up in the bottom corner of those reports for which the last refresh failed when viewed by the administrator (line level security setting). This is particularly useful if the source is from multiple datasets with separately set refreshes.

Conclusion

We have shown that with a little imagination, you can achieve some interesting functionality in Power BI and create your own navigation page with the possibility of further expansion and customisation. Do you like the result? Would you use it in your business? Do you want to create a similar Report Portal but are stuck in one of the steps? Or do you want to provide one of the DAX metrics? Contact us (by e-mail).

Do you have an interesting topic that you would like to implement, but it does not seem possible in Power BI? Or are you missing something in the reports, is there something that does not suit you or does not have enough setting options? Send us your ideas and suggestions and you might find a solution in our next post.

Author: Tomáš Němeček
Power BI department
tomas.nemecek@dolphinconsulting.cz