Interact with visuals in reports, dashboards, and apps

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

At its most basic, a visualization (or visual) is a chart built by Power BI designers using the data in reports and semantic models.

You can find visuals on dashboards and in reports, and you can create them instantly using Power BI Q&A. When a designer creates a visual in a report, they can pin it to a dashboard. For more information, see Dashboard tiles in Power BI. The following example shows a dashboard with eight tiles.

Tip

We recommend reading the overview topic Basic concepts for the Power BI service business user before reading this more detailed content.

What can I do with visuals

Report and dashboard designers create and share visuals with colleagues. The designer assigns different permissions to their colleagues, depending on how each colleague uses the report or dashboard. For example, the designer can assign a developer different permissions than a business user.

The following table lists the most common tasks for a business user with links to step-by-step instructions. Business users have many options for interacting with visuals to uncover insights and make data-driven business decisions.

The administrator or the designer can disable your ability to see or use these features. And some of these features only work on specific visual types. If you have any questions, contact your administrator or the owner of the report or dashboard. To find the owner, select the dashboard or report dropdown.

Important

Q&A is Power BI's natural language search tool. You type a question using natural language, and Q&A answers the question in the form of a visual. Q&A allows business users to create their own visuals instantly. However, you can't save the visuals you create with Q&A. But if there's something specific you want to learn from the data, and the designer didn't include it in a report or on a dashboard, Q&A is a great option. For more information, see Q&A for Power BI business users.

Task	On a dashboard	In a report	In Q&A
Add comments to a visual or start a conversation with colleagues about it.	Yes	Yes	No
Open and explore the report where the visual was created.	Yes	n/a	No
View all the filters and slicers affecting the visual.	Yes, if you open in focus mode.	Yes	No
Open and explore a visual in Q&A (if the designer used Q&A to create the visual).	Yes	n/a	n/a
Explore and create a visual in Q&A (visuals created with Q&A can't be saved).	Yes	If designer adds Q&A to the report.	Yes
Use Power BI to find interesting facts or trends (automatically generated visuals are called insights).	Yes, for tiles.	No	No
View one visual at a time using focus mode.	Yes, for tiles.	Yes, for visuals.	n/a
Check the visual's timestamp and see the latest refresh time.	Yes	Yes	n/a
View one visual at a time, without borders or nav panes, using full screen mode.	Yes	Yes	By default
How to Print from the Power BI service.	Yes	Yes	No
Dig into the visual by adding and modifying visual filters.	No	Yes	No
Hover over a visual to reveal more details and tooltips.	Yes	Yes	Yes
How visuals cross-filter and cross-highlight each other in a Power BI report.	No	Yes	n/a
Show the data used to create the visual.	No	Yes	No
Change the way the visual is sorted.	No	Yes	You can change sort by rewording the question.
Add a spotlight to a visual.	No	Yes	No
Export data to Excel from a Power BI dashboard tile or a report visual.	Yes	Yes	No
Create an alert to notify you when a value crosses a limit you set.	Yes	No	No
Cross filter and cross highlight the other visuals on the page.	No	Yes	n/a
Drill a visual that has a hierarchy.	No	Yes	No

Related content

• Basic concepts for the Power BI service business users
• Open a report in the Power BI service
• Visualization types in Power BI