We’re excited to introduce a new datasets hub in the Power BI service and Power BI personal app in Teams.
The datasets hub makes it easy to find, explore, and use the datasets in your organization. It provides information about the datasets as well as entry points for creating reports on top of those datasets or for using those datasets with Analyze in Excel.
The datasets hub can be useful in many scenarios, such as:
- Dataset owners can see dataset usage metrics, refresh status, related reports, and lineage to help monitor and manage their datasets.
- Report creators can use the hub to find suitable datasets to build their reports on, either from scratch or from templates.
- Report consumers can use this page to find reports based on trustworthy datasets.
By making it easy to find quality datasets and their related reports, the datasets hub helps prevent the creation of redundant datasets and reports. It also makes it easy to find good reports to use as starting points for creating new reports.
In the Power BI service, you now have a Datasets button that opens the datasets hub. In Teams, you have a new Datasets tab.
The datasets you can see in the datasets hub are those that you have build permissions for. This means that you can create reports and analyze in Excel to get insights from the data.
Find curated datasets to build your reports on
To help you find the right data to use, the datasets hub offers you recommended datasets. Recommended datasets are endorsed datasets (promoted or certified) that are presented to you based on how recently they’ve been refreshed and how recently you’ve visited related reports and/or dashboards.
Note: If you don’t see a recommended datasets section, it means that none of the datasets you have access have been promoted or certified. Dataset owners! Keep reading to see how you can make your datasets more discoverable.
Explore datasets that are relevant to you using the Recent tab
The Recent tab shows you datasets whose related reports and dashboards you’ve recently accessed. When you view reports and dashboards in Power BI, you are at the same time accessing their underlying datasets. Our assumption is that the datasets you access are the datasets that are relevant for your job, and hence the Recent tab makes it easy to find them for future analysis to make better data-driven decisions.
Manage your datasets using the My datasets tab
As a dataset owner, we believe you’ll find this tab super useful. Until today there wasn’t a single, central place where you could view and manage all of your datasets across Power BI workspaces. The My datasets tab shows you them all. You can check refresh status, trigger refresh (coming soon), view lineage and impact, and manage permissions.
View dataset details and related reports
To see more information about the dataset, to explore related reports, or to create a new report based on the dataset, from scratch or from a template, pick a dataset from the recommended datasets or from the datasets list. A page will open that shows you information about the dataset, lists the reports that are built on top of the dataset, and provides entry points for creating new reports based on the dataset or for pulling the data into Excel via Analyze in Excel.
Make it easier for others in your org to discover your dataset
There are a number of ways you make it easier for others in your org to discover your datasets:
- Endorse your datasets: You can promote or certify your datasets to make them easier for users to find and to let them know that they are trustworthy sources of data. Endorsed datasets are labeled with badges and are readily identifiable in Power BI. In the datasets hub, only endorsed datasets show up in the recommended datasets section, and the list of datasets by default shows endorsed datasets first. Learn how to endorse your datasets.
- Provide a meaningful description of the dataset: You can help users discover the right dataset for them by providing useful, meaningful descriptions of your datasets. You provide the description as part of the process of endorsing the dataset.
- Give your dataset a memorable image: You can make it easier for users to find and remember your dataset by giving it memorable image. This makes your dataset stand out in the datasets hub and anywhere else that supports displaying dataset images. To give your dataset an image, open your dataset’s settings, and expand the dataset image section.
- Create a report template built on the dataset: You can create a report template that users can use to get started building their own reports based on your dataset. This template is simply a regular report that you design keeping in mind that it to be used as a template. When you save it, you must add the suffix “(template)” to the report name, e.g. Monthly Sales (template). When a user selects Create > From template in the create a report section of the dataset details page, a copy of the template is created in the user’s My workspace and then opens in the report editing canvas. Report templates are also easily identifiable in the list of related reports on the dataset details page.
Read more about the new Datasets experience.
We greatly appreciate your feedback so we can continue to improve the experience. Try out the new Datasets discovery experience today, and if you have any feedback, please let us know via this survey. Thanks in advance!