Design A Report Layout

Introduction

Organisations use reports to monitor and record performance and identify trends and variances. When an organisation is making decisions, it relies on the information that is provided by reports. Reports drive organisational behaviour and action, at every level, in every aspect.

In this module’s scenario, you work as a Power BI developer for Tailwind Traders. Your managers have found it difficult to make good business decisions based on the current quality of the reports. Consequently, your managers have requested one report that displays all the information that they need to accomplish their yearly planning and forecasting activities, ultimately helping them make better, strategic organisational decisions. They want the report to be concise, accurate, and well-designed, and it must display information in a compelling way that is simple to navigate and complies with current accessibility standards.

Design A Report Layout

The page layout of the reports that you create in Power BI Desktop will likely depend on the business requirements, the context of the underlying data, and the output requirements.

Report Page

It is important to consider that you and the report users might view the reports on screens with different aspect ratios and sizes. The default display view is ‘Fit to page’, which means that the contents are scaled to best fit the page. If you need to change this view, go to the View tab, select Page view, and then select your preferred page view option, as illustrated in the following screenshot.

Visuals

You might want to use a combination of visuals in your report, such as cards, charts, tables, slicers, and so on. It is important to use the right number of visuals on a page, and then size and position those visuals strategically.

Report Accessibility

It is essential that you consider the possibility that your users might have hearing, motor, cognitive, or visual impairments. Therefore, make sure that you design a report that adheres to accessibility standards and that uses the available accessibility features within Power BI Desktop.

The following image depicts the same report that was shown at the beginning of this unit. Why is this better?