Mobile Reporting That You Can Actually Use!

The February 2022 update of Power BI came with a major change for mobile reporting. It was so exciting that I dropped my original article for this week so I could share this update. Mobility has always been a part of Power BI dashboards, but there were some challenges. It was not flexible and did not offer much with visual interaction.

Mobile reporting was then added to Power BI reporting, but there was still one major challenge. What worked for consumers on a computer or tablet did not work for mobile phones. To make it functional, you might end up creating two different versions of the report to accommodate mobile users.

With the February 2022 update of Power BI, we can finally take an existing report and modify it for a quality mobile experience. This is a huge step forward for the frontline and I cannot wait to use it!

Data on the Frontline

Data gurus pontificate about how leaders should make data driven decisions. I agree with them. I love having the right data to make decisions. With some analysis, I have likely avoided making poor purchases because of my research.

As wonderful as many of these data gurus are with their ideas, there seems to be a prejudice towards frontline leaders. The gurus spend their time reviewing data about what happened and how they can turn their insight analytics to prescriptive analytics. But the frontline workers are hungry for data and welcome it for making decisions.

Moving and Shaking on the Frontline

Frontline leaders spend their day on their feet. They are normally walking the floor pitching in where needed. If they are in retail, sometimes they are running registers while associates are taking breaks. In manufacturing they could be helping to repair an issue with a line so production can resume.

Frontline leaders likely have a desk somewhere in the facility, but they rarely sit at it. Sometimes leaders might need to share a computer at that desk. During my time working retail during college, I worked at a store that had four managers and two supervisors who all shared the same computer. If they wanted to pull a report or review some data, they had to wait in line. If content creators only create reports that must be viewed on a computer, they will never get used.

Decision Making on the Floor is Paramount

Frontline leaders are constantly making decisions when walking the floor. Restock orders, new material requests, and resource management are all made in real time. If you want to enable your user leaders to make data driven decisions, the data needs to be with them on the floor.

Now you might be thinking “Hey Dom! Laptops are portable. They should just carry one with them at all times on the shop floor.” And that is a good point – a laptop in hand is fairly portable. However, there is a risk factor. You need to find a solid surface to set the machine on so you can use it. You also run the risk of dropping it or setting it down and forgetting it.

This is where a mobile phone becomes the star. It is compact, powerful, and convenient. Properly managed, this will enable your frontline leaders to have mobile reporting with them wherever they go. And before you say anything about the risks of dropping or misplacing a laptop are the same for a phone, I will challenge you and say it is not. Ruggedized phone cases are easy to find and people tend to not misplace their phone. Even better, if a company has a bring your own device (BYOD) policy, your leaders can use their own device. They tend to protect it more than company issued hardware and don’t want to be without it.

Know Your Audience

One of the challenges of content creators is understanding the frontline audience. Like many creators, I love putting together flashy reports and combining data for deeper insights. This is great content for consumers who are looking to learn more from the data and have time to pour over reports.

Frontline leaders tend to be more focused on current operations. They want to review data to decide what needs to happen next. As a result, frontline leaders want reports that have key metrics and measures that fulfill the immediate needs on the floor. Instead of fancy reports that show how production relates to the relative position of Mars, they need to know how they are trending to plan and what they can do to meet it.

Now frontline leaders still care about the insights found in data. They still have access to computers and will want to perform a deeper analysis on their data. The key is making sure you have the right tool for the right job.

Now that you understand why I think mobile reporting is so important, let’s start building one out.

Create your own Mobile Reports

The first thing you will need to do is update your Power BI Desktop client to the February 2022 release. If you have not done so, you can download it here. This will allow you to use some of the new mobile reporting features that we will discuss in this article. After you have updated Power BI Desktop, open up an existing report hat you want to enable for mobile use.

Once you have your report finished, go to the view ribbon. From there, you can click on the Mobile Layout button to bring up the mobile view. You will notice that you will see a new blank canvas in the shape of a mobile phone.

While the canvas is blank, you will note that there is a pane on the right hand side full of visuals from your report page. We now can drag and drop visuals onto the mobile report canvas and adjust them accordingly.

As a result, you can optimize your existing report for mobile devices. Note that I did not add my table of top fifteen products sold. It is great info, but hard to read on your mobile device. We will make it available for consumers from their computers, but suppress it on a mobile device.

Take Mobile Reporting to the Next Level

You might be saying “Big deal! This has been around for a while! Why are you writing an article about this?!” But here is what I am loving about this update – we now have the ability to customize our visuals in the mobile format. When you select a visual on the mobile canvas, a new pane is available on the right side.

Think about this scenario – you have a bar chart but want to see what the actual values are. If you are on your computer, you can hover to discover what the actual amount is on the bar. But with mobile reporting, it is far more difficult to accomplish that. So to help consumers see what is happening, I can now add a data label without disturbing my original report.

To add data labels to by bar chart, I simply select it and expand the visualization pane. From there, turn on the data labels and customize accordingly. Note the new little icon that appears – the Power BI logo with a mobile device over it. This indicates that the visual is customized for the mobile experience.

The best part of this whole thing is when I go back to the regular report view, the data labels will remain hidden!

And just like that I have been able to optimize my mobile reporting experience while maintaining my original report! Amazing!

But Before You Change Your Mobile Reporting Experience…

Really make sure you know what you want to change! Once you break away from the original report configuration, you now have to update both the desktop and mobile report canvas. Even worse, there is no clear indicator that a report has been optimized for mobile users. As you consider your mobile reporting controls and lifecycle plans, you might want to consider options that ensure the mobile canvas is properly updated.

So have you built out any mobile reports? Do you have any great use cases for mobile reporting? If so, tell me in the comments below!