Can You Link One Power BI Report to Another?

Building a single, perfect Power BI report that answers every possible question is a common goal, but it's often impractical. Instead of creating a huge, overwhelming dashboard, you can build a network of specialized reports that link to one another. This guide walks you through exactly how to connect your Power BI reports, turning them from isolated dashboards into an interactive, cohesive analytics experience.

Why Link Power BI Reports in the First Place?

Before diving into the "how," it's helpful to understand the "why." Linking reports solves several common problems and can significantly improve both the performance of your dashboards and the user experience.

• Create a "Summary-to-Detail" Flow: The most common reason is to provide a high-level overview in one report and allow users to drill into the fine details in another. For example, an executive might view a one-page summary of company KPIs, then click on "Sales Revenue" to be taken to a detailed sales performance report, pre-filtered for the quarter they were viewing.
• Separate Complex Data Models: If you try to cram data from marketing, sales, finance, and operations into one massive report, the underlying data model can become slow and difficult to manage. By creating separate reports for each department and linking them, you keep each one fast and focused.
• Improve Dashboard Performance: Reports with dozens of visuals and complex DAX measures can be slow to load. Breaking them apart into smaller, specialized reports means each one loads much faster, as Power BI only needs to process the data for that specific view.
• Streamline Navigation: Instead of asking users to navigate through dozens of pages in a single report, a central "hub" report can provide clear links to other dedicated reports, acting as a table of contents for your entire analytics workspace.

The Two Main Ways to Link Power BI Reports

Power BI offers two primary methods for connecting reports. One is a seamless, built-in feature, and the other is a more manual but highly flexible approach using URLs. Let's break down both.

Method 1: Using Cross-Report Drillthrough (The Recommended Approach)

Cross-report drillthrough is Power BI's intended feature for this exact purpose. It allows a user to right-click on a data point in a visual (the source report) and jump directly to a pre-filtered page in another report (the target report). The key benefit here is that Power BI automatically passes the filter context, like the product category or sales region the user clicked on.

For this to work, both the source and target reports must be published to the same Power BI service workspace.

How to Set Up Cross-Report Drillthrough

The setup involves configuring your target report to accept filters from another report.

Step 1: Prepare Your Target Report

The target report is the detailed report you want users to land on.

1. Open your target report (e.g., "Detailed Product Analytics") in Power BI Desktop.
2. Select the page you want to be the drillthrough destination (e.g., "Product Details Page").
3. With that page selected, find the Visualizations pane. Drag the field you want to filter by into the Drillthrough field well at the bottom. For example, if you want to link from a Product Category summary, drag the Product Category field there.
4. Once you've added a field, a new option will appear: Cross-report. Toggle this option On. This is the crucial step that tells Power BI this page can be accessed from other reports in the same workspace.
5. Power BI automatically adds a "Back" button to the page. You can customize this button or move it as needed.
6. Publish your target report to the Power BI service.

Step 2: Use the Drillthrough from Your Source Report

Now, let's go to the source report, which is the high-level summary dashboard (e.g., "Executive Sales Overview").

1. Open your source report in the Power BI service (this part happens after publishing, not in the Desktop editor).
2. Find a visual that uses the same field you set up in the target report's drillthrough settings (e.g., a bar chart showing sales by Product Category).
3. Right-click on a data point within that visual (for instance, the "Electronics" bar on the chart).
4. In the context menu that appears, you'll see an option for Drillthrough. Hover over it.
5. A sub-menu will show the target page you configured: "Product Details Page." Click it.

You will instantly be taken to the "Product Details Page" in your "Detailed Product Analytics" report, and all the visuals on that page will be automatically filtered to show data only for "Electronics." It's a clean and intuitive user experience that requires no extra instruction.

Method 2: Using URL Actions with Filters (The Flexible Approach)

Sometimes, cross-report drillthrough isn't enough. Maybe your reports are in different workspaces, or you want to provide a more obvious user interface, like a large clickable button instead of a right-click menu. In these cases, you can build a dynamic URL that links to another report and passes filters directly in the web address.

This method requires a bit of DAX but offers much more flexibility.

How to Set Up URL Linking

This process feels a bit more like programming, but it's straightforward once you understand the components.

Step 1: Get the Target Report's Base URL

1. Navigate to the report you want to link to in the Power BI Service.
2. Copy the URL from your browser's address bar. It will look something like this:

https://app.powerbi.com/groups/xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx/reports/yyyyyyyy-yyyy-yyyy-yyyy-yyyyyyyyyyyy/ReportSection

1. This is your base URL. Paste it into a text editor for now.

Step 2: Understand the URL Filter Syntax

To apply a filter, you need to add a parameter to the end of the URL. The syntax is specific:

?filter=TableName/FieldName eq 'FilterValue'

• ?filter= is the command to start the filter declaration.
• TableName is the exact name of the table containing the column you want to filter.
• FieldName is the exact name of the column you want to filter.
• eq stands for "equals."
• 'FilterValue' is the value you want to filter for, wrapped in single quotes.

Important: Table and field names with spaces must have those spaces replaced with . For example, a field named "Product Category" becomes Product Category.

Step 3: Create a Dynamic URL Measure using DAX

This is where the magic happens. We'll use DAX to build the complete URL dynamically based on what the user has selected in the source report.

1. In your source report in Power BI Desktop, create a new DAX measure.
2. Suppose you have a slicer for the field Sales[Region] and you want to pass the selected region to the target report. Your DAX measure would look like this:

Link to Regional Report = 
VAR BaseURL = "https://app.powerbi.com/groups/YOUR_GROUP_ID/reports/YOUR_REPORT_ID/ReportSection"
VAR SelectedRegion = SELECTEDVALUE('Sales'[Region])
VAR FilteredURL = BaseURL & "?filter=Sales Region eq '" & SelectedRegion & "'"
RETURN
IF(
    HASONEVALUE('Sales'[Region]),
    FilteredURL,
    BaseURL -- If no single region is selected, just link to the unfiltered report
)

This measure first defines the base URL. Then, it grabs the currently selected value from the Sales[Region] column using SELECTEDVALUE(). Finally, it concatenates them to create the full, filtered link. The IF statement handles cases where more than one (or zero) region is selected.

Step 4: Apply the Link to a Button or Shape

1. On your source report canvas, insert a blank button (Insert > Buttons > Blank).
2. Select the button, and in the Format pane, turn Action On.
3. Set the Type to Web URL.
4. For the Web URL destination, do not paste a static URL. Instead, click the fx button (Conditional formatting).
5. In the dialog box, under "Field value," select the DAX measure you just created (Link to Regional Report).
6. Click OK.

Now, when a user selects "North America" from the slicer and clicks your button, they will be taken to the target report, automatically filtered to show only North America's data.

Best Practices for a Smooth Experience

No matter which method you choose, a little planning goes a long way. Keep these tips in mind:

• Keep Field Names Consistent: If you're using fields to link reports, make sure their names and data types are identical in both the source and target datasets. This prevents filtering errors.
• Consider User Experience (UX): Make it obvious where users can click. For cross-report drillthrough, you can add a note in a text box like "Right-click on a category for more details." For URL links, use clear button text like "View Detailed Analysis."
• Manage User Permissions: Linking reports doesn't automatically grant access. A user must have permission to view both the source and target reports. Make sure to share both reports with the intended audience.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, connecting Power BI reports is entirely possible and opens up a structured, efficient way to manage and present your data. You can either use the built-in and user-friendly cross-report drillthrough for common summary-to-detail scenarios or leverage the power of DAX and URL actions for more customized, flexible navigation paths.

Manually building, maintaining, and linking multiple dashboards can become a full-time job. Often, the need for linked reports stems from a desire to explore a simple follow-up question, which sends you down a rabbit hole of editing data models and designing UIs. At Graphed, we solve this by letting you just ask those follow-up questions in plain English. Instead of building a complex "drilldown report," you can connect your data sources once and simply ask things like, "Which product category drove the most revenue last quarter?" and get an instant answer, saving you the hassle of becoming a full-time Power BI developer.