How to Create a Landing Page in Power BI

Building a powerful report in Power BI is only half the battle, ensuring your audience can actually use it is the other. Your perfectly crafted visuals and insightful data can get lost if users don't know where to click or what they’re looking at. This guide walks you through creating a simple, professional landing page within your Power BI report to dramatically improve navigation and usability for everyone.

Why Create a Landing Page for Your Power BI Report?

You might wonder if an extra page at the beginning of your report is worth the effort. In most cases, it absolutely is. A landing page, also known as a splash page or home page, acts as a central hub for your report, guiding users and providing essential context right from the start.

Here’s why it’s a game-changer:

• Improves User Experience (UX): Not everyone who views your report is a data analyst or Power BI expert. A landing page simplifies navigation, replacing the small, often unnoticed page tabs at the bottom with clear, clickable buttons. This makes your report feel less like a complex analytics file and more like a user-friendly web application.
• Provides Essential Context: What is this report for? Who built it? How current is the data? A landing page is the perfect place to put this information front and center. You can include a clear title, a brief description of the report's purpose, the data refresh date, and contact information for the report owner. This immediate context helps users trust the data and understand its scope.
• Creates a Professional Look and Feel: A polished landing page gives your report a clean, branded, and professional appearance. It shows forethought and consideration for the end-user, immediately elevates the quality of your work, and helps establish a consistent design across all your reporting assets.
• Controls the User Journey: By directing users through a specific starting point, you can control how they first interact with the information. You can guide them to a high-level summary before they dive into more granular details, ensuring they see the big picture first.

Core Components of an Effective Power BI Landing Page

While you can get creative, a great landing page typically includes a few key elements. Think of it as the cover and table of contents for your report, all in one.

• Report Title and Description: A large, clear title that states the report's purpose (e.g., "Quarterly Sales Performance Review"). Below it, a short sentence or two explains what the user will find inside, such as "An analysis of regional sales, product performance, and team leaderboards for Q3 2024."
• Navigation Buttons: These are the most critical interactive elements. They are buttons or icons that link directly to the other pages (or "tabs") within your report. Instead of hunting for the page tabs at the bottom, users just click a button labeled "Sales Summary" or "Product Deep Dive."
• Key Report Information: This typically includes metadata that adds credibility and context. Good candidates are a "Data Last Refreshed" date, the name of the report author or owner, and perhaps a version number.
• Branding Elements: Include your company logo or a relevant department icon to make the report feel official and align it with your organization's brand identity.

Step-by-Step Guide to Building Your Power BI Landing Page

Let's walk through the exact steps to build your own landing page in Power BI Desktop. Don't worry, you don’t need any coding or advanced design skills.

1. Prepare Your Report and Workspace

First, get your report file ready. All your main analysis pages - the dashboards and charts you've already built - should be complete.

• Open your report in Power BI Desktop.
• Click the + icon in the page tabs at the bottom to add a new page.
• Right-click the new page tab and select "Rename." Give it a clear name like "Home," "Welcome," or "Start Here."
• Drag this new page tab all the way to the left so it’s the very first page users see when they open the report.

2. Design the Visual Layout

Now, let’s make a clean canvas for your content. The goal here is clarity, not clutter.

• Set a Background: With your "Home" page selected, go to the Visualizations pane, click on the paintbrush icon to "Format your report page," and expand the "Canvas background" section. You can choose a solid color (a light gray or a brand color works well) or a subtle image. Keep it simple so it doesn't distract from your text and buttons.
• Use Shapes: Shapes are your best friends for structure. Go to the Insert tab on the ribbon and choose Shapes > Rectangle. You can use a rectangle to create a header bar at the top or a menu panel on the side. Adjust the color, transparency, and border in the Format pane to match your design.
• Add a Title and Logo: Go to Insert > Text Box. Click in the box and type your report title. Use the formatting options to make the font large and easy to read. To add a logo, go to Insert > Image and select your logo file from your computer. Position it in a corner or in the header.
• Add a Description: Insert another text box for the report's description. Use a smaller font size than your title.

3. Create Navigation Buttons

This is where your landing page comes to life. We’ll add clickable buttons that take users to other pages in the report.

• Insert a Button: In the Insert tab, click Buttons and select "Blank." A blank, transparent button will appear on your canvas. Drag it to where you want it. Repeat this step for each navigation link you need. For example, if you have pages for "Executive Summary," "Regional Sales," and "Marketing Attribution," you'll need three buttons.
• Customize Button Appearance: Select one of your blank buttons. In the Format pane to the right, you can customize everything about it under the "Style" section (it might be under "Button" depending on your version).
• Set the Action: This is the key step. Select the button, and in the Format pane, find and turn on the "Action" toggle.

Repeat step 3 for all your navigation buttons, linking each one to the correct destination page.

Pro Tip: Remember you'll probably need a "Home" button on each of your other report pages to allow users to easily return to the landing page!

4. Add Essential Report Information

To help users trust your data, it's great to show when it was last updated. While there are advanced DAX methods to do this dynamically, the simplest way is a text box.

• Go to Insert > Text Box.
• Once a day or whenever you refresh the data, manually update the text to something like: "Data Last Refreshed: October 26, 2024".
• You can add other useful text boxes for "Report Owner: [Your Name]" or "Version: 1.1." Place this information in a footer or a corner, out of the main way but still visible.

5. Hide Navigation Pages for a Clean User Experience

This final step is what makes the landing page truly effective. If users can navigate with both your new buttons and the page tabs at the bottom, it creates confusion. Your goal is to force them to use your intuitive button navigation.

For every report page except your new "Home" page:

• Right-click on the page tab at the bottom of the screen (e.g., on your "Executive Summary" page tab).
• Select "Hide Page."
• Repeat this for all your detail pages.

Once hidden, these pages will no longer be visible to end-users who are viewing the published report. However, your navigation buttons will still work perfectly! The only way for them to get to those pages is by clicking the buttons you've created. This creates a controlled, clean, and professional experience.

Now, just publish your report to the Power BI Service, and your users will be greeted with a welcoming, easy-to-navigate home page.

Final Thoughts

Creating a landing page in Power BI is a small investment of time that pays huge dividends in user experience and report professionalism. By providing context and simple navigation, you turn a complex collection of charts and tables into an accessible, application-like tool that anyone on your team can confidently use to find answers.

Making data more accessible is exactly why we built Graphed. While a landing page makes navigation easier in Power BI, we took it a step further to eliminate the technical learning curve of report-building itself. Instead of clicking through interface menus to create visuals and configure actions, you can simply ask questions in plain English like, "create a dashboard comparing campaign spend versus sales by channel this quarter." We instantly connect to your live data sources and build the dashboard for you, putting the power of a data analyst in everyone's hands.