How to Link Two Dashboards in Power BI

Cramming every single chart and table into one giant Power BI report is a recipe for confusion. It's slow to load, hard to navigate, and overwhelms anyone trying to find a simple answer. A smarter approach is to build focused, specialized reports that link to each other, creating a clean, guided analysis experience. This article will show you three effective methods to connect your Power BI reports and dashboards, turning cluttered data dumps into intuitive, navigable BI systems.

Why Bother Linking Reports in the First Place?

Before we jump into the "how," let's quickly cover the "why." Linking reports isn't just a gimmick, it's a core principle of good dashboard design that offers several significant benefits:

• Better User Experience: Instead of forcing users to sift through dozens of visuals, you can create a clear path. Start with a high-level summary (a "homepage" report) and let them click to navigate to more detailed pages about sales, marketing, or operations. This guided analysis is far more intuitive.
• Improved Performance: Loading one massive report with hundreds of visuals can be a major drag on performance. By splitting your analysis into smaller, linked reports, each one loads faster, leading to a much snappier feel for the end-user.
• Logical Organization: It allows you to structure your data logically. You can have a main C-suite dashboard that links out to separate, detailed reports for the marketing department, the sales team, and the finance team. Everyone gets the data they need without being distracted by metrics that aren't relevant to them.

One quick clarification: Power BI developers often use the terms "dashboard" and "report" interchangeably, but they are different. A report is a multi-page canvas created in Power BI Desktop with interactive visuals. A dashboard is a single-page, often "read-only" view created in the Power BI service. While you can link from a dashboard tile to a report, the rich, interactive "drilling down" experience we'll cover happens by linking report pages together. This is where the magic happens.

Method 1: Creating a "Drillthrough" for Detailed Analysis

The drillthrough feature is arguably the most powerful way to link reports with context. It allows a user to click on a specific data point in a chart (like a country, product, or sales rep) and jump to another report page that is automatically filtered for that specific item. It's perfect for moving from a summary to a detailed view without losing your train of thought.

Step-by-Step Guide to Setting Up Drillthrough

Imagine you have a main report page with a bar chart showing "Revenue by Product Category." You want users to be able to click on a category, like "Accessories," and jump to a detailed page showing performance just for that category.

1. Configure the Destination Page

First, you need to prepare the detailed report page that users will land on.

• In Power BI Desktop, navigate to your "Product Detail" report page. This page might have charts for sales over time, performance by region, and top-selling products.
• With no visuals selected, look at the Visualizations pane on the right. Find the section at the bottom labeled Drillthrough.
• Drag the data field that will act as the filter from your Data pane into the "Drillthrough" box. In our example, you would drag the 'Product Category' field here.
• Once you add the field, Power BI automatically does two things:

2. Use the Drillthrough on the Source Page

The great news is, you don't have to do anything on your main summary page. By setting up the destination page, you've already enabled the feature. Here’s how a user interacts with it:

• Go to your summary page with the "Revenue by Product Category" chart.
• Right-click on one of the bars in the chart (e.g., the bar for "Accessories").
• In the context menu that appears, you’ll see an option for Drill through, followed by the name of your destination page (e.g., "Product Detail").
• Click it. You'll be transported to the Product Detail page, and every visual on that page will now be filtered to show data only for the "Accessories" category.

This method provides a seamless, contextual deep-dive that feels intuitive and professionally designed. It's the go-to for creating summary-to-detail relationships.

Method 2: Using Bookmarks and Buttons for Custom Navigation

What if you don't need a context-sensitive link? Sometimes, you just want a simple button to take a user from one page to another, like a website's navigation menu. This is where bookmarks and buttons come in. This method is perfect for creating a main landing page or switching between different, self-contained views.

Step-by-Step Guide to Setting Up Navigational Buttons

Let's say your report has three distinct pages: "Sales Overview," "Marketing Funnel," and "Inventory Levels." You want to create a "Homepage" with three buttons to navigate to each of these pages.

1. Create Your Bookmarks

A bookmark saves a specific "state" of a report page. In this case, we simply need to create a bookmark for each page we want to link to.

• Navigate to the "Sales Overview" page.
• Go to the View tab in the Power BI ribbon and check the box to open the Bookmarks pane.
• In the Bookmarks pane, click Add. Rename your new bookmark to something descriptive, like "Go to Sales."
• Repeat this process for your other pages. Go to the "Marketing Funnel" page, add another bookmark, and name it "Go to Marketing." Do the same for the "Inventory Levels" page.

You now have three bookmarks, each pointing to a different report page.

2. Add and Configure Navigation Buttons

Now, let's create the buttons on your Homepage that will trigger these bookmarks.

• Navigate to your "Homepage" report page.
• Go to the Insert tab in the ribbon and click on Buttons. You can choose a pre-made shape or a "Blank" button for full customization.
• Place the button on your canvas. In the Format pane, you can style it and, most importantly, add text under the Button > Text section. Type "View Sales Overview" into the text box.
• With the button still selected, go to the Action section in the Format pane. Toggle it On.
• For the Type, select Bookmark.
• For the Bookmark, select the "Go to Sales" bookmark you created earlier.
• (Optional but recommended) Under Tooltip, add helpful text like "Click here for a detailed sales performance breakdown."

Repeat this process to add buttons for Marketing and Inventory, linking each to its respective bookmark. Now, when a user is in Power BI (Desktop or web service), they can simply click these buttons to jump between pages effortlessly.

Advanced Tip: Linking Across Different Workspaces Using URLs

Drillthrough and bookmarks work wonderfully - as long as all your report pages are within the same .PBIX file. But what if you need to link from a summary report in one workspace to a completely separate detail report in another? This requires a more advanced approach using dynamic URL filtering.

This technique involves constructing a web link to the destination report and tacking on a filter at the end. It's less seamless than drillthrough but incredibly powerful for large, distributed BI environments.

1. Get the Base URL of the Destination Report

First, you need the stable web address for the report you want to link to.

• Open the destination report (e.g., the "Regional Sales Deep Dive" report) in your web browser via the Power BI Service.
• Copy the entire URL from your browser's address bar. It will look something like this: https://app.powerbi.com/groups/Some-Group-ID/reports/Some-Report-ID/ReportSection

2. Create a Dynamic URL Column with DAX

Back in your source report (the one you're linking from), you need to create a new column in your data model using DAX that builds the full, filtered link.

• Go to the Data view in Power BI Desktop and select the table that contains the entity you want to filter by (e.g., the 'Locations' table, which has a 'Region' column).
• Click New Column from the ribbon.
• Enter a DAX formula that concatenates the base URL with the filter string. The syntax for the filter is ?filter=TableName/FieldName eq 'Value'. Your formula will look like this:

RegionLink =
"https://app.powerbi.com/groups/groups-id/reports/report-id/ReportSection?filter=Locations/Region eq '"
&amp, Locations[Region]
&amp, "'"

Press Enter. This formula creates a new column where each row contains a unique URL that links to the destination report and filters it by that row's region.

3. Use the URL in a Table Visual

Finally, make that new URL column clickable in a report visual.

• Return to the Report view and add a new table visual to your canvas.
• Add the fields you want to display, for example, 'Region' and 'Total Sales.'
• Crucially, click on your 'RegionLink' column in the Data pane. Go to the Column tools tab at the top and change the Data category to Web URL.
• Now, back in the report, turn this URL into a cleaner icon. Select your table visual, go to the Format visual pane, find Cell elements, select your 'RegionLink' column under "Apply settings to," and toggle the URL icon to On.

You will now have a table where each region has a small link icon. Clicking the icon for "North America" will open the detailed report in a new tab, already filtered to only show data for North America.

Final Thoughts

By connecting your reports using drillthrough, buttons, or dynamic URLs, you can deliver a far cleaner and more professional BI experience. This approach guides users from high-level summaries to granular details intuitively, reduces clutter, and improves performance. Mastering these linking techniques is a major step toward building truly exceptional Power BI solutions.

Of course, becoming proficient with tools like Power BI often involves navigating steep learning curves and hours of setup. At Graphed, we remove the technical burden by letting you build powerful, real-time dashboards using plain English. Instead of manually configuring drillthrough settings or writing DAX formulas, you can simply ask for the reports you need, and our AI data analyst builds them for you in seconds. It allows your entire team to connect their data and uncover insights without the all-day reporting workshops.