Power BI reports: start with three questions
Power BI report creators can start with the decision, audience and data needs before choosing visuals.
Key insights
- Define the business decision the report should support before choosing visuals.
- Identify who will use the report and what detail, filters or drill-down they need.
- Check data sources, definitions, completeness and refresh frequency before building.
- A polished dashboard cannot correct inaccurate or outdated data.
Power BI report planning starts with three questions: what decision the report should support, who will use it and whether its data is suitable. These questions matter to report creators, analysts and business teams commissioning reports. Laura Rogers [MVP] raises the three-question approach in a YouTube Short, while the available material does not provide a transcript of its spoken details.
What it does
Starting with business needs gives a report a purpose before anyone selects charts or lays out a dashboard. The first question is what decision the report should help someone make, such as identifying costs over budget or checking progress against sales targets. A report built around a decision can focus on the measures users need instead of accumulating unrelated metrics.
The second question is who will use the report and what they need to do with it. Executives may need a small set of high-level indicators, while analysts may need more detail and ways to filter or explore the data. Audience, level of detail, terminology and frequency of use all affect what the report should present.
Who it is for and what you need
This planning approach is relevant to people creating or requesting business reports in Power BI. The research notes describe users with different needs, including report viewers, creators and analysts. They do not specify a required Power BI license, plan, role or product version for asking these planning questions.
Before building, establish what data is available and whether it is reliable for the intended decision. Consider whether sources are authoritative, whether departments use consistent definitions, and whether records are complete and current. The material does not state a prerequisite dataset or a particular rollout stage for this approach.
How it works
- Name the decision. State what action or judgment the report should support, such as spotting a budget overrun.
- Define the audience. Decide who will use the report, the detail they need and whether filtering or drill-down is useful.
- Assess the data. Check its source, consistency, completeness and refresh frequency before relying on its measures.
Only after answering those questions should the report creator decide which measures and visuals best communicate the information. In Power BI, the report’s usefulness depends on how well its data and presentation serve the defined audience and decision. The research notes describe a wider reporting process that can include data preparation, modeling, report creation and sharing, but they do not provide specific menu paths or configuration steps.
Limitations and open questions
The available Short material contains no transcript, and the supplied research notes do not identify the exact three questions as a verbatim quote from Laura Rogers. The questions in this article are therefore presented as a practical framework based on those notes, not as a verified word-for-word account of the Short.
No official Microsoft source URL was included in the supplied sources, so licensing, availability and Microsoft-specific implementation details cannot be verified here. The material also does not compare this planning approach with a named previous method or identify a specific feature that must be enabled.
Sources
Frequently asked questions
What should I decide before building a Power BI report?
Define the decision the report should support, who will use it and whether the data is suitable. These help determine which measures and level of detail are relevant.
What data checks should I make before creating a report?
Check whether sources are authoritative, definitions are consistent, records are complete and data refreshes often enough. The supplied material does not give a specific technical validation procedure.
Is a particular Power BI license required for this report-planning approach?
The available material does not specify a license or plan. It describes planning questions, not a license-dependent feature.