How to Remove Links from Power BI Dashboard Service

As Power BI developers, we create dashboards that we want our end users to use, but today we want to show you a tip to solve a common issue. When users select a visual or tile on a dashboard, it automatically redirects to the report that the visual corresponds with. In some cases, that’s fine. But oftentimes, users don’t need to, or possibly should not have access to, anything at the report level.

In this demo, we’ll show you how to prevent this by changing the redirect path within the individual tiles. Let’s take a look:

• We’ll start with a demonstration workspace and you’ll see when we click on a visual or tile on the dashboard, it directs us to the report that data came from.
• To resolve this, click on the ellipses in the top right corner of a tile for more options and go to Edit Details.
• This will open the Tile Details pane. For initial set up in this pane check off Set Custom Links, set Link Type to External Link and check yes for Open Custom Link in the Same Tab. *Although we’re using an internal link to our dashboard, and not an external link, it’s just the verbiage they use.
• Next, go to the browser window on your dashboard, select and copy the URL. Paste this in the URL box in the Tile Details pane and click Apply.
• This will apply to the tile you selected only. You’ll need to set this up with each tile individually.
• You’ll see when we click on the tile that we set up, it reloads the dashboard page, obviously not the most user-friendly functionality.
• To fix this, click on the ellipses button on the tile again and Edit Details.
• In Edit Details, go back to the URL section, scroll all the way to the end of the URL entered for the dashboard and add a hashtag (#) symbol at the end and Apply.
• Now, when we click on that tile it just keeps us on the dashboard page without a full refresh.

Remember, this will need to be done for each tile on the dashboard, but these quick steps will ensure that your users aren’t redirected to reports they don’t need to, or shouldn’t, see.

If you’ve run into this issue, you’ve now got an easy solution. Be sure to keep an eye out for more tips and tricks within the Power BI Desktop services. Need Power BI Training? Our On-Demand Training platform offers 9 Power BI courses included in our library of 30+ courses covering Business Intelligence, SQL Server, Business Analytics and more. Sign up for a free trial today!