Labs · Power BI

Lab: Publish a Report to the Power BI Service, Pin Visuals to a Dashboard and Schedule a Refresh

By Ravindra Bagale · Last updated: 8 October 2026

Suppose we are…

Suppose the Croma director loved our report but asks: "Do I have to wait for your email every Monday? Can it just be there, updated, when I open my browser at 9?" The answer is the Power BI Service (app.powerbi.com): we publish the report, pin the key visuals to a dashboard, and schedule a daily refresh.

To keep the lab free and simple, our data lives in a Google Sheet published as CSV. That is a cloud source, so the Service can refresh it without a gateway (a gateway is software you install so the Service can reach files on your own PC or office network). The numbers are sample data made up for practice.

Goal of this lab

By the end you will have:

• A report built on a published Google Sheet, published to My workspace.
• A dashboard Sales at a glance with 3 pinned tiles.
• Data source credentials set and a daily refresh at 9:00 AM IST.
• Proved it works: a change in the Sheet appears in the Service after a refresh.

What you need (all free)

• Power BI Desktop, a work or school email for app.powerbi.com, and a Google account.
• Download pbi_sales.csv (24 orders)
• 45 minutes.

The data: before and after

Before. The report exists only on your laptop.

After. Three items in the Service: semantic model, report and dashboard, with a daily refresh.

The formula

The Source step of our query is a web address, which the Service can reach on its own:

= Csv.Document(Web.Contents("https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/…/pub?gid=0&single=true&output=csv"), [Delimiter=",", Columns=7, Encoding=65001])

When you publish, Power BI creates two items: a semantic model (data + measures) and a report (pages). A dashboard is a third, separate item: one page of tiles pinned from one or more reports.

Steps

Part A: Desktop

1. Create a new Google Sheet (https://sheets.new), File → Import → Upload pbi_sales.csv, choose Replace current sheet and untick Convert text to numbers, dates and formulas (so the dates stay as 2025-01-14 and are not changed to your Google locale). Name it pbi_sales (sample).
2. File → Share → Publish to web, choose the sheet and Comma-separated values (.csv), click Publish and copy the link (it ends with output=csv).

3. In Power BI Desktop: Get data → Web, paste the link, OK (Anonymous if asked), then Load.

   👁 What you should see: a table with 24 rows (rename the query to pbi_sales).

4. Add the measure Total Sales = SUM ( pbi_sales[Sales] ). Build a Card (Total Sales), a Bar chart (City, Total Sales, sorted) and a Line chart (OrderDate by Month, Total Sales).

5. Save as Lab-25-service. Click Sign in at the top right of Desktop and sign in with your work or school email.

Part B: publish and pin

6. Click Home → Publish, choose My workspace, click Select.

   👁 What you should see: "Success! Opening 'Lab-25-service.pbix' in Power BI" with a link. Click it.

7. In the browser report, hover over the Card and click the pin icon. Choose New dashboard, name it Sales at a glance, click Pin.

8. Pin the bar chart and the line chart to the Existing dashboard "Sales at a glance".

9. In the left menu, open My workspace.

   👁 What you should see: three items: a Dashboard (Sales at a glance), a Report and a Semantic model, all called Lab-25-service except the dashboard.

Part C: credentials and schedule

10. Hover over the semantic model, click … → Settings. Expand Data source credentials → Edit credentials. Choose Authentication method: Anonymous, Privacy level: Public (it is a published sample sheet), and click Sign in.

11. Expand Refresh (Scheduled refresh). Turn it On, frequency Daily, time zone (UTC+05:30) Chennai, Kolkata, Mumbai, New Delhi, click Add another time and choose 9:00 AM. Click Apply.

    👁 What you should see: "Next refresh" shows tomorrow at 9:00 AM.

12. Test it. In the Google Sheet, change order SO-1024's Sales from 100000 to 150000. Wait about 5 minutes (Google republishes).

13. In My workspace, hover over the semantic model and click the Refresh now icon. When it finishes, open the dashboard.

    👁 What you should see: the card tile shows 1.35M instead of 1.30M, and Nashik's bar is longer. Change the Sheet back to 100000 afterwards.

Common mistakes

Self-check checklist

Try-at-home challenge

Open the dashboard on your phone with the free Power BI mobile app (sign in with the same account). Which tile appears first, and how can you change the order for phone users?

Samjla ka? Publish creates a semantic model and a report; pinning builds a dashboard; credentials + schedule keep it fresh. Aata pudhe jaauya: row-level security, so each city manager sees only their city.