Add Images, Text Boxes and Video to a Power BI Dashboard

A dashboard full of numbers feels cold to the people who have to act on it. A chart showing a 12 per cent drop in renewals is useful. The same chart with a text box explaining that the drop follows a pricing change, who owns the response and when the data was last refreshed is far more useful. Most of the questions we get after a dashboard goes live are questions the dashboard should have answered itself.

Power BI lets you add a few non-data tiles directly to a dashboard: images, text boxes, videos and web content. Used well, they turn a page of metrics into something a busy executive can read in thirty seconds. Used badly, they clutter the screen and open up a security problem you didn't plan for. Here's how the feature works, and the things I'd check before you rely on it.

Where to find it

You add these tiles from the dashboard itself. Select the arrow next to Edit in the top menu, then choose Add a tile. The window offers five types: Web content, Image, Text box, Video and Custom streaming data.

You need permission to edit the dashboard to see these options. That sounds obvious, but it matters in a shared workspace. Someone with viewer access will open a dashboard and wonder where the option went. The answer is that they don't have the rights to change it.

Your Power BI administrator can also switch off some of these content types. We'll come back to that, because it's the part people hit at the worst moment, usually the afternoon before a board meeting.

Images: host them somewhere public

Adding a logo or a diagram is the most common reason people reach for this feature. It's also where most of the frustration happens.

Power BI needs a direct public URL for the image, something like a link that ends in a .png or .jpg and loads in a browser without signing in. Images stored in OneDrive or SharePoint won't work, because those require authentication and Power BI can't provide it on the tile. We've seen people paste a SharePoint link, get a blank tile, and assume Power BI was broken. It wasn't. The image was simply behind a login.

Two other rules to know. Images can't be in SVG format, so if your logo is an SVG, export a PNG at a sensible resolution. And the image must be accessible to whoever views the dashboard, which is the bit that deserves some thought.

My honest opinion: a public image URL means anyone with the link can see the image. For a company logo, that's fine. For a chart that contains commercial figures, it's a problem. If you're hosting images yourself, think about whether they should be on a public web server at all. A content delivery network or a storage account with anonymous read access works, but only use it for images you'd be comfortable publishing. Don't put a confidential forecast in a public bucket because it was the quickest way to get a tile on screen.

To add the image, select Image, then Next. Add a title and subtitle if you want them, enter the image URL, and optionally set a custom link so that clicking the image goes somewhere useful. Then select Apply and resize the tile on the dashboard.

Text boxes: the most useful tile you'll add

If I could only recommend one of these tiles, it would be the text box. It costs nothing, it doesn't break, and it solves a lot of problems.

Use it for the questions people always ask. Who owns this dashboard. When the data was last refreshed. What the target is and where it came from. How to read a metric that isn't obvious. A short note saying "Renewals are measured on contract end date, not invoice date" saves a meeting.

We set up a text box on nearly every client dashboard we build now. The standard content is the owner's name, the refresh cadence, a one-line description of the data source, and a link to the process document or the team channel where questions should go. It's boring, but leadership reads it, and it means fewer messages landing in the analyst's inbox at 7am.

To add one, select Text box, then Next. Choose whether to display a title, enter the content and format it. Font size matters more than you'd think. Make the heading large enough to read from the back of a meeting room. You can add hyperlinks inside the text itself, which is usually better than setting a custom link on the whole tile, because the tile is easier to move around when it doesn't behave like a button.

Video: fine for short content

Adding a YouTube or Vimeo video to a dashboard works well, and the video plays directly on the tile. It's handy for a two-minute walkthrough of how to use the dashboard, or a short update from the CEO before a quarterly review.

Give the video a title and subtitle, and use the subtitle to link to a playlist or the full video channel. That way, colleagues who want more can find it without leaving the dashboard by accident.

My view is that a dashboard isn't the right place for anything longer than a few minutes. People come to a dashboard to get an answer quickly. If you're embedding a forty-minute training session, put it on the intranet and link to it from a text box. It keeps the dashboard sharp.

Web content: the one to be careful with

Web content tiles let you paste HTML embed code from a site that provides it. Common sources include video players, social media posts and some third-party widgets. This is the most flexible tile type, and the one that causes the most trouble.

Start with the basics. If you're using an iframe, make sure the source starts with https. An http source is the usual cause of a blank tile. Next, sort out the sizing. Embed codes often set a fixed width and height. For a YouTube embed, the default is 560 by 315 pixels, and that size stays fixed no matter how you resize the tile. If you want the player to fill the tile, set the width and height to 100 per cent.

Social embeds deserve a warning. The example in Microsoft's documentation is a tweet embed, and social embed codes age badly. They rely on third-party scripts, they break when the platform changes, and they can show content you didn't choose once the source updates. I wouldn't put a social feed on an executive dashboard unless someone is actively maintaining it.

The security point is the one I'd push hardest. Web content tiles run code. Pasting embed code from an unknown source into a dashboard that leadership reads is a risk you don't want to take casually. Only embed from providers you trust, and check the code before you paste it. If your tenant administrator has restricted web content, that's probably why, and it's a sensible restriction.

Editing and removing tiles

To change an existing tile, hover over its top right corner, select the ellipsis that appears, and choose Edit details. You can change the title, subtitle, link and the content itself. It's a quick way to fix a typo in a text box without rebuilding the tile.

Add a title and subtitle to most tiles, even if they feel redundant. Titles make the tiles easier to find when someone else is trying to move them around, and they help screen readers and people with low vision understand the layout.

Things to check before you build

Before you spend an afternoon on a beautifully designed dashboard, check these four things.

• Confirm that your tenant allows the tile types you want. Some administrators disable web content or certain external sources, and it's far better to find out before the build.
• Make sure any image is hosted at a public, https URL that doesn't need a login.
• Decide who will maintain each tile. Text boxes go stale, and an out-of-date note that says the target is $2 million is worse than no note at all.
• Test the dashboard in the view your audience will use, including on a laptop screen. Tile sizes that look right on a big monitor can overlap or squash on a smaller display.

For the streaming data tile, Microsoft has a separate article on real-time streaming. It's a different use case, usually for sensor data or live feeds, and it's worth reading that one on its own before you plan anything involving live data.

Where this fits

Non-data tiles are a small feature, and I wouldn't build a strategy around them. They do one job well. They give a dashboard context, instructions and a bit of brand identity, which is often the difference between a dashboard people open once and one they check every Monday.

If you're deciding how your dashboards should be structured for a team of executives, our Power BI consultants can help with layout and governance. For broader reporting estates, the Microsoft Fabric team can help plan how the data behind those dashboards should be modelled and refreshed.

The original article is Microsoft's Add images, videos, and more to your dashboard. It's worth a read for the exact menu steps, particularly if your organisation's Power BI version has changed recently.