Design a report
A report is a set of blocks laid out on a 12-column grid across one or more
pages. You compose it in the designer and readers open the same report in view
mode.
Open it
- View —
/report/{guid} - Design —
/report/{guid}/edit
Older links still work: /report/view/{guid}, /studio/{guid} and
/dashboard?workspace={guid} redirect to the screens above.
The three columns
- Left — design. Theme, presentation, canvas size, suggested charts, layout
tools and pages. - Middle — the report. Blocks in reading order. Click one to select it; drag
to reorder. - Right — panel. Two panes, Properties and Assistant. Collapse the
whole panel with the chevron when you want the full width for the report.
Properties
Select a block, then work through the four tabs.
| Tab | What it sets |
|---|---|
| Data | Label / legend, value, aggregation, group-by — and for a table, which columns show. Filters live here too. |
| Chart | Type, palette, legend and position, data labels, tooltips, fill, animation |
| Format | Font, title size, corner radius, series and border colour |
| Block | Title, width, height, page, row limit |
The field lists come from the datasource itself, so you are always choosing
columns that exist. A block with no label and no value renders No records
returned — the Data tab says so rather than leaving you to guess.
Width and height
Width is a share of the 12-column grid: ¼, ⅓, ½, ⅔, Full. Height is in
pixels per block, so a KPI tile and a table are not forced to the same size.
Rows
Every block carries a row limit, on the Block tab:
- Automatic — 500 for a table, the server ceiling for a chart
- Fixed steps from 100 up
- All records — the server ceiling, shown in the label
The ceiling is real and cannot be exceeded from the report: it is
QueryLimits:ExecuteMaxRows (50,000 by default). On a table, remember that
every row is drawn into the page — past a few thousand the report gets slow to
scroll and slow to print.
Theme and canvas
Four themes ship — Studio, Slate, Warm, Mono — plus Custom, where you pick
an accent, a page colour and a block colour; the lighter and darker shades are
derived from the accent.
Design for caps the grid to a target screen: Fit to window, Print (1120),
Laptop (1440), HD (1920) or 4K (2560). Compose for the screen the report will
actually be read on.
Pages
Add, rename and delete pages in the left rail. Deleting a page removes its
blocks, and the pages after it renumber.
Suggested charts
The left rail proposes charts built from your datasource's field names — a
measure against a category, a measure over a date, totals, counts. It is a
heuristic over column names, not an AI call, and the rail says so. Click one to
add it.
The assistant
The Assistant pane builds blocks from a plain-English request. Ask for a
chart and it is added; ask something looser and it proposes one or more, each
with a chart-type picker, so you choose the shape and it fills in the fields.
The ＋ Visual button opens the chart-type grid when you know the shape
first. Each answer reports its estimated token cost.
Saving, versions, publishing
Changes autosave, and the toolbar says saved or not saved — never saved
when the write failed. Snapshots freeze a copy; Revisions roll back.
A report starts as a Draft, which is private. Publish makes it readable
by anyone holding the public link; Unpublish makes it private again.
Export
- PDF — opens the print dialog; choose Save as PDF
- CSV — the rows behind each block on the page, exactly as drawn
- Power BI project — generated by the server
PowerPoint export is not wired to this screen yet; the classic viewer still
has it.