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Consultant KB for Microsoft Power BI: semantic models, DAX and modelling, Power Query and dataflows, reports and visuals, the service and workspaces, capacity and performance, embedding and integration, governance and security, ALM and deployment, and licensing, plus cross-cutting decision guides. Scoped to Power BI, with Microsoft Fabric covered where it touches Power BI directly. Implementation notes, configuration decisions and the gotchas that bite on real projects. Populated by the daily author agent from the Power BI release plans, docs repo and product blog, plus the author's own consultant notes.

power-bi/05-service-and-workspaces/feature-power-bi-mobile.md
feature-power-bi-mobile.mdv2 · history
CurrentApplies to ServiceUpdated last weekSource Microsoft Learn ↗

What it does

Native apps for iOS, Android and Windows that render Power BI dashboards, reports and Report Server content on a device. Reports can carry a separate phone layout authored in Desktop, and the apps cache data so previously viewed content still opens with no connection.

Key facts

  • Available for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Android phone and tablet, and Windows 10 or higher. Windows 10 Mobile phone support ended in March 2021.
  • Mobile layout is a second, portrait-orientation layout for a report page, built in the Mobile layout view on the View ribbon in Desktop or in the service. It has its own canvas and grid, and only the visuals you place on it appear.
  • Phone layouts render only in the iOS and Android apps. Everywhere else — browser, tablet in landscape, embedded — you get the desktop layout.
  • There's an auto-create option that generates a starting mobile layout from the desktop page, reading visual position, size, type and order. It's a starting point, not a finished layout.
  • Dashboards have their own separate phone view, configured in the service, not in Desktop.
  • Offline: up to 250 MB of cached data, no expiry, refreshed in the background when the device is online. Dashboards you've opened before stay interactive; reports you've opened before are read-only.
  • DirectQuery and live connection content isn't cached and isn't available offline. Neither are some tile types that need a live server call, such as Bing map tiles.
  • The cache holds what you last looked at. If you last viewed the report filtered, the unfiltered view may not be there offline.
  • Cached data is deleted when the app is removed, when the user signs out, or on a failed sign-in.
  • The apps are manageable through Microsoft Intune for iOS and Android — access PIN, data handling policy, encryption at rest when the app isn't in use.

When to use / skip

Build a phone layout for the two or three pages executives actually open on a train, and don't bother for the rest. A full analytical page with eight visuals and a filter pane is not going to work on a 6-inch screen no matter how long you spend on the grid, and the honest answer is to design a separate summary page for mobile rather than squeeze the desktop one. Skip mobile entirely if the audience sits at desks — plenty of clients ask for it because it sounds modern and then nobody installs the app.

Configuration decisions

  • Which pages get a phone layout at all, and whether mobile users get a dedicated summary page instead of a squeezed version of the main one.
  • Whether you start from the auto-generated layout or build by hand.
  • Whether the mobile audience needs offline access, which rules out DirectQuery and live connection for that content.
  • Whether the apps are enrolled in Intune, and what the MAM policy says about PIN, copy-paste and encryption.
  • Whether dashboards get a phone view as well as reports, since they're configured separately in different places.

Gotchas

  • Storage mode decides offline capability. A client who asks for offline access and a DirectQuery model at the same time is asking for two incompatible things — settle it early.
  • The phone layout is a separate artefact. Add a visual to the desktop page and it doesn't appear on the phone layout until you put it there. This is the number one "the mobile report is missing the new chart" ticket.
  • Tablets in landscape get the desktop layout, so tablet users see a different report from phone users on the same page. Clients rarely expect this.
  • Fewer visuals on the mobile layout genuinely helps load time, so the temptation to include everything costs performance as well as legibility.
  • Offline caching means a device that's been out of contact still shows numbers, with no obvious signal to the user that they're stale.

Consultant notes

  • Ask who actually asked for mobile. If it's one sponsor who wants to check a KPI at the airport, that's one phone-optimised page, not a mobile workstream.
  • Bring Intune into the conversation early on anything with sensitive data. Offline cache on an unmanaged personal device is a governance question, and the security team would rather hear it from you than find it themselves.
  • Demo the phone layout on an actual phone during UAT. Screenshots of the mobile layout canvas convince nobody and hide the scrolling problems.
  • Budget mobile layout as ongoing maintenance, not a one-off. Every report change is potentially two changes.

Worth a look after any release that changes the mobile layout editor or the offline cache behaviour.

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