For most organizations, the reporting landscape is the most-used — and least-organized — part of their data stack. Hundreds of Power BI reports across multiple workspaces. Dashboards built by different teams. Datasets that may or may not still be maintained.
Users ask the same questions over and over: "Which is the official sales report?", "Who owns this dashboard?", "Can I trust this number?" — and the BI team spends a chunk of every week answering them.
dScribe Catalog gives that reporting landscape an authoritative home: a single place where every report and dashboard is discoverable, documented, owned, and connected to the business terminology behind it.
What you get out of it
When your reporting landscape is documented in dScribe:
One discoverable entry of every report, dashboard, and dataset across your BI tools
Clear ownership for each asset, so users know who to ask
Trusted descriptions that explain what each report is for, when to use it, and what to be careful of
Linked business context — every KPI on a dashboard connects back to its glossary definition
In-context documentation in Power BI itself, via the dScribe browser extension
The result: new employees onboard faster, BI teams handle fewer "where's the right report?" questions, and decisions across the organization rely on the same trusted insights.
How it works
1. Connect your BI tool
dScribe pulls reports, dashboards, and datasets directly from your BI platform via native connectors:
Power BI — the most common connector among dScribe customers
Tableau — full sync of dashboards and underlying data sources
SAP Analytics Cloud — Stories and analytics applications (data models are not synced)
Any other BI tool — Make use of the custom extractors engine to catalog any other reporting tool
For step-by-step setup, see the connector article for your platform: Power BI, Tableau, SAP Analytics Cloud.
2. Let dScribe catalog your assets
Once a connector is configured, dScribe catalogs your assets automatically on a schedule. For each report or dashboard, dScribe captures:
Title and description (where present in the source tool)
Creator and last editor
Creation and last-edited date
Linked datasets
Workspace or folder location
Lineage between reports and underlying datasets
You don't need to do anything for this step — assets appear in your Catalog as soon as the sync runs.
3. Document what matters
Synced metadata is a starting point, not a finished catalog. Add the context that humans need to actually trust and use the report:
Write a description that explains the report's purpose, audience, and any caveats
Assign owners so users know who to ask
Link KPIs to glossary definitions so terms like "Revenue" or "Active Customer" are unambiguous
Set a validation status to indicate whether the report is trusted, in development, or deprecated
You don't have to document everything at once — start with the reports that matter most.
4. Surface documentation inside Power BI
Once your reports are documented in dScribe, install the dScribe browser extension to bring that documentation into Power BI itself.
Users hovering over a visual see linked definitions and walkthroughs without leaving the report. They can follow links back to the full asset page in the Catalog when they want more detail.
This is the moment dScribe stops being "another tool to check" and becomes part of the report-reading experience.
Rolling it out
You don't need to document every report on day one. A practical sequence:
Start with your top 10–20 most-used reports. These are where you'll get the highest return on documentation effort.
Get owners assigned first. Ownership matters more than perfect descriptions — as long as users have someone to ask, they're unblocked.
Add descriptions to flagship reports. Focus on reports that drive recurring decisions (executive dashboards, finance reports, operational KPIs).
Link to your glossary. As your glossary grows, link each report's KPIs and key data elements back to their definitions.
Encourage users to suggest edits. Most documentation drift comes from changes nobody knows about — let users flag them.
Most organizations get 80% of the value from documenting the top 10% of reports.
Where to go next
→ Catalog — overview of how assets work in dScribe
→ Glossary — define the business terms your reports rely on
→ dScribe in Power BI — install and use the browser extension
→ Power BI connector — configure the integration
→ Custom connectors — automatically catalog any BI tool