PowerBI.tips

Category: Building Reports

Make Custom Visuals with no Code

Welcome to another installment of building custom visuals with the Charts tool from PowerBI.Tips. In this edition we make the following custom visual.

Custom Ribbon Chart

This chart comes to us from the sharp mind of Nick Snapp, Check out is work on Charts.PowerBI.Tips within our custom visual gallery. This chart combines the ability to see both the relative size of values between states as well as distributions of data with adjacent number lines. Pretty cool don’t you think?

Below is the walk through video on how to build this custom chart.

Building the Custom Visual

If you want some other help making custom visuals check out this other tutorial building a simple bar chart.

If you like the content from PowerBI.Tips please follow us on all the social outlets. Stay up to date on all the latest features and free tutorials. Subscribe to our YouTube Channel. Or follow us on the social channels, Twitter and LinkedIn where we will post all the announcements for new tutorials and content.

Introducing our PowerBI.tips SWAG store. Check out all the fun PowerBI.tips clothing and products:

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Hasta La Vista Data

Go Ahead Make My Data

PBIX Hat

June 20, 2019
New Layout – Square One

“Square One” utilizes the color theme as a background component that adds a pop of accent color only. This gives you the end user the maximum flexibility to incorporate color themes that match your needs without drawing to much attention on the main part of the page. Click here to download

The icons are part of the background so that the colors come through with the icons, but this also keeps the same flexibility in that if you have different icons, you can always place those behind the clear buttons placed on the report. We’ve only tied in 3 of the icons to buttons and bookmarks as the others can be added by you as you develop and build out the report.

The idea behind the icons on the right follow two different thought patterns.

First, a Summary, more granular, and then table views of data. In this vein, you would create a clear bookmark to re-direct to the different pages showing that level of information.

Second, would be to create toggles on each page to view visuals in current state vs. over time and use the icons to flip between the two.

Let us know your thoughts on this new layout idea, we hope you get a lot of use out of it!

Sample of Report:

May 1, 2019
New Layout – Smooth Operator

Hey everyone! We’re excited to release our latest layout “Smooth Operator”. Click here to download. We’ve gotten some great feedback from our users and the previous layouts were a bit heavy handed as we tried to create a perfect experience with adding visuals. The difficulty of trying to link up a dataset to the x/y axis made some of those a bit burdensome. As a result, we’re going to streamline the layouts to be super easy to use but yet still providing as much enhanced value with bookmarks, areas for visuals, and using json themes to change look and feel of background and visual elements.

We’re interested in your thoughts on this streamlined approach, so please let us know how you like the new layout – and expect more like it in the future!

Sample of Report:

March 21, 2019
Make Custom Visuals – Create a Bar Chart

With the release of the custom visuals building tool Charts.PowerBI.Tips we received a number of comments requesting tutorials on how to build visuals. Ask and you shall receive! Below is a basic tutorial on how to create a Bar chart. Within this tutorial we review a couple of the features of the chart tool and how to use them.

Video Tutorial on Building a Basic Bar Chart Custom Visual

Comment below on other topics you would like to see.

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If you like the content from PowerBI.Tips please follow us on all the social outlets to stay up to date on all the latest features and free tutorials. Subscribe on YouTube. Or follow us on the social channels, Twitter and LinkedIn where we will post all the announcements for new tutorials and content.

February 12, 2019
Respect Layers

If you are like me and you like making your reports look extra good with different visual elements you’ve probably come across the issue before where you use shapes or images layered behind a visual. What you have quickly discovered is that an end user can mistakenly click on that background layer and the entire object pops from the background to the foreground. In this quick tutorial, we’ll show you how to STOP this from happening! We learned the technique through a webinar given by Miguel Myers and wanted to make sure we spread the word because it will have a huge impact on how we can build reports!

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If you like content from PowerBI.Tips please follow me on all the social outlets to stay up to date on all the latest features and free tutorials. Subscribe to us on YouTube. Or follow me on the social channels, Twitter and catch up with me on LinkedIn where I will post all the announcements for new tutorials and content.

December 4, 2018
New Layout – September 2018 Blog Layout

In the September 2018 blog post the Microsoft team released a new layout. This layout has a number of really nice design elements. However, upon reviewing the file used for this demo found here. Upon downloading we noticed that the new style of the layout was only one page deep. As an enhancement to this file we added all the pages, renamed all the elements and created a full PowerBI.Tips layout from this page. We’d love to share our work with you and hope you enjoy this new layout from PowerBI.tips.

Be sure to download your copy here:

Demo of September 2018 Layout:

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If you like the content generated from PowerBI.Tips please follow me on all the social outlets to stay up to date on all the latest features and free tutorials. Subscribe to me on YouTube. Or follow me on the social channels, Twitter and LinkedIn where I will post all the announcements for new tutorials and content.

October 2, 2018
Using Grids to Improve Visualization Placement

When you design a report, there are a number of things to consider. For example, the types of visuals, the colors used within the visuals, and the location of the visuals. The orientation and alignment of the visuals is a subtle but important aspect of your report build. Doing a good job aligning the items removes distractions from the report page and allows users to engaged with your data story.

To that end, using grids in Power BI desktop has been extremely helpful to me to aid in aligning elements on the page. In this tutorial, I walk through how to use the default Grid settings of Power BI. Additionally, I developed a couple of grids as images that can be used to aid in aligning visuals. Check out the video below to see how you can use Grids, and download the new Grids Layout for your reports.

Tutorial Video:

To download this layout follow this Link, or use the product image below:

[product id=”18774″ ]

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If you like the content generated from PowerBI.Tips please follow me on all the social outlets to stay up to date on all the latest features and free tutorials. Subscribe to me on YouTube. Or follow me on the social channels, Twitter and LinkedIn where I will post all the announcements for new tutorials and content.

September 4, 2018
Microsoft Business Applications Summit – New Layout – Purple Haze
In honor of the 2018 Business Applications Summit, PowerBI.Tips has published a new layout, Purple Haze. Purple Haze is the brain child of Seth Bauer, and utilizes the latest features of the July 2018 Power BI Desktop.

In the previous versions of Power BI desktop there was always a header present at the top of a visual. Now, the header is no longer needed, and design elements within the report can extend all the way to the very top of the report page. This is great news for report designers and new possibilities for Layouts.

Hit the link to download the Purple Haze layout.

[product id=”18324″ ]

Cool Features of Purple Haze:
- The report comes with four (4) pages. In the example the are listed as Accessories, Bikes, Clothing, and Components. By Clicking on these buttons the report navigates to a new page where all the visuals for these topics exist.
Purple Haze Menu Bar
- The filters across the top of the report are using an upper third filter context window. This window is exposed when clicking on the filter icon, which is found in the upper left hand corner of the report:
Purple Haze Filter Menu

We hope you enjoy this new free layout.

Be sure to follow:

If you like the content generated from PowerBI.Tips please follow me on all the social outlets to stay up to date on all the latest features and free tutorials. Subscribe to me on YouTube. Or follow me on the social channels, Twitter and LinkedIn where I will post all the announcements for new tutorials and content.
July 30, 2018
Center the X-Axis on a Line Chart
Sometimes when your working on a line chart you want the x-axis to stay centered on a chart. This tutorial will walk you through how to create an X-Axis that will always center it’s self on the graph.

Video Support Material:

The measures discussed within this tutorial are:
```
Variance All = SUM(Sales[Variance])
```
The column name Variance is found in the data table called sales. This is just a numerical column.

After summing up all the variances we can calculate the min and max lines.
```
Const Max Line = [Variance All] * 1.2

Const Min Line = -1 * [Const Max Line]
```
Finally to calculate the variance to date you can use this filtered measure, which will only produce historical values.
```
Variance To Date = CALCULATE([Variance All], FILTER('Sales','Sales'[Date] <= EOMONTH(TODAY(),0)))
```
Thanks for watching our short tutorial. If you like this video please be sure to follow me (Seth Bauer) on Twitter, LinkedIn and be sure to subscribe to the PowerBI.Tips YouTube channel.
July 9, 2018
Segmented Filtering with Slicers
This weeks tutorial focuses on the need to control groups of visuals independently. This recently came up in a project where I needed to adjust all the items on the left side of the screen independently from the right side. By using the Edit Interactions button found on the Format ribbon you are able to adjust how different visuals interact with each other. Finally, adding multiple Slicers to the page for controls finishes out the report. I hope you enjoy this weeks tutorial.

Followup:

On the demo page of the report you’ll notice that when various items are selected, some of the non-selected items dis-appear. This is handled by using some formatting within the measures for the visuals. All the measures used in this tutorial are listed below:

Taking an Average of a Numerical Column:
```
Average of Values = 
VAR calc = AVERAGE( Data[Value] )
RETURN if( calc = BLANK(), "", calc )
```
Making Dynamic Titles off of a list of items in a table:
```
Title = 
VAR title = CONCATENATEX( VALUES( Data[Customer] ), Data[Customer], " & " )
RETURN if( title = BLANK(), "", title )
```
Producing a sum of values:
```
Total of Values = 
VAR calc = SUM( Data[Value] )
RETURN if( calc = BLANK(), "", calc )
```
Want the file:

Need a little more help? Like the content from PowerBI.Tips. Please consider purchasing the demo PBIX file to support more great content.

[product id=”17894″ ]

Be sure to follow:

If you like the content generated from PowerBI.Tips please follow me on all the social outlets to stay up to date on all the latest features and free tutorials. Subscribe to me on YouTube. Or follow me on the social channels, Twitter and LinkedIn where I will post all the announcements for new tutorials and content.
June 20, 2018