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A look at the landscape and terminologyIn Power BI, a report can have one or more report pages and all the pages together are collectively referred to as the report. The basic elements of the report are visuals (aka visualizations), standalone images, and text boxes. From the individual data points, to the report elements, to the report page itself, there are innumerable formatting options. We’ll start at the report planning stage, continue on to basic report design principles, then discuss visual design principles, and finish with a discussion of best practices for individual visual types. In-depth guidance and instructions for creating and using Power BI reports is available at powerbi.com > Learn. Before you build your first visualization…focus on requirementsCreating a report starts before you build your first visual because a good report needs planning. Know what data you have to work with and write down the requirements for the report. Ask yourself “What is the business need, how is this data going to be used, and by whom?” A key question is “what decisions does the reader want to be able to make based on this report?” The answer to those questions will drive your design. Every report tells a story. Make sure that story matches the business need. It may be tempting to add visuals that show dramatic insights, but if those insights don’t match the business need, then the report won’t be useful – and in fact your users might be distracted by those visuals. Also, you may find that the information needed to make that decision cannot be gleaned from this data. Can this report be used to measure what is needed? Reports can be used to monitor, uncover, track, predict, measure, manage, test, and more. If, for example, the business need is a sales report that measures performance, then you might design a report that looks at current sales, compares it to previous sales, compares to competitors, and includes some KPIs that trigger alerts. Perhaps readers can drill down into the sales numbers to see store closures or supply chain issues that may be impacting sales. Another drill-down might be the ability to look at sales by store, region, product, season, and more. Know the customers for the report and design a report that uses familiar terminology and provides data at a level of detail and complexity on par with the customers’ level of knowledge. Have more than one type of customer? One size doesn’t always fit all; design separate report pages based on expertise and be sure to label each page clearly so customers can self-identify. Another option is to use slicers so customers can tailor the page to fit them. Involve the customer in the planning stage and avoid the mistake of building what you think they need. Be prepared to start over and to iterate. Once you’ve identified the business need, the customers, and the metrics you’d like to include, the next step is to pick the right visuals to tell the story and present those visuals in the most-effective way possible. That covers a lot of ground, and we’ll start with some basic principles of report design. Principles of report designA report page has limited space and one of the hardest things is to fit all the elements you want into that space – and still have that information be easily understood. And don’t underplay the value of “pretty.” The key is to find the balance between pretty and useful. Let’s take a look at layout, clarity, and aesthetics. Layout - the report canvasThe report canvas has a finite amount of space. If you can’t fit all the elements on a single report page, break the report up into pages. A report page can be tailored to a specific audience (e.g., HR, IT, Sales, SLT), or to a specific business question (e.g., How are defects impacting our downtime?, What is our Marketing campaign’s impact on Sentiment?) or as a progressive story (e.g. first page as overview or attention-grabbing “hook”, 2nd page continues the data story, 3rd page dives deeper into the story, etc.). If your entire report fits on a single page, great. If it doesn’t, create separate report pages that logically chunk the content. And don’t forget to give the pages meaningful and helpful names. Think about filling an art gallery. You wouldn’t put 50 pieces of artwork into a small room, fill it with chairs and paint each wall a different color. As the curator, you’d choose just pieces that have a common theme, lay them out around the room with plenty of space for visitors to move and think, and place informational cards that describes what they’re looking at. And there’s a reason most modern galleries have plain walls! For this article, we’ll start with a report example that needs a lot of work. As we apply our best practices and principles of design, our report will improve. Figure 1: This ugly report page needs a lot of work The example above has many space-related (layout) design issues that we’ll discuss below: - alignment, order, and use of proximity - poor use of space and sorting - clutter Alignment, order, and proximityThe layout of your report elements impacts comprehension and guides the reader through the report page. How you place and position elements tells a story. The story might be “start here and then look here” or “these 3 elements are related to each other.”
Let’s take a closer look at alignment. AlignmentAlignment doesn’t mean that that the different components need to be the same size or that you must have the same number of components on each row of the report. It just means that there is a structure to the page that aids in navigation and readability. We can see in our updated report below that the report components are now aligned on the left and right edges and each report row is aligned horizontally and vertically as well. Our slicers are to the left of the visuals they impact. Figure 2: Our ugly report example improved with layout edits Power BI includes tools to help you align your visuals. In Power BI Desktop, with multiple visuals selected, you can use the Align and Distribute options on the Visuals ribbon tab to match up the position of visuals. Figure 3: Align visuals in Power BI Desktop In Power BI online and Power BI Desktop, you also have precise control over the size and position of visuals through the General tab on the formatting pane for all visuals: Figure 4: Set exact position for your visual In our example report page (Figure 2), the 2 cards and large border are aligned on the X Position at 200. Fit to the spaceMake the best use of the space you have. If you know how the report will be viewed/displayed, design with that in mind. Reduce empty space to fill the canvas. Do all you can to eliminate the need for scroll-bar on individual visuals. Fill the space without making the visuals seem cramped. Adjust the page sizeBy reducing the page size, individual elements become larger relative to the overall page. Do this by deselecting any visuals on the page and using the Page Size tab in the formatting pane. Here is a report page using page size 4:3 and then using 16:9. Notice how the layout suits 16:9 so much better. There is even enough room to remove the scroll-bar from the second visual. Figure 5a: The report at 4:3 page size Figure 5b: The report at 16:9 page size ratio Will your report be viewed 4:3, 16:9 or another ratio? On small screens or huge screens? Or on all possible screen ratios and sizes? Design with this in mind. Our example report page seems a bit cramped. With no visual selected, open the formatting pane by selecting the paint-roller icon. Expand Page Size and change Height to 900. Figure 6: Increase page height Reduce clutterA cluttered report page will be hard to understand at-a-glance and may be so overwhelming that readers won’t even try. Get rid of all report elements that aren’t necessary. Don’t add bells-and-whistles that don’t help comprehension or navigation. Your report page needs to convey the information as clearly and quickly and cohesively as it can. The clutter you remove will increase the white space on your report page and give you more real estate for applying the best practices we learned about above in the “Alignment, order, and proximity” section. Here our example is already looking better. We’ve removed lots of clutter and added shapes to group elements together. The background image is gone, the unnecessary arrow shape and text box are gone, one visual has been moved to another page in the report, etc. We’ve also lengthened the page size to increase white (yellow?) space. Figure 7: Our ugly report example de-cluttered Tell a story at a glanceThe overall test should be that somebody without any prior knowledge can quickly understand the report without any explanation from anybody. With a quick glance, readers should be able to quickly see what the page is about and what each chart/table is about. When readers look at your report, their eyes should be drawn to the element you want them to look at first and their eyes will then continue left-right-top-down. Change this behavior by adding visual cues like text box labels, shapes, borders, size, and color. Text boxesSometimes the titles on visualizations aren’t enough to tell the story. Add text boxes to communicate with the people viewing your reports. Text boxes can describe the report page, a grouping of visuals, or describe an individual visual. They can explain results or better-define a visual, components in the visual, or relationships between visuals. Text boxes can be used to draw attention based on different criteria called out in the text box. In Power BI service, from the top menubar, select Text Box. (In Power BI Desktop, select Text Box from the Insert area of the ribbon.) Figure 8: Add a text box Type in the empty box and then use the controls at the bottom to set font face, size, alignment, and more. Use the handles to resize the box. Figure 9: Format the text box But don’t overdo it! Too much text on a report is distracting and detracting from the visuals. If you find that your report page requires a ton of text to make it understandable, then start over. Can you pick a different visual that tells a better story on its own? Can you tweak the visual’s native titles to make it more intelligible? TextCreate a text style guide and apply it to all pages of your report. Pick just a few font faces, text sizes, and colors. Apply this style guide to not only textual elements but to the font choices you make within your visualizations (see Titles and labels that are part of the visualizations, below). Set rules for when you’ll use bold, italics, increased font size, certain colors, and more. Try to avoid using all capitalization or underlining. ShapesShapes too can aid navigation and comprehension. Use shapes to group related information together, highlight important data, and use arrows to direct the eye. Shapes help readers understand where to start and how to interpret your report. In design terms, this is often referred to as contrast. Figure 10a: Shapes in Power BI service Figure 10b: Shapes in Power BI Desktop What does our example page look like now? Figure 11 shows a cleaner, less cluttered page with a consistent use of text faces, fonts, and colors. Our page title in the top-left corner tells us what the page is all about. Figure 11: Our report example with text guidelines applied and title added In our example, a report page title was added in the top left corner; the first place readers look. Font size is 28 and font is Segoe Bold to help it stand out from the rest of the page. Our text style guide calls for no backgrounds, black titles, legends, and labels and that was applied to all visuals on the page, where possible (the Combo chart axes and labels are not editable). Additionally: - Cards: Category label set to Off, Title turned On and set to 12pt black centered. - Visual titles: if turned On, set to 12pt and left-aligned. - Slicers: Header set to Off, Title turned On. Leave Items > Text grey and 10pt. - Scatter and column charts: black font for X and Y axes and X and Y axes titles, if used. ColorUse color for consistency. We’ll talk more about color in Principles of visual design, below. But here we’re referring to being deliberate in your selection of color so that it doesn’t detract from your readers being able to quickly understand your report. Too many bright colors barrage the senses. This section is more what not to do with color. BackgroundsWhen setting backgrounds for report pages, choose colors that don’t overshadow the report, clash with other colors on the page, or generally hurt the eyes. Realize that some colors have inherent meaning. For example, in the US, red in a report is typically interpreted as “bad”. Figure 12: Set report background You’re not creating a work of art, but a functional report. Choose a color that improves the readability and prominence of the report elements. A study on the use of color and visualizations within Web pages found that higher contrast between colors increases the speed of comprehension (The effect of text and background colour on visual search of Web pages** and **Determining Users’ Perception of Web Page Visual Complexity and Aesthetic Characteristics.) We’ve applied some color best practices to our example report (Figure 20 and 21) below. The most-notable was that we changed the background color to black. The yellow was too bright and strained our eyes. Also, on the “Count of athlete name by year and class” chart, the yellow portion of the bars disappeared into the yellow background. Using a black (or white) background gives us maximum contrast and makes the visuals the focus of attention. Here are the additional steps we took to improve the example report: Page title When we changed the background to black, our title disappeared because the text box field only allows black font. To fix this, add a text box title instead. With the text box selected, erase the text and in the Visualizations tab, select Title and turn it On. Select the arrow to expand the Title options, type Summer Olympic Games into the Title Text field and select white Font color. Figure 13: Add a page title Cards For the card visuals, open the formatting pane (paint roller icon) and turn Background On. Select white with a transparency of 0%. Then turn Title On, select Font color white and Background color black. Slicers Up to this point the two slicers had different formatting, which doesn't make design sense. For both slicers, change the background color to aqua. Aqua is a good choice because it is part of the page’s color palette – you can see it in the filled map, tree map, and column chart. Figure 14: Change slicer background color Add a thin white border. Figure 15: Add a border to the slicer The grey font is hard to see against the aqua, so change the Items color to white. Figure 16: Change slicer font color And, finally, under Title, change Font color to white and add a black Background color. Figure 17: Format slicer title Rectangle shape The rectangle too has disappeared into the black background. To fix this, select the shape and in the Format shape pane, turn Background On. Figure 18: Format the shape Column charts, bubble chart, filled map, and tree map Add a white background to the remaining visuals on the report page. From the formatting pane, expand the Line option and set the Line Color to white and Weight to 3. Figure 19: Add a white background to remaining visualizations Figure 20: Report example with color best practices applied (black background) Figure 21: Report example with color best practices applied (white background) AestheticsMuch of what we would consider aesthetics has already been discussed above: things like alignment, color, font choices, clutter. But there are a few more best practices for report design worth discussing and these deal with the overall appearance of the report. Remember that the function of your report is to meet a business need; not to be pretty. But some level of beauty is required, especially when it comes to first impressions. Nashville consultant Tony Bodoh explains "Emotion fires a half-second before logic can kick in." Readers will first react at an emotional level to your report page, before they take more time to dig deeper. If your page looks disorganized, confusing, unprofessional…your reader may never discover the powerful story it tells. Concentrate on: - Creating a common theme or look for your report, and apply it to all pages of the report - Using standalone images and other graphics to support and not detract from the real story - And applying all the best practices we discussed up to this point in the article. Principles of visual designWe’ve looked at the principles of report design; how to organize the report elements in a way that makes the report easy to quickly grasp. Now we’ll look at design principles for visuals themselves. And, in the next section, we’ll dig down into individual visuals and discuss best practices for some of the more commonly-used types. In this section, we’re going to leave our example report page alone for a while and look at other examples. After we’ve gone through the principles of visual design, we’ll return to our example report page and apply what we’ve learned (with step-by-step instructions). Planning – choose the right visualJust as it’s important to plan out your report before you start building, each visual also requires planning. Ask yourself “what story am I trying to tell with this visual?” And then figure out which visual type will tell the story best. You could show progress through a sales cycle as a bar chart but wouldn’t a waterfall or funnel chart tell it better? For help with this, read the last section of this paper “Visual types and best practices” which describes best practices for some of the more-common types. Don’t be surprised if the first visual type you pick doesn’t end up being your best option. Try more than one visual type to see which one makes the point best. Understand the difference between categorical and quantitative data and know which visual types work best with what type of data. Quantitative data is often referred to as measures and it’s typically numeric. Categorical data is often referred to as dimensions and can be classified. This is discussed in more depth in “Choose the right measure”, below. Avoid the temptation to use fancy or more-complex visual types just to make your report look more impressive. What you want is the most-simple option for conveying your story. Horizontal bar charts and simple line charts can convey information quickly. They are familiar and comfortable and most readers can interpret them easily. An added advantage is that most people read left-to-right and top-to-bottom and these two chart types can therefore be scanned and comprehended quickly. Does your visual require scrolling to tell the story? Avoid scrolling if you can. Try applying filters and making use of hierarchies/drilldown, and if those don’t eliminate the scrollbar, consider choosing a different visual type. If you can’t escape scrolling, horizontal scrolling is tolerated better than vertical scrolling. Even when you choose the absolutely-best visual for the story, you might still need help telling the story. That’s where labels, titles, menus, color, and size come in. We’ll discuss these design elements later in the section titled “Design elements”. Choose the right measureIs the story your visual telling compelling? Does it matter? Don’t build visuals for the sake of building visuals. Maybe you thought the data would tell an interesting story, but it doesn’t. Don’t be afraid to start over and look for a more-interesting story. Or, maybe the story is there but it needs to be measured in a different way. For example, say you want to measure the success of your sales managers. What measure would you use to do this? Would you measure that best by looking at total sales or total profit, growth over previous year or performance against a target goal? Salesperson Sally might have the largest profit, and if you showed total profit by salesperson in a bar chart, she would look like a rockstar compared to the other salespeople. But if Sally has a high cost of sales (travel expenses, shipping costs, manufacturing costs, etc.), simply looking at sales doesn’t tell the best story. Reflect reality/don’t distort realityIt’s possible to build a visual that distorts the truth. There’s a website where data enthusiasts share “bad” visuals. And the common theme in the comments is disappointment in the company that created and distributed that visual. It sends the message that they can’t be trusted. So create visuals that don’t intentionally distort reality and that aren’t manipulated to tell the story you want them to tell. Here is an example: Figure 22: Distorted reality chart In this example, it appears as if there is a big difference between the 4 companies, and that CorpB is way more successful than the other 3. But notice that the X axis doesn’t start at zero and that the differences between the companies is likely within the margin of error. Here’s the same data with an X axis that does start at zero. Figure 23: Realistic chart Readers expect and often assume the X axis is starting at zero. If you decide to not start at zero, do so in a way that doesn’t distort the results and consider adding a visual cue or text box to point out the deviation from the norm. Design elementsOnce you’ve selected a type and measure and created the visual, it’s time to fine-tune the display for maximum effectiveness. This section covers: - Layout, space, and size - Text elements: labels, annotations, menus, titles - Sorting - Visual interaction - Color Tweaking visuals for best use of spaceIf you’re trying to fit multiple charts into a report, maximizing your data-ink ratio will help make the story in your data stand out. As mentioned above, Edward Tufte coined ‘data-ink’ ratio: the goal is remove as many marks from a chart as possible without impairing a reader’s ability to interpret the data. In the first set of charts below, there are redundant axis labels (Jan 2014, Apr 2014 etc.) and titles (“by Date”). The titles for each chart also require dedicated horizontal space across each chart. By removing the chart titles and turning on individual axis labels we remove some ink and have better use of the overall space. We can remove the axis labels for the top two charts to further reduce ink and use more of the space for data. If there were particular time periods that you wanted to call out, you could draw lines or rectangles behind all the charts to help draw the eye up and down to aid comparisons. Figure 24: Before Figure 25: After To turn axis titles on and off Select the visual to make it active and open the Formatting pane. Expand the options for the X-axis or Y-axis and drag the slider for Title on or off. Figure 26: Turn axis titles on and off To turn axis labels on and off Select the visual to make it active and open the Formatting pane. Next to X-Axis and Y-Axis are sliders. Drag the slider to turn axis labels on or off. Figure 27: Turn axis labels on and off
To remove visual titles Select the visual to make it active and open the Formatting pane. Set the slider for Title to Off. Figure 28: Remove titles from visuals Consider how your readers will be viewing the report and ensure your visuals and text are large enough and dark enough to be read. If you have a proportionally-larger visual on the page, readers may assume it’s the most important. Put enough space between the visuals that your report doesn’t look cluttered and confusing. Align your visuals to help direct the eyes of your readers. To resize a visual Select the visual to make it active. Grab and drag one of the handles to adjust the size. Figure 29: Resize visual To move a visual Select the visual to make it active. Select and hold the gripper bar at the top middle of the visual and drag the visual to its new location. Figure 30: Move a visual Titles and labels that are part of the visualizationsEnsure titles and labels are readable and self-explanatory. Text in titles and labels must be an optimal size with colors that stand out (such as black instead of the default grey). Remember our style guide (see "Text" above)? Limit the number of colors and sizes -- too many different font sizes and colors make the page look busy and confusing. Consider using the same font color and size for the title of all visuals on a report page and choose the same alignment for all titles on a report page. The formatting pane For each of the formatting adjustments listed below, select the paint roller icon to open the Formatting pane. Figure 31: Open the Formatting pane Then select the visual element to adjust and make sure it is set to On. Examples of visual elements are: X-Axis, Y-Axis, Title, Data labels, and Legend. The example below shows the Title element. Figure 32: Format a visual title Set the text size Text size can be adjusted for titles and data labels, but not for X or Y axes or legends. For data labels specifically, play with the Display units and number of Decimal Places until you find the optimal level of detail for displaying on your report. Set the text alignment The choices for title alignment are left, right, and center. Choose one and apply that same setting to all visuals on the page. Set the text position Text position can be adjusted for some Y axes and for the legend. Whichever you choose, do the same for the other Y axes and any other legend on the page. Set the title and label length Adjust the length of titles, axes titles, data labels, and legends. If you decide to display any of these elements, adjusting the length (along with text size) ensures that nothing is truncated. For Title and Legend, the setting is Title Text and this is where you type in the actual title that will appear on the visual. For X-Axis and Y-Axis, the setting is Style and you select from a drop-down. For Data labels, the settings are Display and Decimal. Use the Display dropdown to select the units of measurement: millions, thousands, none, auto, etc. Use the Decimal field to tell Power BI how many decimal places to display. Set the text color Text color can be adjusted for titles, axes, and data labels. Titles and labels that are not part of the visualizationsEarlier in this paper we discussed adding text boxes to report pages. Sometimes the titles on visualizations aren’t enough to tell the story. Add text boxes to communicate additional information to the readers of your reports. Figure 33: Format the font used in a text box SortingA really simple opportunity to provide faster insight is to set the sorting of visuals. For example, sorting bar charts in descending or ascending order based on the value in the bars enables you to quickly show significant incremental information without using more real estate. To sort a chart, select the ellipses (…) in the top right of the chart, select Sort and choose the field you want to sort by and the direction. For more information, see Change how a visual is sorted. Chart interaction and interplayOne of the most compelling feature of Power BI is the ability to edit the way charts interact with each other. By default, charts are cross-highlighted: when you select a data point, the related data of other charts light up and the unrelated data dims. You can override this behavior to use any chart as a true filter which saves you real estate on your page. To do this, select Visual Interactions from the menu-bar. Figure 34: Visual interactions Then, for each visual on the page, decide whether you want the selected visual to filter, highlight, or do nothing. Not all visuals can be highlighted, and for those the highlight control won't be available. For more information, see Visual interactions in Power BI.
The use of color in visualsEarlier in this paper we talked about the importance of having a plan for how you’re going to use color across a report. This section will have some overlap but primarily applies to how you use color in individual visuals. And the same principles apply: use color to tie the report together, add emphasis to important data, and to improve the reader’s comprehension of the visual. Too many different colors is distracting and makes it difficult for the reader to know where to look. Don’t sacrifice comprehension for beauty. Only add color if it improves comprehension.
This topic is broken down to cover: 1. Data color 2. Data label color 3. Color for categorical values 4. Color for numerical values Use colors to highlight interesting data The simplest way to use color is by changing one or more data point’s color to call attention to it. In this example, the color changes when the Olympic games moved from a 4-year cycle to a 2-year cycle of alternating Summer and Winter games. Figure 35: Use color to tell a story You can change data point colors from the Data colors tab in the formatting pane. To customize each data point individually, make sure Show all is set to On. Figure 36: Set data point colors
Figure 37: Choose a custom color In Power BI Desktop, you can even highlight outliers or a section of a line by using a second series: Figure 38: Using Desktop to plot outliers Here, values in the ‘Outliers’ series only exist where the average August temperature drops below 60. This was done by creating a DAX calculated column using this formula: Outliers = if(Editions[Temp]<60, Editions[Temp], BLANK()) In our example, there were 3 outliers: 1952, 1956, and 2000. Colors for labels and titles As you explore all the formatting options available to you, you’ll find many different places to add color to titles and legends. For example, you can change the color of data labels and axes titles. Proceed with caution. Generally, you want to use a single color for all visual titles. As with all the guidelines in this paper, there are always situations and reasons to “break the rules”, but if you do decide to break the rules, do it for a good reason. Colors for categorical values Charts with a series typically have a categorical value in the legend. For example, each color in the legend below represents a different category of Country/Region. Figure 39: Default colors applied The colors Power BI uses by default were chosen to provide a good color separation between categorical values so they are easy to distinguish. Sometimes people change these colors to match their corporate scheme etc. but it can lead to problems. Figure 40: Color applied as hues of a single color By sticking to a single hue and varying the intensity of the color, this visual has introduced a false sense of ordering between the categories. It implies the darker bubbles are higher or lower on some scale than the lighter hues. Other than alphabetical, there’s normally no inherent order in this sort of categorical value. To change the default colors, open the Formatting pane, and select Data colors. Colors for numerical values For fields that do have some inherent order and numerical value, you can also color data points by the value. This can be helpful to show the spread of values across the data, and also allow for two variables to be shown on a single chart. For example this chart makes it clear that although China has the highest medal count, Japan and Thailand have participated in more Olympic games. Figure 41: Color data points by the value To create this chart, add a value to the Color saturation field and then adjust those colors in the Formatting pane. Figure 42: Add a color saturation field Figure 43: Adjust the colors used for saturation Color can also be used to emphasize variance around a central value. For example, coloring positive values green and negative values red. Be aware of cultural differences when assigning colors to positive or negative values; not all cultures use red for bad and green for good! Figure 44: Color to emphasize variance around central value Principles of visual design – applied to example report pageNow let’s take the visual principles discussed above and apply them to our sample report. Before Figure 45: Our example report (before) After Figure 46: Our example report (after) What did we do?
Visual types and best practicesPower BI provides many visual types natively. To these, add the custom visuals available from Microsoft and from the Power BI community and total visual options become too numerous to document here. But let’s look at some of the most-used native visual types. Line chartsLine charts are a powerful way to look at data over time. Looking at data in tables doesn’t really take advantage of the speed in which our eyes spot peaks, valleys, cycles, and patterns. Figure 47: Line charts Best practices
For more information, see: Bar/Column ChartsIf line charts are the standard for looking at data over time, bar charts are the standard for looking at a specific value across different categories. If you sort the bars based on the number, you will instantly see the top values and distribution. Horizontal bar charts work well with long-ish labels. Figure 51: Horizontal bar chart Best practices
Figure 52: Turn on data labels
One way to limit the values included is to use a filter. For example, add a Visual level filter that shows the country only if unemployment rate is above 20%.
For more details on Bar and Column charts: Stacked Bar/Column ChartsAdd another dimension to your bar/column charts by stacking different categories within the bar or column. Now the chart conveys information about one overall trend (based on height/length) but also shows the influence of the categories on that trend. The chart below shows the overall growth of Top soccer team revenue above 6 billion in 2014. Figure 54: Stacked column chart This stacked column chart shows us that total revenue is growing over time and that the Commercial and the Broadcasting categories are increasing steadily over time – contributing to overall revenue increase. But this chart doesn’t make it easy to compare the impact each of the 3 categories has on each other. For example, how does the growth of Commercial compare to the growth of Broadcasting or Match Day? A better choice for this data, or a companion visual for this data, would be a line chart. Figure 55: Convert to a line chart In this line chart it is easier to see how commercial revenue has grown the most followed by broadcast and match day. Best practices
For more information on stacked charts: Combo Bar/Column ChartsIn Power BI, you can combine column and line charts into a combo chart. The choices are: Line and Stacked Column chart and Line and Clustered Column chart. Save valuable canvas space by combining two separate visuals into one. The two screenshots below show a before and after. The first page has two separate visuals: a Column chart showing population over time and a Line chart showing GDP over time. These charts are a good candidate for a Combo chart because they have the same X-Axis (year) and values (2002 through 2012). Why not combine them to compare these 2 trends on a single visual? Combining these 2 charts lets you make a quicker comparison of the data. The new report page has a single visual: a line and stacked column chart. We could’ve just as easily created a line and clustered column chart. It’s now easier to look for a relationship between the two trends. We can see that up until 2008, population and GDP followed a similar trend. But starting in 2009, as population growth flattened, GDP was more volatile. Figure 57: As two separate charts Figure 58: As a single combo chart Best practicesCombo charts work best when both visuals have at least one axis in common. Watch your axes! Is your Combo chart easy to read and interpret? Or does it use dissimilar ranges and values? For example, if the scale of the column chart’s Y-Axis is much smaller than the scale of the line chart’s Y-Axis, your combo chart won’t be meaningful. For example, notice the third line (aqua color) way down at the bottom. Figure 59: An unsuccessful line chart So too, your combo chart won’t be meaningful if your column chart and line chart use 2 different measures and you don’t create dual axes. For example, dollars versus percent. Be sure to include both axes to help the reader understand the chart and consider adding axes labels as well. To do this, open the Formatting pane, expand Y-Axis and set Show Secondary to On (if it isn’t already on). This setting is sometimes difficult to find; expand Y-Axis (Column) and scroll down until you see Show secondary. Also, set the Y-Axis (Column) Title to On and set the Y-Axis (Line) Title to On. Figure 60: Show secondary axis Figure 61: Create a combo chart instead
For more information: Scatter ChartSometimes we have many variables that we want to see together, and a scatter chart can be a very useful way to get an overall picture. Scatter charts display relationships between 2 (Scatter) or 3 (Bubble) quantitative measures. A scatter chart always has two value axes to show one set of numerical data along a horizontal axis and another set of numerical values along a vertical axis. The chart displays points at the intersection of an x and y numerical value, combining these values into single data points. These data points may be distributed evenly or unevenly across the horizontal axis, depending on the data. A bubble chart replaces the data points with bubbles, with the bubble size representing an additional dimension of the data. The bubble chart below looks at South America and compares GDP per capita (Y-Axis) sum of GDP (X-Axis) and population by South American country. The size of the bubbles represents total population for that country. Brazil has the largest population (bubble size) and the largest share of South America’s GDP (it is farthest along on the X-Axis). But notice that GDP per capita for Uruguay, Chile, and Argentina is higher than Brazil (farther up on the Y-Axis). Figure 62: South America GDP and population as a bubble chart If you add a play axis, you can pretend you are Hans Rosling and tell the story over time (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbaDBJWCeD4). To add a play axis, drag a datetime field into the Play Axis well. Best practices
Tree Map ChartsTree maps can be very useful for giving a good overview of the relative size of different components that make up a whole -- especially when you can group them by categories. Any time I try to understand a new business, having a tree map of the main components can be very useful in knowing the overall distribution. In the first chart below, you can see right away that Brazil makes up approximately half of South America’s GDP and that Venezuela and Argentina are roughly the same size. If you want to have broader context and still have an idea of the impact of the top contributing countries, you can create visual hierarchies with category members (countries) nested inside regions. The second tree map gives us an idea, first and foremost, of the relative size of the regions and then, within each region, we can see which individual countries contribute the most. We see that there are three massive regions (Europe, Asia & North America) and within those we can easily see the top countries/regions. The main limitation of a tree map is the limited ability to compare the different rectangles beyond the top ones. It is a good chart for an overview but column and bar chart are probably a better choice to have more precise idea of the relative size of different components. For example, the first tree map gives a broad indication of the order of the GDP size, but it’s hard to identify specific differences between countries, particularly the smaller unlabeled boxes. For this data, where a single grouping is compared, a bar or column chart might be a better choice. Figure 63: South America GDP comparison as a tree map Here we’ve added another level of data, region, and we can see the overall contribution to GDP by regions, as well as the relative impact within the regions. Beware that doing this with non-summative measure (such as averages) that the sum of the details might not represent the actual value at the aggregate level. Figure 64: GDP by region and country as a tree map For more information on tree maps, feel free to click on links below. Other chartsPie or Donut ChartsIn general, bar/column/line charts will serve most purposes. It’s well understood that pie and donut charts are difficult for humans to interpret correctly, and in fact can often distort data. Avoid them where possible. Stephen Few has an excellent write up on the history and dangers in Save the Pies for Dessert He does explain the one time where pie charts can be useful, when comparing part-to-whole relationships. But even this is rarely significantly-better than, say, a 100% stacked bar chart. Another fun article (and animation) about pie charts can be found on the Darkhorse Analytics site. Or read an opposing point of view, Why Tufte is flat-out wrong about pie charts Radial Gauges & KPIsRadial gauges seem like a good visual for indicating performance against a target, and they are very popular in executive dashboards. However, they suffer in two main ways. As with pie charts, it’s difficult to interpret the angle of the shaded area compared to the full 180 degree arc or target line. It also uses a lot of space to show a single metric. A good alternative is a simple KPI visual KPIs show the value, status, goal, variance from the goal and trend in the same amount of space. The green coloring turns red if the target isn’t being met and can be yellow if some intermediate target is hit. It’s much simpler to read and interpret than the gauge.
SecurityManaged RolesTo define security roles, you can do the following.
You cannot assign users to a role within Power BI Desktop. This is done within the Power BI service. You can enable dynamic security within Power BI Desktop by making use of the username() or userprincipalname() DAX functions and having the proper relationships configured. Power BI RLS ProcessTo learn how to use the technique of the Power BI RLS Process we must explain briefly the Role Managing. Start following these steps:
Findings:
If you are an Admin in the workspace you will always be able to see all data when you open a report no matter your security role assigned for a particular report. If you are a Member in the workspace you will be able to see the relevant data permitted in your security role assigned for a particular report. See image below:
Basically you cannot have one member in more than one Department row-level security role. The way the method is constructed at this moment not allows one person to participate in more than one department. Same report shows data from the MULTIPLE departments an example non-VIP user is approved to access requirement not met. See following images: A work around can be creating Department row-level security roles that can have more than one department so we can add multiple users to this role. But this will need further investigation and testing. See below images with the role containing the Pediatrics department with Pathology: Manage security on your modelTo manage security on your data model, you will want to do the following.
This will take you to the RLS page for you to add members to a role you created in Power BI Desktop. Only the owners of the dataset will see Security available. If the dataset is in a Group, only Administrators of the group will see the security option. You can only create or modify roles within Power BI Desktop. Working with membersAdd membersYou can add a member to the role by typing in the email address, or name, of the user, security group or distribution list you want to add. This member has to be within your organization. You cannot add Groups created within Power BI. You can also see how many members are part of the role by the number in parenthesis next to the role name, or next to Members. Remove membersYou can remove members by selecting the X next to their name.
RLS has changed several times with each new update so this can change soon.
When it's ready, he publishes a new version of the content pack. •Julio, another distribution group member, didn't customize the original content pack. The new changes are automatically applied to his version of the content pack. •Jane did customize the content pack. She receives a notification that there's a new version. She can go to AppSource and get the updated content pack without losing her personalized version. She'll now have two versions: her personalized version and the updated content pack. Say Nate changes the security settings. Julio and Jane no longer have access to the content. Or say they're removed from the Marketing distribution group. • Julio didn't customize the original content pack, so the content is automatically removed. • Jane did customize the content pack. The next time she opens the dashboard all tiles from the original content pack are gone, but tiles she pinned from other reports (that she still has permission to use) still appear. The associated reports and dataset are no longer available (and don't appear in her left navigation pane). Or Nate deletes the content pack. • Julio didn't customize the original content pack, so the content is automatically removed. • Jane did customize the content pack. The next time she opens the dashboard all tiles from the original content pack are gone, but tiles she pinned from other reports still appear. The associated reports and dataset are no longer available (and don't appear in her left navigation pane). Data securityAll distribution group members have the same permissions to the data as the content pack creator. The one exception to this is SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) on-premises tabular datasets. Because the reports and dashboards are connecting live to the on-premises SSAS model, the credentials of each individual distribution group member are used to determine the data he or she can access. Creating APP for Shared Content SecurityApp workspacesApp workspaces are the places where you create apps, so to create an app, you first need to create the app workspace. If you’ve ever worked in a group workspace in Power BI, then app workspaces will be familiar. They’re the evolution of group workspaces – staging areas and containers for the content in the app. You can add colleagues to these workspaces as members or admins. All app workspace members and admins need Power BI Pro licenses. In the workspace you can all collaborate on dashboards, reports, and other articles that you plan to distribute to a wider audience, or even your entire organization. When the content is ready, you distribute the app. You can send a direct link to that wider audience, or they can find your app from the Apps tab by going to Download and explore more apps from AppSource. Those people can’t modify the contents of the app, but they can interact with it either in the Power BI service, or one of the mobile apps -– filtering, highlighting, and sorting the data themselves. How are app workspaces different from group workspaces? All existing group workspaces can serve as app workspaces, and you can publish apps from any of these workspaces. Here’s one way app workspaces and group workspaces are different: You create an app workspace as a place to create and house a specific app. There’s a one-to-one relationship between the app and contents of the app workspace. Everything in the app workspace will be in the app when you distribute it.
Now that you understand apps and app workspaces, let's start creating and publishing an app. Create an app workspace Once users in an area have been setup with licenses within O365, a team workspace needs to be created where all the reports developed by the area/developers can deploy and share their reports. This team workspace is created in O365 and can be accomplished by putting in a Service Now ticket addressed to the Office 365 team. You can request for a specific workspace name which will be used in accordance with existing naming conventions to create the said workspace. As a part of this workspace creation, one or more users of the workspace will be set up as “administrators” of the workspace. This role will let these specific users add more users to the workspace or remove them as needed. (Optional) - For any groups that want to share the developed reports on PowerBI to users who do not also have a PowerBI Pro license, it is necessary to add the workspaces hosting those reports into the ‘Premium Capacity’ license. There is currently no formal process for this. The best way to go about this is to request the Office 365 team for premium access via a Service Now ticket at which point it will run the request by IT senior leadership. Once cleared by IT senior leadership, O365 admins can turn on the ‘Premium Capacity’ on the specific workspace. Any dashboard on this workspace can now be shared with users who may not have a pro license themselves. After workspaces have been created in O365, it will appear in the app in Power BI, too. Distribute an appWhen you’ve finished creating and perfecting the dashboards and reports in your app workspace, you package it all up as an app and distribute it.
Change your published appAfter you publish your app, you may want to change or update it. You notice that when you open your app from Apps, even though you’re the one who published it, you can’t edit it – Edit Report is grayed out. But it’s easy to update it if you’re an admin or member of the app workspace.
Unpublish an appAny member of an app workspace can unpublish the app.
This action uninstalls the app for everyone you've distributed it to, and they no longer have access to it. It doesn't delete the app workspace or its contents. Annotate & share a tile, report, or visual in the mobile appsApplies to:
You can annotate and share a snapshot of a tile, report, or visual from the Power BI mobile app for iOS and Android devices. Your recipients see it exactly as it was when you sent the mail, plus a link. You can send snapshots of tiles to anyone — not just colleagues in the same email domain. You can add annotations — lines, text, or stamps — before you share it. A report with annotations The mail with the snapshot of the tile, report, or visual also includes a link to the actual object on the Power BI service (https://powerbi.com). You recipients can click the link and go straight to that tile, report, or visual, if you and they have Power BI Pro licenses, or the content is in a Premium capacity, and you've already shared the item with them. You can share a tile from the Power BI mobile app for Windows 10 devices, too, but not annotate it. Open a tile for annotating
Open a report for annotating
Open a visual for annotating
Annotate and share the tile, report, or visual
Future Plans
Power BI Apps FAQHow are app workspaces different from group workspaces?With this release, we have renamed all group workspaces to app workspaces. You can publish an app from any of these workspaces. The functionality remains on par with group workspaces for the most part. Over the next few months, we plan on the following enhancements to app workspaces:
How are apps different from organizational content packs?Apps are an evolution and simplification of content packs, with a few major differences.
What about read-only members in groups?In groups, you can add read-only members who can only view the content. The main problem with this approach was that you couldn't add security groups as members. With apps, you can publish a read-only version of your app workspace to large audiences, including security groups. You can stage your changes to the dashboards and reports in the app without affecting end users. We recommend that you use apps in this way in the future. Over the long run, we plan to deprecate read-only members of workspaces as well.
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