Enhancing Reports with Custom Visuals in Power BI: What, Why, How and When?
Table of Contents
Introduction
People recognise Power BI for its powerful data visualization capabilities. The built-in visuals cover nearly all the standard scenarios, but you might reach a point in your Power BI journey where you want to get creative and add your personal touch to the report visuals. At that point, the built-in visuals might not support you. Power BI custom visuals can step in to meet all your customised visual needs.
In this guide, we’ll explore custom visuals, explain their benefits, show you how to integrate them into your Power BI reports to create more engaging and informative dashboards, and help you decide when to use them for maximum impact.
What Are Custom Visuals in Power BI?
Adding custom visualizations to Power BI’s default visualization options offers a great way to customise your reports. Microsoft, external development partners, or even your own company can use the Power BI Visuals SDK to create them. These visualizations let you display intricate or specialised data in ways that conventional charts might not allow. You can customise them to fit your specific business needs, follow industry norms, or reflect your personal preferences. By using unique visuals, you can improve your data storytelling and make it more approachable and engaging.
Why Use Custom Visuals in Power BI?
Enhanced Data Representation
Custom visuals help you present complex data in creative ways. For instance, while a standard bar chart compares sales figures, a custom chord diagram illustrates the intricate relationships between various business units.
Enhanced Interaction with Users
Including interactive and distinctive graphic components can enhance engagement in your reports and improve their visual appeal. These elements offer flexibility that lets you customize interactions, aesthetics, and animations beyond what native built-in visuals allow. They include specialised data visualizations like heatmaps, geospatial maps, and network graphs, which make them an asset for industries such as finance and AI analytics.
Industry-Specific Insights
Each industry has its own set of key numbers. You can design custom graphics to emphasise the metrics that matter most in your industry, making your report more relatable and relevant.
Flexibility and Customization
You can modify your reports to fit your company’s style by using custom graphics. This shows that, in addition to offering precise information, your reports also feature a polished appearance and feel that aligns with your brand.
How to Add Custom Visuals to Your Power BI Report?
Custom visuals in Power BI can be sourced from:
Microsoft AppSource:
Following is the step-by-step instructions to add a custom visual to your report:
- Launch Power BI Desktop on your computer.
- On the Visualizations pane on the right side of your screen, find the ellipsis (three dots) at the bottom.
3. Select “Get more visuals”:
This will open Microsoft AppSource, where you can browse a wide range of custom visuals at your ease
4. Search and Choose a Visual:
Use the search bar or browse through categories to find a visual that suits your needs.
By understanding the source of these visuals, you can make more informed choices and tailor your Power BI reports to exactly what your data needs.
5. Once you’ve found the desired visual, click the “Add” button.
Once the visual is imported. Customize it as per your requirements and make your report stand out.
In-House Development:
Apart from the custom visuals already available to you in AppSource, you can create your very own custom visual tailored to your specific needs with Power BI Visual SDK.
The Power BI Visuals SDK is a highly functional group of tools that developers can use to create their own customizable, and interactive, visuals, fit for your reporting needs. With TypeScript, D3.js, HTML, and CSS you can build your own wonderful visualizations instead of the default ones by using the latest web technologies.
For further information on Power BI Visual SDK visit here.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/developer/visuals/develop-power-bi-visuals
When to Use Custom Visuals?
There are many features that sets custom visuals apart from the native built-in visuals. A few of them are discussed below:
Native visuals are the clear option for the most standard reports when you require fast performance, seamless integration and easy sharing. While custom visuals offer better flexibility, interactivity and data representation. You can use custom visuals:
When You Need More Customization with Custom Visuals in Power BI:
If there are design limitations in your native visuals that do not fit your branding, use custom visuals for unique fonts, color themes, and animations
When you require Advanced interactivity:
Custom visuals provide more control over features like hover effects, dynamic filters, real-time animations, and interactive storytelling, surpassing the capabilities of native built-in visuals.
When You Need API Integration:
Custom visuals can pull live data from external sources like APIs, IoT sensors or AI models. If you rely on real-time updates in your report, custom visuals are the way to go
When Standard Visuals Do Not Support Your Data in Power BI Custom Visual:
Specialized visualizations are required for some datasets in your report that are not available natively, Custom visuals bridge this gap by offering unique chart types to enhance data interpretation. E.g Sankey Diagrams for flow analysis, Heatmaps for density visualization.
Cautions and Precautions
There are many benefits of using custom Visuals in Power BI but, you should also exercise caution and make an informed decision before integrating a visual in your report. Following are some key points you should consider:
Performance Impact:
Some custom visuals, especially the ones with heavy data processing, may slow down your report’s performance. It is wise to test the visual with your datasets to ensure a smooth performance
Compatibility Issues:
Custom visuals may not support every Power BI feature (such as cross-filtering, drill-through, or accessibility standards) as efficiently as built-in visuals. They can also encounter compatibility problems when Power BI is updated.
Maintenance and Updates:
Third-party visuals are managed by their developers. If a visual is not updated regularly, it could become outdated or face issues with new Power BI versions. Be sure to check the update history and support.
Customization Limits:
While custom visuals provide flexibility, they may not always deliver the precise functionality you require, or they might necessitate additional coding and adjustments to fulfill specific needs.
Learning Curve:
Creating or modifying custom visuals, especially if you intend to develop them in-house using the Power BI Visuals SDK, requires coding skills and a good understanding of web technologies like TypeScript and D3.js.
Integration Challenges:
Custom visuals may not integrate as well as a standard visuals with other report components or functions, it is crucial to maintain consistency and alignment with your entire report design.
Sharing Challenges:
Unlike the native Power BI visuals, some custom visuals do require additional licenses or permissions for sharing and distribution. Prioritize using Microsoft approved Certified custom visuals that can be freely used and are fully supported, while one can use non-certified visuals, but they may entail some security restrictions and cannot be used in some environments like, Power BI Publish to web. Some custom visuals require Power BI Premium capacity for broader sharing across organizations, free-tier users may not be able to interact or modify reports containing premium visuals.
Licensing Challenges:
Some custom visuals require a paid license to unlock full functionality. If you do not have the required license, you may experience limitations or in some cases will be unable to view the visual at all.
Conclusion
Power BI’s custom graphics offer a plethora of imaginative options for data display, enhancing the readability, customization, and insight of your reports. You can take your data storytelling to the next level by knowing what custom visuals are, why they are valuable, and how to include them. You can even create your own using the Power BI Visuals SDK, or you may source them from third-party suppliers like Microsoft AppSource. Custom Visuals are best used when native visuals fall short in representing complex data, require unique branding, or integrating with external systems. By combing both native and custom visuals you can maximize Power BI’s potential for insightful reporting.
We encourage you to try out various custom visualizations, evaluate their interactivity, and observe directly how they alter your data insights. Share your thoughts, experiences, and any difficulties you run across. Your advice may be useful to others as they work to produce engaging and successful Power BI reports.
