Top 4 Custom Visuals to Elevate Your Power BI Dashboards
Table of Contents
Introduction
Data storytelling in Microsoft Power BI depends on the right choice of visuals. Sometimes, the business questions are challenging, and their insights cannot be fully captured through native visualisations. In such circumstances, we can visualise our data by simply using standard charts, or we can explore Custom Visuals and take our analytics game to the next level. Previously in our blog ‘Enhancing Reports with Custom Visuals in Power BI: What, Why, How and When?’, we explored the theory behind custom visuals, their purpose, benefits, and how to install them.
But theory can only take you so far. To truly understand the power of custom visuals, we need to see them in action. In this blog, we will work with a practical dataset to showcase four of the most impactful custom visuals in a dashboard.
Let us dive into our custom visuals.
KPI Indicator
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are very important in tracking performance. This custom visual in Power BI adds a layer of clarity by combining actual vs. target metrics with easy-to-read colours and icons. Therefore, this makes it simple for your managers and teams to grasp performance without digging through numbers.
Custom Visual Key Features
- Colour coding: KPI indicator comes with built-in colour coding that you can change as per your theme from Visualization Pane> Visual> KPI Colours.
- Trends over time: It not only shows current performance, but it also highlights improvement/decline comparison.
Why It Matters
It works like a traffic light on a dashboard, so you know exactly where to look without having to read the full reports.
- In Sales, it can show if the team has met its monthly sales goals.
- In Operations, it can show how well production is going compared to what was planned.
- It can keep track of satisfaction scores in Customer Service and compare them to benchmarks.
Chiclet Slicer
Chiclet Slicer is a custom visual designed for User-Friendly filtering, which makes filtering more intuitive by turning slicers into buttons or images. Instead of a plain dropdown, users can click on visually appealing options.
Custom Visual Key Features
- Customizable Buttons: Display slicers as clean tiles, buttons, or grids.
- Image Support: Add product/category images or logos for more intuitive filtering.
- Flexible Layout: Choose horizontal, vertical, or grid-based arrangements.
Alternatively, we can add ‘Total Orders’ to visualise orders.
Why It Matters
- Improves User Experience: Makes filtering faster and more visual.
- Reduces Errors: Users instantly recognise categories by icons/pictures instead of text alone.
- Engage Stakeholders: A visually appealing slicer encourages interaction.
- Perfect for Business Dashboards: Especially useful in sales, retail, and e-commerce, where product/category visuals drive insights.
Custom Calendar by Akvelon
The Custom Calendar visual lets you filter dates in a more flexible, smart, and advanced way than the default Power BI slicer. Moreover, it lets people choose ranges, single days, or layouts that they make themselves.
Custom Visual Key Features
- You can choose from monthly, yearly, or multi-calendar views.
- You can use fiscal calendars and time frames that are specific to your business.
- Switching between months and years is easy.
Why It Matters
- More flexible: can handle complicated date needs like fiscal years or project phases.
- Saves time: Users can quickly go to the time they need.
- Better Accuracy: Eliminate mistakes when entering dates by hand.
Gantt Chart (MAQ Software)
Gantt Chart is a custom visual that is often used for project management, but it can also be used to keep track of sales over time. We used it here to show how well different categories met their sales goals.
Custom Visual Key Feature
- Color-Coded by Category: Putting Category in the Legend bucket makes it easy to see how different areas are doing.
- Data Labels: We put the Achievement % (Sales ÷ Target) right on the bars so that users can see how far they’ve come right away.
Why It Matters
The Gant Chart is more than just a simple visual of actual vs. target. It helps us see and answer the question, “Did we hit the target?” “When and in what category or region did we do it?”
- In Sales, it can show monthly performance windows.
In Operations, it can keep track of how long processes or production are supposed to take compared to how long they actually take.
Custom Visuals in Action: A Complete Dashboard
To showcase the power of these visuals, we built a demo dashboard made purely with custom visuals. It combines:
- KPI Indicators to track business targets.
- Chiclet Slicers for quick category filtering.
- Custom Calendar for precise time-based analysis.
- MAQ Gantt Chart to visualize category and region performance across timelines.
This dashboard demonstrates how custom visuals transform a standard Power BI report into an engaging, intuitive, and decision-ready tool.
Common Pitfalls to Avoid with Custom Visuals
KPI Indicator:
- If you don’t use the right date hierarchy for the trend axis, your visuals might be blank.
- The months may get mixed up if you don’t sort by a proper Month-Year column.
- If relationships aren’t set up right, circular dependency errors can happen.
Chiclet Slicer:
- Too many images can make things run more slowly.
- Filters can look unprofessional if the images are not of good quality.
- Plan your layout carefully so that overlapping slicers don’t confuse users.
Custom Calendar:
- If you don’t connect the calendar to the date table, it won’t work.
- Not marking the Date Table as a Date Table can cause problems with ordering.
- Putting text-based months together without sorting them can mess up the order of events.
Gantt Chart (MAQ Software)
- Bars won’t show up right if they don’t have the right Start and End Dates.
- Too many fields on the labels/legends make the chart messy. Keep the labels simple and use tooltips for more information.
- If you don’t set a limit on your date range, the chart might go past your actual data.
Conclusion
Custom visuals in Power BI add more than just the basics to dashboards, making them more interesting, helpful, and easy to use. Analysts can turn static reports into dynamic storytelling tools by adding visuals like the KPI Indicator, Chiclet Slicer, Custom Calendar, and MAQ Gantt Chart. Download the interactive dashboard from the download section and feel free to look around and start making your reports with your own graphics. Happy Storytelling!
FAQs
Custom Visuals in Power BI are third-party visuals that add flexibility and interactivity beyond built-in charts.
They track performance vs. targets with colours, icons, and trend lines for quick insights.
It provides button-style filtering, making data selection more visual and user-friendly.
It allows advanced date selection and accurate month-wise comparisons.
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