Visualizations

01The problem

Your model and measures are ready. Now they need to become a page someone can read. Power BI has dozens of visuals; a handful do most of the work, and knowing how they interact (click one bar, and the whole page filters) is what makes a report feel alive.

02The concept

The core visuals

Formatting (Format visual, paintbrush icon): titles, data labels, axis units (Millions), colours. For a single highlighted bar: Format → Bars → Colors → turn on Show all and colour one category.

Conditional formatting in tables and matrices: click the field's drop-down in the Values well → Conditional formatting → Background color / Data bars / Icons.

Interactions. Clicking a data point in one visual cross-filters or cross-highlights the others. Control it: select a visual → Format → Edit interactions, then choose filter, highlight or none on each other visual.

Drill down. With a hierarchy (Year → Quarter → Month) on an axis, the drill arrows at the top of the visual move between levels.

Tooltips. Hovering shows details; add extra measures to the Tooltips well to show more (e.g. YoY % when hovering a region's bar).

03Example

A first report page for Kolanut:

• Top row: three Cards: Revenue, YoY %, Active Customers.
• Left: Line chart: Date[Year Month] on the X-axis, Revenue and Revenue LY on the Y-axis.
• Right: Clustered bar: customers[region] on the Y-axis, Revenue on the X-axis, YoY % in Tooltips, sorted descending.
• Bottom: Matrix: products[category] in Rows, Date[Year] in Columns, Revenue in Values, with data bars.
• Side: Slicers for customers[channel] and Date[Year].

Click the North West bar and every other visual shows North West only.

Here's a first version of that page built in Power BI Desktop, with a card, a slicer and two bar charts:

Tick Wholesale in the slicer and every visual on the page recalculates for wholesale customers only:

04Walkthrough

1. Add the three cards. For each, Format → Callout value → Display units Millions for revenue.
2. Add the line chart. If the X-axis shows a hierarchy (Year, Quarter, Month, Day), use Date[Year Month] instead, or drill down to Month.
3. Add the region bar chart; sort by Revenue (… menu → Sort axis → Revenue, descending).
4. Add the matrix with data bars on Revenue.
5. Add slicers; set their style to Tile or Dropdown (Format → Slicer settings).
6. Click around. Then select the line chart → Format → Edit interactions and set the region bar chart to filter rather than highlight the line chart.

05Practice

06Check your understanding