How-To make Cool Visualizations as a Beginner with Microsoft Power BI
If you are exploring the Business Intelligence field and have got your hands on Power BI, this article will cover common problems beginners face on BI.
Moreover, if you have yet to download Power BI or are unaware of it, please go through our article that covers these in detail: link.
Let’s get started!
One of the main problems is where are the charts that were shown in the promo. When you download Power BI on their website, you will see several charts that look great visually and further encourage you to download them. But once on Power BI, users complain that they can not find these charts.
A small example can be this one that you will find across all Power BI places to download:
The bar charts and the line graphs can be easily found, but what about the one in the middle? This will not be under your “Visualizations” tab. Do not worry. It is not a problem on anyone’s end. You will have to import this visualization on your dashboard specifically.
So where can you get it?
You will not have to use extensions or external sources to import this hover below all the charts on the “Visualizations” tab, where you will see a three-dot button. On hovering, it will read, “Get more visuals.”
Now on clicking on this, it will show you a vast list of visuals that, on one click, can be added to your dashboard.
Users are allowed to scroll through and find their favorite visuals accordingly. In the above case, the visual used was “Tornado chart,” search it, and it will appear.
Click on it, and now you will see a general overview of the chart and an image for visuals. Click “Add,” and now you can use this on your dashboard.
It will now appear on your Visualizations tab:
Just like this, users can add several visuals that cater to their needs best.
We are now moving to the next most asked question.
How to set the theme?
This is a relatively simple procedure; on your ribbon, click “View,” and now you can access different themes.
You can further explore other options created by the community or import themes using the button-down.
Users can access the massive collection of themes using the link: Themes Gallery – Microsoft Power BI Community. Users can add their themes if they want to as well.
The next problem is that a user would prefer to change the bar chart colors or want to change them from the defaults of the themes. You can very quickly change them.
Suppose you want to change the colors of the bars and the legends; firstly, you must click on the chart and go on “format your visual.”
Click on “Ribbons,” and now you can change the colors of the five cities. Since it is a ribbon chart, ribbons are written. If it were a bar chart, it would have been “bars.”
Now choose the colors of your choice and fix it.
After changing colors.
Similarly, for bar charts, you can click on “bars” and fix it:
The next problem faced is the problem of changing the whole dashboard’s background and a specific chart’s background. Firstly, if you want to change the background of the entire canvas, you will have to deselect all charts.
Now you will get an option to “Format your report page”. From here click on the canvas background.
This will change the area beneath the visuals. But it will not change the whole dashboard’s colors; the sides will remain the same.
So to fix it, change the wallpaper to the color of your choice.
Next, if you only want to change the background of a specific visual, that can be done by changing the background only of your chart. Say you have these two visuals:
Click on the one you want to change and then from the format visualizations, go to General->Effects->Background and change them.
And now you can change the background of whatever chart you want to.
Lastly, the titles of each chart and headers of the X and Y-axis can also be changed by the Visual and General tabs in a format your visualizations.
These can be different for different charts; hence, the best practice is to click on these On/Off buttons for each chart, which will help you identify which tab is for which specific text section on your visual.
These were the basic designing and styling problems users face as amateurs, and this simple guide helps you navigate such issues. Beginners often need to pay more attention to the importance of styling on dashboards, but without a doubt, it is one of the essential elements of your dashboard and should always be addressed.
