Power BI Interface - Explained
Ribbon
Workspace | Canvas
Field
Or
Data
Pane
Shows all
fields from
your data
Filters Pane
Helps you add filters
to your visual
Visuals Pane
What Page of Dashboard are you on? Helps you add visuals to your dashboard & format it.
Loading your data
1. Select source data
format and load data
by selecting location 2. Put a tick mark here
of the file. & then click on Load
button below.
Creating a Card
Click on the card visual to add it on your canvas. Add numerical
Once added, drag a numerical field you want to field in fields as
visualize in the fields box. shown below.
Creating a Table
Add any field in
Click on the table visual to add it on your canvas. columns as
Once added, drag any field you want to visualize in the shown below.
columns box.
Creating a Column Chart – X-axis & Y-axis
Add fields in X &
Y Axis as shown
below.
Sales is
your Y-axis
Adding numerical
metric as Y-axis helps
the user understand
the extent of it by the
column height.
Sub-Category is your X-axis
Add the text based field that you want to see in the X-axis. As we are using
a column chart, numerical metrics like sales, profit etc will become Y-axis
as we want the column HEIGHT to show the extent of that metric.
Creating a Column Chart – Legend
Add fields in
Legend further divides your visual into different colors Legend as shown
by adding a second level of breakdown. below.
Adding Region to legend breaks all our subcategories from 1 column for each
subcategory to 3 columns for each sub-category, all having different colors.
For ex – 1 Column of bookcases becomes 3 columns of Bookcases from Central,
Bookcases from North & Bookcases from South.
Creating a Column Chart – Tooltips
Any metric (numerical field) that you add in Tooltips will Add fields in
be visible to you when you hover over different Tooltips as shown
elements of the visual. below.
For ex – After adding Profit to tooltips, whenever user hovers over ANY column of
the column chart, they will see profit of that subcategory along with the Sales
amount as well. Profit amount will only be visible as a value in the hover box and
not as an additional column in the chart.
Creating a Bar Chart from a Column Chart
To create a Bar Chart, all you have to do is create a
Switch from right
Column Chart & then click on Bar Chart icon in
icon to left icon.
Visualization Pane to convert it to a Bar Chart.
Creating a Line Chart
To create a Line Chart, all you have to do is add your Once completed,
date field in X-axis & the numerical field you want to this is how your
see the trend of in Y-axis. inputs will look like.
By doing the above you will get one line showing trend of the numerical
field over your date range.
Creating a Pie Chart
To create a Pie Chart, add your numerical field in values Once completed,
& the field by which you want to see a breakdown of this is how your
your values in legend. inputs will look like.
By doing the above you will get one line showing trend of the numerical field over
your date range. If you want to break it into multiple lines based on another field,
such as Shipping Mode, add it to the legend as shown below.
Step 1: Added Qty as Values Step 2: Added Region as Legend
Creating a Map Chart
Once completed,
this is how your
inputs will look like.
FAQ: How to add / change title of a visual
1. Select the visual by clicking
on it. 2. Click on the Format Visual
icon under the Visualizations
Pane.
3. Click on the General Tab
4. Enable title & add your title
under “Text”
Tip: You can further format
title by adding
background, changing font
style, etc by using the
options below “text”.
FAQ: How to change background of a scorecard (or any other visual)
1. Select the visual by clicking
on it. 2. Click on the Format Visual
icon under the Visualizations
Pane.
3. Click on the General Tab
4. Go to “Background” under
the Effects Section & Change
the color by clicking on color
icon.