Report Design principles:

“What is the business need, how is this data going to be used, and by whom?” A key
question is “what decisions does the reader want to be able to make based on this
report?”

The answer to those questions will drive your design. Every report tells a story. Make
sure that story matches the business need. It may be tempting to add visuals that
show dramatic insights, but if those insights don’t match the business need, then the
report won’t be useful – and in fact your users might be distracted by those visuals.
Also, you may find that the information needed to make that decision cannot be
gleaned from this data. Can this report be used to measure what is needed?

Reports can be used to monitor, uncover, track, predict, measure, manage, test, and
more
It should provide data at a level of detail and complexity on par with the customers’
level of knowledge

Alignment and placing visuals on a Report.

 Report can spread across multiple pages. Most important should be in First page
and preferably starting from Top left corner.

 Slicers can be placed at one area of Canvas like the Left side,

 Use Format Tab to align and adjust spacing.

 Also for each visual you can use General Properties to resize and set x,y
positions precisely

 Try to eliminate the need for scrollbars on individual visuals. Fill the space without
making the visuals seem cramped Your report page needs to convey the
information as clearly and quickly and cohesively as it can. With a quick glance,
readers should be able to quickly see what the page is about and what each
chart/table is about.

 Text box can be used if necessary to explain the Page.

 Create a text style guide and apply it to all Objects in all pages of your report.
Pick just a few font faces, text sizes, and colors

 A typical Page might have thick borders for all Visuals a common background for
all Slicers,…and preferably similar color/formatting for all pages of the report.

 Choosing the right Visual Type:

 Quantitative data is often referred to as measures and it’s typically numeric.
Categorical data is often referred to as dimensions and can be classified.

 Choose the right measure : Sales or Profit ?

 A visual should not mis-represent the data. Ex Scales and Visual height may
highlight Variations in values

Tweaking visuals for best use of space

o Can avoid axis titles

o Use lines like Average line, Max line where available.

o Y-axis labels can be off if you had Data labels turned on.

o Use appropriate sorting of Data to help users analyze.

o Change Interactions between the visuals in a page - selected visual to

filter, highlight, or do nothing

o The use of color in visuals: Colors should be selected based on user

sentiments/likes (Know your audience and any inherent color rules. For
example, in the United States, green typically means “good” and red
typically means “not good”.)

Colors can be selected by using Show All to on

Outliners: Same chart can have different colors based on data.

Low Sales can be highlighted with a Measure Low Sales = IF(SUM(FactOrders[Sales]) <
750000,sum(FactOrders[Sales]),"")

Color Saturation can be used to represent a different Value: Ex for Funnel Chart
Data values are based on Sales Amount. To display the profit we can use Color
saturation and customize the color grading.

Selection Control Property: Used to allow Select All option in Slicers.

1. Visual Interactions: turned off interactions for both cards since I always want
them to show total games and sports.
2. Can use a border or similar background to group related Objects. Resize the
visuals to fit the Page appropriately. When 2 line charts are grouped We
can show them within a Box. It is meaningful to have a Time
field(Year/Month) in X Axis Also Ensure that x axis is same on both
of them so that comparison across series is clear Ex sales in one
chart and profit in the othercan be compared with Month in X axis.
Lowest sales in Nov doesn’t mean that profit is also lowest.

3. Line Charts: Y axis we can reset start End values. This is useful when you want to compare
two charts having different data range. Also it is useful to make good use of the available
space.
4. Bar charts:
1. Horizontal bar charts are preferred to display long names.
2. Visual level filters can be applied to limit no of values and so avoid scrolling.

A Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is a visual cue that communicates the amount of
progress made toward a measurable goal.

Power BI visualizations
List of visualizations available in Power BI

All of these visualizations can be added to Power BI reports, specified in Q&A, and
pinned to dashboards.

Area charts: Basic (Layered) and Stacked

Tip
The Basic Area chart is based on the line chart with the area between the axis and
line filled in.

For more information, see Basic Area chart.

Bar and column charts

Tip

Bar charts are the standard for looking at a specific value across different categories.

Cards: Multi row

Cards: Single number

For more information, see Create a Card (big number tile).

Combo charts

Tip

A Combo chart combines a column chart and a line chart. Choose from Line and
Stacked Column and Line and Clustered Column.

For more information, see Combo charts in Power BI.

Doughnut charts

Tip

Doughnut charts are similar to Pie charts. They show the relationship of parts to a
whole.

For more information, see Doughnut charts in Power BI.

Funnel charts

Tip

Funnels help visualize a process that has stages and items flow sequentially from one
stage to the next. Use a funnel when there is a sequential flow between stages, such
as a sales process that starts with leads and ends with purchase fulfillment.

For more information, see Funnel Charts in Power BI.

Gauge charts

Tip

Displays current status in the context of a goal.

For more information, see Gauge Charts in Power BI.

Key influencers chart

A key influencer chart displays the major contributors to a selected result or value.

For more information, see Key influencer charts in Power BI

KPIs

Tip

Displays progress toward a measurable goal.

For more information, see KPIs in Power BI.

Line charts
Tip

Emphasize the overall shape of an entire series of values, usually over time.

Maps: Basic maps

Tip

Used to associate both categorical and quantitative information with spatial

locations.

For more information, see Tips and tricks for map visuals.

Maps: ArcGIS maps

For more information, see ArcGIS maps in Power BI.

Maps: Filled maps (Choropleth)

Tip

The more intense the color, the larger the value.

For more information, see Filled Maps in Power BI.

Maps: Shape maps

Tip

Compares regions by color.

For more information, see Shape Maps in Power BI.

Matrix

Tip

A table supports two dimensions, but a matrix makes it easier to display data
meaningfully across multiple dimensions -- it supports a stepped layout. The matrix
automatically aggregates the data and enables drill down.

For more information, see Matrix visuals in Power BI.

Pie charts

Tip

Pie charts show the relationship of parts to a whole.

R script visuals

Tip

Visuals created with R scripts, commonly called R visuals, can present advanced data
shaping and analytics such as forecasting, using the rich analytics and visualization
power of R. R visuals can be created in Power BI Desktop and published to the Power
BI service.

For more information, see R visuals in Power BI.

Ribbon chart

Tip

Ribbon charts show which data category has the highest rank (largest value). Ribbon
charts are effective at showing rank change, with the highest range (value) always
displayed on top for each time period.
For more information, see Ribbon charts in Power BI.

Scatter and Bubble charts

Tip

Display relationships between 2 (scatter) or 3 (bubble) quantitative measures --

whether or not, in which order, etc.

For more information, see Scatter charts in Power BI.

Scatter-high density

Tip

Too many data points on a visual can bog it down, so a sophisticated sampling
algorithm is used to ensure the accuracy of the visualization.

For more information, see High Density Scatter charts in Power BI.
Slicers

For more information, see Slicers in Power BI.

Standalone images

For more information, see Add an image widget to a dashboard.

Tables

Tip

Work well with quantitative comparisons among items where there are many
categories.

For more information, see Working with tables in Power BI.

Treemaps

For more information, see Treemaps in Power BI.

Tip

Are charts of colored rectangles, with size representing value. They can be
hierarchical, with rectangles nested within the main rectangles.

Waterfall charts

Tip

Waterfall charts show a running total as values are added or subtracted.

For more information, see Waterfall charts in Power BI.