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5 interesting custom visuals in Power BI Dektop
Basic Power BI Desktop visuals can leave something to be desired. Try these 5 visuals to spice up your reports!

Posted by Sam Lowrie on 12 March 2018

In this blog

Tachometer - aka Gauge
Play Axis - Scrolling Slicer
Heat Map - Alternative to ArcGIS
ChicletSlicer - Use images as a slicer.
Enlighten Aquarium - Fun chart visual
All of them together

5 Custom Power BI Desktop Visuals to check out.

Power BI Desktop comes with some great in built-in visuals but sometimes we need a little something more. Here are a few of this owl's favourite visuals you should check out.

Tachometer - aka Gauge

This classic looking visual will be popular with users of SSRS who dislike the Power BI Gauge. It uses blocks of colour to track performance in traffic light colours:

Use up to 3 ranges based on data to track live performance.

Instead of using it with ranges you can use solid blocks like the original Power BI gauge, but with more control over the colours:

Compare an individual to the highest and lowest performing on a team.

An alternative is the Dial Gauge which I found hard to get working.

Play Axis - Scrolling Slicer

This is probably the most practical of the custom visuals in this list, and adds a nice animation to reports. The visual provides a slicer that scrolls through the filter field you give it:

This slicer will automatically show each year, filtering visuals on the page for each.

If you find the default options unappealing you can change a whole host of settings including time spent on each level, auto scroll and even button colours!

You could even have corporate colours for the buttons or multiple slicers!

Heat Map - Alternative to ArcGIS

Whilst the standard map is fine for visualising, it doesn't have heat map options. ArcGIS does, but some of the options are paid for whilst this one is free.

The visual includes a host of options including the kind of map (aerial, road etc) and turning town names on and off.

If contour maps aren't your thing it is also possible to turn on heat maps. Change the size of the rings and colours to suit.

Dark mode always strikes this owl as only useful for tracking night-time road crashes.

ChicletSlicer - Use images as a slicer.

The second slicer that has snuck onto this list, but this time it is more form than function. This handy slicer lets you combine images with your data into a slicer.

Perfect for using with company logos for filtering.

A handy feature with this visual is since it is data driven you can filter the visual just like any other.

It appears 2010 was a good year for reptile sales only. Perhaps Rango was released that year.

Enlighten Aquarium - Fun chart visual

Reaching here you deserve a reward: something relaxing perhaps? The Enlighten Aquarium embodies form over function and shouldn't be taken too seriously.

Up to three values can be visualised for a single field - in this case average quantity and price for each region.

All the fish of the same category are the same colour. With a choice of triangular fish, round fish or sharks, how can anyone dislike watching the fish swim around?