What is Visual in Power BI?

A visual in Power BI is essentially any chart, graph, map, or even a single number used to turn your raw data into a picture you can actually understand. This article breaks down what Power BI visuals are, covers the most common types you'll encounter, and walks you through how to create and use them effectively in your own reports.

Deconstructing the Power BI Visual

Think of each visual as a single, powerful building block for telling your data's story. If your entire Power BI report is a detailed paragraph explaining your business performance, then each visual is a clear and concise sentence. Without them, you're just staring at a spreadsheet filled with rows and columns of numbers - data without context or meaning.

The primary job of a visual is to present insights in a way that is quick and easy to digest. Are sales going up or down? Which marketing channel brings in the most valuable customers? Where are most of our orders coming from? Instead of calculating and comparing numbers manually, a well-chosen visual can answer these questions at a glance.

For example, a column chart comparing website traffic from social media, organic search, and paid ads instantly shows you which channel is your top performer, an insight that might get lost in a table with hundreds of rows.

The Anatomy of a Power BI Visual

Before creating a visual, it helps to understand its moving parts. When you’re in Power BI’s "Report" view, you’ll mainly interact with two key areas: the Fields pane and the Visualizations pane.

The Fields pane, located on the right side of your screen, lists all the tables and data fields available to you. This is your raw material - things like 'Sales Amount,' 'Customer Name,' 'Date,' and 'Country.'

The Visualizations pane is where the magic happens. Here, you first select the type of visual you want (like a bar chart or line chart). Once selected, this pane presents several "wells" or "buckets" where you drag your data from the Fields pane.

While the exact wells change depending on the visual, most share a few common ones:

• Axis (or X-axis): This is for your categorical data - the things you want to measure. For example, if you want to see sales by product, you would drag the 'Product Name' field here.
• Values (or Y-axis): This is reserved for your numerical data - the metric you're actually measuring. This would be a field like 'Total Revenue' or 'Quantity Sold'.
• Legend: This allows you to break down your values by a second category. For example, you could add 'Region' to the Legend to see how each product's sales are split across different regions, all within the same bar chart.
• Tooltips: Dragging a field here adds extra context that appears only when you hover your mouse over a part of the visual. You could add 'Profit Margin' to tooltips to see that value for each product without cluttering the main chart.

A Tour of Common Power BI Visual Types

Power BI offers a wide range of native visual types. Choosing the right one is crucial for clearly communicating your message. Here’s a rundown of the most popular visuals and when to use them.

Bar & Column Charts

These are the workhorses of data visualization. Use them to compare different categories against each other. Column charts display categories vertically, while bar charts display them horizontally (which is great for long category names).

Use When: You want to compare metrics across a handful of distinct items. Example: Comparing monthly revenue for the last year, website traffic from different marketing channels, or sales performance across different team members.

Line & Area Charts

When you have time-series data, line and area charts are your best friends. They are perfect for showing trends, patterns, and fluctuations over a continuous period. A line chart is classic and clean, while an area chart (a line chart with the area below the line filled in) helps to emphasize the magnitude of change over time.

Use When: You need to track a value's performance over time. Example: Showing daily website sessions over the last 30 days, tracking stock prices, or monitoring customer sign-ups by week.

Pie & Donut Charts

Pie and donut charts are used to show the proportions that make up a whole. They're visually simple and immediately show the biggest and smallest segments. A word of caution: they become cluttered and hard to read if you have more than five or six categories.

Use When: You're showing percentage-based data or parts-of-a-whole relationships. Example: Breaking down sales by product category, visualizing the distribution of different lead sources, or showing website traffic by device type (desktop, mobile, tablet).

Maps

If your data has a geographical component (like city, state, country, or even latitude/longitude), use a map. Power BI can create interactive maps where data points are represented as bubbles or shaded areas (called a filled map).

Use When: Location context is a key part of your analysis. Example: Visualizing sales performance by state, mapping store locations, or showing where your global company’s web traffic originates from.

Cards & Multi-Row Cards

Sometimes you just need to display a single, important number - a Key Performance Indicator (KPI). That's what Cards are for. They take a single value and display it prominently. Multi-Row Cards do the same, but for a short list of related KPIs.

Use When: Highlighting critical top-line metrics that your audience needs to see immediately. Example: Showing today's 'Total Sales,' 'Number of New Users,' or 'Average Order Value' at the top of a dashboard.

Tables & Matrices

Want to see the raw numbers? A Table visual does a great job of displaying detailed data in a standard row-and-column grid, just like a classic spreadsheet. A Matrix is a more advanced version, similar to a pivot table in Excel, allowing you to display data with rows, columns, and sub-groups.

Use When: You need to present detailed data for lookup or comparison, or when users need to see precise values. Example: A detailed list of all products with their unit price, inventory level, and sales totals. A Matrix is great for showing sales broken down by both Product and Region in a single grid.

How to Create Your First Visual in Power BI

Ready to try it yourself? Creating a basic visual is straightforward. Let’s create a simple column chart showing Sales Amount by Product Category.

1. Load Your Data: First, ensure your data is loaded into Power BI Desktop via the "Get Data" option on the Home tab.
2. Open the Report View: Click the bar chart icon on the left-hand navigation pane to go to the report canvas.
3. Select a Visual Type: Go to the Visualizations pane and click the icon for "Stacked column chart." An empty visual placeholder will appear on your report canvas.
4. Drag and Drop Your Fields: From the Fields pane, find your 'Sales Amount' field and drag it into the "Y-axis" well. Then, find your 'Product Category' field and drag it into the "X-axis" well.
5. That's a Wrap!: Instantly, the empty visual comes to life as a column chart, showing you the total sales for each product category. From here, you can resize it or customize its colors, title, and fonts using the "Format your visual" (paint roller) icon in the Visualizations pane.

Best Practices for Using Visuals Effectively

Creating a visual is easy, but creating an effective one requires a bit of thought. Here are a few tips to keep in mind:

• Choose the Right Chart for the Job: The biggest impact decision you’ll make. Don't try to show a trend over time with a pie chart or a simple category comparison with a scatter plot. Match the visual to the insight you're trying to communicate.
• Don't Be Afraid of Simplicity: A cluttered visual is a confusing visual. Avoid using distracting background colors, 3D effects, or too many data points. Let the data speak for itself. Aim for clarity and readability above everything else.
• Always Use Clear Labels and Titles: Your visual should be understandable even without you there to explain it. Give it a descriptive title (e.g., "Total Revenue by Month (2024)") and ensure the axes are clearly labeled.
• Tell a Story on Your Page: Arrange your visuals on the report page in a logical flow. Place high-level summary visuals (like Cards) at the top, and more detailed visuals below, guiding the user from the "what" to the "why."

Final Thoughts

Mastering visuals is the key to unlocking the power of business intelligence. They are the essential tools that convert oceans of data from platforms like Google Analytics, Shopify, and Salesforce into clear reports that drive smarter decisions without requiring a degree in data science.

But building dashboards in tools like Power BI - connecting data sources, choosing visual types, dragging fields in, and refreshing everything - still costs you valuable time. Instead of building reports manually, we designed Graphed to do the heavy lifting for you. Simply connect your marketing and sales platforms, describe the report you need in plain English - like "create a dashboard showing my Facebook Ads funnel." - and watch it get built instantly with live, up-to-date visualisations.