Create Data Driven story with a Power BI Reports

Design a report layout

Key guidelines for creating a well-designed report layout include:

• Draw a sketch of  report layout. This approach will help us get an idea of what it will look like before we spend considerable time physically designing it. Alternatively, we could draw multiple sketches, where we try out different ideas and then discuss these ideas with team to help select the best layout design.

• Focus on the most important information. Highlight key parts of our report with a bright color or summary icon so that it stands out and draws users to the most critical metrics.

• Select the right background for the context of your report. A white background can make our report look clean and professional, whereas a black background can draw attention to colorful highlights on the report. Using images as a background can add visual interest.

Add buttons, bookmarks, and selections

We can use the Bookmarks, Buttons, and Selections features in Power BI Desktop to make our report more compelling, interactive, and simpler for users to navigate.

• Bookmarks - Capture the currently configured view of a report page so you can quickly return to that view later. We can use bookmarks for different reasons. For example, we can use them to keep track of your own progress when creating reports. We can also use them to build a PowerPoint-like presentation that goes through the bookmarks in order, thereby telling a story with your report.

• Buttons - We can create a more interactive experience for the report users. With the addition of buttons that have assigned actions, our report behaves similar to an app, where users can hover, select, and interact more with the content.

• Selections - It Allows us to determine what items in the report are visible and what items are hidden. Selections are used alongside bookmarks and buttons.

View and Edit interactions 

When multiple visuals exist on the same report page, they all interact with each other. For that reason, we should become familiar with these interactions to see how our report changes.

With help of format tab and Edit interactions we can manage the interaction between the visuals. 

Configure conditional formatting

Conditional formatting in Power BI Desktop allows us to specify customized cell colors, including color gradients, that are based on field values. Additionally, we can use conditional formatting to represent cell values with data bars, KPI icons, or active web links.

We can do conditional formatting by enabling following one of option:

1. Background color

2. Font color

3. Data Bar

4. Icons

Apply slicing, filtering, and sorting

Slicer : 

A slicer is a type of filter that we can add to our report, so users can segment the data in the report by a specific value, such as by year or geographical location.

Filter:

• Filters on this visual - Filters that apply to the selected visual and nothing else. This section only displays if we have a visual selected.

• Filters on this page - Filters that apply to the whole page that we currently have open.

• Filters on all pages - Filters that apply to all the pages in our report.

Sorting :

• Sort descending - Sorts the visual by the selected column in the order of greatest value to smallest value.

• Sort ascending - Sorts the visual by the selected column in the order of smallest value to greatest value.

• Sort by - Sorts the data by a specific column. Hover over this option to display the list of columns that we can select from.

Publish, Export report and Comment on report

By selecting tab Home and Publish we can publish our report on power bi service. In order to comment on report, open the report in Power BI web service. In the upper-right corner, select Comments. In the Comments pane, we can view existing comments and write our own comments, and then select Post Comment.

Tune report performance and analyze performance

When we finish creating our report, the performance of that report depends on how quickly data can load onto the report page. We should test your report in the Power BI Report Server to see how it works from a user's perspective. If we experience issues, or if the report users have reported issues, we need to investigate the cause of those issues and take measures to tune the report for more optimized performance.

To investigate the cause of issues, our first step is to use the Performance analyzer tool within Power BI Desktop. Performance analyzer allows us to discover how each of our report elements, such as visuals and DAX formulas, are performing. Performance analyzer provides us with logs that measure (in time duration) how each of our report elements performs when users interact with them. By examining the durations in the logs, we can identify which elements of the report are the most (or least) resource intensive. We can find where bottlenecks exist, which is a good starting point for making changes.

Before run Performance analyzer, clear the visual cache and data engine cache; otherwise, the results will not be accurate. Also, we should set up the report so that it opens on a blank page.

When cleared the caches and opened the report on the blank page, to run the Performance analyzer, go to the View tab, select Performance analyzer, and then select Start recording.

In order to tune performance,

• Reduce the number of visuals on the report page because fewer visuals means better performance. If a visual is not necessary and doesn't add value to the user, we should remove it. Rather than using multiple visuals on the page, consider other ways to provide additional details, such as drill through pages and report page tooltips.

• Reduce the number of fields in each visual. The upper limit for visuals is 100 fields, so a visual with more than 100 fields will be slow to load (and will look cluttered and confusing). Identify fields that are not valuable to the visual and then remove them.

Conclusion

In this blog I have given brief information about different topics which are essential to create data driven story.