Using Power BI to Create A Visual Overview of Your Customers

On Thursday March 28th I spoke at the User Group Summit event in Amsterdam. My session was all about Power BI and helped attendees ‘Find out how map visuals, images, Dynamics 365 CE data, and customer feedback can be used to create useful, actionable Power BI reports. Visual and interactive reporting can assist account managers and provide your leadership team with an effective overview of the business. ‘

This blog post will walk through the entire report, and each of the tips provided in video format. Below is an overview of the example report I created for the purpose of the demonstration. The data I used was from a Microsoft Form I created, asking people within the community to provide their name, job, twitter handle, city & country, favourite colour, phrase or a saying, and rate something on the scale of 0 to 10 for a Net Promoter Score rating.

1. Option Set Labels & Colours 

The Net Promoter Score Type and the Colour Selected from the survey were both Option Sets in Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (CRM). When adding these to a Power BI report, you only get the field value, rather than the label, colour or description. Using Power Query (M) Builder helps with that!

2. NPS Gauge Overview

There are so many great custom visuals. Here we can add a gauge to display the overall Net Promoter Score.

3. Tool Tip Reports

When hovering your mouse over fields on the report, a tool tip will show values by default. Did you know you can have reports show as a tool tip instead?

4. Map Visual

A great way to show geographical data based on the country location of a Contact or Account is via maps. This video shows how adding the Synoptic Panel by OKViz custom visual, you can show a map of the world, with a count of all contacts represented.

5. Report Drill Through

If your report has multiple pages, a great way to link the data is to use a report drill through, allowing you to jump back and forth, filtering the data as you go.

6. Adding A Search Box

This one is quick and easy, but a very effective tool to have on your report, a search box. Using a custom visual you can add a way for users to type in text, and find and filter the data fast.

7. Tree Map Overview

For the report, the contacts image is displayed, pulling it in from Twitter. Upon displaying the photo, I wanted to have the colour they selected as a border around the image. Using a tree map allowed for some colour coding to be used as the border.

8. Ratings Custom Visual 

The Net Promoter Score on each Contact can be displayed as a ratings custom visual which can be coloured with a gradient, and have animation applied to it. A great visual that’s immediately recognisable.

9. Using Slicers to Filter

There are many ways to filter the data on a report, but a slicer is one of the easiest things for a user to get to grips with. It’s very simple to set up, and even easier for someone to use!

10. Quick Measures

Once we’ve got the slicers on the report, it would be great to see which options have been selected. This is where a Quick Measure comes in. Let’s look at how to set one up, and then add it to the report.

That’s it! Hope at least one of these tips helped you learn something new. What other custom visuals or elements could be used to make your reports effective, and impactful?