Introduction

This article will explain basic design formatting for content, card and scatter plot in Power BI and how to use those to make attractive reports and dashboard with recent market trend. It demonstrates straightforward steps to get started with Power BI desktop for those who have passion to learn on Business intelligence tools.

In previous chapter we completed up to Pie and column bar design. This part will be continued from there. In this part, we will learn to add Title, background, border design, data labels show in visualization as well as understand how to add scatter plot and card in dashboard. In Addition to this, I will explain shortly about DAX functions and demonstrate how to use it.

Dashboard Title: Insert Text box and give name of your Dashboard and put it on top of page. Format it as per your design need.

Page Background: Go to Format then go to Page color and then choose background color.

Border Design: Borders add good looking to design in dashboard. To Add border on visuals-> select visuals in which you want to add border, go to format, go turn on Border and choose color of border and give radius of border.

Data Labels show in visualization: Visual with data displayed in it provides clear insights to user. To show data in visual, select visuals and Go to format then go to Data labels and turn it on.

Scatter Plot

Scatter Plot is type of visualization which is used to represent relationship between two numerical values. In scatter plot, bubble point represents the data and the shape of bubble can be changed according to your choice.

How to add Scatter Plot?

Go to visualization panel and select scatter plot as depicted in below figure.

Drag Branch column to X-Axis and Id to Y -Axis as depicted below.

Then Rename Y-Axis to Number of Employee.

Or

We can go to Format section and rename Title of Scatter plot as shown below.

Visualization color changing – Data color changing

To change color of data represented in visualization go to Format then go to Data colors and choose your favorite color or color according to your customer need.

To increase Size of Scatter plot Bubble Shape: Go to Format, then go to Shape and increase size of Shape

Additionally, you can change shape of marker by selecting from dropdown options

Card

In Power BI, Score Card is generally used to represent Total no of record or total count of any field or total count of some filtered value or sum of Amount, total sales amount, total price, amount by departments and so on. Based on our need we can represent, count, summation, aggregate value etc. in Score Card. Usually, designer place it on Top of reports and dashboard to make it more attractive and eye catching.

Follow Below steps to add and design Card:

Go to Visualizations and click Card.

Then drag the column which you want to show in the card. My case I want to show total number of employees in an organization, so I am going to drag Id to Field.

After that rename field as Total number of Employee. We can design and format score card background, font and so on from format section.

Alternatively, we can use DAX function to get Total count of Employee and number of Employee in each Branch. Data Analysis Expression (DAX) consists of library of functions and operators which can be used to build formulas and expression in Power BI.

Here, in this example we can create measure or quick measure with DAX functions and get total number of employee in an organization as well as numbers of employee in each branch.

Right click on your Dataset and click on New Measure to add it.

Write below expression in your measure as depicted below screen.

Total Count = CALCULATE(COUNT(DatasetName[Id]))

Our databaset Name is Employee. So for this case, our Measure becomes like this

Total Count = CALCULATE(COUNT(Employee[Id]))

After writing DAX function click on correct icon as depicted below.

To Add above Measure Value in Score card, click on Score card and drag the value as shown below.

To Get number of Employee in each branch: There are two ways:

1. Add Score Card and Drag Id in field and in Filter option we can bring Branch Column and Choose one Branch Name.

2. Add New Measure for each Branch as illustrated below.

Total Pokhara Count= CALCULATE(COUNT(Employee[Id]), FILTER(Employee, Employee [BranchName]="Pokhara"))

To show this New Measure Value in score card just Drag and drop it in Field Value of Score as described above.

Similarly, repeat process of adding new measure to count employee number in other branch too and design score card in remaining branch.

Eventually, we have designed employee dashboard as depicted below.

Conclusion

Thus, this article has described the basic designs and formatting layout for dashboard and reports in Power BI. Additionally, article has explained steps to add scatter plot and card with an example using Power BI Desktop. I hope, this will help reader to understand basic knowledge of how to use power BI desktop and start designing report and dashboard with scatter plot, card as well as basic DAX functions.