Employee Performance Panel Charts in Power BI with R

Yesterday we saw a beautiful example of panel charts with R. Today let me show you how to create the same (or even better) with Power BI & R.

What you need:

• Power BI Desktop and R
• Raw data set – rem-data.csv

Creating Panel Charts in Power BI with R

1. Load CSV data in to Power BI
2. Edit the query in so we can transform the data in to Pivot shape in Power Query
3. Apply below steps in Power Query
   • Group data by Group and Branch with aggregations on count (named Branch Count) and All rows (named Ratings)
   • We get a totals by group and branch level.
   • Expand Ratings table and show only Ratings column
   • This creates a table with all group, branch and rating combinations along with branch total
   • Group again, this time on Group, Branch, Branch total and Ratings with aggregation on count.
   • Calculate count as percent of Branch count
   • Format the percentage as percent
   • Close and apply to Load this data in to Power BI
4. Insert R script visualization
5. Add Group, Branch, Ratings and Pct to values area. This creates a dataframe with all 4 columns.
6. Add below R script and your visualization is ready.

library(tidyverse)

ggplot(data=dataset) +
geom_bar(aes(x=Rating, y=Pct), stat="identity")+
scale_x_discrete(limits = c("NME","AME","SP","OP","NR"))+
facet_wrap(~Branch, nrow=1)+
theme(strip.text.x = element_text(size = 8))

To run the R script, simply press play button in R script editor pane.

Enhancing your visualization – Adding a slicer on Group

This creates a truly powerful interactive panel chart in Power BI. Simply add Group as a slicer and play with it. Every time you select a new Group, Power BI runs the R script with filtered data fed to the dataframe. There is a second or two lag, but the wait is totally worth it. 🙂

Creating Interactive Panel charts in Power BI with R – Video tut

Here is a video outlining the entire process along with some tips on how to use R in Power BI. Check it out below or on Chandoo.org YouTube channel.

Download Power BI workbook

Click here to download Power BI workbook for this. You may need to adjust the data source settings. Play with the slicer to refresh the R panel charts.

Have you tried Power BI yet?

I am playing with Power BI for last year or so and I am in love. You are going to hear more about it on Chandoo.org for sure.

What about you? Have you played with Power BI yet? What are your thoughts?

Related: Introduction to Power Query.