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
- Load CSV data in to Power BI
- Edit the query in so we can transform the data in to Pivot shape in Power Query
- 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
- Group data by Group and Branch with aggregations on count (named Branch Count) and All rows (named Ratings)
- Insert R script visualization
- Add Group, Branch, Ratings and Pct to values area. This creates a dataframe with all 4 columns.
- 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.
2 Responses to “Top 10 Power BI Interview Questions & Answers”
Hello...
In Power BI I have data that includes months by name only (e.g. May, April, December...)
I need to build charts etc. but i need the months to go chronologically... not alphabetically... I cannot seem to find the fix to this.... once again, my data does NOT have an actual date attached to it (like 02/01/2023)....only month names... can i use a helper table wher i id the month names as numbers 1 thru 12? and if so, how do i manage this to work for me ?
Thank you.
~Keith
You need to setup an extra table to map each month name to a running number. A simple 12 row table like
Jan 1
Feb 2
Mar 3
..
Dec 12
Then create a relationship between this month table and your month column
Now, go to "table view" in Power BI and set the sort by column to month number for the month name column on this new table.
Finally, use the new table's month name whenever you need to refer to the month name in the visuals.
They will be chronologically arranged.