Day 12: Visualisations — Advanced & Custom

The Decomposition Tree lets users interactively drill down through different dimensions to analyse what is driving a measure. Add the visual → put your measure in "Analyse" (e.g. Total Revenue) → add multiple dimensions to "Explain By" (Region, Product Category, Sales Rep, Month). The user then clicks "+" to add any dimension at any level — building their own analysis path. This is particularly powerful for root cause analysis: "Why is revenue down? → By Region: South is down → By Product: Electronics in South is down → By Month: August specifically."

Key Influencers automatically analyses which factors most influence a selected metric using machine learning. Add the visual → put the metric to analyse in "Analyse" (e.g. Customer Churned = Yes) → add potential influencing factors to "Explain By" (Contract Type, Tenure, Monthly Charges, Tech Support). The visual shows which factor values most increase or decrease the probability of the metric being true. No DAX or coding required — Power BI runs the analysis. Useful for churn analysis, satisfaction drivers, and fraud indicators.

Custom visuals are third-party chart types not included in Power BI Desktop by default. Source: AppSource (accessible via Insert → Get More Visuals or appsource.microsoft.com). Popular custom visuals: Charticulator (flexible custom charts), Sankey Chart (flow diagrams), Bullet Chart, Word Cloud, Gantt Chart, Calendar Visual, and KPI cards. Download adds them to the Visualisations pane permanently. In organisations, IT may restrict which custom visuals can be used — certified visuals (marked with a shield) have been vetted by Microsoft.

By default, clicking a data point in any visual filters all other visuals on the page (cross-filtering). Edit Interactions lets you control this behaviour for each visual pair. Format → Edit Interactions → click the source visual → each other visual shows icons: Filter (applies filter), Highlight (dims non-matching data), None (no interaction). Common use: a summary card should not be filtered by clicking a detail table row. A map should cross-filter a bar chart but not a KPI card. Getting interaction design right is key to a professional, intuitive dashboard.

A Tooltip page is a report page set up to appear as a rich tooltip when a user hovers over a data point. Create a new page → Page Information → turn on "Allow use as tooltip" → resize the page to tooltip dimensions (about 320×240px) → build visuals on that page. Then: on the main visual → Format → Tooltips → Type: Report Page → select the tooltip page. When the user hovers over a bar, the tooltip shows the custom page content instead of the default value label. Use to show detailed breakdown, sparkline, or context that would clutter the main visual.