A Fine Slice Of SQL Server
Tomaz Kastrun has fun generating a triangle:
What motivates human behaviour can be captured in the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (source: Wiki). Maslow and psychologists have articulated these needs in a form of a Pyramid, and ever since the concept had been widely adopted (also criticised), and yet, another adaptation is the Pyramid of R needs
Read on for Tomaz’s take, as well as how to generate such a pyramid.
Comments closedMeagan Longoria wants to know about visual interactions:
It can be tedious to check what visual interactions have been configured in a Power BI report. If you have a lot of bookmarks, this becomes even more important. If you do this manually, you have to turn on Edit Interactions and select each visual to see what interactions it is emitting to the other visuals on the page.
But there is a better way!
Click through for that better way.
Comments closedCole Nussbaumer Knaflic contrasts a pair of visual options:
Bringing clarity to your data storytelling doesn’t usually mean you need to learn and use more chart types. It does mean choosing visuals that are appropriate for your data and what you’re trying to communicate. Two of the most useful tools in our graphing toolkit—bar charts and line graphs—often do the heavy lifting. Knowing when to use which (and when to switch) can make all the difference.
This lesson came up recently as I revisited our new book, storytelling with data: before & after. I’ll share two scenarios where the choice between bars and lines matters. They are both from Chapter 2, which is titled “embrace basic graphs.”
Read on for an initial chart that is using the wrong type of visual, and then how we can tell different stories using the same data based on our choice of visual.
Comments closedThomas Williams builds a chart:
I also wanted to get a little interactive with my analysis, and came across Dygraphs for R https://rstudio.github.io/dygraphs/ which wraps the “venerable” (according to creator Dan Vanderkam https://github.com/danvk) javascript charting library of the same name, first released in 2006.
I used Dygraphs in an R script file (it can work equally well in R Markdown) to quickly chart my time series data, loaded from the CSV file. Dygraphs were simple to use, are a solid pick among other charting libraries and very functional for being free and open source.
Read on for a few examples of charts, as well as the entirety of Thomas’s code.
Comments closedElena Drakulevska builds a switch:
We learned in the last post that while dark UI feels sleek, it’s not automatically accessible and it shouldn’t be your default strategy (hello, contrast + glare). In most cases, light mode is the more accessible baseline (just imagine trying to work on a sunny beach or on your balcony with dark mode… nightmare).
But UX is also about choice. Some users love light, some swear by dark. So let’s give them control.
Read on to see how, without sacrificing much accessibility.
Comments closedAnnamarie Van Wyk demonstrates how to use field parameters to slice data in Power BI:
If you’ve ever built a Power BI report and found yourself duplicating charts for daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly views — you’re not alone. It’s one of the most common (and frustrating) dashboard challenges: “Can we see this by day? Actually, make it by week. No wait — what about monthly?”
Instead of building five versions of the same visual, you can do it all with one — thanks to Field Parameters.
Read on to see how it all works.
Comments closedElena Drakulevska adds a button:
If you’ve been building Power BI reports, you probably know about drillthrough.
In short: drillthrough lets users move from a summary view to a detail page focused on one data point. For example, you can right-click on Austria in a sales chart and jump straight to a page showing visuals and metrics only about Austria.
Sounds powerful, right?
The catch: most users don’t even know it’s been implemented.
The other catch: those of us sad souls using Power BI Report Server don’t get drillthrough at all.
Comments closedConsider a typical sales dashboard filled with charts, KPIs, and large tables.
Users often have to guess what is important, read legends, or ask questions like “What does this mean?” or “Which numbers require attention?”
Many dashboards display data but do not guide users to key insights effectively.
Read on for a few different possibilities based around conditional formatting.
Comments closedBoniface Muchendu takes a peek at a fairly new feature:
Keeping your Power BI reports consistent, clean, and on-brand just got a lot easier. With the new Organizational Themes feature released in June 2025, Power BI now allows organizations to centrally manage and distribute custom report themes across all users. No more manual theme imports or scattered design standards.
Read on to see how it works, and hopefully your organization does not have terrible standards.
Comments closedBen Richardson creates a visual:
Ever wished you could see exactly how customers move through your sales funnel, or how costs flow across your business?
A Sankey Diagram makes those flows visible, showing not just totals but how values split and connect between categories.
In Power BI, the Sankey Diagram is available as a custom visual from AppSource, designed to reveal relationships and flow patterns.
There are specific times and places for Sankey charts. It requires having a natural flow in your data—that is, you need different states of data, those states should typically only “move” in one direction, you have paths to get from one state to another, and there is enough variety in pathing that not all of the data is going to the same location. The more of these rules you violate, the less useful a Sankey diagram is.
Comments closed