Recently while on Chandoo’s webinar I saw very interesting use of Emojis used as icons for creating KPIs in Power BI. And this is definitely worth a post.
In this post, I’ll talk about how can you
- Create indicative icons in Power BI
- Where can you readily find these emojis (a.k.a icons) and
- How can you use them in a report
Just like always…
Let’s start with this simple data!
| Month | Actual | Budget |
| Jan | 180 | 130 |
| Feb | 140 | 180 |
| Mar | 200 | 120 |
| Apr | 160 | 160 |
| May | 110 | 180 |
| Jun | 150 | 150 |
| Jul | 130 | 110 |
| Aug | 190 | 170 |
| Sep | 160 | 180 |
| Oct | 150 | 190 |
| Nov | 160 | 170 |
| Dec | 130 | 190 |
This is no-where close to what you’d really do in Power BI but for the heck of having some simple data to work with please flow with me.
Following the good manners of creating two measures
Actual Sales = SUM(Data[Actual])
Budgeted Sales = SUM(Data[Budget])
Proceeding to a simple Table/ Matrix visual
Unfortunately to have custom icons in Power BI you don’t have a visual so we are going pull this off with DAX!
A little DAX for Creating Icons..
I am going to write a simple SWITCH measure
KPI 1 =
SWITCH(
TRUE(),
[Actual Sales]>[Budgeted Sales],'✔️',
[Actual Sales]<[Budgeted Sales],'❌',
'➖'
)
Now if you are wondering how the hell did I get the tick (and other) icons in my DAX code. I’ll explain
- These icons are available at these sites- Get Emoji and Emojipedia (there could be others too!)
- Important: Get any emoji you want but the emoji should be a text object and NOT a picture
- Since the emoji will be a text, you’ll be able to copy and paste it between double quotes in your DAX measure.
- Before you ask.. Yes, you’ll retain it’s original color, formatting etc..
Here’s some Display of Icons…
Some things to keep in Mind!
- Don’t go overboard with it, be subtle! Remember, nothing beats simplicity
- Using too many icons can also slow down your report. I have seen some performance issues because of these icons being used
Some More Power BI Tricks
- Copy Paste Data in Power BI
- Create a Pivot Table in Power BI
- PAYTM Dashboard in Power BI
- Calculating Fiscal Year in Excel and Power BI
