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This month's update allows users to add customisable buttons to a report, incorporates a numeric slicer and includes a few other smaller changes.
- New features in the April 2018 update of Power BI Desktop
- Action buttons
- Numeric slicers
- Changing the line and marker style for combination charts
- Choose your organisational custom visuals (this blog)
- Features still in preview as of April 2018
For a cumulative list of all of the updates to Power BI Desktop since November 2016 see this blog, or have a look at the Power BI courses that we run.
Posted by Andy Brown on 07 April 2018
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Choose your organisational custom visuals
There are currently 147 custom Power BI Desktop visuals listed on the Microsoft website, with a few more being added each month. You can now select a few of them to be ones that you want to prioritise within your organisation.
Choosing your custom visuals
The first thing to do is to choose the custom visuals which you want to use to represent your corporate data. I've gone for two:
Visual | Notes |
---|---|
Word cloud | Displays a word cloud showing which words have been most used for a text column. |
Aquarium | Displays numerical data as fish swimming to and fro (the larger the number, the bigger the fish!). |
I've downloaded these two files from the website linked to above:

The two files that I want to make easily accessible to other owls.
Logging on to your admin account
We have a number of Office 365 subscriptions, so I've logged on to Power BI Service using one of these. I can then get at the admin portal:

Click on the gear icon at the top right of Power BI Service to get this dropdown menu.
Adding organisational visuals
I can now choose to view my organisation's visuals:

Choose this option to see the visuals to be used within your organisation.
You can click to add visuals:

Click to add each custom visual.
Here's an example:

I've given the visual a new name, description and icon.
Using a custom visual
You can choose to add a custom visual in Power BI Desktop as normal:

The icon and option to add a custom visual.
You can then click on the MY ORGANIZATION tab to see the custom visuals recommended for use within your company:

Click on this tab to see the two visuals you're recommending.
A neat way to promote the use of only certain visuals within your company!
- New features in the April 2018 update of Power BI Desktop
- Action buttons
- Numeric slicers
- Changing the line and marker style for combination charts
- Choose your organisational custom visuals (this blog)
- Features still in preview as of April 2018