POWER BI: Gauges and KPI Cards

Gauges

The Basics:

Gauges are a simple yet effective visualization for a dashboard. Using a gauge or KPI card gives a quick snapshot of your main KPIs. The main features of a Gauge are:

• Track performance overtime for a specific metric
• Illustrates a KPIs current value and goal or target value.

Power BI Demo:

To make a Dial style gauge above with three colors we need to have the following values:

• Pointer Value: ie. Current NPS above set to 10
• Min Value: ie. Minimum NPS above set to 0
• Max Value: ie. Maximum NPS above set to 20
• Actual Start Value: ie. OK NPS above set to 13
• Target End Value ie. Goal NPS above set to 15
• Percentage Value ie. Current NPS / Goal NPS

You can import this visual from the visual gallery

To make a Tachometer style gauge above with three colors we need to have the following values:

• Current Value: ie. Current NPS above set to 10
• Start Value: ie. Minimum NPS above set to 0
• End Value: ie. Maximum NPS above set to 20
• Range 2 start Value ie. OK NPS above set to 13
• Range 3 start Value ie. Goal NPS above set to 15

Additionally you can set a target NPS Value if different than the "goal NPS" value. You must make sure that this target NPS value has a different value than any of the NPS values above, otherwise the graph will not show three colors for each range.

You can import this visual from the visual gallery

Try it out yourself with this simple excel data here

Cards

The Basics:

Cards or KPI cards are also useful for displaying your main business metrics on your dashboard. For instance with KPI cards you can have your sales data, and then show your goal sales or projected sales numbers. You can also add in a trend axis which will show different colors depending on whether sales are up or down.

Features:

• Useful in a corner of a dashboard for a snapshot glance of your main KPIs.
• Trend axis shows changes over time.
• Goal value shows expected target to be reached.

This highly customizable, and award winning visual made by OKViz can be downloaded for free here. There are many cool and customizable features that make this a great KPI visual.

Features:

• Add in variance to your data values
• Customize goal messages based on specific cases.
• Customize colors and icons based on different scenarios
• Customize appearance and weight of treadline
• Illustrate high and low points in the data
• An awesome tooltip feature that lets you hover see your data points
• Customizable settings for those who are color blind