Reports are a visualized display of insights and findings from a particular data set. It includes either a single visualization or multiple pages full of interactive visualizations. The visualizations are customizable and hence dynamic in nature as they change with any update or modification in the dataset. 

Since Power BI Reports serve a business critical purpose and utilized by higher management for analysis, it is important that the look appealing and effective. Few tips and tricks can help you make highly creative reports.

Tip 1: Keep Things Simple!

Be careful while using charts as they can misrepresent the information by twisting the real facts. Particularly, when you are integrating 3D charts or any other charts that don?t start at 0 (zero), make sure to use them intelligently. Always include visuals that simplify information instead of using one that makes it more complex to understand. Interpreting circular charts such as donut charts, pie charts, gauges, etc. are difficult to interpret instantly for the human brains. They may look interactive and pretty, but you can use different visuals to keep the things simple. 

Tip 2: Avoid Visualization Variety  

If you want variation in your Power BI reports, be creative in your ideas but try to avoid integrating variety of visuals. It will make your Reports complex and the actual purpose may interpret. Keep in mind that the visualization must focus on representing the information in a readable format. A simple graphical visualization is appropriate to represent business critical data. For more complex visualizations, always consider using labels and titles. This will help the reader to understand it easily without putting in extra efforts. 

Tip 3: Avoid Mix Precision

Yes, avoid mixing levels of time frames and precision. Make sure that the visualization must display every single bit of information clearly and precisely. Do not mix time frames and big and small units on a same scale. If you are using bar chart or line chart, make sure that everything is readable and clear. For example, for representing two different measures of thousands and millions, you will need a large scale, else figuring out the small measure, i.e. thousands will be difficult. In this case, combo chart can help display both the quantities clearly as it enables visualizing second axis. 

Tip 4: Use Pie Charts for Limited Categories

As stated earlier that pie charts might contribute to the complexity levels of the visualizations, there are exceptions. Pie charts are appropriate for Power BI reports where you need to display less than eight categories. Pie Charts are recommended for the case where it required viewing partial to complete relationship information. Gauge charts are good for representing current status of an objective. 

Tip 5: Pay attention to Charts

Keep track of the charts and pay attention to how they are sorted. If you want to draw reader's attention to the highest or lowest numbers, remember to sort by the Measure. Alternatively, if you want to draw reader's attention to a particular category, try to sort by the Axis. 

Tip 6: Sort by Another Column

When you use a string or categorical value in Power BI Reports for slicer or filter or for the chart axes, the default order is alphabetical. To override this order, you can command Power BI Desktop to sort by a different column. Sorting by different column is required when you need to mention days of the weak or names of months, etc. 

Tip 7: Map with Geographic Designations

Power BI integrates with Bing to provide Geocoding functions. Default map coordinates makes it easier for users to create maps. Use of algorithms makes it possible to get the right location in few seconds; it's the best guess game though. To increase the instance of best Geocoding, several practices, tips and tricks can help achieve the target. While creating a map, use often tries to plot countries, states, cities and suburbs. Instead, naming the columns after geographical designations in Power BI Desktop can help Bing to guess and display the most accurate location. 

These tips and tricks will help assimilate best practices needed for creating interactive, appealing and highly effectual reports. 

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