Power BI Blog: Metric Visuals Updated

Welcome back to this week’s edition of the Power BI blog series.  This week, we look at added support for composite models and Dynamic M Query Parameters.

Power BI has recently updated streamlining the creation and sharing of metrics.  In particular, this affects:

• Metric visuals
• Move and copy scorecard
• Follow metrics
• Share link to a metric.

Let’s plough through them.

Metric Visuals

The Scorecard visual shipped last year has now been updated to include metric visuals.  This provides a level of flexibility in integrating metrics into your Power BI reporting solutions.  You can now include individual metrics instead of the entire scorecard and create report pages showcasing metrics alongside other visuals, in the context of the rest of the report data.

You may either create a new metric or add a metric from an existing scorecard as a visual in the report.

You can create a metric by either entering values or connecting to data in reports you have access to.

You may view notes, perform check-ins, set up rules on this metric, just like on a regular scorecard.

You can also format the metric visual to the look and feel of the rest of the report and it is configurable with options to turn the individual metric elements (such as targets, owner etc.) on / off.

It should be noted that his will be available in Power BI Service by the time you read this and will be made available in Power BI Desktop later in August.

Move / Copy Scorecard

Many organisations have “template” scorecards that different departments or business groups might want to use as a starting point.  Alternatively, you might want to develop a “test” scorecard in ‘My workspace’ to make sure the metrics are working correctly before moving it to the correct workspace when it’s ready to share.  You can now do all this using the new move or copy scorecard functionality.

You can move the entire scorecard with all the scorecard features and metadata including the check-ins, status rules as-is to a new workspace.  You will be provided with a dropdown of a list of workspaces you have access to pick from.

Copy scorecard has the option to include / exclude check-in history.  This makes it easy to reuse the same scorecard for a newer time period (for example, for fiscal year scorecards) so you don’t have to do this all over again.

The copy scorecards capability is also useful in getting started quickly if you want to create a new scorecard by reusing the metric definition from an existing scorecard.

Follow Metrics

You can now use the ‘Follow’ functionality to quickly access metrics you’re interested in and stay up to date on the activity on these metrics. You can follow metrics as you’re browsing through different scorecards and later access all your followed metrics in one place.

You can view all the metrics you are following in the Metrics hub under the ‘Following’ section.  Clicking on a metric tile takes you to the scorecard containing the metric.  This makes it easy to get a quick overview of the metrics you care about without having to navigate to different scorecards often.

Once you follow a metric, you will get Teams notifications right in the activity feed and as a banner (Toast card) whenever the metric definition is updated, a check-in is added or when an automated status rule changes the status of the metric.  When you click the notification, the scorecard opens and the Details pane for the metric is shown.  This Teams integration makes it easy to stay up to date about the metrics you follow without having to leave Teams to view the scorecards.

Share Direct Link to a Metric

Often you might want to draw someone else’s attention to a specific metric in a scorecard for them to look at it.  Now, instead of having to @mention someone in a new check-in, you can reference a metric by simply sharing a direct link to it.  When a metric is selected on a scorecard, the URL in the address bar is now updated with the metric ID.  The link in the ‘Share’ scorecard option also has been updated to include the metric ID if a metric is selected.  When the recipient opens the link, they now will be able to view the scorecard with the Details pane of that metric open.

Check back next week for more Power BI tips and tricks!