Overview
Power BI provides the flexibility to create your own custom visuals using R script visual. Before you dive in I request you to refer the following articles to start with R-script visuals.
In this article, we will learn a step-by-step procedure to create R-script visual in Power BI.
I believe you have installed R Engine and R Studio in your environment. You must have an active Power BI Pro license to publish R script visual. If you have Power BI free license, you are not able to publish the R script visual.
I have uploaded Sample data file and report file in GitHub. You can directly download it using the following URL,
Now, let’s get started!
- Click on R-script visual from the visualization pane. It will open a pop up for “Enable script visuals”. Click on Enable button.
- It will create a blank R-script visual as shown in the following figure.
- Drag the fields, from the table. In our example, we want to prepare a report using Month, US and London column. So, I drag three columns.
If you observe, it has created some auto-generated code in the script editor. Now, we will open the same code in R Studio.
To open the code in R studio, click on the icon (Edit script in external R IDE).
- It will open R Studio with predefined code.
Optional
If your Power BI code doesn’t reflect in R Studio automatically, then you need to go to the following path to open your R script file in R Studio.
Path: C:\Users\Dhruvin Shah\REditorWrapper_58dc934e-160d-427c-8d2b-4d7f8abc23bd
Here, REditorWrapper folder with the latest timestamp covers your R file. Open it in R Studio.
Follow the below step only if your R file does not open in R Studio automatically.
- Now, let’s add code in R Studio and check the result.
Add following line of code in R Studio.
- library( ggplot2 )
- #dataset$monthname = c(dataset$Month)
- dataset$Month
- dataset$Month <-factor(dataset$Month,
- levels = c("January", "February", "March", "April", "May", "June",
- "July", "August", "September", "October", "November", "December"))
- ggplot(data=dataset, aes(x=Month, y=US )) +
- geom_bar(stat="identity")
- Here, we are using a ggplot2 library to generate the R visual. So you need to install it first.
- To install ggplot2 package open packages from R studio, click on install, search for ggplot2 and click on Install.
- Once this library is installed, we will run the code we have applied in Step 5.
- To run the code, select all the code first ( Refer numeral 1 from Figure below) and click on run button. ( Refer numeral 2 from Figure below). Select the Plot tab ( Refer numeral 3 from Figure below) to see the final result. (Refer numeral 4 from Figure below)
- You will find the end result in the plots option of R studio. (Refer numeral 4 from Figure above)
- Now, we will copy the same code from R Studio and paste it to Power BI R script visual.
- Select code and click on Run button. ( Refer numeral 1 and 2 from Figure below ) The visual will look like the following image. (Refer numeral 3 from the following Figure).
- Now, let’s publish the report to your Power BI Pro account. R script visual will not work with Power BI free license.
Conclusion:
This is how you can start the custom development with R script visual in Power BI. I hope you love this article. Stay connected with me for amazing tutorials.