Gage and KPI Visuals Power BI has a wide range of chart types to choose from and some charts are suited to different metrics. So for example pie charts are ideal for showing composition one value as a percentage of a total. Bar and column charts are great for showing comparison. Sometimes we want to show how we have met a target or how close we are to that target.

So Power BI has some visuals which will help us do that.

One of these chart types is a gauge visual.

A gauge visual is great to set goals or targets so we can see a single value and where it is against a given target.

The target can be set manually or it can be driven by the value from a different field.

We also have KPI visuals and Power BI KPI visuals will do a similar thing to gauge chart so they will let us see where we are against a target or goal.

However, they also show us the percentage we are above or below the target.

We can only use fields or formulas to set the target for a KPI, we can't manually enter it.

Let's do a workout and see how to create gauge charts and KPIs in Power BI.

So I'm going to use get data to connect to a workbook here. I'm going to use module 4 lesson 3.

I'll connect to this little worksheet here, there's not a lot of data in it We can see here we have got four rows of data. We've got four quarters, a total for each of those quarter, and a target that was set for each of those quarters.

So I loaded into my workbook here, the first thing I'm going to do is create a gauge chart. So I'm going to get the gauge chart to show me the grand total and where it sits against the overall Target, so the sum of all four quarters and high it sits against the sum of all four targets.

So I'm going to use first of all the value field and the value field I want to set is that the total so I'll bring that in here and I'll change it to a gauge chart, this is the icon here a little arch. If I click on that.

Right away it's showing me the total for all four quarters. So 87,000. It's a minimum and maximum value, so the maximum is generally double the total amount and we can change that if we wish but what I'm really interested in doing is setting the target in. I'm going to include that visual that that field also in my visual.

So if I tick it here, now it hasn't gone into the right place, so I just have to be careful I just want to drag it in as the target, I'll just move it there.

And now we can see it properly so we can see that my total for all four quarters was 87,000, but the target was just over that so I'm slightly under and in terms of a yearly overview.

That's a gauge visual.

Let's have a look at how to do a KPI. So I'm just going to create another page here.

The KPI visual is found over here on the visualizations pane. So if I just click on that to create a KPI.

The KPI also requires a total value. So if I click on that again, I'm just making sure when I click on it here that it does go in as the value field.

I also need a trend axis and a trend field, so the trend axis here is going to be the quarter. So rather than just look at a single value like the gauge chart did.

I have it over a period of time. So it's a little bit like a line chart a shaded line chart at the minute. So it shows me the peaks and troughs there over the four quarters.

But I need to bring my target in now, so again I'm just going to click on it here and just make sure it goes into the right place down in trend.

I now it changes, we got a lot more information out of it. So first of all, we can see here the goal and the percentage achieved. It's looking at the most recent value which in our data will be quarter four and it's telling me now that it was a slight markup. It was up by 6.71% against the target and it's giving me the value itself.

It's turned green. The green is important that indicates that it was up over the target, had I been under the target it would have turned red. That's the indicator there in terms of the result.