Get ready to experience a new level of visual excellence with the latest addition to Power BI Desktop – the stunning new card visual! The core visuals team has been hard at work, crafting this masterpiece from the ground up. And now, in the June 2023 release, you’ll be able to see their vision come to life. With its sleek design and unparalleled functionality, the card visual is set to revolutionize the way you interact with your data using cards. Get ready to be amazed!
- Feature overview
- Setup instructions
- Building a new card visual
- Formatting the new card visual
- Interactivity
- New card visual roadmap
- Limitations and known issues
Feature overview
The card visual is one of the most used visuals in reporting. However, it has not been updated since its creation, which has led our users to overlap multiple visual elements or rely on custom visuals to create their own card visuals. This approach decreases report performance and makes reports less accessible, particularly for screen reading and keyboard navigation. With the new card visual, you can display multiple cards in a single container and have full control over every component of each card. This updated approach improves report performance making it easier for all users to access and interact with the data.
- Overlapping multiple visual elements to create a customized card visual
- New card visual
Set up instructions
To access the new card visual, you can find it in the visual gallery, either in the ribbon or the on-object dialog. The preview feature is already turned on by default, to encourage more users to try it out and provide feedback. As this addition does not affect existing card visuals, we believe it will not cause any disruption to the user experience.
However, if you prefer to disable the preview, or control when you see it, you can still find toggle under Options > Preview features > New card visual.
Building a new card visual
To start building a visual, you have three options: 1) insert a new visual from the ribbon and add fields, 2) right-click on the canvas and select “add visual”, or 3) check or drag fields from the data pane and then select the new card from the on-object dialog.
The new card visual can support multiple fields, and their order is based on the order they appear in the data field well.
Formatting the new card visual
To change the style of your new card, follow these simple steps: first, click on the on-object edit icon. Then, click on the ‘More options’ button. This will open the format pane, where you can see all available formatting settings. From there, you can easily customize the style of your card.
The new card visual comes with special surprises that include the ability to customize the shape corners to achieve your desired style with precision control.
The new card offers a refined formatting settings for values and labels, with expanded support for conditional formatting and the introduction of font transparency.
Customize your display units with precision control, thanks to the new custom option and ensure your cards display the proper content, even when no data is found, with the new ‘Show blank as’ feature.
Choose from three dynamic layouts (Horizontal, vertical, and grid) and fine-tune your cards with precise control over padding, spacing, and text alignment.
Take your design to the next level with the addition of an image and accent bar and all formatting settings can be defined through ‘Themes’.
Interactivity
Tooltips
The new card supports both default and report page tooltips. However, if you want to take your tooltips to the next level, you can assign ‘report page’ tooltips to each card. To do this, you must follow these steps: 1) design your tooltip page, and 2) link it with the field you want to connect it to.
To update the tooltip for each field in your new card, return to the page that contains your new card visual. 3) Select the visual, 4) go to the format pane, navigate to Properties > Options, and 5) under Page, select Auto. This will automatically update the tooltip for each card that is assigned to a tooltip page.
Drill through
To take advantage of the Drill Through feature and enable users to navigate across multiple pages, follow these steps: 1) open the General format settings to locate the Page Information section, then 2) select “Drill Through” as the Page Type, and finally, 3) Insert all the fields that you want to use for navigation into the field well.
If you have assigned the Drill Through field to other pages, every card associated with that field will have the capability to take you to those pages. To navigate to these pages, simply right-click on the card with the field assigned and select the page name under the “Drillthrough” option. This will allow you to easily access the information you need across multiple pages.
New card visual roadmap
Please note that the new card visual is planned to have multiple stages.
- Stage 1 (current release) supports multiple cards in a single container and includes new formatting settings for value, label, and shape layout.
- Stage 2 introduces indicator labels to add even more context and sub metrics to your callouts.
- Stage 3 takes it even further with the ability to split cards into groups using small multiples.
Please share your experience and share with us how you are using this new visual so we can continue improving. Stay tuned for exciting updates!
Limitations and known issues
- Currently, the shadow and glow effect can cause the size of all cards to change unexpectedly. Our team is actively working on a solution to this issue.
- During the preview period, there will be some limitations and known issues.