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Announcing the new Charticulator visual (Public Preview)

Headshot of article author Roseanne Levasseur

We’re excited to announce a new custom visual in AppSource: the Microsoft Charticulator visual.

Previously to use Charticulator, a user would flip between the web app at charticulator.com and Power BI (PBI). Now, users can create a wide range of custom chart designs right within PBI using our brand-new Microsoft Charticulator custom visual.

Here are some of the possibilities:

To get started:

  1. Import the Charticulator visual from AppSource
  2. Add fields to the Data section of the Visualizations pane
  3. Select Edit in visual header
  4. Start building from scratch or import a template
  5. Save or export your chart

Additional resources:

 

Import the Charticulator visual from AppSource

Using the “” menu from the Visualizations pane, select “Get more visuals.” Within AppSource search for “charticulator” and add the visual to Power BI.

Add fields to the Data section of the Visualizations pane

Add the needed data fields to the Data section in the Visualizations Pane. For a chart with links between glyphs, add the link-related data fields to the Links section, after creating a relationship between two tables. See chart with links for more details.

Note: You may need to remove data summarization or specify sorting order. See tips for using Charticulator in Power BI for additional help.

Select Edit in visual header

Start building from scratch or import a template

If you choose to build from scratch, you’ll land on the empty canvas to start creating your chart.

If you wish to use an existing Charticulator template, choose “Import template.” Next, browse to where you have your template file stored, and select the file. Then, map your data to the required data columns and save mapping.

Now you can see Charticulator has generated the chart ready for editing.

Save or export your chart

Always remember to save your chart before navigating back to report.

If you wish to reuse your custom chart design, you can export the chart as a template for later importing. In Power BI Service, click export in the top right menu and the template file will be downloaded.

However, in Power BI desktop the export functionality is not yet supported. As a workaround, when you click export the template data will be copied to your clipboard. You will need to paste this into your favorite text editor (e.g. Notepad, Visual Studio Code) and save it as a .tmplt file.

Sample templates and datasets

On the getting started screen, you’ll see four sample templates provided to offer inspiration on what type of charts can be made with Charticulator. You can download the template files and the sample dataset they were built on from the Chart Templates page. These can also be used to follow along with the tutorials to learn the Charticulator basics.

We’d love to hear from you!

Try out the visual and fill out the post experience survey: https://aka.ms/charticulatorsurvey.

Feel free to also comment directly on this blog post or if you prefer to send private feedback, email the team at charticulator-feed@microsoft.com. We will continue to update and evolve the Charticulator visual based on your feedback.

If you want to see Charticulator integrated into Power BI Desktop, please add your vote to this idea.