Hitting the bullseye: Target visualization in Power BI for different audiences
PRESENTING TARGETS HIT & MISSED VISUALLY
Setting targets helps us measure progress and stay motivated towards a goal, whether it’s personal or business-related. Positive results motivate us while falling behind highlights areas for improvement. Figuring out the best way to visualize a target, for example, in Power BI, can be challenging, as it heavily depends on which actions the audience you are designing for wants to take with the results.
This article shows you different ways to display reaching a target. All visualizations are standard in Power BI, mostly tweaked with conditional formatting. If you want to have a look into AppStore visuals, I mention them at the end of the article.
Asking the right questions
Before you begin creating the visual, it’s crucial to first understand what you want to visualize and, more importantly, why you want to visualize it. Additionally, take time to define, in collaboration with your audience, the actions that will follow from answering whether or not a target was hit. Why is this important? Because it will help guide you in selecting the best visualization for your audience. It may sound simple, but even a statement like “We want to see if we hit or miss our sales quota” can be visualized in several different ways. To help clarify, here are some questions you can ask:
Purpose and Actions: What actions should result from viewing the visual? Is a simple snapshot (e.g., knowing if a target is met for a newsletter) sufficient, or is deeper analysis required for decision-making or strategy refinement?
Relevant Timeframe: What is the optimal timeframe for analysis? Should the data be monitored daily for immediate adjustments, weekly for trends, or monthly/yearly for long-term planning?
Data Comparisons: Is the data being compared against benchmarks, targets, or historical trends? How much data is available, and does it need to be segmented or aggregated to provide clarity?
Audience and Detail: What level of detail is appropriate for your audience? A high-level overview may suffice for newsletters, while more granular insights could be necessary for account managers evaluating specific performance metrics.
Daily target visualization – using a Power BI Matrix visual
Visualizing daily targets can be tricky. Quickly comparing specific days in bar and line charts can become difficult due to the amount of data.
Unfortunately, the custom visuals provided by Power BI don’t offer a calendar that makes it easy to visualize daily results. However, a workaround can be to use a matrix visual in combination with conditional formatting.
In the example, you see a daily overview for January till March with colored columns every time a target is hit. Using just 1 bold color makes it easier to interpret the information. If you would color this visual red and green, the visual gets busy and harder to interpret.
The visual at the top highlights the days when targets were missed, making it easy to spot any patterns. For instance, days 12-17 show a consistent trend of missed targets.
- On the other hand, the second visual focuses on the days when targets were met, maintaining a positive outlook while still displaying missed days in gray.
By using a matrix visual with conditional formatting in Power BI, you can effectively identify patterns and track both missed and met targets. This approach offers a visually appealing and easy-to-interpret way to analyze performance.
Visualizing a monthly fixed target
Using A Power BI Line And Clustered Column Chart Or A Matrix Visual
When visualizing a target monthly, you should check if the target is flexible or fixed throughout the year. For example, some companies have a specific percentage or amount they want to reach every month, regardless of the month. At the end of the year, they want to see an overview of all the months and the targets hit or missed.
In this example, I’ve chosen two different approaches.
For the first visual, I use a matrix visual and apply conditional formatting, similar to the daily target. It’s ideal for company updates or for audiences that don’t require additional details. In Power BI, this visual can also filter other data on the dashboard.
For the second visual, I opted for a line and clustered column chart. I apply conditional formatting to the bars, so their color changes when the target is met. To achieve this, I create a measure that returns a 1 or 0, indicating whether the target is hit, and used this measure for the conditional formatting. Alternatively, you could reverse the logic to highlight the bars when the target is missed, depending on what you want to emphasize.
Using A Line Chart In Power BI For Target Visualization
Next to the line and column chart and the matrix visual a line chart also can be an option to visualize a hit or missed target. Line charts are a great way to compare values with each other and they do not take up a lot of space. However, you should remember that the values are a little more challenging to compare than, for example, in a bar chart (try it yourself by comparing this visual with the one above).
In this example, I chose to show the target as a dashed line and the line chart with the results witha solid line. Additionally, I used conditional formatting on the data labels. Also, the values shown are the distance to the target.
Target visualization for a monthly flexible target
Using A Power BI Line And Clustered Column Chart, A Line Chart Or An Area Chart
With a flexible monthly target, you could also choose a line and clustered column chart. However, visuals can feel crowded very quickly when too much information is provided, for example, when you add (too many) data labels. In the example, I show a chart with and without data labels for the target amount, not the result.
Another option to visualize a flexible target is a line chart. A line takes less space in a visual, leaving more room for data labels without making it look cluttered. But also here, knowing which labels are interesting for your audience is essential. Do they know the target, or is it mentioned in the title somewhere else in the dashboard?
Next to a line chart, an area chart also can be a great visual since the shade (showing the distance to the goal) can be a visual hint.
Power BI AppStore visual examples for target visualization
There are many visuals in the AppStore to visualize a target; for the purpose of this article, I have selected two that I find useful. Remember that most AppStore visuals require (paid) licenses. The great advantage of these visuals is that they offer the opportunity to visualize data in ways that are impossible with the standard visuals in Power BI.
- The first example is a dumbbell column chart from Nova Silva (also available as a bar chart visual). This is a great visual to understand the distance to a (flexible) target. You can change the color of the different data points and the icon. In this case, I chose green and red to indicate a missed or hit target. Since some people cannot distinguish between red and green due to color blindness, I chose an arrow icon instead.
- The second visual is a lipstick chart by Nova Silva, it is also available as a bar chart. This type of chart simplifies the comparison of two values, such as the target and the actual result. With conditional formatting, you can alter the colors shown in the visual.
