4.3 Create a clustered column chart - Video Tutorials & Practice Problems

<v Instructor>In this sub lesson,</v> we're going to create a clustered column chart and we're gonna go through the process of formatting a clustered column chart. Okay, so let's go ahead and get the supporting Power BI Desktop file open for this sub lesson and wait a moment. Okay, so I have my Power BI desktop file open. So what we're gonna do here is we're going to go to the Visualizations pallet here and we're gonna go ahead and find our clustered column chart. So we're gonna find it, it's the third visualization over here. So we'd just go ahead and click on that. And if I just zoom back out, we're gonna see that an empty visualization that is a clustered column chart has been added to the reporting canvas. (keyboard clicking) So the next thing that we're gonna do here is we're just going to take this blank visualization and I'm just going to put it over here in my canvas and just roughly position it like that. We're gonna actually go through and get it placed exactly where we want it in the grids here, in a few moments here by going through the formatting, but for now this is good enough. This is roughly where I want this visualization to land. Okay, so what we're gonna do is move into the next steps and start building data into this visualization. (keyboard clicking) Okay, so we are ready to start putting some data into our visualization here. And for the next little bit, this is pretty much like creating visualizations in any of the reporting tool. We're gonna go through a process of building data in the visualization and using the formatting over here to make the visualization look nicer. And we'll just continuously be bouncing back and forth between the two as we get the visualization just right for our end user, 'cause keeping in mind, we're always trying to tell a story here and we want the story to be compelling and intuitive. So, right now we've decided that clustered column chart is the right visualization for this. But as you progress your storytelling abilities and skills, you may start using different types of visualizations. So let's go ahead and get some data bound into this visual first. (keyboard clicking) So the first thing we're gonna do here is we are going to add the calendar year. So I'm going to open up my Order Date table, go to my Order Date Hierarchy here. And I'm gonna grab the Order Date Year column here. I'm gonna take this and drag it over to the axis and just go ahead and drop it right in there. When I'm doing the dropping, there will be a black dotted line that shows up around the well here. And we're gonna... That will signify that we're ready to actually drop the field into that bucket and it will be accepted. Okay. So that's the first thing we wanna drop. The next thing we do is I'm just gonna close the Order Date table and then gonna move over to my Sales table here. And I am gonna grab my Total Sales and drag it down here to the Values. So once we do that, now we can see, we have our visualization drawing itself out. So we actually have some data bound into our visual and now it is completely being drawn. So now, the next thing we do is go in and actually start formatting this visualization. (keyboard clicking) So we're gonna do here is since our visual has focused on this, it's actually a really important concept, so I just wanna zoom in here. So I'm just gonna zoom in this visual here and we're gonna see we have this gray box that sits around the outside of the visualization here. And that means, this visual is what currently has focus. So what that means is once it has focus, the tabs up on the ribbon will change in context to what is being selected and the formatting that we're gonna go to next here, will be specific to the object that we have selected as well. So the concept of focus is really important because if I actually go ahead and click in the canvas here, now the canvas actually has focus. So you'll notice that the menu-ing at the top is changed. If I go into the formatting, the formatting cards are a little bit different because they're specific to the actual report canvas and not the Visual. So once again, I'm just gonna click on the Visual so that it gets focused back. (keyboard clicking) Okay, so the first thing we're gonna do here is we're going to go to the Format and we're gonna go into the x-axis first to do some formatting here. So the very first thing we're gonna do is change the type from Continuous to Categorical, like so. Then, what we're going to do is we'll go down just a little bit lower here and we're actually gonna turn the title off for the x-axis. So this isn't the title of the actual report but we're actually just gonna turn the title off for the x-axis. So if we go ahead and take a look here, it says, Order Date on the screen, I know it's a little hard to see, it's gonna click this box over and now you're gonna notice the title for the x-axis disappears. (keyboard clicking) The next thing we're gonna do here is we're actually gonna go to the Y card. I'm just going to scroll up here and close up my x-axis card. And this is just a good habit to get into when you're working with the cards is to go into a card, do the configurations you need to do and then close it back up, just so it's easier to see which properties belong to which card. So now I'm gonna open up the y-axis here and what we're gonna do here first is we're going to go and fix the y-axis. So what I'm gonna do here is in the Start and End positions, I'm going to choose the value zero here as my start (keyboard clicking) and in the end, I'm gonna do 90 million. So I'm gonna type in 90, one, two, three, one, two, three, just like that. And now this way, whenever I'm doing interactions with my Visuals, the y-axis will stay fixed and avoid any possible deception with the axes and the sizing of the actual visuals themselves. (keyboard clicking) Okay, so the next thing we're gonna do here is we're just going to go up and close the, oops. I guess we want to go and turn the y-axis title off as well. So let's just go like that. I'm to turn that title off then, I'm going to go up and turn the y-axis card off here. And the next thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna turn the data labels on. So if we take a look at the visualization itself we're not seeing any labels on these reports. So I'm just going to go ahead and click, On. And now you're going to see various labels show up on the visualizations themselves. So what we're gonna do here is open the data labels card up and we're gonna go and change the position of the labels from Auto to Inside end. So we're gonna see here is the labels for some of these visuals actually move to the inside of the visualization at the very end, others where it was too small to be displayed have just been removed completely here. So the next thing we wanna do here is let's just go ahead and add one decimal place in here. We can see that it says, 90 million, 39 million, and 32 million. Let's just go ahead and add a decimal plot into here. So we have a little bit more information on the actual visuals themselves here. (keyboard clicking) Okay, so the visualization starting to look a little bit better here. Let's go in next and we'll go to the general card and here's where we're actually gonna position the visual exactly where we want it on the screen. So I'm gonna change my x-axis to 654. I'm going to change my Y position to 115, like so. I'm going to make the width, 584. So just go 584, go ahead and enter like that. And the height of this visual should be 254. So just like that. So now, I've actually got in control exactly the X and Y positions and how wide and high I wanted this visualization to actually be. (keyboard clicking) The next thing that we're gonna do here is we're gonna go down to the title card, we're actually gonna give our visualization a proper title. So if I take a look in the title text here, it's called Total Sales by Order Date Year. What I wanna do here is I'm just gonna actually go ahead and modify that. We're just gonna call it, Total Sales by Year. So lets just go ahead and remove the Order Date piece here, so we see, Total Sales by Year. What I'm gonna do is just scroll a little further down the page where I'm gonna make the title show up in the center. So I'm gonna change my alignment to the center. The font is a black, which is quite nice here. And the text size is good, I'm gonna leave it at 14. (keyboard clicks) Okay. So those are some of the key things we wanted to go ahead and format on this visual itself. (keyboard clicking) Okay. So the last thing we wanna show you here in the visualization is how to control the sorting. So in the upper right hand corner of the Visualization, we can see these three dots called the ellipsis and it's called More options. I'm just gonna to zoom in here just to show you what this looks like. So we go in here, we can actually click these three little dots and we're gonna get a dialog box here that shows up that gives us some additional configuration properties. I'm just gonna to zoom back out. And what we're gonna here is we're actually gonna influence the sorting order of the actual visualization itself. So what we're gonna do here is we can see that it's sorting descending by default because it's bolded and there's a little yellow bar right next to it. So I'm gonna do is I'm going to then go and take a look at the Sort by. So it's sorting descending by Total Sales. What I wanna do is I want to make this visual sort ascending instead. (keyboard clicking) And then I actually wanna sort it ascending by the Order Date Year. So if I just go in here like so, we can see the visual is now sorted in a different order. So this is really nice. I can control the sorting right at the visualization level and do some different things to that visual based on who the user actually is. (keyboard clicking) Okay, so that's actually good enough for this visual here. So this is walking through, just creating some pretty basic visual here in our clustered column chart and doing some very basic formatting here. As mentioned back in the opening of this lesson here, most of the focus of this set of sub lessons is going to be the things that are unique to Power BI and how Power BI can differentiate itself by adding in some additional features which we're going to talk about here in the next few sub lessons. Okay. So that brings us to the end of sub lesson 3.