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Writer's pictureDhruvin Shah

Create Power BI Visual Using R Script Visual - Bar Chart

Overview

Power BI provides the flexibility to create your own custom visuals using R script visual. Before you dive in I request you to refer the following articles to start with R-script visuals.

In this article, we will learn a step-by-step procedure to create R-script visual in Power BI.

I believe you have installed R Engine and R Studio in your environment. You must have an active Power BI Pro license to publish R script visual. If you have Power BI free license, you are not able to publish the R script visual.


I have uploaded Sample data file and report file in GitHub. You can directly download it using the following URL,

Now, let’s get started!

  • Click on R-script visual from the visualization pane. It will open a pop up for “Enable script visuals”. Click on Enable button.







  • It will create a blank R-script visual as shown in the following figure.









  • Drag the fields, from the table. In our example, we want to prepare a report using Month, US and London column. So, I drag three columns.

If you observe, it has created some auto-generated code in the script editor. Now, we will open the same code in R Studio.

To open the code in R studio, click on the icon (Edit script in external R IDE).







  • It will open R Studio with predefined code.

  • Optional If your Power BI code doesn’t reflect in R Studio automatically, then you need to go to the following path to open your R script file in R Studio.

Path: C:\Users\Dhruvin Shah\REditorWrapper_58dc934e-160d-427c-8d2b-4d7f8abc23bd


Here, REditorWrapper folder with the latest timestamp covers your R file. Open it in R Studio.










Follow the below step only if your R file does not open in R Studio automatically.







  • Now, let’s add code in R Studio and check the result.

Add following line of code in R Studio.


library( ggplot2 )  

$monthname = c(dataset$Month) dataset$Month  

dataset$Month <-factor(dataset$Month,  

levels = c("January", "February", "March", "April", "May", "June",  "July", "August", "September",

  "October", "November", "December"))  

ggplot(data=dataset, aes(x=Month, y=US )) +  

geom_bar(stat="identity")  









  • Here, we are using a ggplot2 library to generate the R visual. So you need to install it first.

  • To install ggplot2 package open packages from R studio, click on install, search for ggplot2 and click on Install.









  • Once this library  is installed, we will run the code we have applied in Step 5. 

  • To run the code, select all the code first ( Refer numeral 1 from Figure below) and click on run button. ( Refer numeral 2 from Figure below). Select the Plot tab ( Refer numeral 3 from Figure below) to see the final result. (Refer numeral 4 from Figure below)








  • You will find the end result in the plots option of R studio. (Refer numeral 4 from Figure above)

  • Now, we will copy the same code from R Studio and paste it to Power BI R script visual.







  • Select code and click on Run button. ( Refer numeral 1 and 2 from Figure below ) The visual will look like the following image. (Refer numeral 3 from the following Figure).








  • Now, let’s publish the report to your Power BI Pro account. R script visual will not work with Power BI free license.

Conclusion:

This is how you can start the custom development with R script visual in Power BI. I hope you love this article. Stay connected with me for amazing tutorials.

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