Hey,
this is not exacty a data story, as the data does not tell a story, or at least not what we consider being a data story most of the time.
Instead it reflects what can be done using a few things possible in Power BI in glue these things together. I try to spent a whole day every quarter where I try to use different features for something completely different, broadening my understanding about what's possible besides a bar chart.
This birthday card is the result of some of these days, be assured that this is not the onl outcome 😉
Basically, there are four visuals, layered on top of each other, some bookmark magic and there is the card.
The "simple" barchart
is a set of 5 polygons (the yellow square) stored inside an Azure SQL database as a geometry data type, also known as WKT (Well Known Text). These objects are visualized flawless by the custom visual Icon Map created by James Dales. I'm using a more recent version of the visual as the one available for download in the visual store. This version can be downloaded from here: http://icon-map.com/
With a little imagination the columns form office buildings and the yellow square a place, or something similar, and voila - a floorplan visualized by a custom visual stored inside an Azure SQL database.
The funny faces
can be used to watch the different pages of this birthday card.
These are "normal" buttons using the conditional text feature of the button.
A simple measue leveraging the UNICHAR DAX function and there is the emoticon, here is the simple function that reveals the secret of this great community:
vizAid sign slgreetings = unichar(129309)
This little guy
brings you this page:
Once again, a geometry data type is used to determine the position of a star (a little more mundane, a trackable device) is positioned on a floor. The more romantic ones here are thinking stars are dancing, but the naked truth is this. The motion (some consider motion as one of the newer visaul aesthetics) is just an svg transformation. The not so romantic ones may think that motion on a 2d plane (our displays for example) could be used to visualize a duration, the number of devices at one place or other boring stuff.
The funny little rectangles that are frantically dancing are just little markers trying to attract your attention, @Greg_Deckler has a great quick measure how this should be used: https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Quick-Measures-Gallery/SVG-Animation-Bouncing-Blinking-Stephen-Few-...
This guy
unhides my favorite custom visual when I want to visualize unstructured data like text in combination with links and other stuff, the Card browser custom visual. Here my PowerAutomate flow was capturing tweets (I did not expose all the information capture) and putting this into the same Azure SQL database. To all the people who tweeted on the 23rd of July using these both word birthday and powerbi and are not reading their greeting - my apologies, your greetings have become a victim of the PowerAutomate twitter connector limitations. I'm pretty sure it has not been my fault 😉
Done, have fun
Tom
Please be aware that the PowerAutomate flow is no longer active.
