Creating JSON themes: Doing it the easy way.

[Freshboards]

In my years as a Power BI consultant I always struggle to create custom themes for my clients. I can find a couple of reasons for this:

1. In order to perfect the theme, you have to play around with tedious JSON code.

2. There is no way to easily see the result of changing your JSON code. You have to save it, go into your Power BI report and import the JSON theme to see the effect on all the visuals.

3. To properly test what effect the JSON has on the visuals, you have to make a new report with dummy data first and import all possible visuals into that report.

In order to make this whole process a bit more easy, I thought creating and sharing the following to the community:

1. A complete (but relatively small) JSON file which have all necessary components in there. Most of the time it's not needed to manually create properties for all visuals, as it's possible to speak to all visuals using the (*) parameter. Using this will make a much more compact JSON. Some visuals, however, do need their own 'treatment', such as KPI, Card & Gauge visuals. These and other components which have very specific JSON properties, such as buttons or page/bookmark navigators will be also configured in the JSON. In the end, every Power BI visualization & component will be defined with as little JSON code as possible.

2. A test report, filled with every possible visualization and component (buttons, navigators, shapes) in Power BI. This testreport will include dummy data as well and can be used to easily test your JSON.

You probably think by now: "Has this guy never heard of https://themes.powerbi.tips/properties?" I do, actually! And I think it's a great tool. However, some things are definitely missing, such as the capability to import and edit your already configured JSON file, to configure not so common objects such as the new navigators, create a general theme background image, see a live preview and more. So I will definitely look into creating such an improved version of this tool myself. However, for now I think this will add some value already. Do you think so too? Please let me know! If there is some demand I will definitely build something.

[Anonymous]

Hi @Freshboards ,

Thanks for sharing. 

You could reply yourself to share the information  again, and then accept your reply as solution. An answered thread is searched more easily than an open one. Others will learn more from your sharing.

Best Regards

Community Support Team _ Polly

If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[Greg_Deckler · Accepted solution]

@Freshboards You may want to check out this blog article I did on theme generators. There are far more powerful tools out there than powerbi.tips.

Power BI Theme Generators - Microsoft Power BI Community

[LukeHe]

What would be better is some proper documentation rather than a bunch of disparate sites that look very questionable