Power BI can't show basic text results via the R script visual ?

[Anonymous]

Can the R custom visual not show text results? 

I just used the summary(dataset) function. And in R this properly shows the min/max/median/etc. but when I attempt the same script in R within Power BI I get the following error message:

"No image was created. The R code didn't result in a creation of any visuals. Make sure your R script results in a plot to the R default device."

I've correctly run R scripts via Power BI before, so I don't think my setup is incorrect. It seems odd though that Power BI can't display any/all output from an R script. This is frustrating, especially when it comes to troubleshooting.

Am I not looking at this correctly? Or is there something I'm missing?

Any thoughts/suggestions would help.

Thanks!

Jonathan 

[danielPrieto · Accepted solution]

Hi @Anonymous

As you say R script visual only show image but a possible way to display the result of summary function is to use the grid.table function of the gridExtra package . I make an example with the iris dataset. See image below.

Surely this does not cover all your needs but I hope it will help you.

Regards,

Dani

[dannn777]

i believe all R output should be of image datatype rather than string.. hence "visual"

[Anonymous]

@dannn777,

Right. But how often is something displayed that is not a visual? The Card "visual" is a good example of this where it's a single number that has to be shown. 

I have linear regression model in R that is providing me with a single forecast that I would like to display in Power BI. But I can't seem to find a way to do it since Power BI can only display R visuals rather than the results of the R script itself.

Jonathan 

[Anonymous]

Just submitted idea here: https://ideas.powerbi.com/forums/265200-power-bi-ideas/suggestions/34937713-change-the-r-visual-to-s...

Jonathan 

[Anonymous]

That's a good idea. I share your pain when I sometimes want to show a text value directly from R. I think you can get around this right now if you bake your R script into a custom visual. I haven't done it before but people make it sound pretty doable

[Anonymous]

@Anonymous,
Thanks for the head's up. I'll keep looking around, but I haven't seen any examples. I've tried using simple summary(dataframe) or str(dataframe) functions and came up with errors in Power BI, but perhaps I'm misunderstanding you.

Jonathan 

[Anonymous]

@Anonymous

I don't think the plain R visual will display anything other than a plot as of now. In order to get a visual to display text from R such as summary(dataframe), I think you would have to create your own visual. Check this out real quick and you may have some luck

Creating a custom visual

Parker