Custom visuals have come a long way since they were announced as part of the GA of Power BI back in July 2015. From best visual contest, to a new and improved version of the platform and the developer tools, to the recent announcement for the new custom visuals community site, it was always about the community.
The community is the force that drives the success of custom visuals. Developers have contributed more and more custom visuals to the visuals gallery, which now has more than 80 visuals! Report creators embraced custom visuals and made some awesome reports. Also, your focus and passion has helped to improve the platform and make custom visuals what they are today. It was heartwarming to see how much you care and enjoy custom visuals! Thank you!
Custom visuals in the Office store
We are very excited to announce, that as of today, custom visuals are available to discover and download within the Office store.
What is the Office store? Simply put – it is the place to find apps (known as add-ins) for your Office 365 software.
The Office Store connects millions of users of Office 365 to solutions that help them get work done more efficiently, more insightfully or more beautifully than before.
What is changing?
Power BI is now a product in the Office store, listing all Power BI custom visuals. Searching and filtering by categories are available for easy navigation.
The custom visuals gallery is moving to the Office store. Many visuals are already listed in the store, and we are working to onboard the rest of the visuals within a few weeks. The Office store will be the place to discover custom visuals and download them, as well as the place for developers to submit and manage their custom visuals in the store.
The visuals gallery will still be available until we finish moving all of the visuals to the Office store, however new submissions will only go to the Office store. All custom visuals that were ever downloaded from the gallery will continue to work as usual even after the gallery will be deprecated.
Better for users
If you use custom visuals, here is what the integration with the Office store will mean to you.
- An easy navigation experience using categories and search. We created a set of categories just for custom visuals.
- A details page for each visual with high quality screenshots and videos to introduce you to the visual.
- Reviews and ratings are available as a feedback channel to the developer and also a way for you to help others gauge quality of a visual.
For more information about how to discover and use custom visuals in the office store, see Download and use custom visuals from the Office store.
Better for developers
For you custom visual developers, you will be able to use the Office developer center which will bring the following.
- Submit your custom visuals in an easy to use web portal.
- Manage your custom visual submissions.
- Track how many people visited your custom visual page in the store and downloaded it.
- Get direct feedback from users through the review system to help you improve the visual.
In addition to that, you will get broader exposure to a larger user base in the Office store.
For more information about how to submit visuals to the Office store, see Publish custom visuals to the Office store.