Custom Visuals Development Discussion topics

Unit testing a custom visual: how do you test update() and formatting settings?

jubinsoni — Sun, 01 Nov 2026 19:25:52 GMT

Hi everyone,

I would like to hear how others structure automated tests for a custom visual built with the pbiviz tools. My current idea is to keep the rendering logic in plain functions that take a view model, so they can be tested without the Power BI host, and to test the update() path with a mocked data view.

// viewModel.ts - pure function, easy to test export function toViewModel(categories: string[], values: number[]) { return categories.map((c, i) => ({ category: c, value: values[i] ?? 0 })); } // viewModel.spec.ts (Jest) import { toViewModel } from "./viewModel"; test("pads missing values with zero", () => { expect(toViewModel(["a", "b"], [1])).toEqual([ { category: "a", value: 1 }, { category: "b", value: 0 }, ]); });

Questions:

Which test setup do you use for the visual itself (Jest with jsdom, Karma, the powerbi-visuals-utils-testutils helpers), and what has been painful?
How do you build realistic data views for tests, including empty data, many categories and null values?
Do you test the formatting settings model (cards and slices) separately, and how do you check that the format pane maps to the capabilities file?

Thanks in advance.

Trying to enable write-back in my custom visual, but stuck on getting the user’s token.

tharunkumarRTK — Sat, 31 Oct 2026 04:44:22 GMT

Hi everyone,

I’ve built a Power BI custom visual called Smart Table. It adds a lot of things the standard table visual can’t do.

Smart Table:
- Excel-style filter menu in every column header
- Column headers driven by a DAX measure, recomputing as the user filters
- Column groups with no extra tables

You can read about it here: Blog link

The next feature I’m working on is write-back to a Fabric Warehouse using Fabric User Data Functions. The goal is Excel-style editing: users click into cells, change values across many rows, and save everything in one go, straight from the report.

Where I’m stuck: I can’t get the signed-in user’s bearer token inside the visual, so I can’t call the UDF on their behalf.

What I’ve done so far:

Enabled the tenant setting AppSource Custom Visuals SSO in the Fabric admin portal (under Power BI visuals).
Added the AADAuthentication privilege to capabilities.json and used API version 5.9.1 or higher.
Uploaded the .pbiviz as an organizational visual in our tenant.

acquireAADToken still returns nothing.

My questions:

Does the custom visual Authentication API only work for visuals published to Microsoft AppSource? The docs seem to say private and organizational visuals aren’t supported, apart from debug mode. If so, that effectively limits it to Microsoft partners, since AppSource publishing needs a verified Partner Center account.
If that’s the case, has anyone found a supported way to do per-user authenticated write-back from a custom visual without publishing to AppSource?

Why I’m not just using translytical task flows: I know a data function button can call a UDF as the signed-in user. But it’s built around updating one row at a time, or packing several values into one delimited string through a measure. Both work, but neither is intuitive for business users who want to edit a grid the way they would in Excel. That’s the gap I want Smart Table to fill.

Any pointers, workarounds, or confirmation from someone who’s been down this road would be much appreciated. And if you try Smart Table, I’d love your feedback!

Thanks!

Gráfico de barras agrupadas

MariaPereira1 — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 12:39:57 GMT

Boa tarde,
no dashboard que estou a desenvolver no BI Desktop criei um gráfico de barras agrupadas em que as cores das barras são aplicadas através de uma formula DAX.
Contudo, quando faço a publicação para o BI Service esse mesmo gráfico aparece com as cores de origem do BI e não com as que estão definidas no desktop.
Quando tento entrar pelo fabric e alterar diretamente, não assume a formula dax, isto é não acontece nada.
alguém sabe o porquê deste comportamento e como solucionar?
Obrigada

Bug: Legend changes to "(Blank)" when Initial Scroll Position is set to End

eloibf — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 07:33:43 GMT

Hi,

I believe I have found a bug related to the new Initial Scroll Position setting on the X-axis.

Environment

Power BI Desktop 2.158.1177.0 (64-bit)
Power BI Service (app.powerbi.com)

Steps to reproduce

Create a stacked column chart.
Add a categorical field to the Legend (e.g. A, B, C, D).
Configure the visual so that a horizontal scrollbar appears (for example, by increasing the Minimum category width).
Set X-axis > Presentation > Initial Scroll Position = End.
Verify that the legend displays correctly.
Go to Data colors or Labels and modify one of the legend categories.
The legend immediately becomes "(Blank)" and the category names are no longer recognized.

Expected behavior

The legend should continue showing the actual category names.
It should remain possible to customize colors and formatting for each legend category.

Actual behavior

The legend changes to "(Blank)".
The categories disappear from the formatting pane.
Individual color customization is no longer available.
The visual itself still renders correctly, but any formatting option related to the legend field appears to be broken (data colors, labels, category-specific formatting, etc.).

Additional observations

I can reproduce the issue in a brand new PBIX file using a simple sample dataset.
The issue only occurs when Initial Scroll Position = End.
If Initial Scroll Position = Start, everything works correctly.
The problem is triggered after changing a category color or modifying category-specific formatting.
The issue is reproducible in both Power BI Desktop and the Power BI Service.

Has anyone else experienced this issue?

Thanks.

Bug: Legend changes to "(Blank)" when Initial Scroll Position is set to End

eloibf — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 07:01:43 GMT

Hi,

I believe I have found a bug related to the new Initial Scroll Position setting on the X-axis.

Environment

Power BI Desktop 2.158.1177.0 (64-bit)
Power BI Service (app.powerbi.com)

Steps to reproduce

Create a stacked column chart.
Add a categorical field to the Legend (e.g. A, B, C, D).
Configure the visual so that a horizontal scrollbar appears (for example, by increasing the Minimum category width).
Set X-axis > Presentation > Initial Scroll Position = End.
Verify that the legend displays correctly.
Go to Data colors or Labels and modify one of the legend categories.
The legend immediately becomes "(Blank)" and the category names are no longer recognized.

Expected behavior

The legend should continue showing the actual category names.
It should remain possible to customize colors and formatting for each legend category.

Actual behavior

The legend changes to "(Blank)".
The categories disappear from the formatting pane.
Individual color customization is no longer available.
The visual itself still renders correctly, but any formatting option related to the legend field appears to be broken (data colors, labels, category-specific formatting, etc.).

Additional observations

I can reproduce the issue in a brand new PBIX file using a simple sample dataset.
The issue only occurs when Initial Scroll Position = End.
If Initial Scroll Position = Start, everything works correctly.
The problem is triggered after changing a category color or modifying category-specific formatting.
The issue is reproducible in both Power BI Desktop and the Power BI Service.

Has anyone else experienced this issue?

Thanks.

Dynamic axis label: real name vs. "Anonymous" per user (RLS)

luzrueda — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 12:49:15 GMT

I have Row Level Security (RLS) set up on my fact table, based on a mapping table (Company ↔ Email). When a user logs in with their email, RLS restricts them to see only rows belonging to their own company.

However, I also have a separate Ranking visual where I want all companies to be visible (for benchmarking purposes), but:

The logged-in user's own company should show its real name
All other companies should show as "Anonymous" (or similar)

Since RLS filters out other companies' data entirely at the model level, I created a duplicated fact table with no relationship to the RLS table, so all companies remain visible in this ranking view. This part works.

My problem: Since axis fields in a chart must be columns (not measures), I can't directly put an IF(company = current user's company, real name, "Anonymous") measure on the axis.

As a workaround, I tried showing a numeric/letter index/key on the axis, with a small separate table showing "which key = which company" for the logged-in user only. But my client finds this confusing and wants something simpler, ideally the real company name directly on the axis for their own company, and "Anonymous" for the rest.

Question: Is there a way to dynamically display the correct label (real name vs. "Anonymous") directly on a chart axis, based on USERPRINCIPALNAME(), without using a measure on the axis? Or is there a better pattern for this "self visible, others anonymized" ranking scenario?

I'm using DAX measures like:

'RLS_Firma'[E-Mail] = USERPRINCIPALNAME()

Any guidance on a cleaner approach (calculated column with row-level dynamic logic, field parameters, dynamic format strings, or a different table design) would be greatly appreciated.

Horizontal Conditional Formatting in a Matrix

mathmontibeler — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 15:49:14 GMT

Good afternoon, everyone!

I'm having some difficulty implementing conditional formatting (heat map style) horizontally in a Power BI matrix.

By default, Power BI seems to calculate the heat map by column, but I need to clearly highlight when a specific product's volume (number of opinions) is increasing or decreasing over time.

My matrix is structured as follows:

Rows: Product
Columns: Month/Year
Values: Number of Opinions

What I need is a horizontal heat map, meaning I want to compare each product's values across time.

In this scenario, I'd like the color intensity to be calculated within each row, so that it's easy to see whether the volume for a given product is trending upward or downward throughout the months. However, the standard conditional formatting appears to calculate the color scale across the entire column, comparing products against each other for a given month.

Is there a way to make the color scale be calculated per row (product) instead of per column (month)?

Thank you in advance for any suggestions!

Custom visuals - pdf export

analyst85 — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 09:18:08 GMT

Hello, we recently created custom visuals that we've made available in our organisational visuals section. The problem we have is that they do not appear when exporting published reports to pdf, is this because visuals are required to be certified by Microsoft?

We only want these visuals to be internal and not made available externally, and I understand that certification means publishing them to the Appsource and removing them from Organisational visuals, which wouldn't work for us.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Free flowing text/date options

janani80 — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 13:21:50 GMT

I want to build a dashboard where users can type department name and manager name manually and the table will populate all the colleagues falling under the manager in the mentioned department. I tried using power app dataverse but I dont have a dedicated environment. Is there any other option in Power BI desktop or Power BI app where I can create these textboxes and click enter will populate the required data?

What CRM Features Are Most Useful for Small Business Sales Management?

saleoid — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 12:34:57 GMT

Hi everyone,

I’m exploring different CRM solutions that can help small businesses manage their sales activities and customer relationships more efficiently.

As a business grows, managing leads, customer information, follow-ups, sales opportunities, and communication across different tools can become difficult. A CRM can help bring these activities into one centralized system.

I’m currently looking at Saleoid CRM and would like to learn from the community about the CRM features that provide the most value for small businesses.

Some key areas I’m interested in include:

Managing leads and customer contacts

Tracking sales opportunities and pipelines

Automating follow-ups and repetitive tasks

Keeping customer information organized

Monitoring sales activities and performance

Generating reports for better decision-making

Integrating CRM data with other business tools

For those using CRM software, which features have made the biggest difference in managing sales and customer relationships?

Are there any CRM integrations, automation workflows, or best practices you would recommend for a growing small business?

Ordering in Microsoft's Gantt Visual

NarekGrigoryan — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 17:01:28 GMT

I am building a gantt chart using Microsoft's gantt visual extension and I came accross the following issue.

I use both task and parent fields when building the visual and I needed to establish a cusom order of displaying the gantt bars. I achieved that by creating sorting columns and sorting the data in data view by those.

However when I publish the report into Power BI online services, the ordering breaks. I wonder if anyone had similar issue previously and if it was possible to solve it.

Thanks in advance

Best User-Friendly Horizontal Bar Graph Drill-Down Dashboard Methodology

reikerpg — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 23:12:54 GMT

How would I conceptually define the following in Power BI? Say I have two columns in a dataset. I would like to see a horizontal bar graph of number of rows sorted by the first column. When I click on a bar, I would like all the bar shapes to remain the same length; the bar I select should then act as if the legend parameter were the second column while greying out all the other bars. This should then revert back to a blank legend when I deselect a bar. I am open to other ideas if they work better.

Microsoft Sankey Visual: How can I prevent destination nodes being automatically reordered?

Silsil — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 15:40:04 GMT

Hi all,

I'm using the Microsoft Sankey visual in Power BI Desktop and would like to keep the node order consistent between the left and right sides of the chart.

My source data is structured as:

From To Value

Apples	Apples	45
Apples	Pears	7
Pears	Fig	26
Fig	Cherry	115
Cherry	Cherry	13

Intended category order:

Apple
Pear
Fig
Cherry

However, the Sankey visual automatically changes the order of the destination nodes presumably to reduce flow crossings.

I have already tried:

Creating a numeric sort column (1 = Severe, 2 = Moderate, 3 = Mild, 4 = Normal renal function)
Using Sort by Column on the destination field (To)
Creating a separate Category/SortOrder lookup table
Sorting both the source data and lookup table correctly
Disabling Auto links reorder in the visual settings

Power BI accepts the sort order without errors, but the Sankey visual continues to reorder the destination nodes.

Manually dragging is not ideal, as the freehand movement does not allow precision. My questions are:

Does the Microsoft Sankey visual support a fixed destination node order?
Is there a supported way to force the same category order on both sides of the Sankey

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Claendar - view of titles

UlaTomczyk — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 12:10:47 GMT

hello,

We are wondering as your lucky customer DPD Poland why you complicate view of calendar? it is completly not usefull in our opinion, please concider to replace it as pragmatic one or rather hide it in general. Trust me, it is stone in a shoe to read data and be well informed.

I'm staying at your disposal,

Urszula Tomczyk

OPS Dirtector

DPD Polska

Deneb/vega on power bi

Serizawa — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 11:21:34 GMT

Hello,

I am building a radar chart in Power BI using Deneb with Vega. The chart displays seven indicators:

Precarious work rate
AHT stability
AHT entry rate
AHT consumption
AJT entry rate
AJT consumption
Window consumption

I created a disconnected configuration table in DAX:

t_radar_Indicateurs =
DATATABLE(
"Indicateur", STRING,
"Ordre", INTEGER,
"Seuil", DOUBLE,
"Sens", STRING,
{
{"Taux de précaires", 1, 0.10, "MAX"},
{"Stab AHT", 2, 0.85, "MIN"},
{"Saisie AHT", 3, 0.92, "MIN"},
{"Consommation AHT", 4, 0.75, "MIN"},
{"Taux de saisie AJT", 5, 0.92, "MIN"},
{"Consommation AJT", 6, 0.90, "MIN"},
{"Tx consommation Fenêtres", 7, 0.92, "MIN"}
}
)

This table contains four columns:

Indicateur
Ordre
Seuil
Sens

The actual rate is returned by a separate measure using SELECTEDVALUE and SWITCH, depending on the selected indicator.

The Deneb dataset therefore receives fields such as:

Indicateur
Ordre
Sens
Taux
Objectifs

My Vega specification converts decimal percentage values such as 0.92 into 92, and keeps values already expressed as percentages.

The radial scale is defined as:

{
"name": "r",
"type": "linear",
"domain": [0, 100],
"range": [0, {"signal": "radius"}]
}

I currently have two main issues.

1. One indicator displays 176.7%

The “AHT entry rate” indicator is displayed as 176.7%.

In the Vega code, the displayed value comes directly from datum.TauxNum, so Vega does not seem to create this value by itself. It appears to be receiving either 1.767 or 176.7 from Power BI.

However, this indicator is supposed to represent a rate, and I am not sure whether this result is legitimate or caused by:

duplicate rows in the numerator;
the use of COUNT instead of DISTINCTCOUNT;
different filter contexts between numerator and denominator;
an incorrect relationship in the Power BI model;
a measure removing filters with ALL or REMOVEFILTERS.

Because the Vega radial domain stops at 100, the 176.7% point is also drawn outside the radar.

What would be the best way to diagnose whether the issue comes from the DAX measure, the model relationships, or the Vega percentage conversion?

2. Several radars show identical values for different entities

I display several radar charts for different operational entities. Some of them show exactly the same values even though the entities should have different results.

The entity filter uses:

't_pbi_dash'[entite_realisatrice]

The indicator configuration table is disconnected, which I understand is normal because it is only used to select the appropriate measure through SWITCH.

My concern is that one or more measures selected by the SWITCH may not preserve the entity filter context.

The measures used include:

_tx_precaire
_tx_stabiliteAHT_All
_tx_saisie_sur_AHT
_tx_pris_AHT
_tx_prises_sur_ajt
_Tx_fenêtres_prises

Could identical radars be caused by:

missing relationships between the business tables and the entity table;
inactive or incorrect relationships;
measures using columns from different entity tables;
ALL, REMOVEFILTERS or similar functions inside the measures;
the disconnected radar table;
the way Deneb groups the dataset?

What debugging measures or temporary table visual would you recommend to verify the filter context received by each measure for each entity?

I can provide the complete Vega specification and the DAX measures if needed.

How to detect drill mode

alexpokerface — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 09:50:48 GMT

Hi,

a quick question:

In the Power BI custom visuals API, is there any way to detect whether the visual is currently in drill mode (as opposed to normal selection mode)?

Thanks and kind regards,

Alex

Auto-select a slicer value based on another slicer's selection (button-style slicers)

AlonCarmel — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 10:35:48 GMT

Hi all,

I have two button-style slicers on my report page:

Year slicer: 2025 / 2026 (single-select)
Quarter slicer: Q1 / Q2 / Q3 / Q4 (single-select)

The Quarter slicer already cross-filters correctly based on the Year selection — for example, when I select 2026, only Q1 shows up as an available option (since that's the only quarter with data so far for 2026). When I select 2025, all four quarters (Q1–Q4) are available, as expected.

The problem: when a user switches the Year slicer to 2026, Q1 becomes the only available button, but it is not automatically selected/highlighted. The user still has to manually click Q1 every time they switch to 2026.

What I want: when Year = 2026 is selected, I want the Quarter slicer to automatically select Q1 by default — without requiring a manual click.

Box and Whisker visual

sfarooq3 — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 14:00:09 GMT

I want to display faculty metrics within each department (such as number of publications) using the box and whisker diagram. There is a search bar where I can search departments within the organization and the Box and Whisker by MAQ Software visual would update the box diagram. I would to further drill this down by searching and comparing faculty within a department. I cannot do this by simply adding a faculty name slicer as the box and whisker diagram would disappear when any one person is selected on the slicer. I want to compare different faculty members within the same deparmtment. Could this possibly be done using this visual, or is there another visual I can use in Power BI to make similar comparisons? Thanks!

Cannot Add Synoptic Panel by OKVIZ (Version 2.5.7.0)

Roya-Daemi — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 09:48:57 GMT

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to add the Synoptic Panel by OKVIZ visual in Power BI, but I get the following message:

The report already contains a copy of this visual version 2.5.7.0. Do you want to update this visual to version 2.5.7.0?

When I click Update, I get another error saying:

Something went wrong

and the visual is not added to the report.

What's confusing is that I get the same message even when I create a brand-new Power BI report. I can't find the visual anywhere in the report or in the Visualizations pane, so there doesn't seem to be anything I can remove and reinstall.

Has anyone experienced this issue before? Any suggestions on how to fix it?

Thanks in advance for your help

How to Keep X-axis showing all days (1–31) of current month when data only goes up to day 25?

ENF27 — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 07:14:02 GMT

Hi all,

My line chart shows daily customers for the current month, but data only loads up to the 25th. I want the X-axis to always show the full month (1–31), with the line simply ending at day 25.

My current workaround is including last month (M-1) to fill the axis, but I'd prefer not to depend on that.

Questions:

How can I force the X-axis to show all days of the current month even when the fact table has no rows for the remaining days?
Should the axis use my Calendar table instead of the fact table's date column?
How do I keep the line from dropping to zero on empty days so it just ends at day 25?

Thanks!