Introduction To Power BI Visuals - Part Two (Stacked Column Chart)

Overview

Here, I am writing an introduction series for all Power BI visuals so the end user or beginner will get a basic idea how visuals work. During this series of Power BI visuals, we will learn about each OOTB Power BI visuals step by step.

Before you start with this tutorial I request that you look at my previous article.

• Introduction to Power BI Visual Part 1

In this article, we will talk about this one visual provided by Power BI Desktop OOTB.

Stacked Column Chart

There will be a question in your mind about what’s the difference between a stacked bar chart and stacked column chart.

Ans
In a stacked bar chart, Axis is represented on Y-axis and value on X-axis and in case of the stacked column chart, it’s the complete opposite. In the stacked column chart, Axis is represented on X-axis and the data is represented on Y-axis.

We can find this visual in OOTB Power BI. Please refer the below screenshot for it.

Let’s get started!

Stacked Column Chart

Stacked column chart looks like this.

 

This chart shows values (sum, count etc.) on Y-axis and group by data on the X-axis. This chart is opposite of Stacked Column chart which we have discussed in my previous article.

Now, let’s understand each term in detail.

We should set the following parameters to create a Stacked column chart.

Ex
We will learn this chart using Sales data which has the following columns. The data will look like this.

 

I want to prepare a chart for total sales done by a company by region and item. I need total sales by region and when I drill down through the region, it will show me sales data by item. Here, these are the most important properties to create this chart.

Axis

We want sales data by region, so I will drag region first.

I want to drill down the data by item wise so, I will add an item to the Axis field.

 

Values

Now, I want to show the number of items sold in each region. So, I will add Units field in my values field.

 

After adding Axis and Values, my chart will look like this.

 

 

Legend

Legend field is also a very useful feature provided by Staked column chart.

Suppose, sometimes we need to represent our bar in a different color with different categories.

Ex
I want my first level drill down categorized with item count. So, I will select “Item” in Category field.

 

Tooltip

When you need to achieve functionality on hover of bar chart tooltip is very useful. So, I will drag both the fields in my Stacked column chart. 

 

Ex
On hover of the bar chart, I want to show total and unit cost. After setting all these above properties, our chart will look like this.

Now, let’s talk about design elements

It provides the following functionality.

 

Please refer my previous article for design elements.

All design elements work same as mentioned in the previous article.

Conclusion

This is how we can set stacked column chart in Power BI.

In the next part, we will talk about Clustered bar chart and Clustered Column Chart in a deep manner.

Hope you loved this article!