Power BI Reports serve several purposes, but they often consumed by larger audiences. As a result, we often strive to provide a quality viewing experience for our report consumers. Most people jump right in with the creation of their reports and neglect how the report is going to look and feel. This is common as we want to get to the good stuff as quickly as we can. But as they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Taking some time to setup a theme file can really speed up the development process.
Why Are Themes Important?
So before you say that his is a lot of work to just make reports look pretty, it is really more than that. The look and feel of your reports are critical – especially in a self service environment. The look and feel of a report can be a subtle signal to the consumer of who created the report and the reliability of the data.
The Reliability of Poorly Branded Reports
I often work with customers who have created reports that are consumed by large audiences that use color palettes and fonts that do not align with the company branding. This is common with the first several reports that are created. Eventually, someone gets ahold of a branding guide and starts using elements in their reports. Updating the bars, colors, or lines to match the corporate branding helps add legitimacy to the report. Little by little, more corporate branding is added until the theme is fleshed out.
But what happened to those original reports? The ones that used no theme or some of the theme? They often remain neglected. New employees receive links to these reports and often ask themselves “Is this information accurate?” Eventually they will trust the data, but they spend weeks asking if it is correct.
It seems silly, but the branding can instill confidence in your reports.
Managing Branding Manually Hurts in the Long Run
Another common challenge I have identified is inconsistency between visualizations. Actually, it is difficult to even do within a single visualization. When you look at a simple column chart, you would think it is really easy to keep your fonts consistent. Here is a breakdown of where you can make changes to the fonts for a column chart:
- On the X Axis
- Value labels
- X Axis titles
- On the Y Axis
- Value labels
- Y Axis title
- Legend
- Small Multiple Grids
- Column data labels (can be different for each series)
- Visual title
- Tooltip text
Add it up and you have a total of nine places to update the font so it is consistent! That is unbelievable! And if I have to do this for multiple visualizations, this can become a lot to manage. And without a consistent theme, I have to keep making these changes. So how do I prevent this from happening to me in the future?
Make Themes Work for You
Like I mentioned before, a little planning can go a long way. Here are my steps to help simplify the process.
Step 1 – Find the brand identity documentation for Your organization
Hands down this is sometimes the hardest part of the process. If you work at a company that has a strong brand identity, this should not be difficult. There is likely a brand identity guide or a PowerPoint template that has all of the details you need such as the color HEX or RGB codes and fonts located in the margins of the slides.
If you cannot find a brand identity guide or PowerPoint that has that information, I always recommend becoming friends with someone in your marketing department. They have this information readily available for their projects. It might cost you a few drinks at Happy Hour on Friday night, but it is a lot easier than having to get this information manually.
If you are not as lucky, you can still get this information. It might be a little more difficult, but you can find it embedded inside other resources. You can usually find a PowerPoint template that has the basic colors and fonts identified. If you select a text box in a presentation, you will likely find the font used for the majority of the presentation. You can also click on the font colors to see if they are the ones your organization uses. If they are there, select a color one at a time and then click on more colors. Doing so will bring up the RGB and HEX color codes for the selected color. I like to copy the HEX colors as they are easier and paste them into an Excel spreadsheet with the color name so I can quickly reference them.
Still cannot find your colors? Not to worry. Find a digital copy of your company’s logo and add it to a blank PowerPoint presentation. From there, use the eyedropper function under the font color dropdown and use it to extract the key colors to your organization’s logo. Then follow the steps above to extract the color codes.
Step 2 – Build out your Power BI Theme
With the RGB or HEX color codes in hand, it is time to update your Power BI theme. Go to the View tab in Power BI desktop and click on the drop down to the right of the themes.
From here, you can start to build out your theme. Start by adding a name for your theme. From there, update the color palette. Simply add the RGB or HEX codes you identified into each of the positions. Keep in mind that the order of your colors will match the order they are selected for legends. If you have a particular combination of 2-3 colors you like to use a lot, make sure they sit in the first three positions so they can easily be leveraged.
Next, you will want to address the text in the report. By default, Power BI is set to use a blend of Segoe UI and DIN fonts. The list of fonts is limited to ensure they stay web safe and visible in the Power BI service. Your first choice might not be in the list, but most organizations have a secondary font that is for such an application. You can also set default sizes and colors for generic text, titles, cards/KPIs, and tab headers.
Step 3 – Tweak your Power BI Theme until it is set
Once you have the basics in place, you can start making other adjustments to your theme. Other items you might choose to customize include visual backgrounds, borders, report backgrounds, and other adjustments. You have a lot of flexibility to make adjustments that meet the needs of your reports, so play around with them. Whatever you do, try as hard as you can to avoid the formatting pane for your visuals.
Understand that this process can take a little time, so do not be afraid to spend more time than expected. The more customizations are set in the theme, the less customizations you will have to apply to visualizations when you build your reports!
Step 4 – Export your Power BI Theme
When you are comfortable with the theme you have developed, it is time to export your theme so it can be used with other reports.
In Power BI Desktop, go back to the View tab and click on the dropdown next to themes. Select Save Current Theme and save it to your OneDrive. This way it will be automatically backed up in the event of a computer emergency.
Step 5 – Deploy your new Power BI Theme
This is where things can get a little hairy. You have a few options for deploying your theme to others within your organization.
1). You can distribute the Power BI Theme file you created. Users can import the theme every time they want to use it when building a report.
2). You can create a Power BI Report using the theme. Leave it blank and save it as a Power BI Template (*.PBIT) file and distribute it.
Both solutions work, but they feel a little clunky. For me, I have found most of the report creators are quite savvy with theme files, so it is not a big deal. However, if you are interested in building a strong citizen developer community, this could prove to be challenging.
Best practices/considerations for building Power BI Themes.
When you build out your theme, keep these best practices and considerations in mind to help drive the best experience for your report consumers.
Check your theme against multiple visualizations
The temptation is always there – if you only use bar and column charts you only check those visuals. When building out your theme, make sure you try all of the different types of visualizations to make sure your theme works across all available visualizations.
Consider a style guide for reports
If you followed the first best practice, this should be an easy one. Take the report file you used to test the theme and create a sample report. From here, add in key information such as how to label data, types of charts, and other organizational standards that have been set forth by your team. This will help content creators have a roadmap for building quality reports.
Consider color contrast to make reports accessible to all
This might be a bigger concern if you do not have an existing style guide from marketing, but is always an important consideration. Content is difficult to consume if creators use poor color selections. Even worse, it causes strain for users with visual disabilities who have trouble viewing the content. Use a tool like WebAIM’s Contrast Checker to ensure the best experience for all report consumers.
Conclusion
It is a lot of front end work, but I promise you that you will love how easy it is to deploy reports when you have a custom theme. Take the time to build it out right and you will never have to mess with updating individual visuals ever again.
Are you using themes already? Do you have some tips/tricks on how to use them? How are you distributing themes? Leave a comment below and let me know!