Radial gauge charts in Power BI

APPLIES TO: Power BI Desktop Power BI service

A radial gauge chart has a circular arc and shows a single value that measures progress toward a goal or a Key Performance Indicator (KPI). The line (or needle) represents the goal or target value. The shading represents the progress toward that goal. The value inside the arc represents the progress value. Power BI spreads all possible values evenly along the arc, from the minimum (left-most value) to the maximum (right-most value).

In this example, you're a car retailer tracking the sales team's average sales per month. The needle represents a 140 cars sales goal. The minimum possible average sales is 0 and the maximum is 200. The blue shading shows that the team is averaging approximately 120 sales this month. Luckily, there's still another week to reach the goal.

Note

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When to use a radial gauge

Radial gauges are a great choice to:

• Show progress toward a goal.

• Represent a percentile measure, like a KPI.

• Show the health of a single measure.

• Display information you can quickly scan and understand.

Prerequisites

This tutorial uses the Financial sample Excel file.

Power BI Desktop

1. From the upper left section of the menubar, select Get data > Excel workbook.

2. Find your copy of the Financial sample Excel file.

3. Select financials and Sheet1, and select Load.

4. Open the Financial sample Excel file in report view .

5. Select to add a new page.

Power BI service

1. In the lower left corner, select Get data.

2. Under Files, select Get.

3. Select Local File or a OneDrive option.

4. In the Open dialog, select the sample file and select Open.

5. Select Import.

6. Select Go to dashboard, then select the sample.

7. Select to add a new page.

Create a basic radial gauge

Step 1: Create a gauge to track Gross Sales

1. Start on a blank report page

2. From the Fields pane, select Gross Sales.

   

3. Change the aggregation to Average.

   

4. Select the gauge icon to convert the column chart to a gauge chart.

   

   Depending on when you download the Financial Sample file, you may see numbers that don't match these numbers.

   Tip

   By default, Power BI creates a gauge chart where it assumes the current value (in this case, Average of Gross Sales) is at the halfway point on the gauge. Since the Average of Gross Sales value is $182.76K, the start value (Minimum) is set to 0 and the end value (Maximum) is set to double the current value.

Step 3: Set a target value

1. Drag COGS from the Fields pane to the Target value well.

2. Change the aggregation to Average.

   Power BI adds a needle to represent our target value of $145.48K.

   

   Notice that we've exceeded our target.

   Note

   You can also manually enter a target value. See the Use manual format options to set Minimum, Maximum, and Target values section.

Step 4: Set a maximum value

In Step 2, Power BI used the Value field to automatically set minimum and maximum values. What if you want to set your own maximum value? Let's say that, instead of using double the current value as the maximum possible value, you want to set it to the highest Gross Sales number in your dataset.

1. Drag Gross Sales from the Fields pane to the Maximum value well.

2. Change the aggregation to Maximum.

   

   The gauge is redrawn with a new end value, 1.21 million in gross sales.

   

3. Save the report.

Use manual format options to set Minimum, Maximum, and Target values

1. Remove Max of Gross Sales from the Maximum value well.

2. Select the paint brush icon to open the Format pane.

   

3. Expand Gauge axis and enter values for Min and Max.

   

4. Clear the COGS option in the Fields pane to remove the target value.

   

5. When the Target field appears under Gauge axis, enter a value.

   

6. Optionally, continue formatting your gauge chart.

Once you're done with these steps, you'll have a gauge chart that looks something like this:

Next step

• Key Performance Indicator (KPI) visuals

• Visualization types in Power BI

More questions? Try the Power BI Community