Power View Design Experience

Important

Please visit the most up-to-date Power View documentation on office.microsoft.com. Power View is now a feature of Microsoft Excel 2013, and is part of the Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services add-in for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and 2013 Enterprise Editions.

This is a quick overview of the design environment of Power View, a feature of SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services Add-in for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Edition, and how you can use it to create interactive views of data from data models based on PowerPivot workbooks published in a PowerPivot Gallery, or tabular models deployed to SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services (SSAS) instances.

Elements of the Power View design experience.

Crescent design experience

  1. Refresh/Cancel button

  2. Arrange: Bring forward or send backward

  3. Fit to Window

  4. Reading and full-screen modes

  5. Ribbon

  6. Views pane

  7. Default title text box

  8. Sort options

  9. View in edit mode

  10. Visualization filter and popout icons

  11. Filters area

  12. Row label field icons

  13. Help icon

  14. Measure (Sigma ∑) symbols

  15. Fields section

  16. Field list

  17. Layout section

In this article

Creating a Report

Power View design environment

View

Ribbons

Field list

Filters Area

Title

Reading and Full-Screen modes

Sorting

Reports with multiple views

Items in the view

Expanding a visualization

Creating a report

To create a Power View report, you launch Power View from a PowerPivot (XLSX), shared data source (RSDS), or BISM connection file (BISM) file in SharePoint Server 2010. Models can be in a standard SharePoint Server 2010 document library or in a PowerPivot gallery. The Power View design environment opens, and you see the view on which to place your visualizations.

Read more about Creating, Saving, Exporting, and Printing Power View Reports.

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Power View design environment

View

The first thing to notice is that the Power View view is a fixed size, similar to a Microsoft Office PowerPoint slide, unlike Microsoft Excel and Report Builder. Also as with a PowerPoint slide, a Power View report can have many views, all based on the same model, so you do not need to fit all of your report on a single view.

By default, the view fits to the window and resizes as more you open more panes. For example, if you show the Filters Area, the view shrinks to fit the remaining window. You can disable this behavior. Then you can scroll to view the different parts of the view.

  • To stop the view from resizing to fit the window, clear the Fit to Window button.

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Ribbons

Across the top is a ribbon similar to that in Microsoft Office. The Home, Design, and Layout tabs contain buttons and menus for the most common tasks. The icons on the Design and Layout tabs change depending on the visualization you have selected. For example, if you select a chart, on the Layout tab you might have options to modify the chart title and legend, and synchronize the axes.

When an item on the ribbon is disabled (grayed out), it means that action isn’t available for whatever you have selected in the view. For example, if a table has no measures, you cannot convert it to a chart, so all the chart icons will be disabled on the Design tab.

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Field list

The pane to the right of the view is the field list.

The fields section in the top half displays the tables and fields in the data model that your Power View report is based on. These are the fields you have available to put in your report.

The lower half is the layout section. It displays field layout options for the visualization that you have selected in the view.

Fields in the fields section

Click a field and it is added to the view. If a visualization is selected in the view, then the new field is added to that visualization. If not, then the new field starts a new visualization in the view.

Or drag a field to the view. You can start a new table or add it to an existing table.

Table names You can expand the table name in the fields section to see the fields in that table.

Tip

If you click the table name itself, Power View adds the table’s default fields to the view. The default fields are defined in the data model that your report is based on.

Row label fields are the fields that are marked with the blue and white icon.

A field marked with this icon exhibits “row label” behavior, and is one or more of the following:

  • A row identifier field.

  • A field identified as the default label.

  • A field identified as the default image.

  • A field that contains an actual image (not a URL to an image).

  • A field with Keep Unique Rows set.

All of these fields are defined in the data model on which your report is based. This is a useful distinction because a row label field might contain duplicate values, even though the duplicates are not the same thing. For example, your company might have two Bob Smiths, each with a unique employee ID. If the row label field is grouped on the Employee ID field, then the two Bob Smiths will be listed as separate people, rather than being grouped together.

For more information, see Configure Table Behavior Properties for Power View Reports (SSAS Tabular).

Measures in a table are the fields marked with a Sigma ∑ symbol. A measure is a set of numeric values that indicate the size, quantity, scale, importance, or extent of something. Measures are defined in the data model that your report is based on. You need at least one measure to create a chart data visualization.

You can also use a non-measure field as a measure. For example, if you have a Rating field with values from 1 to 5, you could add it to a table and then set it to Average. For more information about changing non-measure fields as measures, see Measure and Non-Measure Fields in Power View.

For more information about creating data visualizations in Power View, see Data Visualizations in Power View.

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Layout section

Elements in the layout section vary depending on what kind of visualization you have selected in the view. For example, if you have selected a chart, you’ll see fields in the Value, Axis, and Series boxes. Here are some actions you can take in the layout section:

  • Drag fields from the fields section of the field list to the boxes in the layout section. This adds them to the selected visualization in the view.

  • Delete fields from the layout section; this does not delete them from the model.

  • Change the aggregate of a measure in the layout section. By default, most measures are added using Sum aggregate.

    Click the arrow next to the field name in the Values box, and then click Average, Minimum, Maximum, or Count.

  • Change a field that is not a measure into a measure field. For more information, see Measure and Non-Measure Fields in Power View.

  • Create a tile container. For example, if you have selected a chart, you can create tiles by dragging a field to the Tile by box, or create vertical or horizontal multiples by dragging a field to one of those boxes in the layout section.

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Filters Area

You can filter an entire view, or an individual visualization. The Filters Area has two modes – basic and advanced -- to provide flexibility in filtering.

For more information about filtering, see Filtering, Highlighting, and Slicers in Power View.

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Title

Power View reports have a placeholder text box for the title already. You can format the text in the text box. For more information, see “Can I format the text in my report?” in Power View FAQ, Troubleshooting, Tips, and Tricks.

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Reading and full-screen modes

The Reading Mode and Full Screen icons on the Home ribbon display your report in a larger format. In both modes, the ribbon and field list are hidden, so the visualizations in the view have much more room. The Filters Area retains the state it had in design mode – if it is visible in design mode, then it is visible in reading or full-screen mode, too.

In reading and full-screen modes, you can move between the views in your report by using the arrow keys or clicking the multi-view icon in the lower left. You can interact with the report visualizations just as you can in design mode. However, you cannot edit the report – for example, you cannot move, resize, or delete visualizations, or copy, reorder, or delete views.

In reading mode, the report takes up the whole browser. In full-screen mode, the report takes up the whole screen, as the name suggests, similar to a PowerPoint slide show. This is the mode to use when presenting with Power View.

Press ESC to exit full-screen mode and go back to the mode you were last in, whether design or reading mode.

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Sorting

You can sort data in tables, matrices, and bar and column charts. You can sort the individual charts within small multiples. You can sort measures, such as Sales Amount, and non-measures, such as Name.

For more information, see Sorting in Power View.

Reports with multiple views

Reports can have multiple views. All the views are based on the same model. They have their own filters. When you move from one view to another, the filter state of the previous view is preserved. You can duplicate views; the duplicate has the filters already.

For more information about multiple views, see Reports with Multiple Views in Power View.

Overlapping and inset items on top of each other

Items in the view can overlap or completely cover each other. For example, you could inset a smaller chart on a larger one. To enhance the design experience, you can bring objects forward or all the way to the front, or backward or to the back.

If you add another visualization when the view is already full, Power View places it on top of existing items in the view.

For more Power View design tips and tricks, see Power View FAQ, Troubleshooting, Tips, and Tricks.

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Expanding a visualization

All the visualizations have a ‘popout’ button in the upper-right corner. When you click it, the visualization appears to expand to fill the entire Power View view, or if you’re in reading or full-screen mode, to fill the entire mode. This is only temporary. The rest of the report is still underneath, and when you click the popout icon again, the visualization returns to its spot in the report.

Note

Tiles do not have a popout button.

Popout button expands a visualization

Popout icon

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See Also

Concepts

Power View (SSRS)

Data Visualizations in Power View