This custom PowerBI visual is designed to allow users to visualise non-overlapping patient data.
Originally developed for use in an NHS mental health trust, uses included inpatient visits, mental health clusters and primary mental health diagnosis.
The PowerBI visual itself can be downloaded from the dist/ folder. Save the .pbix file in there to any location on your computer.
The PowerBI custom visual can then be imported into PowerBI using the option ‘more visuals’ –> ‘From my files’.
Example datasets are given in sample_datasets/
A csv template is given in template_dataset/
An example PowerBI file is available in pbi_example_file/
The visual should appear in your list of available visuals. Click on the icon to add a blank visual to the page. With the visual selected, drag all fields from your dataset into your ‘values’ section.
| File | Function |
|---|---|
| script.r | The main R script that ingests the data then creates and saves the plotly visual. Additional settings specified in settings.ts and capabilities.json will need to be referenced in here to have an effect. |
| pbiviz.json | Version numbers are updated in here. |
| capabilities.json | Used when adding additional options to the PowerBI visualisation customisation panel |
| src/settings.ts | Used when adding additional options to the PowerBI visualisation customisation panel |
| r_files/flatten_HTML.r | Helper functions generated automatically by PBI viz tools when using the RHTML template. References by script.r |
A full tutorial will be written up at a later date.
In the meantime, details on setting up the required packages were obtained from the following tutorials:
It’s important to note that (as of June 2023) there is an error with the
most recent version of powerbi-visuals-tools has a bug that means that
compiled visuals will just render as blank.
Instead, when you reach this step in the tutorial, use the following to get the most recent working version:
npm i -g powerbi-visuals-tools@4.0.5
The following page should be consulted to see which versions of R packages are currently suppported on the PowerBI service. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/connect-data/service-r-packages-support
The file script.R is the key file that controls the plotting logic.
This plotly code could be extracted and reused in R markdown or an R Shiny dashboard. Alternatively, it could be ported into the Python version of Plotly with some changes to the syntax.
A full tutorial will follow, but for now this excellent and in-depth tutorial from Stéphane Laurent will get you started: https://laustep.github.io/stlahblog/posts/pbiviz.html#adding-formatting-objects