My Practical Charts course is tool agnostic, that is, it doesn’t assume that any particular dataviz software product (Excel, Tableau, Google Sheets, etc.) is being used. There are three reasons for this:

The guidelines for making design choices like choosing a chart type or choosing a color palette are the same, regardless of which dataviz software product is being used.
All the chart types and techniques in Practical Charts are pretty standard and can be implemented in just about any modern dataviz software product.
If a workshop participant is unsure of how to create anything that I show in the course, high-quality tutorials for just about every major dataviz software product are just a Google search or AI prompt away.

You might have noticed that, in those last two reasons, I referred to just about any major data visualization software product. The “just about” qualifier is there because of one unfortunate exception:

Power BI.

Power BI can, of course, handle basic bar charts, line charts, pie charts and the like, but, for anything that’s even slightly more “advanced,” or to make even small chart formatting adjustments, there’s a risk that it will be surprisingly complicated—or, in some cases, impossible—to do.

I didn’t realize how limited Power BI’s visualization features were until I watched these fantastic YouTube videos from Power BI guru Greg Deckler, in which he tries to recreate some of the more “advanced” charts from Practical Charts in Power BI. Even though many people wouldn’t consider these chart types and techniques to be particularly “advanced” and they’re easy to create in other major dataviz software products, Greg (who’s literally written books on Power BI) often has to resort to heroic amounts of hacking and custom coding to pull them off, or in some cases, make not-insignificant compromises in the final chart design.

I have no particular beef with Microsoft, and I know a number of people who work there, all of whom are lovely. For whatever reason, though, they made some truly baffling choices when they designed the native visuals for Power BI back in the day, and many of those baffling choices and feature omissions are still in the product. Yes, custom visuals can be used to overcome these limitations, but many of my clients are hesitant to go that route because of legitimate concerns around complexity and maintainability.

Participants in my workshops who are familiar with Power BI sometimes spot these limitations during or after the workshop, and a few have asked me if I’d be open to creating a “Power BI version” of Practical Charts that shows how to create the best charts that can be created within Power BI’s limitations.

I don’t think that this would be helpful, though—even for Power BI users—for a few reasons:

When I designed the Practical Charts course, I cut every single chart type and technique that wasn’t absolutely necessary for creating “everyday” charts. Cutting any more (for example, cutting whatever can’t be implemented easily in Power BI’s native visuals), would leave “gaps” in the course, i.e., common situations and challenges for which the course would offer no guidance.
I’d be forced to recommend chart types and techniques that would not be good choices in certain situations simply because the good choices in those situations aren’t easily doable in Power BI. Basically, workshop participants would learn how to create charts that are needlessly hard to read, unobvious, or potentially misleading.
Even if a particular chart type or technique can’t be implemented easily in Power BI’s native visuals, it’s still important for chart creators to know that that chart type or technique exists. Why? Because, if Power BI prevents a dashboard designer from using the best chart type or technique in a particular situation, the designer will understand why their users don’t respond well to their dashboard, i.e., that the problem is with the tool, not with their design choices.
Most Power BI users also use other tools with more capable visualization features, such as Excel or Tableau, to create charts for presentation slides, written reports, etc. In those situations, they need to be aware of all essential chart types and techniques—not just those that happen to be easily done in Power BI—in order to create effective charts.

Having said all this, I don’t want to make Power BI sound worse than it is. Millions of dashboards have been built on it and those dashboards are getting used (well, some fraction of them, anyway), so it can’t be that bad. Like I said, it handles basic chart types and techniques just fine; it’s just that when it comes to fine-tuning charts with small (but impactful) adjustments, it can get needlessly complicated or impossible to make those adjustments. Power BI also seems to be excellent when it comes to back-end data processing; it’s just the front-end visuals that seem to be lacking.

So, what should you do if you’re a Power BI user? Still take Practical Charts, obviously 😊. I don’t think it makes sense to not want to learn about essential chart types and techniques simply because a Power BI product manager didn’t think to support them back in the day. That would be like learning to write using only certain letters of the alphabet because some of the keys on your keyboard happen to be broken.

What should you do if you need to use a chart type or technique that you saw in Practical Charts but that you can’t pull off fully (or at all) in Power BI? Based on what you learn in the course, you’ll be well-positioned to choose the “least bad” alternative that can be created in Power BI and, if that alternative doesn’t go over well with users, at least you’ll understand why and you’ll know what a better alternative would have been.

BTW, if anyone on the Power BI team happens to read this and wants to know what I consider to be the most basic missing features in the product’s visuals, I’m happy to chat.

BTBTW, I recently updated the Practical Charts “course preview” video! Thinking of taking Practical Charts on demand, live online, or in-person at your location? Check out the course preview video on YouTube (13 mins) for a detailed overview what you’ll learn and what you’ll be able to do after the course!