Introduction
For the month of May, we are remaking Tableau visualizations with Power BI. Although the visuals made by the two tools may be similar, the calculations and formatting options are a bit different. This makes some things easier in one tool compared to the other. If you use both Power BI and Tableau, feel free to try to create the visuals in both tools and let us know if you thought one was easer or offered an advantage for the particular use case.
For this first Tableau remake, we are going to remake a Tableau Workout Wednesday exercise from earlier this year. The Tableau Workout Wednesday for 2022 Week 10 was a sales budget “burndown” chart. I see burndown charts most often in project planning, where you look at how many tasks, features, or hours are remaining at periodic intervals throughout a project or sprint. But you can use them to look at budget usage/burndown as well.
In this visual, we know the total budget for the time period shown, and we are subtracting the cumulative budget used from the total budget to show remaining budget. It is common to include a reference line in a burndown chart to show what it would look like if you used the budget evenly across the time period. To make this visual in Power BI, we need to write some DAX calculations and make use of some lesser known formatting options.
Requirements
- Retrieve the data from data.world.
- Create DAX measures for the following:
- Total Budget: The sum of the budget column across all time.
- Total Budget Used: The cumulative sum of the budget column up to the selected date. Budget in future dates from today should not be included in Total Budget Used. Total Budget should show the same number for all future dates.
- Remaining Budget: The remaining amount after subtracting the Total Budget Used from the Total Budget.
- Estimated Budget: The amount of budget remaining if budget used were spread evenly across the selected timeframe.
- Difference from Estimated Budget: The difference between Remaining Budget and Estimated Budget for the selected timeframe.
- Create a line chart that displays Remaining Budget and Estimated Budget grouped by month.
- Use different line styles and different colors for the two lines.
- Add a vertical reference line that indicates the current day (the point beyond which the Remaining Budget amount should remain constant). Label the line “Future” and shade the area to the right of the line.
- Set the x-axis labels to show the abbreviated month name and the year. Do not allow the labels to be rotated – you do not have to show a label for every month.
- Filter the line chart to show the date range from 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2023.
- Ensure that the following four measures are included in the tooltip in this order: Remaining Budget, Estimated Budget, Difference from Estimated Budget, and Total Budget Used.
- Display the current Remaining Budget value at the top of the page.
Dataset
This challenge uses data provided on data.world specifically for this exercise. You can use the data.world connector in Power BI (recommended) or download the Excel file to your local machine. You will need to log in to data.world to retrieve the data, but accounts are free.
Share
After you finish your workout, share on Twitter using the hashtags #WOW2022 and #PowerBI, and tag @JSBaucke, @MMarie, @shan_gsd, @KerryKolosko, and @NerdyWithData. Also make sure to fill out the Submission Tracker so that we can count you as a participant this week in order to track our participation throughout the year.