Powe R BI

Enhance your
Microsoft Power BI
experience with R
 As a specialized, open source statistical environment, R represents the primary analysis

language for a large number of data scientists and statisticians. In recent years, R has also

undergone a significant shift in user base by gaining wider adoption in the business world.

By extending Power BI with R, Microsoft has opened up numerous opportunities to enhance

your Business Intelligence solutions. In addition to its versatility for data science, R is a great

language and ecosystem for work related to both data visualization and data processing. By

incorporating R into its products, Microsoft has signaled a strong commitment from Microsoft

not only to data science, but the R platform in general.

Microsoft began incorporating R into Power BI in December 2015

and has been adding additional functionality ever since!

Over the following pages, you will explore three ways to use R in Microsoft Power BI:

1. R-powered Custom Visuals utilize pre-built R Custom Visuals

2. R Visuals visualize your data with full control over your R code

3. R Scripts use R in your data preparation

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 R-powered Custom Visuals
R-powered visuals work like any other Power BI Custom Visual. Apart from requiring a local
connection to R from Power BI Desktop, the use of R in Power BIs R-powered visuals is
hidden from users. They allow users to take advantage of R without knowing R or even
seeing any R code.

If you would like to easily use advanced R visualizations, you can use what other developers have created. Examples include
plotting the correlation between different fields, different types of clustering, advanced forecasting, and more.

Developers use the same tools to create R-powered visuals as they do for standard Power BI Custom Visuals. In fact, most of
the code used to create R-powered visuals often will not be R. It will be TypeScript! Anyone who wants to create R-powered
visuals embeds the R code to visualize data within the Custom Visual framework. Additional code for handling data and
format options utilizes TypeScript.

Advantages of using R-powered visuals include:

R-powered visuals are good options for teams who seek a quick visual solution with the same level of ease as any other
Power BI visual.

You can unlock the power of R without knowing R.

Disadvantages of using R-powered visuals include:

Additional customization is limited since you download and import a visual created by another developer. You do not have
direct control over the R code to change the visuals appearance. The R code that drives the visual is bundled with Power BIs
.pbiviz file and is not directly exposed to users. Some visuals may include formatting options in the Format tab, but it is at the
discretion of the R-powered Visual developer.

Unlike native visuals or custom visuals, R-powered visuals display static images. The R-powered visual will interact with other
visuals that you may include on the report page, but no interaction is available in the R-powered visual itself. Features such as
visual highlighting or using slicers on the report canvas will affect the appearance of R-powered visuals, but clicking on R visuals
will not update the R visual or update other visuals on-screen.
Tooltips are not available.

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 Acquiring R-powered visuals

Obtain R-powered visuals from the Office Store as you would with any
Power BI Custom Visual. Navigate to https://store.office.com and find
Power BI in the menu.
All

Excel

OneNote

Outlook

Power BI

PowerPoint

R-powered Visuals will display Built with R with the R logo next to it.
For example, see the difference between the Histogram Chart and the
Correlation Plot. The Histogram Chart is a standard custom visual while
the Correlation Plot is R-powered.

After finding your desired R-powered Visual in the Office Store, select it.
A new page appears that shows an Add button to download the visual.

Visuals also have thumbnails and screenshots that provide

a quick glimpse of what you might see in your reports.
Some visuals even have videos describing their use.

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 Acquiring R-powered visuals ...continued

After you click Add, you should see two options.

PowerBI-visuals-corrplot.1.0.1.0.pbiviz PowerBI-visuals-corrplot.1.0.1.0.pbix

On the left will be an option to Select to Download. After To the right, you may see an option to Try a Sample. If
clicking that, your browser may prompt you to download you select this option, you can download a PBIX report
a PBIVIZ file, or it may automatically start downloading to file, which you can open in Power BI Desktop.
your default download folder.

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 Using R-powered Visuals in Power BI Desktop
To use Power BIs R-powered Visuals in Power BI Desktop, make sure that you have a version of R installed on your
workstation. You can download R from https://www.r-project.org, or you can use Microsoft R Open and download it from
https://mran.microsoft.com/download.

Power BI Desktop should automatically locate your local R installation, but you can be certain by visiting
File gOptions and SettingsgOptionsgR scripting.

In the Visualizations area, click the [] icon and select

Import a custom visual and browse for the pbiviz file.
A new icon will appear under Visualizations that corresponds
to the new R-powered Visual.

Continuing with the Correlation Plot example,

the visual will display on your report after you add data.

There are often numerous format options available with R-powered

visuals. Format options differ for each visual. Some may offer a wealth
of customization while others may offer few options.

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 Using R-powered Visuals in Power BI Service
To use R-powered visuals in Power BI Service at https://www.powerbi.com, you do not need R installed on your local
workstation. Simply import the appropriate pbiviz file in the Visualization area as you do in Desktop. Click the [] icon,
select Import a custom visual, and browse for the pbiviz file.

Building R-powered Visuals

If you are interested in building R-powered Visuals, Building R Powered Custom Visual (corrplot)
see the guidance from Microsofts Custom Visual
1. Creating a new R Powered Custom Visual
development team on GitHub. Navigate to https://
github.com/Microsoft/PowerBI-visuals and find the 2. Starting a simple R Script
section pertaining to Building R-Powered Custom 3. Adding a static property to the property pane
Visuals. As previously mentioned, much of the code
4. Validate input data in R Script
is not R but TypeScript, so skills useful in building
standard Power BI Custom Visuals overlap heavily
with building R-powered Visuals.

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 R Visual
What if you want to do more with R than what the R-powered Visuals allow? In this case, use
the built-in R Visual. If you have experience plotting with R or are inspired by the ability to
expand Power BIs native data visualization capabilities, the R Visual is for you.

Working with the R Visual is a different experience

than using other Power BI visuals. Adding the R
Visual to the report canvas brings up a Script Editor.
After you add data to Values, that data becomes
available to use in your R Visuals script. The R Visual
is completely based on code that you provide. As a
result, there are many opportunities to enrich your
reports with custom-created plots.

If you are seeking inspiration, try starting with Microsofts R

Script Showcase. Navigate to https://community.powerbi.
com/t5/R-Script-Showcase/bd-p/RVisuals and select from the
many sample scripts. Use these scripts as a launchpad for
your own work.

Advantages of using R Visuals include:

Expand Power BIs native capabilities by using existing R code for data visualization.
Unlike with R-powered Visuals you download from the Office Store, you have full control over your R code and final
output with the R Visual.

Disadvantages of using R Visuals include:

As with R-powered visuals, self-coded R visuals display static images. The R Visual will interact with other visuals that you may
include on the report page, but no interaction is available in the R Visual itself. Features such as visual highlighting or using
slicers on the report canvas will affect the appearance of R Visuals, but clicking on R Visuals will not update the R Visual or
update other visuals on-screen.

Tooltips are not available.

The R Visual currently has a limit of 150,000 records. If your dataset includes more data than allowed, you could attempt
alternative ways of visualizing that data.

R Visuals do not display in reports that have been distributed using Publish to Web.

Power BI Service has a limited number of R packages that Microsoft deploys and manages. While you can take advantage of
common visualization packages like ggplot2, you cannot install additional packages for online use like you can when using
Power BI Desktop.

Visuals that take longer to execute than 60 seconds in Power BI Service or 5 minutes in Power BI Desktop will timeout with an error.

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 Using R Visuals in Power BI Desktop
As with R-powered Visuals, Power BI Desktop requires a local version of R to render R Visuals. You can download R from
https://www.r-project.org, or you can use Microsoft R Open and download it from https://mran.microsoft.com/download.
Power BI Desktop should automatically locate your local R installation and any default R development environment. There
is no additional configuration necessary to use a local version of R. For example, you do not need to run a special package
such as Rserve to access R from Power BI. If needed, however, you may configure a setting if you have multiple versions of R
installed locally and want to change which version Power BI uses.

The R Visual appears in the list of Visualizations with a blue R icon.

After adding the R Visual to your report, you should see a message
encouraging you to drag fields into the Values area.

Once you add your data, Power BI prepares a data frame, which is
a two-dimensional R data structure consisting of rows and columns.
In your subsequent code, reference the name of Power BIs initial
data frame, which defaults to dataset automatically.

library(corrplot) As an example, you could add a correlation plot similar to the one
provided by the R-powered Visual of the same name. Provide the code
M <- cor(dataset)
to the R Visual and click the Run Script icon in the top right corner.
corrplot(M) Run Script looks like a play button and appears as the leftmost icon.

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 Using R Visuals in Power BI Desktop ...continued

Here is how everything would

appear together on-screen:

Power BI also provides the option to edit

scripts in a local R integrated development
environment (IDE). Use an IDE such as
RStudio or R Tools for Visual Studio by
selecting the Edit Script in External R IDE
icon in the top right corner. It appears
as an arrow.

Using R Visuals in Power BI Service

Using R Visuals in the cloud with Power BI Service provides some of the same advantages of Power BI Desktop.

To work with R in Power BI Service, users will need a Power BI Pro subscription with a managed tenant. With a Pro license,
R Visuals should render in your reports as well as any dashboard tile to which you have pinned your R Visual.

Unlike with Power BI Desktop, there are some additional limitations when using the R Visual in Power BI Service. The
most noticeable constraint is which R packages are supported. If you use R in Power BI Desktop and need a package that
is not currently available to your workspace, you can simply install it. With Power BI Service, however, there is no way to
install additional packages, but you can request them from the Power BI team for potential future inclusion. Microsoft has
excellent documentation on what packages it supports in Power BI Service. You can find more detail about what packages
are supported by navigating to https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-service-r-packages-support/.

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 R Script
In addition to using R for data visualization, Power BI can execute R scripts for data
processing tasks. Complementing its native Power Query / M functionality, Power BI
includes a Run R Script option. While Power BI natively handles many advanced data
processing tasks, users may still prefer using R Scripts for a few different reasons. These
may include performing advanced analytics with R or overcoming feature gaps such as
Power BIs lack of regular expressions.

Creating R Scripts requires Power BI Desktop. Reports that use R Scripts can be deployed to Power BI Service, but it requires
the additional use of the Power BI Personal Gateway to refresh R Scripts that reference on-premises data sources.

As with R Visuals, a local copy of R is required to use R Scripts.

Advantages of using R Scripts include:

Import data from sources not currently supported by Power BI Desktop.

Enrich data directly on the dataset without having to work outside of Power BI.

Disadvantages of using R Scripts include:

Data must exist as a data frame.

Data source privacy levels must be set to Public.

Scripts that take longer than 30 minutes will time out.

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 Using the R Script to Import or Modify Data
R Script appears as an option in Get Data. While Power BI has many data connectors, R may help overcome some issues
getting data from specific formats. For example, if a user has data stored in format used by statistical applications such as SAS
or SPSS, its not easy to get to that data using native Power BI connectors. It is easy to import it using the R Script option.

After selecting Get Data, simply find the Other section

and connect using the R Script option.

Simply paste a script into the Execute R Script

window and its ready. While this example uses data
from a file, you could use any source that R connects
to such as data online or in a database.

Your scripts could also combine import and additional

data processing using R, or you could simply import
data using R and continue to wrangle it if needed
using Power BI.

After selecting input and viewing the initial preview, you

may Load the data directly as it appears, or you can Edit
and continue to process the data with Power BI.

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Using the R Script to Import or Modify Data ...continued
In addition to loading data, the R Script works downstream. You can load data with Power BIs native connectors to get
data from numerous sources that it would be difficult to obtain with R (such as Microsoft Azure connectors). Once youve
connected to that data source and brought data in, however, you can still enrich that data with R.

R
Run R
In the Transform tab, the Run R Script option allows you to execute scripts on existing queries.
Want to do additional data preparation that is difficult or impossible to do in Power BI (such
as use regular expressions)? Want to perform machine learning tasks such as clustering or
Script classification? With R in Power BI, its all at your fingertips!

Check out BlueGranites Blog for even

READ POST
more ideas on how to get data using R!

Final Thoughts
The abundant ways to use R in Power BI help enhance your data and
empower your visualizations. Whether you have broad experience or
no experience with R, incorporate R into your reports. Whoever your
audience, you can tap into the Power of R in Power BI.

Interested in More?
BlueGranite has a quick tutorial on using both the R Script and R
Visual in Microsoft Power BI. Check it out for free online to work
through the hands-on example!

VIEW TUTORIAL