Level 6 · Custom visuals from AppSource, safely

Power BI’s built-in visuals cover most needs: bars and columns in clustered, stacked and 100% stacked forms, lines, areas, combos, pies and donuts, maps, tables, cards, KPIs, gauges, slicers. When they don’t, there are custom visuals: hundreds of extra charts built by Microsoft, software vendors and the community.

What you are working in

This level is a quiz on this site; Power BI Desktop runs only on Windows. To add a custom visual in Power BI Desktop: in the Visualizations pane, click the … (More options) icon under the visual icons → Get more visuals. A window opens with AppSource, Microsoft’s marketplace; filter by category or by Power BI Certified, pick a visual, and Add. It appears as a new icon in the pane for this report. Import a visual from a file in the same menu loads a .pbiviz file instead.

What custom visuals are good for

• Charts Power BI doesn’t have: bullet charts for actual against target, Sankey diagrams for flows, word clouds for text, Gantt charts for plans.
• Better interaction: button-style slicers, richer tooltips, timeline slicers.
• Full control: visuals like Deneb let you describe a chart in a specification language (Vega-Lite) and draw almost anything.

What to check before you add one

1. Certification. A certified visual has passed Microsoft’s code review, uses only the supported APIs, and does not access external services or resources. It shows a certification badge on AppSource. Certified visuals also work where uncertified ones don’t: export to PowerPoint and email subscriptions.
2. Data privacy. A visual receives the rows it draws. Read its description and privacy notes: does it send data anywhere? Customer names, reviews or prices leaving the company is a policy question, not a design one.
3. Performance. Every visual on a page renders separately; some custom ones are slow with many rows. Test the page with Optimize → Performance analyzer before and after adding it.
4. Support and updates. Who maintains it? A visual that breaks after an update, or whose vendor disappears, breaks your report.
5. Licensing. Some visuals are free with paid features; check what your use needs.

How companies control it

Power BI admins decide in the Admin portal → Tenant settings whether people may use visuals from AppSource at all, and whether only certified ones are allowed. They can also publish organizational visuals (Admin portal → Organizational visuals): a short list of vetted visuals that appears for everyone under My organization in the Get more visuals window. That is the route for a visual the business needs but that isn’t certified.

Common mistakes

• Equating “on AppSource” with “approved”. Certified and uncertified visuals are listed together.
• Adding a custom visual for a chart Power BI already has. Built-in visuals are faster, supported and work everywhere.
• Testing with ten rows. Check speed and appearance with the real data volume.