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Designed Power BI reports, with and without agents

Techniques proven in Power BI Desktop, notes on PBIR and AI agents, and free reports to take apart.

Six page thumbnails wired to one gold 95 % setting in the Colis Pro settings panel

Let users set the thresholds: a settings panel in Power BI

Move thresholds out of DAX and into a settings panel: a parameter table, one measure with a default, a synced slicer and a hidden page. The whole report follows.

A visual.json with six deliberate mistakes, each marked with a cross, and the validator answering: succeeded, 0 errors, 0 warnings

PBIR & agents9 min read

The PBIR validator passes, Desktop disagrees: 7 traps

Microsoft's PBIR validator checks names and the schema, never the render. Seven things it lets through that Power BI Desktop draws differently, each proven by a render.

Report labels in French next to their English versions, with an FR / EN switch and the DAX measure that picks the language

Design techniques9 min read

A bilingual Power BI report with one slicer

Switch a whole Power BI report between French and English with one slicer: a language table, one measure per text, FORMAT with a culture, and one row per language for chart categories.

An exploded view of a report page: the background image at the bottom, cards, slicers and buttons in the middle, charts and the table on top

Design techniques7 min read

347 visuals, only 9 charts: anatomy of a designed Power BI report

An X-ray of a designed Power BI report: 347 visuals, 167 of them cards and only 9 charts. Where the design of a Power BI report really lives, region by region.

A map of France drawn as a scatter chart: the plot area is the map image, bounded by longitude -8.2 to 11.9 and latitude 41.0 to 51.5, with city bubbles in gold

Design techniques9 min read

A Power BI map without Azure Maps: a scatter chart over an image

Replace Azure Maps with a native scatter chart: longitude on X, latitude on Y, axes bounded to a map image set as the plot area background.

The Colis Pro activity list: four card-like rows that are really a table with one SVG image column, next to its formatting properties

Design techniques9 min read

Power BI table rows as cards: one SVG measure per row

A native table row can't have rounded corners or a highlight. One DAX measure draws an SVG tile per row, and the table shows only that image column.

The DAX that encodes % before # in an SVG data URI, next to a ring that is lost when only # is encoded and drawn when % is encoded first

Design techniques9 min read

SVG measures in Power BI cards: rings, pills and a timeline

Draw rings, status pills, gauges and a shipment timeline with DAX, as SVG in a card's image, and avoid the encoding trap that wipes out every colour.

The Overview page background with its first card and notch measured, next to the layout JSON that draws them

Design techniques9 min read

Design the page, not the visuals: Power BI page backgrounds

Shadows, gradients, a notch and photos drawn into one 2x image under transparent visuals: how Colis Pro designs each Power BI page, with or without code.

A terminal running the validate, reload and screenshot-all commands, next to captures of round 1, round 20 and the final render

PBIR & agents9 min read

Give your AI agent eyes: the Power BI Desktop Bridge from a Mac

An AI agent on a Mac drives Power BI Desktop in a Windows VM with the Desktop Bridge: write, validate, reload, capture every page, read the PNGs, fix.

A unit chart: 77 Desktop renders read by the agent, 35 design calls by a human, 75 of 75 calibration checks passing

Field notes9 min read

Reviewing is cheap, deciding is the job: how an AI agent built a Power BI report

An AI agent built Colis Pro, a full Power BI report, in 77 rounds. Where the human time went: the brief, calibrated data, contradictions and choices.

Two sketches joined by an arrow labelled decide what to keep: a conversation with a chart on the left, a report page on the right

Field notes8 min read

Claude Dashboards and Power BI: explore in Claude, deliver in Power BI

Claude Dashboards answers data questions in a chat. Power BI runs governed reports. What each one does, how they fit, and how an agent bridges the two.

The file tree of the Colis Pro project: 8 pages, 347 visual.json files, 30 TMDL tables with 465 measures

PBIR & agents9 min read

PBIP, PBIR and TMDL explained: inside a Power BI project

What is inside a Power BI project folder, file by file, from a real 347-visual report: PBIR for the report, TMDL for the model, and why Git and agents care.

The Colis Pro Overview page next to the contents of the free download: the .pbip, 8 pages, 347 visuals, 465 measures, data, backgrounds, FR and EN

Free reports8 min read

Colis Pro: a free designed Power BI report you can download

Download Colis Pro, a free designed Power BI report built with an AI agent: 5 pages, 2 panels, 347 visuals, French and English. What's inside, how to open it.