Power BI

Patterns can also be specific to reports. These are usually a collection of different elements and properties on a report that don’t necessarily come from a data model, or are specific to a reporting requirement. Consider the following example of a simple pattern for a left-hand title area on a report, which you can copy and re-use modularly across multiple report templates.

al if you have fixed styles or functionalities that apply to many reports (like a centralized portal that you link to from a help button).

The card visual formatting, which is a set of properties for the visual container and elements to look the way they do. This might be saved as a theme.json file, or applied with the Format painter tool in Power BI Desktop from an existing visual template. You then combine one or more visuals together in a single report page to fully cover the necessary questions the user might have about their data.

Report page templates are designed to address a set of specific questions or data needs

However, there are limited options to apply these visuals in new reports as templates. For instance, you can apply container formatting (such as for backgrounds, titles, and so on) with either the format painter or Power BI theme.json files. However, it is only possible to replace fields from your template visual if you use on-object interaction. An example of this is shown below, where a visual template results in a “grey box of death” because the MTD Sales field cannot be found. The user can select an alternative field, like Sales Amount or Sales CY – PY to swap, and retain the visual formatting (to thus use the template).