Cards in Power Bi

Lets talk about cards in Power Bi

Card visuals are ideal for displaying single values, such as totals or first entries, which provide a quick snapshot of key metrics. While building interactive dashboards , cards play a major role in summarizing what the key insights are.

Power Bi offers different kinds of cards to chose from , each has its own characteristics to serve different purposes. Lets dive deep into each of them.

1. Card

You can find the “Card” visual on the ‘Build visual’ under “Visualisations” Pane. The basic card option let you chose only one measure for the field .

• One field (usually a measure) → displays one number
• You can’t drag multiple fields into it

Lets try and understand this with an example , suppose you want a card to give you the measure : Median yearly salary
For this :

1. On the “Fields” field drag and drop the appropriate column (here yearly_salary) here we need median so set the aggregation to median .
2. For formatting your card visual , go to the “Format Visual” pane and under ‘Visual’ you have your options to format and customize the call out value and the category label to your liking . You can change font ,size , color and even set the display units (here its thousands) and decimal points.
3. General formatting still holds for cards as well . You can change effects like border for cards and more.

The basic Card visual doesn’t do much , if you need to show multiple values you need to use one of these : 1. Multi-row card : Shows multiple fields or measures stacked in a list. 2. Multiple single Cards : Use multiple basic cards together, each value gets its own card. 3. The “New Card” visual (if you’re on the updated interface) : Supports multiple auto-generated measures/layouts.

2. New Card Visual

If you are on the updated interface you will be able to find the “new card” visual . Using this let’s create a card visual for displaying the company job count and unique locations, filter to show only the top 3 companies by job count. As opposed to the basic card visual , the new card visual let’s you display multiple measures in a single card , we use the “Value” field for it and the “Categories” field is used to set the text label for the metric (basically grouping/splitting).

For this :

1. Get the “New Card” visual from the visualisations pane
2. Drag the drop the required data fields to the “Value” field - Job count and Job location aggregated to count (distinct)
3. In the “Categories” field drag and drop the Company_name field , to group the card measures.
4. In the Filter pane , add the “Top -N” filter from the filter type and set it to 3 by job count, so that you get the top 3 companies , their job count and location (distinct) on the card.

3. Multi-Row Card

A Multi-row card is essentially a compact, card-style list (a lightweight table) that displays multiple fields for multiple items (rows) in the current filter context. Let’s make a multi-row card  to display key metrics about job postings for each quarter, including: Hourly Median Salary, Job Count, and Unique Locations. This will help provide a quick overview of the job market.

Think of it as a stacked group of small cards where each row represents one category (e.g.,Job posting date , drilled to quarters) and each field shows a labeled value for that row (e.g., Hourly Median Salary, Job Count, Unique Locations).

For this :

1. Get the “Multi -Row Card” .
2. The order in which you drag in your data fields to the “Fields” is important here . The FIRST field you place acts like the row label , and the rest as the column labels .So here we need the row to be the job_posted_date , drilled to the quarters , so drag that in first
3. Followed by hourly_salary aggregated to median , job Count (you get job count in all the exercises mentioned by aggregating the job_title by count) amd job_locations aggregated to count(distinct) - make sure you rename the fields for more readability.
4. Like in every other card visual , you can format the category labels and call out values.

4. Gauge Card

Now this one is different and definitely more interesting. The Gauge visualisation. A Gauge in Power BI is a single-metric dial that shows where a value sits between a minimum and maximum, plus an optional target. It’s great for quickly showing performance vs a goal or the data spread (e.g., “median hourly salary vs min/max/average”).

When do we use it particularly?

• To show one key metric and how it compares to a range (min → max).

• To highlight progress toward a goal (use Target).

• Not for detailed comparisons or many categories — use a card/matrix for that.

Now lets try and replicate this Gauge for displaying the median hourly salary for remote jobs in the United States, with a bold and blue callout value

Let’s get to know the fields of this visualisation better and how to replicate the above Gauge :

• Value — the main metric shown on the dial (the callout number in the center).
  here: hourly_salary aggregated as Median → shows the median hourly salary.

• Minimum — the start of the gauge scale (left end of the arc).
  here: hourly_salary aggregated as Min → the smallest observed salary.

• Maximum — the end of the gauge scale (right end of the arc).
  here: hourly_salary aggregated as Max → the largest observed salary.

• Target — a marker on the arc that indicates a goal or benchmark.
  here: hourly_salary aggregated as Average → shows where the mean sits relative to median/min/max.

Now that the main part is done :

1. Make sure to rename the fields to your preference.
2. Go to the Filters pane and apply a filter on job_country to only include “United States” and on job_work_from_home to only include “True”.
3. Change the callout value color to blue and make it bold under Format visual
4. Under Format visual -General , make sure you add your title to the Gauge.

And voilà ! Now you know your cards !!