Power BI Challenge 6 - Insurance Complaints Entry from Greg

Here’s Greg’s entry for Power BI Challenge 6. @Greg, feel free to add other details of your work.

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Here is the link to the report:

And here’s how Greg described it:

I started out on this challenge with more of an experimental sandbox mindframe, and never quite made it to a fully prepared report submission, but there were many areas I wanted to explore, which are below the “liked” notes:

What I liked:

  • Using PowerPoint for all backgrounds
  • Using the “Top N and Others” technique for pie and doughnut charts
    • I really like pie charts and doughnut charts, as I find them very useful and easy to communicate relative size, but they can be less useful (more overwhelmed) when there are too many “slices”. I looked for and found a great technique to limit the number of slices, by only displaying slices for the Top N categories, then a single “others” slice with all those outside the Top N
    • I am excited to use this technique in the future with bar charts too, as I think it will be terrifically insightful to not only see who my Top N are, but also how far they are ahead of the average of others (and conversely how far behind average my bottom N are)
  • Using simple back and forward images with “bounce” for navigation
  • Using familiar back and forward chevrons, reminiscent of browser buttons or the “swipe” icons in Windows Photos

What needs more attention/what I didn’t like:

  • The red abstract background and theme that I chose; I had used muted blue, muted green, and white backgrounds in previous challenge submissions, and wanted to see if I could make a more garish colour and background work, so I chose a bright red abstract background. This was generally midly OK, but I the colour palette I chose didn’t provide enough differentiation, and I chose a couple of complementary colours, which (alas) didn’t work well at all, but did provide differentiation.
  • I think that, after my experience, that I’m leaning towards using simpler backgrounds in my reports, for a couple of reasons:
    • I end up spending too much time on colour selection
    • I’m too concerned with how the visuals look within the theme rather than concentrating only on how well they display the data so useful insights can be extracted

Here’s a more detailed list of some of the techniques I used in my report:

NOTES

Goals:

  • to gain experience using PowerPoint for all backgrounds, including header, footer, and visual backgrounds
  • to gain experience using image buttons
  • to gain experience using the Decomposition Tree AI visual
  • to gain experience with the DAX Studio and Tabular Editor external tools by using them as much as possible for measure development

Setup:

  • used internet search to find a red abstract background image
  • used PowerPoint to create left-to-right gradient semi-transparent rectangles in a dark complementary colour for header, footer, and body rectangles, to provide the canvas for transparent visualizations
  • used filter pane to limit records shown in the report to those with Dates[Is After Today] = FALSE
  • used eDNA Colour Theme Generator https://analysthub.enterprisedna.co/colour-theme-generator to extract colour hex codes from background image, then used eDNA Colour Fan to identify colours for theme
  • setup navigation image buttons and images using arrow icons sourced from iconsdb.com (arrow 24, arrow 88) in #FFFFFF, #BFBFBF, #000000 for disabled, default, and on hover

General:

  • used “Work” pages to try out different visuals and identify trends that were interesting and should be included in the main report pages
  • formatted all measures and calculated columns using eDNA DAX Clean Up tool https://analysthub.enterprisedna.co/dax-clean-up
  • made extensive use of the [General] section in the [Visualizations] pane to ensure consistent sizing of all visual elements and adjusted the X/X/Width/Height as necessary (I made everything multiples of 10 pixels [where possible] to help me keep things aligned)

Data Model:

  • used eDNA extended date table as [Dates] Extended Date Table (Power Query M function)
  • used eDNA period table as [Periods]; adjusted for two periods: Last 2 Years, and Previous Dynamic Date Range Slicer- Query M
  • marked [Dates] table as a date table
  • changed all date formats to dd-mmm-yyyy [by typing “dd-mmm-yyyy” into “Format” box directly]
  • updated [Dates] table to use the fxStartDate and fxEndDate values (see below)
  • added all “*_Tbl” tables from Excel file;
    • renamed fields as necessary (e.g., in [Types] changed [ID] to [Type ID], changed [Description] to [Type] to avoid future confusion)
    • changed case of “lookup” table columns as necessary to be consistent (used “Transform\Format\Capitalize Each Word”)
    • corrected reverse naming of Customer[First Name] and Customer[Last Name] columns; created merged column for full name (Customer[Customer])
    • renamed [Regions] table to [Locations]; renamed [Region ID] fields in [Locations] and [Customers] tables to [Location ID]
  • deleted all auto-generated relationships
  • arranged table model in a “waterfall” and used “Manage Relationships” dialog to add all relationships (all 1-to-many)
  • created empty tables for [Key Measures] and [Admin Measures]; opened 2 sessions of Tabular Editor (1 each on my Challenge #5 PBIX and this file) and copied measures
  • added [Last Refresh] table
  • hid all ID fields
  • added disconnected supporting tables for [Categories plus Others] and [States plus Others]; accepted default of many-to-many relationship offered by Power BI when linking to [Categories] and [States] tables
  • added [Status Group] to [Status] table, with “Closed” and “Resolved” status values assigned to the “Closed” group, with all others assigned to the “Open” group

M/Power Query:

  • added fxNow, fxToday [date of fxNow], fxFirstComplaint [min compliant date], fxStartDate [start of year of fxFirstComplaint], fxEndDate [one year after end of year of fxToday]

DAX Calculations:

  • added [Is Desktop] and [Is Service] using difference between NOW() and UTCNOW() to determine user interface

Visualizations

Custom Visuals:

  • used Enlighten Data Story custom visual
  • used Sunbust by MAQ Software custom visual

General:

  • used blank buttons in header with separate “default” and “on hover” images, all using “Fill\Image Fit\Fit” for back and forward; used slightly larger copies of the default images to create the “bounce” effect on hover (with “Fit”, larger image appears smaller in same size box)
  • hid all pages except “Summary” page, so all navigation in Power BI Service would be via back and forward buttons
  • used multi-row card in footer to display report info

Summary page:

  • used transparent black “back” image instead of back button to show “start”
  • added [Periods] slicer to easily display last 2 years
  • used many instances of the Enlighten Data Story custom visual on the left side of the page to present summary insights
  • used [Top States plus Others] in doughnut visual ([TopX] set to 5, so will show 5 slices for the Top 5 states plus a 6th slice for “Others” [sum of values outside the Top 5])
  • used [Top Categories plus Others] in doughnut visual ([TopX] set to 5, so will show 5 slices for the Top 5 categories plus a 6th slice for “Others” [sum of values outside the Top 5])
  • used multi-row card in the footer to present report admin and session admin measures

Source page:

  • added [Periods] slicer to easily display last 2 years
  • used Decomposition Tree to identify breakdown of complaints by source, product category, product subcategory
  • used conditional formatting to colour 3 groups in the [Complaints by Broker], [Expected Reimbursement by Customer], and [Complaints by Customer] charts: top 20% - dark red; 50-80% - red; bottom 50% - light red
  • used multi-row card in the footer to present report admin and session admin measures

Time page:

  • used transparent black “forward” image instead of forward button to show “end”
  • used Sunbust by MAQ Software custom visual to showcase average processing days by distribution network and distribution channel, complete with animation
  • used relative date slicer to show only the last 2 years of complaints data in the two graphs on the right; adjusted the filter interactions so that these two graphs would not be affected by the date slicer selections
  • used multi-row card in the footer to present report admin and session admin measures

To learn about the real-life scenario presented for the challenge, be sure to click on the image below.

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1 Like

No more comments to add, other than I hope to do better with colours from now on. Second post to allow marking as solved.
Greg

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I agree with your choice on color - perhaps the red would have worked if you had limited your other colors to something like white/grey/black. But, I find I am rarely a fan of the bolder colors for the background.

Use of the Decomposition tree is nice, letting the user do a bit more exploration of the data on their own. Generally I shy away from this visual because I always feel the need to make this a visual that fills the page, but you seem to have hit a good size that appears to limit the output to the top 3, but a savvy user can still drag the visual to see the scroll options.

And yes, if you’re going to use pie charts, the use of an “Others” slicer is a great technique. I’ve used this in bar charts, but generally I format that bar to be a slightly different color (slightly lighter, or grey as you have done with the pie) to help the user understand that it is not a single entity.

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Incredible write up Greg. There’s so much inspiration and what your laid out there.

I love the big bold colours that you’ve used in the submission, and I think they work really well.

I also again love the dynamic text that you’ve gone with on the front page. Really outlining all of the key take aways and analysis from the dataset. When I see something like that I honestly feel like you never have to have a meeting again because you could honestly walking every morning and get a daily write-up of what is actually happening in each different part of a business by just using this technique. Totally automated and dynamic. So powerful.

I also like the other custom visuals that you’ve used. I still myself I have to get a bit more into incorporating custom visuals into my own work, but I’m certainly starting to see the visual ecosystem has developed to a point where it really adds value to the unique insights that you might want to showcase.

Also like how you’re been thinking creatively and designing some backgrounds and PowerPoint. I think there’s a lot of unique design That you could bring to power BI by thinking out of the box like that

I also like how you’ve laid things out and grids. That to me really breaks things down and to areas where it’s easy for the eye to scan.

Over super submission. Hard to fault.

Sam

2 Likes