Create and use R visuals in Power BI

APPLIES TO: Power BI Desktop  Power BI service

R visuals currently can only be created in Power BI Desktop, and then published to the Power BI service. For more information on creating R visuals, see Create Power BI visuals using R .

Viewing R visuals in the Power BI service

The Power BI service supports viewing and interacting with visuals created with R scripts. Visuals created with R scripts, commonly called R visuals, can present advanced data shaping and analytics such as forecasting, using the rich analytics and visualization power of R.

R visuals are created in a Power BI Desktop report, like the report shown in the following image.

Once the report is created in Power BI Desktop, you can publish the report containing one or more R visuals to the Power BI service.

In the service, not all of the R packages are supported. See supported packages at the end of this article for the list of packages currently supported in the Power BI service.

You can download this sample Power BI Desktop file (.pbix file) that contains a few R visuals to see how they work, and to experiment. You may need to install the corrplot R package first.

R visuals that are created in Power BI Desktop, and then published to the Power BI service, usually behave like any other visual in the Power BI service. You can interact, filter, slice, or share them with others. However, unlike other visuals, R visuals can't show tool tips, and can't be used to filter other visuals.

As you can see in the following image, R visuals in the Power BI service largely appear and behave like any other visual. Users don't need to be aware of the underlying R script that created the visual.

R scripts security

R visuals are created from R scripts, which could potentially contain code with security or privacy risks.

These risks mainly exist in the authoring phase when the script author runs the script on their own computer.

The Power BI service applies a sandbox technology to protect users and the service from security risks.

This sandbox approach imposes some restrictions on the R scripts running in the Power BI service, such as accessing the Internet, or accessing other resources that aren't required to create the R visual.

R scripts error experience

When an R script encounters an error, the R visual isn't plotted and an error message is displayed. For details on the error, select See details from the R visual error on the canvas, as shown in the following image.

As another example, the following image shows the error message that appears when an R script failed to run properly due to a missing R package in Azure.

Licensing

R visuals require a Power BI Pro or Premium Per User (PPU) license to render in reports, refresh, filter, and cross-filter. For more information about Power BI Pro licenses and how they differ from free licenses, see Power BI Pro content - what is it?

Free users of Power BI can only consume tiles shared with them in Premium workspaces. For more information about Premium, see purchasing Power BI Pro for more information.

The following table describes R visuals capabilities based on licensing.

Overview of R packages

R packages are collections of R functions, data, and compiled code that are combined in a well-defined format. When R is installed, it comes with a standard set of packages, and other packages are available for download and installation. Once installed, an R package must be loaded into the session to be used. The primary source of free R packages is CRAN, the Comprehensive R Archive Network.

Power BI Desktop can use any type of R packages without limitation. You can install R packages for use in Power BI Desktop on your own (using the RStudio IDE, for example).

R visuals in the Power BI service are supported by the packages found in the Supported Packages section found in this article. If you don't find a package you're interested in among the supported packages list, you can request the support of the package. For more information, see R packages in the Power BI service for information on how to request support.

Requirements and Limitations of R packages

There are a handful of requirements and limitations for R packages:

• The Power BI service supports R packages with free and open-source software licenses such as GPL-2, GPL-3, MIT+, and so on.

• The Power BI service supports packages published in CRAN. The service doesn't support private or custom R packages. We encourage users to make their private packages available on CRAN before requesting the package be available in the Power BI service.

• For Power BI Desktop has two variations for R packages:

  • For R visuals, you can install any package, including custom R packages.
  • For Custom R visuals, only public CRAN packages are supported for autoinstallation of the packages.

• For security and privacy reasons, we currently don't support R packages that provide client-server queries over the World-Wide Web (such as RgoogleMaps) in the service. Networking is blocked for such attempts. For more information, see R packages in the Power BI service for a list of supported and unsupported R packages.

• The approval process for including a new R package has a tree of dependencies; some dependencies required to be installed in the service can't be supported.

Supported Packages:

For a long list of supported R packages (and the short list of unsupported packages), see the following article:

• R packages in the Power BI service

Considerations and limitations

• R visuals support is limited to the packages identified in Learn which R packages are supported. There currently is no support for custom packages.

• Data used by the R visual for plotting is limited to 150,000 rows. If more than 150,000 rows are selected, only the top 150,000 rows are used and a message is displayed on the image. Additionally, the input data has a limit of 250 MB.

• If the input semantic model of an R Visual has a column that contains a string value longer than 32766 characters, that value is truncated.

• All R visuals are displayed at 72 dots per inch.

• Only plotting to the default device is supported.

• If an R visual calculation exceeds 60 seconds, the script times out and displays an error.

• R visuals are refreshed upon data updates, filtering, and highlighting. However, the image itself isn't interactive and doesn't support tool tips.

• R visuals respond to highlighting other visuals, but you can't select elements in the R visual in order to cross filter other visuals.

• R visuals are currently not supported for the Time data type. Use Date/Time instead.

• R visuals don't display when using Publish to web.

• R visuals don't support renaming input columns. During script execution, columns will be referred to by their original name.

• R visuals don't print with reports printing.

• R visuals aren't supported in the DirectQuery mode of Analysis Services.

• R visuals have the ability to convert text labels into graphical elements. Doing so in the Power BI service requires the following extra step:

  • Add the following line at the beginning of the R script:

    powerbi_rEnableShowText = 1

• Chinese, Japanese, and Korean fonts require all of the following steps to work properly in the Power BI service:

  1. Install the R package showtext and all of its dependencies. You can install it by running the following script:

     install.packages("showtext")

  2. Add the following line at the beginning of the R script:

    powerbi_rEnableShowTextForCJKLanguages =  1