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Getting started

This page takes you from an empty report to a working calendar. No prior experience with custom visuals is required.

1. Add the visual to Power BI​

The Calendar is distributed through Microsoft AppSource, the marketplace built into Power BI. You can view the listing here: ChartPad Calendar on AppSource.

  1. In Power BI Desktop (or the Power BI service), open the report you want to add the visual to.
  2. In the Visualizations pane, select the ⋯ (Get more visuals) button.
  3. Search for ChartPad Calendar.
  4. Select Add. The Calendar icon appears at the bottom of your Visualizations pane.
tip

The Calendar is a Microsoft-certified visual, so it shows a blue Certified badge in Power BI. When browsing "Get more visuals", turn on the Power BI Certified filter to find it quickly.

note

Your organization may restrict AppSource. If you can't add visuals, ask your Power BI administrator to allow the ChartPad Calendar, or to import it as an organizational visual.

Certified by Microsoft​

The ChartPad Calendar is a Microsoft-certified Power BI visual. Certification means Microsoft has reviewed and tested the visual's code and confirmed that it does not access any external services or resources — your data stays inside Power BI and never leaves your tenant.

For report editors, that brings four practical benefits:

  • Safe for enterprise and regulated environments — nothing is sent to an outside service, so the visual suits organizations with strict data-governance rules.
  • Export to PowerPoint and PDF — reports using the Calendar export correctly.
  • Email subscriptions — the visual renders in the images delivered when users subscribe to report pages.
  • Easy to find — use the Power BI Certified filter in "Get more visuals".

Certification also explains two design choices you'll meet later: public holidays are computed inside the visual rather than fetched from a holiday service (Holidays), and direct license keys are verified offline (Licensing).

2. Place it on the canvas​

Select the Calendar icon in the Visualizations pane. An empty visual is added to the canvas, showing a landing page that lists every field you can bind and a Documentation button that opens this site.

3. Prepare your data​

The Calendar expects one row per event. At minimum, each row needs a date. Here is a small sample you can reproduce — a team calendar mixing timed meetings, multi-day events and single-date deadlines:

TitleStartEndTeam
Q1 planning workshop2026-03-03 09:002026-03-03 12:30Product
Trade show — Hannover2026-03-092026-03-14Marketing
Release 4.22026-03-182026-03-20Engineering
Invoice run2026-03-31(blank)Finance
Sprint review2026-03-27 14:002026-03-27 15:00Product

Three rules matter:

  • The Start column must be a real date or date/time column in your model — not text. If it has to be numeric, use a YYYYMMDD date key. See How dates are read.
  • End is optional. Leave it blank and the event sits on its start date alone.
  • Decide what an end date means to you. By default the Calendar reads a date-only end as exclusive (the iCal convention), so 2026-03-09 → 2026-03-14 covers 9–13 March. Step 5 shows how to switch that.

4. Bind the fields​

With the visual selected, drag your columns into these field wells:

  1. Start Date ← Start — the only required field
  2. End Date ← End
  3. Event Title ← Title
  4. Category ← Team

The landing page disappears and the calendar renders as soon as Start Date is populated. Adding Category also brings up the legend and gives each team its own colour.

tip

No title bound? Every event is labelled Untitled. Bind Event Title early — it's what people read on the chips.

5. Check the end-date rule​

Format → Calendar → End Date Interpretation

This is the single setting most worth getting right before you go further, because it decides whether a multi-day event's last day is included:

Setting2026-03-09 → 2026-03-14 coversUse it when your end dates mean
Exclusive (iCal) (default)9 – 13 March"…up to, but not including" — the convention used by iCal, Outlook exports and most system-generated data
Inclusive9 – 14 March"…through the end of the 14th" — how people usually type leave requests, bookings and campaign end dates by hand

If your multi-day events look one day short, switch to Inclusive. Full detail in End Date.

6. Choose the view people land on​

Format → Calendar

SettingWhat it does
Default ViewThe view the report opens on: Month, Week, Day, List, Year or Quarter.
First Day of WeekMonday (default), Sunday or Saturday.
Enable … ViewOne toggle per view. Turn off the views your audience doesn't need — they disappear from the view selector.

Viewers can still switch views and navigate between periods while they read the report; that choice lasts for their session and isn't saved back into the report. See Views & navigation.

7. Tidy the display​

Three quick wins for a first calendar:

  • Format → Event Display → Max Events Per Cell — how many chips a day cell shows before collapsing into "+N more" (1–5, default 3).
  • Format → Tooltips — tooltips are off by default. Turn them on to show start/end dates, the category, and anything you put in Tooltip Fields on hover.
  • Format → Holidays — turn on public holidays and pick a country to give the grid some real-world context.

You're set​

From here:

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