Organizational Chart
The Organizational Chart by ChartPad is a custom Power BI visual for turning any hierarchy into an interactive tree of cards. Each row of your data becomes a card, each card is linked to its parent, and every card can carry a KPI, a target comparison, a trend sparkline, a photo, and a link out to another system.
It is built for report editors who need more than a static org diagram: the hierarchy expands and collapses, cross-filters the rest of the report, groups into swimlanes, and colour-codes itself against targets — without leaving Power BI or writing any code.
What it can do
- Any parent–child hierarchy: org structures, cost centres, product trees, processes, supply chains. One ID column and one parent-ID column is all it takes.
- KPIs on the cards: show a measure on every card, compared against a target (% of target) or against its own previous period (change vs. previous), with good/neutral/bad colour coding.
- Trend sparklines: bind a date or period field and every card gains an inline line or area chart of its history.
- Photos and logos: Base64 images on the cards, sized and rounded to taste.
- Swimlanes: group cards into labelled lanes by department, manufacturing step, procurement phase...
- Accent colours: colour-code cards by a category field, with a per-group colour picker.
- Explore large trees: search, expand/collapse branches, focus on a branch, zoom, pan, and fit-to-screen.
- Full cross-filtering: click a card (or a legend item) to filter the rest of the report (ctrl+click to multi-select).
- URLs: add a link on each card to open a profile, ticket, or dashboard in a new tab.
- Styling: card size, corner radius, connector style, fonts, colours, and a built-in dark mode.
- Accessible: keyboard navigation, screen-reader labels, Power BI high-contrast mode, and shape-coded (not colour-only) KPI status.
The Organizational Chart is a Microsoft-certified Power BI visual: its code has been reviewed and tested to confirm it doesn't access any external services, so your data never leaves Power BI. Certified visuals are safe for enterprise use and support export to PowerPoint/PDF and email subscriptions. See Certified by Microsoft.
Anatomy of the visual
| Region | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Top bar | Search box, the orientation toggle, and the visible-levels menu. Always at the top of the visual. |
| Canvas | The tree itself: cards joined by connector links, pannable and zoomable. |
| Swimlane bands | Optional shaded lanes with titles, one per value of the Swimlane field. |
| Legend | Optional KPI status legend (Target not met · Target met · Target exceeded). Off by default. |
| Zoom controls | In the bottom-right corner: zoom out, current zoom %, zoom in, and fit-to-screen. |
Anatomy of a card
A card is laid out in three bands:
- Header row: the optional image, the title (the first Information Field, or the Entity ID if none is bound), any further Information Fields underneath it, and the link icon on the right.
- KPI row: the measure name and value on the left, the comparison pill on the right.
- Sparkline: the card's KPI history, shown only when a KPI Period is bound and the card has at least two points in time.
Around the edges: an accent border on the side you choose when an Accent Color field is bound, and a collapse toggle carrying the number of children currently hidden.
How to read the KPI pill
The pill tells you both the number and which comparison produced it using shapes and colours, so it still reads in high-contrast mode and for colour-blind viewers.
| Icon | Comparison | Example | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| ✔ / ≈ / ✖ | % of target | ✔ 112.0% | The KPI divided by its target. 100% is on target. |
| ↗ / ≈ / ↘ | Change vs. previous | ↗ +12.0% | The KPI against its own previous period. |
Colour follows the thresholds you set: green above the "good" threshold, red below the "bad" one, blue in between. See KPIs, targets & trends.
Before you start
The Organizational Chart is free to try — every feature works during evaluation. To use it in a published report without an on-visual license notice, each editor and viewer needs a license (a 30-day free trial is available). See Licensing & support for details.
Next steps
- Getting started — install the visual and build your first chart in five steps.
- Data fields — what each field does and how to shape your data.
- Use cases — worked examples: org chart, cost centre rollup, KPI tree, process flow.
- Formatting reference — every setting, with its default.