Microsoft has in the past few months increased the support for R Visuals in Power BI. In the July release, Power BI Service started displaying interactive visuals and in October, six R visuals were made
available in Power BI which do not require any knowledge of R. Six visuals is a far step away from the wide number of visuals available in R. According to the Comprehensive R [CRAN] as of today there are 9557 packages available for R, and that does not count all of the packages on GitHub.
R Packages Supported in the Power BI Service
According to a September 8th post on the Power BI Blog, there are currently 352 R packages supported in the Power BI Service. For those of you wondering if your favorite R library is included (yes dplyr, ggplot2 and cluster are there) I have included the list of packages here.
abc | abc.data | acepack | actuar | ade4 | AdMit | andrews |
aod | apcluster | ape | aplpack | approximator | arm | arules |
arulesViz | assertthat | BACCO | BaM | BAS | base64enc | bayesm |
bayesQR | bayesSurv | BayesTree | BayHaz | bbemkr | BCBCSF | BCE |
bclust | BenfordTests | bisoreg | bit | bit64 | bitops | BMA |
Bmix | BMS0 | bnlearn, | boa | boot | bootstrap | bqtl |
BradleyTerry2 | brew | brglm, | bspec | bspmma | BVS | C50 |
calibrator | car | caret, | catnet | caTools | cclust | class |
clue | cluster | coda | coin | CORElearn | corpcor | corrplot |
crayon | cslogistic | cubature | cvTools | data.table | date | dbscan |
deal | deepnet | deldir | dendextend | DEoptimR | deSolve | DiagrammeR |
dichromat | digest | dlm | DMwR | dplyr | DPpackage | dse |
dtw | e1071 | earth | EbayesThresh | ebdbNet | ellipse | emulator |
ensembleBMA | entropy | EvalEst | evaluate | evdbayes | exactLoglinTest | expm |
extremevalues | FactoMineR | factorQR | faoutlier | fBasics | fields | filehash |
fitdistrplus | flashClust | FME | fmsb | foreach | forecast | Formula |
fracdiff | fTrading | futile.logger | gam | gamlr | gclus | gdata |
gee | genetics | geoRglm | geosphere | ggdendro | ggmcmc | ggplot2 |
ggthemes | glmmBUGS | glmnet | gmodels | gmp | gnm | GPArotation |
gridBase | gridExtra | growcurves | grpreg | gss | gsubfn | gtable |
gtools | haplo.stats | hash | hbsae | hdrcde | heavy | HH |
HI | Hmisc | HSAUR | ifultools | intervals | ipred | irlba |
irr | iterators | jpeg | kernlab | KernSmooth | KFKSDS | kinship2 |
kknn | klaR | knitr | labeling | lars | lattice | latticeExtra |
lava | lavaan | lazyeval | leaps | LearnBayes | LiblineaR | LICORS |
limSolve | lme4 | lmm | lmtest | locfit | locpol | LogicReg |
lsa | lubridate | magic | magrittr | mapdata | mapproj | maps |
maptree | MASS | MasterBayes | Matrix | matrixcalc | MatrixModels | maxent |
maxLik | mboost | mda | memoise | mi | mice | microbenchmark |
mime | misc3d | miscTools | mitools | mixtools | mlbench | mnormt |
MNP | modeltools | mombf | monomvn | MSBVAR | msm | multcomp |
munsell | mvtnorm | NbClust | ncvreg | nlme | nloptr | NLP |
NMF | nnet | nnls | nortest | numbers | numDeriv | OutlierDC |
pacbpred | party | partykit | PAWL | pbivnorm | pcaPP | pdc |
PerformanceAnalytics | plotmo | plotrix | pls | plyr | png | polynom |
predmixcor | PresenceAbsence | profdpm | proto | proxy | pryr | pscl |
psych | qap | qdapRegex | quadprog | quantreg | qvcalc | R.oo |
.utils | ramps | RandomFieldsUtils | RColorBrewer | Rcpp | RcppArmadillo | RcppEigen |
registry | reliampo | relimp | reshape | reshape2 | RGraphics | rjson |
RJSONIO | Rmpfr | rms | robustbase | ROCR | rpart.plot | rrcov |
rscproxy | RSGHB | RTextTools | rworldmap | SampleSizeMeans | SampleSizeProportions | sbgcop |
scales | scatterplot3d | sciplot | segmented | seriation | setRNG | sfsmisc |
SIS | SixSigma | skmeans | slam | smoothSurv | sna | snow |
SnowballC | snowFT | sp | spacetime | spam | SparseM | spatial |
spBayes | spikeslab | splancs | spls | spTimer | sqldf | sROC |
stabledist | stabs | stepPlr | stringdist | stringr | stsm | stsm.class |
survival | tau | tcltk2 | tensorA | textcat | textir | tfplot |
TH.data | tidyr | timeDate | timeSeries | tm | topicmodels | tree |
tseries | tsfa | tsoutliers | TSP | vcd | VennDiagram | VGAM |
VIM | whisker | wordcloud | xgboost | XML | xts | yaml |
zipfR | zoo |
I hope that some day that this list becomes much longer, but it is a good start. If your company has lots R visuals and you wish to migrate them to Power BI, chances are some of the libraries you are using are not here. If you are interested in having your library added to the list of 352, go to the Ideas page of Power BI and request that your library be added, as Microsoft I know looks at this page to determine what to release in the future. Someone has requested that igraph be added, and since it hasn’t received a lot of votes yet (hint) it is probably low on the priority list.
Release Plans for Additional R Library Support in Power BI
In reviewing the Power BI documentation online, it is not known what Microsoft’s plans are for future R packages. Does Microsoft plan on adding a lot more in the future? Will new libraries be added as part of upcoming releases? All questions where the web presently does not provide answers.
The current package support in Power BI does provide the R developer with a method to more securely and widely distribute R visualizations. In my upcoming posts I will review how to use the six R visualizations which do not require R and also how to use R with Power BI.
Yours Always
Ginger Grant
Data aficionado et SQL Raconteur