In addition to the standard visuals included in the Visualizations pane of Power BI Desktop, a vast array of custom visuals can be added to reports to deliver extended functionality or to address specific use cases. These visuals, many of which have been created by Microsoft, are developed with the common framework used by the standard visuals and are approved by Microsoft prior to inclusion in Microsoft AppSource. Given the common framework, custom visuals can be integrated into Power BI reports with standard visuals and will exhibit the same standard behaviors such as filtering via slicers and report and page filters.

This section highlights four powerful custom visuals and the distinct scenarios and features they support. Power BI report authors and BI teams are well-served to remain conscience of both the advantages and limitations of custom visuals. For example, when several measures or dimension columns need to be displayed within the same visual, custom visuals such as the Impact Bubble Chart and the Dot Plot by Maq Software may exclusively address this need. In many other scenarios, a trade-off or compromise must be made between the incremental features provided by a custom visual and the rich controls built into a standard Power BI visual. 

Custom visuals available in AppSource and within the integrated custom visuals store for Power BI Desktop are all approved for running in browsers and on mobile devices via the Power BI mobile apps. A subset of these visuals have been certified by Microsoft and support additional Power BI features such as email subscriptions and export to PowerPoint. Additionally, certified custom visuals have met a set of code requirements and have passed strict security tests. The list of certified custom visuals and additional details on the certification process is available at the following link: http://bit.ly/2AFAC9W.