Custom column visualizations for grids

Status: Public Preview — behaviour may change.

What it does

Renders a column's value as a small inline graphic inside grid cells — a radial dial, sparkline line chart, heat-map bar, or star rating — instead of plain text. You set it once on the column, and every grid or view that shows that column picks up the graphic automatically.

Key facts

Four visualization types plus None (standard text): Radial Dial, Line Chart, Heat Map, Star Rating. Set from Advanced options on the column in make.powerapps.com.
Each type expects a specific data shape: radial dial and heat map want a single number on a 0–100 scale; star rating wants a whole number 0–5; line chart wants a text column holding comma-separated numbers (e.g. 10,20,30,45).
The choice is a display property of the column definition, so it applies everywhere that column appears — you don't configure it per view.
Heat map also works on choice (option set) columns: it colours by the numeric value behind the selected choice and shows the choice label.
It's a display layer only — the stored data is unchanged, and values are clamped to range for display (over 100 shows full, under 0 shows empty).

When to use / skip

Use it when a numeric column is scanned and compared across many rows — scores, percentages, ratings, small trends — and a graphic reads faster than a number. Skip it for precise figures people need to read exactly (currency, counts), for text/lookup columns, and for anything where the underlying data isn't a clean number on a known scale. It's preview, so keep it off business-critical grids until it goes GA.

Configuration decisions

Which visualization matches the column's data shape, and whether the column type (whole number, decimal, text, or choice) actually supports it.
Whether your data is already on the scale the visual expects (0–100 for dial/heat map, 0–max for stars) or needs converting first — a fraction stored as 0.6 renders as 0.6%, not 60%.
For line charts, whether you can hold the series as clean comma-separated numbers in a text column, since no other separator is recognised.
For heat-map'd choice columns, whether the option-set values are numbered low-to-high so the colours line up with the visible order.

Gotchas

A radial-dial value stored as a ratio (0.6 rather than 60) looks almost empty — a very common data-prep miss.
Line charts need two or more points; a single number shows as a lone dot, and any non-numeric entry (n/a) becomes a gap.
Choice-column heat maps colour by the assigned option value, not list order, so a badly numbered choice set gives misleading colours.
Units, currency symbols and thousands separators break the number parse and show a blank or 0 — the column has to hold bare numbers.
After changing a column's visualization you may need to refresh the grid/view before the change shows.

Consultant notes

The data-prep is where this bites in UAT: makers turn it on expecting magic, then discover their "percentage" column is stored 0–1 or carries a %/currency symbol and every dial reads empty or full. Agree the storage scale before you enable it.
Line charts needing a comma-separated text column is an odd shape for Dataverse — it means someone (or a flow) has to maintain that series as text. Don't promise trend sparklines on data you can't easily assemble into that format.
Because it's a column-level property, turning it on affects every app and view showing that column, not just the grid the maker was looking at. Flag that blast radius before flipping it in a shared solution.
It's preview: no SLA, behaviour can change, and there's no guarantee it survives to GA. Fine for internal/low-stakes grids, not something to design a customer deliverable around yet.

Worth revisiting when this moves from Public Preview to GA — the default scales, colours and supported column types may firm up.