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Power BI Mastery

Interactive Reports: Slicers, Drill-Through and Bookmarks

Lesson 8 of 10

A static report answers the questions you thought of. An interactive report lets readers answer their own.

Cross-filtering and cross-highlighting

Click a bar in one visual and the other visuals on the page respond. By default, charts highlight the related portion and cards or tables filter to it.

To change this, select a visual and choose Format > Edit interactions. Icons appear on the other visuals so you can set each to filter, highlight or ignore the selection.

Slicers

A slicer is a visual that filters the page. Add the Slicer visual and drop in a field. Its style can be a list, a drop-down, buttons, or a range slider for numbers and dates.

  • Use View > Sync slicers to apply one slicer across several pages.
  • Use a date slicer in Relative mode for choices such as “last 30 days”.
  • Keep slicers to the few fields readers filter by most.

The Filters pane

Filters can be set at three levels: one visual, one page, or all pages. Use the Filters pane for filters the author controls, and slicers for those the reader controls. You can lock or hide a filter so that readers cannot change it.

Drill down

When a visual’s axis has a hierarchy, such as Year, Quarter and Month, the arrows at the top of the visual let readers drill from one level to the next. Add several fields to the axis well to create the hierarchy.

Drill-through

Drill-through takes the reader from a summary to a detail page filtered to what they clicked.

  1. Create a detail page, for example “Product detail”.
  2. Drag Product[Name] into the Drill through well of that page.
  3. Power BI adds a back button automatically.

Now a reader can right-click any product on another page and choose Drill through > Product detail.

Report page tooltips

A tooltip page is a small report page that appears when the reader hovers over a data point. Create a page, set its page size to Tooltip under page formatting and turn on “Allow use as tooltip”. Then, on another visual, set Tooltip > Type to Report page and choose it.

Bookmarks

A bookmark saves the state of a page: its filters, slicer selections and which visuals are visible. Open View > Bookmarks, set up the page and choose Add.

Common uses:

  • A “Reset filters” button.
  • Switching between a chart and a table in the same space, by showing one and hiding the other. Manage visibility in View > Selection.
  • Guided stories that step through several views.

Buttons and navigation

Insert > Buttons adds buttons that trigger a bookmark, go back, move to another page or open a web address. Insert > Buttons > Navigator creates a page menu automatically.

Practice

Build a summary page and a detail page for regions, connect them with drill-through, and add a button that clears all slicers.