Modern Visual Tooltip in Power BI

[Pragati11]

May 2021 bought many updates for Power BI. Link to the details on these updates can be found here. Out of all the updates, one of the updates 'Modern Visual tooltip' has been specifically a topic of interest and it seems to be the most awaited one among all the updates.

Today in this blog we will talk about what this update is and how we can use it to give users a better interaction while interacting with the reports. This update includes the following:

1. Drill-through tooltip actions
2. Drill-down/Drill-up tooltip actions
3. Tooltips to match the styling of report theme

Scenario 1:

Consider the following chart on my report where I have total sales shown by different clothing category:

I have also created a drill-through page which will show sales for an individual category and it can be navigated from my above page using existing drill-through functionality in Power BI:

When I right-click on my chart, I can navigate to "CategoryDetails" page which will show statistics for an individual category.

Now this is the existing functionality on using drill-through in Power BI. But the new modern tooltip update has given an easier way of doing this by avoiding this extra step of right-click.

First thing we need to do is enable this update in Power BI Desktop. Make sure your Power BI is updated for the month of May 2021. To enable this update in Power BI Desktop, following setting needs to be enabled: File --> Options and settings --> Options --> Preview features

The second setting that needs to be enabled is shown below:

Once these settings are enabled, save your report --> close Power BI --> Restart Power BI and open your report (this is required to enable this feature on the report). Now when we go to the same bar chart with sales by category and hover over one of the bars, we see a different option for drill-through appearing as follows:

When we click on this additional "Drill Through" option that appears on this tooltip and it will take us to our detailed page "CategoryDetails". 

Now without right-click, we can navigate to a drill-through page easily by just clicking on the drill-through option under modern tooltips. Clicking is just more intuitive to users than right-clicking, therefore can help them easily adapt this navigation feature smoothly in Power BI. So, no more training users on how to use drill-through in Power BI.

 

Scenario 2:

Let us now see the second scenario where drill-down capability is made easier by these modern visual tooltips. Consider the following chart where we have sales by Date. (A date hierarchy is moved on x-axis and it shows the highest level of hierarchy in current chart). We know in Power BI on charts, we can drill-up or drill-down using the hierarchy buttons provided on top-right of the chart (as highlighted).

But, as we have already enabled our modern tooltip visual, we can use drill-down and drill-up in a different way. So, when we hover over one of the bars we get the Drill-down option in the tooltips as shown below:

Remember we are at the highest level of a date hierarchy in this chart, therefore we see a Drill down option in the tooltip. Now if we click on this option, we reach to the 2nd level of hierarchy and get option to Drill-up and Drill-down both:

So, this is how Drill-up and Drill-down is in a way embedded in the tooltip and again easier to use from the user point of view.

 

Scenario 3:

The last capability what this modern visual tooltip does is, it gives your tooltip the same theme formatting like the one used on your report. Like above we saw in all the screenshots that I am using Power BI's report theme "Innovate". Now suppose I change my report theme to "Temperature", my visual tooltips adapt the report theme's formatting and can be seen as follows:

These tooltips can be customised in following 2 scenarios:

• When using a custom theme 
• For every visual by using Format options for tooltips

Limitations:

• Modern visual tooltips are not available for: Report Page tooltips, Matrix visuals, Line charts, Area charts, Stacked area charts, Decomposition tree & Custom visuals
• These tooltips cannot be enabled/disabled at a visual level. These can be enabled/disabled only at report level currently.

Hope this blog gives everyone enough idea on how these new modern visual tooltips can be used in Power BI, keeping in mind their limitations. Do not forget to leave your valuable feedback.

Pragati