Using Filter Fields & Visual Interactions For Compelling Power BI Reports

[EnterpriseDNA]

Today, I’m going to talk about some of the techniques that I use in Power BI reporting. I’ll share with you a couple of my tutorials on how visuals interact with each other within your reports. I want to show you a few examples so that you can get a good grasp on how filters work and how you can manipulate them to showcase the visuals in your report effectively. 

Using Power BI visual interactions allows you to showcase data in a way that’s both compelling and easy to understand. 

Filter fields enable you to adjust the results that you are emphasizing in your visuals. But instead of having to manually select a filter within a report page, you can have a filter set across either a single visual, a report page, or even an entire report. 

Visual interactions are a way for you to make sure that your visuals “filter” as they should when a user selects elements within your report page. They enable users to drill down into a granular level of detail. 

With Power BI, you can take your reports and visuals to another level. You'll see in this first tutorial how filters operate, and you'll learn how to manipulate them to showcase your visualizations in a more intuitive way, especially if you need to create groupings of information in your analysis.

The visualization that I’ve used in this tutorial was created using what I call the multi-threaded dynamic visuals technique. Watch the full video of this tutorial and see how you can make creative and compelling reports using filters and visual interactions. 

Now that you know how to manipulate the filters, you must learn how to control the interactions of your visuals. As you develop your Power BI reports, you must make sure that your visuals are showcasing the insights that you need. And controlling the interactions of your visuals is key to make this work. 

In this next tutorial, you’ll discover all the options for changing interactions between your visuals to make a compelling and intuitive report. 

This technique can make your report and dashboard really pop and keep your end-users happy. That’s why, it is imperative that you learn how to do this. Here’s the full video tutorial. 

Having these options in Power BI allows you to change the shape of your reports. You can create mini dashboards within a report page as you turn on or off interactions between certain visuals. 

Key Take Away 

Creating this kind of visualization may not be easy but being able to do so allows you to come up with highly powerful and dynamic visuals. These techniques are great if you want to break down or segment your report dimensions, such as regionally or through age groups, etc. 

If you want to get creative and wonder what you can do from a visualization perspective, there are many ways that you can showcase insights effectively. I highly recommend that you check out our website and the links below for more related content. 

For more visualization examples, you can look at the Showcase page of the Enterprise DNA website, where you can see different ways that visualizations have been created and manipulated. There are also plenty of visualizations that others are showcasing within the community area of the Analyst Hub so definitely check these out. 

Cheers! 

Sam 

***** Related Links ***** 

Visualization Technique – Power BI Column Charts & Filters 

Creating Multi Threaded Dynamic Visuals – Advanced Power BI Technique 

How To Create Compelling Reports & Dashboards In Power BI 

***** Related Course Modules***** 

Data Visualization Tips 

Dashboarding & Data Visualization Intensive 

Advanced Data Transformations & Modeling 

***** Related Support Forum Posts ***** 

Card Visual to Interact with Table 

Keeping Original Selected Begin & End Dates via DAX (ignore bar chart selection) 

Changing the Interaction (Highlighting to Filtering) all at the same time 

For more visual interactions queries to review please see here…