Visual Interactivity in a Power BI Report

by Ranjeet Mandal

Visual Interactivity in a Power BI Report

This is the first post in KPI's Power BI blog series. In this blog, we provide a high-level overview on visual interactivity in a Power BI report. You can read the other posts in the series here:

Power BI visuals in a report page are interactive among each other, by default. An item selection in a visual impacts the rest of the visuals by highlighting the related items. However, do we get the required clarity in visualization? What if we need to display Totals, which should not be impacted by selection in any other visual?

Let us build few visuals on our invoice data

Power BI invoice summary report visuals with pie charts and top customers bar chart showing operating unit and sales channel breakdown

When we select an item in the first visual, the related items in the second and third visuals get highlighted as shown below.

Power BI interactive pie chart selection highlighting related sales channel and top customer visuals on report canvas

In the above report, Operating Unit Vision Sweden is selected in the first Pie Chart, and related values in second and third charts get highlighted.

However, the second and third Charts lack clarity. It is hard to visualize which items got selected. To improve the readability, instead of highlighting in the pie chart, we can use filter to have better insights.

How to change the interaction?

To change the interaction of a chart with other charts on the report page, select the chart for which you want to control the impact on other charts, and then from Visual Tools menu, under Format, click on Edit Interactions.

Power BI report interface showing 'Edit interactions' option under Format menu to control visual interactivity

All other visuals in the page will appear with two or three buttons (Interaction control buttons) on the top right-hand side corner of each.

Power BI visuals with interaction control icons highlighting filter and no impact options on multiple visuals

The darker colour in this icon set shows which interaction will apply.

Let's change this interaction to Filter. See the difference in second and third visual after an item selection in first visual. Doesn't it make more sense, better visual appeal as well?

Power BI report showing filtered pie chart selection updating bar chart based on operating unit selection

The interactivity can be set to None as well which helps us in case we want Totals in a visual.

Invoiced Amount when there is no selection in the first visual

Power BI pie chart interaction with invoiced amount card visual showing no interaction effect in report

The impact on Invoiced Amount when there is an item selected in the first visual No Impact!

Power BI operating unit pie chart with invoiced amount card visual showing isolated metric without filtering

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Ranjeet Mandal is a Principal Consultant at KPI Partners. He has worked extensively on reporting tools like Power BI, Tableau, QlikView, and OBIEE. In addition to his reporting experience, he has extensive experience on ERP technologies like Oracle JD Edwards, EBS, and NetSuite. He has implemented Real-Time Reporting of various JDE modules across multiple on-premise as well as cloud platforms.

Visual Interactivity in a Power BI Report