Table of Contents
Power BI – Navigation Features
For reports developed by Djeeni BV.
1 Index Page
To access a page, click on the 
symbol next to the page name. Index page can be accessed by clicking on the 
icon. This icon can be found on all the other pages on the top right.
2 Definitions page
It is a hidden page, which means that it can only be accessed by clicking on the 
button in the top right corner of any other page in the report.
In order to return to a previous page, click on the back button (
) in the top left corner of the definitions page.
3 Slicers with asterisk (*)
Slicers with asterisk in their headers are sticky – if you set a slicer to certain values, they will persist also on the other pages with the same slicer, but only if they include asterisk as well.
Therefore, slicers without asterisk do not affect other pages and are not affected by slicers from other pages.
4 Interactive visualizations
4.1 Charts
Power BI charts are interactive – by default, clicking on an element in one chart may filter other charts on the same page, with the same filters that are applied to the selected element. Example: We want to see how much chiller items we sold in terms of value against budget in January 2016. As you can see on the screenshot below, there is no visual that currently displays this, we only have a budget per month for all the products. Furthermore, there is no slicer that would allow us to filter on the product type. How do we achieve our goal?
- Within the big combo chart on the right, click on the bright blue portion of the bar (chiller items) for January
- Voila! We can now see that the numbers on the other two visuals have changed.
- Because the light blue portion of the bar is filtered by the filters that we need for our result (January and Chiller items, year 2016 is applied through slicer), we can now check the gauge on the top left to get the information we need.
Note: There might be exceptions when the interactivity between the certain visuals on a page is either turned off or does not exist, because there is no connection between them in terms of data. If there is no interactivity between the charts and it is not clearly obvious from the context why that is, there will be a note with an explanation in the bottom left corner of the page.
4.2 Slicers
The interactivity also applies to slicers. Therefore, if we are filtering on some value in a certain slicer, all the other slicers will be filtered by that value.
Example:
We set the year slicer to 2016. Let’s say that we lost a customer in 2015 so there are no sales for 2016 for that customer. Consequently, that customer will not appear in the list in the customer slicer when we are filtering on the year 2016.
Note: In some cases, the above example does not hold. It depends how the data model was set up by the BI team (one directional or bi-directional filtering). If you noticed that all the slicers do not filter each other properly, consult the BI team/report builder.
5 Drilling up/down and navigation through the hierarchy levels in charts
There are three different ways to navigate through the hierarchy levels in Power BI charts. Those are drill down, go down to the next level and expand all down to the next level in the hierarchy. As it is implied in the descriptions of those approaches (we always go down), the analysis always starts at the top level of the hierarchy. As we dig down through the different levels, we can mix those three approaches depending on the need of the analysis and we can always return back up to the previous level by clicking on the up arrow named “Drill up” in the menu above the chart:
We will describe the differences between these approaches on four examples.
Note that those navigation features are applicable only for the charts in the first three rows as they are displayed on the “Visualizations” pane:
Take a look at the short video presentation. The examples shown in the video are explained in detail in the text below.
5.1 Drill down
Drill down approach is used, when we want to display only the data for the members of a particular category one level above those members.
Example:
We want to examine the sales amount versus budget by quarter for the year 2014. Furthermore, we want to compare the sales amount versus budget for the three months of the Q1 2014.
- Click on the visual to select it or hoover over it with the mouse. The menu on the top right of the visual appears.
- Select the down arrow labeled “Click to turn on Drill down” (the label is displayed when hoovering over it with the cursor) in the menu above the chart
- Now, left click anywhere on the 2014 column.
- Now the data is displayed by 2014 quarters. This can be verified by hoovering over one of the columns, so the tooltips appear. As the first row in the tooltips suggests, the data is indeed for the year 2014. We finished the first part of the example.
- To drill down further on the first quarter, we have to repeat the procedure. As the drill down mode is already activated (the down arrow is selected), we just need to left click anywhere on the “Qtr 1” column.
- The second chart requested in the example is displayed – Sales amount versus budget for the three months in Q1 2014. Let’s verify that again by activating the tooltips.
- To go back to the first result at the step four, click on the up arrow labeled “Drill Up” in the menu above the chart. To go back to the top level (year), click on the arrow again.
5.2 Go down to the next level in the hierarchy
This is the second option that is available in Power BI to browse through the levels of a hierarchy within the chart. We use it to go down to the next level in the hierarchy, without applying any filters from the previous level. Though this is rarely used as a standalone approach in natural hierarchies, it can be useful when mixing the approaches. (see the chapter 1.4)
Example:
We want to see the sales amount versus budget by quarters for the entire period we have data for. We also want to display sales amount versus budget by months for all the years (as you may have noticed, this is a strange requirement to have as the real-life example, but we will use it to demonstrate the functionality).
- Click on the visual to select it or hoover over it with the mouse. The menu on the top right of the visual appears.
- Click on the double arrow pointing down in the menu above the chart
- Now the data is displayed by quarters. This can be verified by hoovering over one of the columns, so the tooltips appear. You will notice there is no year specified next to the quarter like in the first example, therefore we can assume the chart is displayed for the entire period we have the data for. We finished the first part of the example.
- To go further down to the month level, we have to repeat the procedure. Click again on the double arrow pointing down in the menu above the chart.
- The second chart requested in the example is displayed – Sales amount versus budget by month for the entire period we have the data for. Let’s verify that again by activating the tooltips.
- To go back to the first result at the step three, click on the up arrow labeled “Drill Up” in the menu above the chart. To go back to the top level (year), click on the arrow again.
5.3 Expand down to the next level in the hierarchy
The third and the last option. We use it to go down to the next level in the hierarchy, by showing all the attributes also from the previous level and expanding them.
Example 3:
We want to see the sales amount versus budget by quarter and year. We also want to display sales amount versus budget by month, quarter and year.
- Click on the visual to select it or hoover over it with the mouse. The menu on the top right of the visual appears.
- Click on the arrow splitting in two and pointing down in the menu above the chart.
- Now the data is displayed by quarters and years. This time we do not need to activate the tooltip, since both levels are displayed in the labels on the x-axis. We finished the first part of the example.
- To go further down to the month level, we have to repeat the procedure. Click again on the arrow splitting in two and pointing down in the menu above the chart.
- The second chart requested in the example is displayed – Sales amount versus budget by month, quarter and year.
TIP: this chart is not built optimally, because we are hiding data with sliders. It can be used as a temporary chart when exploring the data, otherwise we should either filter out some years or extend the chart
- To go back to the first result at the step three, click on the up arrow labeled “Drill Up” in the menu above the chart. To go back to the top level (year), click on the arrow again.
5.4 Mixing the approaches
When we have more than two levels in the hierarchy, we might want to mix the approaches. Let’s take a look at a quick example when mixing might be needed.
TIP: Power BI does not allow mixing the second and the third approach
Example 4:
We want to see the sales amount versus budget by month for the year 2014. If we want to display all the months for the year 2014 we need to use the first approach to get to the quarter level, and then the second approach to skip the quarter level without filtering and get to the month level.
6 Linking elements to pages
Like we have shown in the previous chapters, by clicking on the buttons like , and help you to navigate through different pages in the report. Furthermore, we sometimes include elements in our report that allow users to click on a visual, which will navigate them to a more detailed page related to that particular visual. In that case, users will be notified by a message on the page below the linked visual in the bottom left corner.
Example:
We have 4 gauges on the Overview page of the Sales report. Each one of them is linked to one of the related pages, as shown in the screenshot below.
Note the message in the bottom left corner. By clicking on the first gauge “Sales Amount Act. Vs Bud. (€)” the Power BI takes you to the related page “Amount (€)”.
After you finish browsing the detailed page, you can go back to overview by clicking on the back () button at the top left corner of the page.
7 Drill through
We use the drill through functionality when we want to see the details to the smallest granularity possible of a certain category in the chart we are currently analyzing.
Note: The drill through pages must be set up by the report builders. If you do not see the functionality available in your reports, contact the person that is responsible for building the reports/dashboards in your company.
Example 5:
We are analyzing the chart below, displaying the sales amount versus budget data by month for the year 2016 and we want to see the sales line details for January 2016 and chiller goods type.
- Right click on the appropriate category, in our case the light blue part of the January column, which represent the chiller goods type.
- A menu appears. Move your cursor to the item “Drill trough” and select an appropriate drill through page – in our case it’s the page named “Details (filtered)”.
- The drill through page is displayed. Here you can browse the details and further slice and dice it by using additional filters in the slicers.
- When you are done with browsing the details, you can either return to the previous page by clicking on the back button () placed in the top left corner or go to the index page by clicking on the button on the top right.
8 Storytelling
To sum everything up, let’s talk about the report building as a whole. At Djeeni we always strive to tell a story in our reports, by guiding the users through three or more different levels of detail.
- We always start with the top level, an overview. Here we try to concisely sum up the whole report with one or a few visuals, usually cards, gauges or funnels. That enables users who are only interested in aggregations to the highest level possible to quickly get their insights and then continue with their work.
- On the second level we try to convey the information to the users by categorizing data to different dimensions, like time, region, businesses, product categories, etc. The dimensions are not chosen randomly, they are implemented considering the business requirements. Here the pages are constructed in the same fashion as the reports themselves – the most important and concise data is put in the top left corner of the page. Then more detailed visuals follow from left to right, top to bottom.
- On third and the last level, the data is represented in the form of tables on the lowest granularity possible. The pages containing the data are usually named “Details”. The most demanding users that are in need of detailed views can navigate to those pages either by “Drill trough” procedure, to browse pre-filtered data from level 2 page or just navigate to the visible details page, in case they want to browse the entire database.
