Last Friday, I created a prototype Power BI “Slicer pane” and posted it to social media. It generated a more positive response than I would have thought. After fulfilling a client request that afternoon to double the number of slicers, the report’s primary visuals were reduced to the bottom 2/3 of the page. In my opinion, slicers were taking up too much of the report canvas.
Why not move some of those slicers to filters? Many Power BI users are not comfortable with the built-in Filter pane, or it may be disabled when embedding, etc. I wanted a solution that balanced ease of user selection with the more important results on the report–without having to rely on filters. The “Slicer pane” was the solution.
Clicking the button in the top left of the report expands or collapses the slicers.
Patrick LeBlanc presented a similar solution in a Guy in a Cube video where he toggled between content using a Search and a Filter button. Check out his walkthrough here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0m-PCX1uCG4
While I will not have an opportunity to write out a detailed step-by-step post for awhile, anyone who wants to download the PBIX file and look at the setup is free to do so.
File (zip): ExpandCollapseSlicers
Get your main report page setup as desired, create a rectangle shape to act as the background for the Slicer pane, and then add slicers for the Slicer pane. Use the Send Forward/Send Backward functionality so that the main report visuals appear behind the slicers and rectangle shape, while slicers appear in front of the shape. Buttons drive navigation between two bookmarks: one with visible slicers for when the pane is expanded, and the other for hidden slicers and rectangle when it collapses. In order to get the slicer selections to “stick”, you need to uncheck the Data option on the bookmarks. Otherwise the slicer values will clear when you click the button to collapse the pane.
I’m also curious to see if and how people use this. Feel free to share ideas and improvements in the comments.
Here is a live version:
Excellent David. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you Matt.
Awesome !!!!
That’s really wonderful☺ thanks David.
David, thanks a lot for the article post.Much thanks again. Fantastic.
Nice work. Coming from the Qlikview world I’ve seen and used similar stuff there so it’s nice to see it recreated on the PBI side.
Does this solution require buttons? Which aren’t available to the PowerBI SSRS version yet? Seems like folks trying to publish to the on-premise SSRS report server are the red headed step children of Power BI?
The sample uses buttons, but the critical feature is the ability to create an Action to link to a bookmark. You could use Shapes or Images in addition to Buttons, so this solution should work in PBIRS with some minor adaptation.
I’m a big fan of this, thanks!
Thank you!
Thank you! It is a great space saver! And an excellent wow effect 😉 my challenge as a beginner in dax is though a nice dax formula that would as well take into account the Select All from the slicer for the notification text on the screen…
Thanks for the tip. It’s a wonderful space saver and desperately needed technique. It’s unfortunate that from a design time perspective it’s a complete and total pain in the @ss to implement because of the lack of the implementation of a ‘shape’ as a more robust object that can act as a container.
This is a great solution to the space saving issues but I am having the problem that my users are clicking on the rectangle shape causing the slicers to disappear. Is there a way to disable the ability to click on the rectangle somehow?
Hi Jose
I’m experiencing the same issue – if you managed to find a solution, could you share please?
hello, great solution; is it possible to clear the selected filters without showing the slicers panel ? that would be great to clear the filters without showing the panel to users
I don’t believe so
Hey David, Great Job.. I tried this and it worked. Thanks for sharing this article.
Thanks Sai. Good to hear it worked out well for you.
Thank you but its not working in dashboard. why?