Progressive disclosure in Power BI
1. Progressive disclosure in Power BI
Our overview page is a bit messy, so let’s use progressive disclosure to improve it. First, we’re going to remove the bookmark and filter card. Then, we’ll shift the inspection report button and inspector chart down and move the Q&A to the top right, shrinking the visual a little bit to make room for a button. That button will read “Show Q&A” which we'll edit in the Style menu of the format pane. In the Selection pane, I’ll rename the button to “Show Q&A” as well. Now let’s copy and paste that button so that it overlaps. I’ll call this one Hide Q&A in the format menu and on the Selection pane. To wire up these buttons, I need to create bookmarks. First, let me hide the Hide button as well as the Q&A visual itself, using the eye icon in the Selection menu. Then, I’ll open the Bookmarks pane in the View ribbon menu and add a new bookmark called “Q&A Hidden”. Right now, that bookmark keeps track of the state of all visuals, not just our Q&A visuals. To limit its scope, we’ll need to select each of the Q&A elements by control-clicking them. Then, hit the ellipsis on the bookmark and switch the bookmark to track only the selected visuals. After that, we will select the ellipsis again and update the bookmark to save those settings. Now let’s reverse visibility, hiding the Show button and revealing the other two elements. We’ll add another bookmark called Q&A Visible. Then, we’ll repeat the process: control-click each Q&A element in the Selection pane, change the bookmark to care about just the selected visual elements, and update the bookmark. With those actions in place, we can select the Hide Q&A button, enable an Action, set the type to Bookmark, and choose the Q&A Hidden bookmark. Note that if we select the Show Q&A button, no formatting options are available. Hidden visuals aren’t editable–it’s almost like they don’t exist until they’re visible. Instead, let’s test the Hide Q&A button by control-clicking it. We can see that it does work and now our Show Q&A button is visible. Let’s enable an Action for the button and wire it up to the Q&A Visible bookmark. Test this button and yes, we can see how users can show and hide this pane. Now, on Overview 2, let’s do something with the other three visuals. We can see one button and one arrow per visual and the visuals overlap. To simplify things, I have put related visuals in groups. The buttons will stay outside those groups so that they always remain visible. Our process is quite similar to what we did with Q&A. If we want the Inspections group to show, we first hide the other two groups. Then we add a bookmark called “Inspections Visible.” We highlight the three groups, change the bookmark to work with only the selected visuals, and update the bookmark to complete the process. We’ll do the same for Inspections over Time by first making the Over Time group visible and hiding the other two. Then, create a new bookmark called “Over Time Visible.” Select all three groups, handle just the selected visuals, and update the bookmark. Naturally, we’ll do the same thing for the Inspectors visual as well. With that sorted, we can wire up each button, starting with Inspections. The process will be the same for each button: turn on the action, change the type to “Bookmark,” and select the appropriate bookmark from the list. Once we’re done, we can control-click a button and see each of the visuals appear. We can also see that drill-through still works just like before. We can’t use hidden visuals to cross-filter visuals on screen, so save this style for independent visuals you don’t expect to cross-filter. And with that, we have implemented progressive disclosure, saving a lot of screen real estate in the process. Now it’s your turn to try it out!2. Let's practice!
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