Filtering of PowerBI reports

PowerBI reports can be filtered in a similar way as traditional Pivot or PowerPivot reports. Since one report is usually consisted of several visuals (tables, charts, cards, slicers) you could adjust a way that selected visual filters all other within a report that share same dataset. Also, you could filter a whole dataset by applying basic, advanced or Top n filters, which will be subject of a text that follows.

In our case, we have created a report composed of several visuals. If you select one and further go to Format ribbon, you’ll se an option called Edit Interactions. By clicking on it you will enable or disable interactions, which is actually a set of icons that are found in the top right corner of each visual. By selecting a visual, all other visuals will shown interaction menu, if enabled. It consists of three icons: funnel, pie and crossed circle. By clicking on funnel you filter the report, by showing only values that apply to filter conditions. Second icon also does filtering in a way that fades all values and show filtered. Third option desables filtering of an object.

Filtering objects can also be done directly, within the Filters menu on the right pane. Below the list of visualization tools there is a layout of fields to define the representation of elements of selected visual (axes, legend, values, etc.), and on the bottom you can find filter area. Numeric values can be filtered by entering a given value or range of values and a logical criterion. Other values are filtered by selecting them (Basic Filtering) or adding one or more conditions (Advanced Filtering). There is also a Top n option that allows selection of certain top or bottom values we want to show in the report. Clicking the Apply Filter button applies the selected filters. Once we have created a filter, by clicking the icon that resembles the eraser, right from its name, we remove the filter.

Filtering can also be done using the Include/Exclude option. When we click on a series of data, and then right-click to open the context menu, these two options will appear. The Include option includes a series (in the given case, show only designated series). The Exclude option removes series from a visual.

Here I described how to filter visuals. Also, PowerBI Desktop offers the ability to filter report pages (Page level filters) or whole reports (Report level filters), which is done by dragging reporting dimension in one of these fields.