Power BI tip: a tooltip for your filter context

Less = more. Particularly when it comes to dashboards.

Every report you prepare calls for the right balance between information and level of detail. A frequent use is the tooltip to show extra details on a graph or KPI.

But…a tooltip doesn’t work on your filter context. It only works on the graphs themselves. Yet there are lots of scenarios where you’d like to show details about your filter context.

An example: shop details of your branch filters in a sales report

You have a report with the performances of all your branches. The report shows a dozen KPIs that together produce a total picture of the performance. More information would make the report too crowded.

When you filter the report on branch X, it would be cool to see a number of umbrella details of that branch in a tooltip. Details you don’t need on the screen continuously, but that are good to bring up. For example, its location, the manager who runs it, a telephone number, or the number of product categories in that particular shop.

Below I show you how I managed to get that information in a tooltip on your filter context.

A tooltip for your filter context

Step 1 | Create a measure that contains nothing but the text you want to display on the header. In the case of this example, it is "Store Details."

Step 2 | Place a card under your filters and add your measure to that card. This now shows the text of your measure instead of a number.

Step 3 | Make sure the filters you want to see details about, in this case the establishment filters, filter your card. This transfers the filter value to your card.

Step 4 | Create a separate tab where you visualize the detailed information you want to display in your tooltip.

Step 5 | Turn on the tooltip toggle on your card. This now displays a tooltip with your desired details about your filter context.