Yooo! Adam Saxton with Guy in a Cube and in this video we are gonna look at how you can create a slicer panel in Power BI and take it to the next level. Let's do this. (upbeat music) If you're finding us for the first time, be sure to hit that subscribe button to stay up to date with all the videos from both Patrick and myself. Slicer panels, I actually did a video on this not too long ago, but I wanted to revisit this because there's been some
new improvements in Power BI and I wanted to show you how
to take it to the next level. So as part of that, I'm retiring the old video and we're just gonna make a whole new one. Why would I even want a slicer panel? And the idea behind it
is that I could actually show or hide those
slicers to free up space with inside of my report and just make it a little cleaner. Another thing to keep in mind though is do you even need a slicer and you may wanna consider whether I actually have a slicer or I wanna do it on the filter pane. I've got a video linked up above where you can take a look at that and decide where's the
right place to put it. But you may actually
want a couple of slicers on your main report because those are the most relevant for your users. Also, it may be that
you wanna take advantage of maybe like a visual-level filter where your selections
with inside of the slicer will change dependent
on what you're doing. All right, enough of all this talking. Let's jump into my laptop and actually see how we can do this. All right, I've got a report here that's got some visuals and whatnot and what we wanna do is
add slicers to this report and we're gonna create that slicer panel. So the first thing I have
to do, gotta add a slicer. So let's go ahead and go over to calendar. We'll jump and grab year and drag it to an empty spot on the canvas so I don't add it something else. We'll turn it into a slicer and I'll choose the dropdown
and make this a list. Let's move it over to where
our slicer panel is gonna be. And that's pretty awful so let's go ahead and adjust some of the formatting. And we'll bump up the font. And we'll change the font color to black. Good to go. All right, I can't, this
is pretty awful right? I can't see the slicer 'cause
there's stuff behind it so the next thing we're gonna do is we're gonna add a shape. So we're gonna add a rectangle. Of note, I'm using a color,
I'm using a theme inside of this report so that's why these colors are automatically picking
up the way they do. So should definitely
use a theme if you can, otherwise, change the color
formatting as you see fit. I'm good with leaving it as it is. So now, it still looks pretty awful. What we're gonna do is
we're gonna go to View and go to the Selection Pane. In here we can adjust the Z-order. That's right I said Z-order. So where is it from a layer perspective. And we can adjust that
with the selection pane. And so right now, let's go
ahead and select the rectangle. It shows up down here so we'll drag it all the way up to the top
underneath the slicer. We're gonna rename these items, too. We're gonna make 'em have
a name that is relevant. All right, cool. We wanna, let's fix this up a little bit make sure it's in the right space. Give it a little bit on the top. Then I'm gonna add another
slicer here for our country. So add sales country again. Put it in a spot where it's not gonna be added to another visual. Change it to a slicer. Let's move it over. Instead of redoing all
that formatting again, I'm just gonna select the one I formatted. Go back to home. Format painter. Bam! Now we're good to go on that. Undo Australia so you
see everything, cool. Next, what we're gonna do
is we're gonna add a button. So we're gonna do a left arrow and we'll move it, resize it a little bit, and there's our panel. Now let's go ahead and fix up these slicers a little bit more. Let's do the names and
the selection panel. All right, cool. So we've got four elements here. This is where we can take
this to the next level. Let's go ahead and select
all four of these elements. So we'll select the slicers, select the back button, and then we'll select the rectangle. They are all selected. What I wanna do now is
right-click, say group, and then create a group. (gasps) Oh my gosh, look at this
over on the selection panel. Selection pane, we'll
call this slicer panel. All right, and if I expand that I see all four of those
elements right there. So now, what's cool about grouping is that all four elements
now will act as one in terms of selections. The thing to note about grouping those, I can still select the individual elements so be aware of that. But in general, this makes
things a little easier. So what I can do now is go
ahead and create a bookmark. And so let's go ahead and
choose the bookmark pane. A bookmark is really
just taking a snapshot of a current state of an element and then we can go back
and forth between bookmarks to show and hide. So what I wanna do is
create two bookmarks. One is with the slicer panel shown. So, let's go ahead and add a bookmark. And I'll remake it show slicer panel. What I wanna do on this bookmark also is click on the ellipses and uncheck data. I don't want the current
state of the slicer saved with the bookmark. So for example here, nothing's selected. If data was selected and then I go and show the slicer panel, it would reset my slicer selection. I don't want that to happen. So uncheck data there if I just
want a visual state of this. For the second bookmark,
what we're gonna do is instead of having to show or hide those four elements individually, I can just hide the slicer panel group and then add another bookmark. Call it hide slicer panel. And remember to uncheck data. So now I've got two bookmarks. One where I'm showing a slicer pane and one where I'm hiding a slicer pane. All right, so let's go back
and show that slicer pane. What I wanna do now is wire
up my given button here. So the back button, let's go ahead and select the back button. And what we're gonna do
is come down to action, we're gonna turn it on and
change my type to bookmark. And when I select that, I want to hide the slicer panel. We'll give it a tool tip. Here we go. So now when I hover over
it, I'll see my tool tip. In Power BI Desktop, I wanna hold down the control button and select it. When you're in the service, you don't have to hold
down the control button. All right, so now we're in the state where the slicer panel's hidden so we need to do something to be able to show the slicer panel. In comes a image. So let's go ahead and add an image here. I happen to have an image right here. We'll call it menu icon. It's a little hamburger. Go ahead and resize this. Move it down. Right here. And then with that image selected I can do the same thing. Come over to action, we'll expand it. Change it to a bookmark. And then change that bookmark
to show the slicer panel, give it a tool tip. And again, when I hover
over it, I see my took tip. Hold down control in
Power Bi Desktop only. Select it, bam, there's my slicer panel. And then bam, slicer panel's hidden. That's amazing, right? Couple things that make
this really next level. One is that grouping feature. The fact that I can group
given visuals together in a single group and
then show/hide those, that provides an amazing experience for when we're doing bookmarks
or things of that nature. I can group things together
instead of having to just manually select and hide. Especially if there's a
lot of items in my report. Bookmarks are another thing that just help take this to the next level with the ability to save states and be able to move things in and out. I've also got another video that you can go check
out with Amanda Cofsky that talks about buttons and taking buttons to the next level. That goes into some
details about bookmarks using with buttons and using
buttons in a very unique way. So check that out as well. All right, I wanna pass this off to you. What do you think? Are you using a slicer panel? Let me know down in the comments below. Also are you using the groups feature? It's pretty cool. If you like this video,
hit the thumbs up button. Smash it if you so desire. If it's your first time here, hit that subscribe button. And as always from both
Patrick and myself, thank you so much for watching. Keep being awesome. And we'll see you in the next video.
