NEW Button Slicers in Power BI | 3 Examples You Don’t Want to Miss!

slicers never got much love from the powerbi development team however it finally seems to have changed in the November 23 release we have the new button slicer so a slicer used to look like this where the selected item was always in Black then you could not change the shape or add images or even have any control over the layout now looks like this over here where we do have full control over the layout we can add images and we can even play around with the shape to make it more like web design and we can even use that new slicer to create a double button like this one over here now in this video I'm going to show you how to get the most out of the new button slices let's dive in straight away and to be able to do that you need to be on the November 23 version of powerbi and you need to enable the new button slicer and the preview options so let's go to options and settings and then here we can go to preview features and make sure that the new button slicer is selected and then you're ready to go now what are we actually comparing the new button slicer to Let's insert the old slicer first so I go over here to the visuals select the old slicer and I'm going to put it here above that visual that I created before and as a filter field I'm going to choose the product category so over here I have a table in product I take the product category name and drag it onto that old slicer all right now over here that gives me all of the items in that field that I can click on but this is kind of the normal slicer I want to have more well buttons that I can click on because that new slicer is a new button slicer all right now to be able to transform this into buttons we have to go to the formatting options and then here we have slice settings and there we can choose the style of slice that we are looking for I want to have tiles all right and now it looks more like buttons now over here and we can now just click on the buttons and you see it filters the visual right below it now what formatting options do we have there if we want to for example change the layout well there's no option like that we have to just play around with the proportions the size of the visual and you see then the layout changes however we do not really fully control it also that selected item over there computers is always in Black I cannot change the color and what if I want to have different shapes also not possible and what if I want to add an image or icon also not possible all right and there's a lot to improve so there were some easy wins for sure and now let's compare this to that new button slicer all right so I'm going to duplicate my page all right and I'm going to get rid of that old slicer and I'm going to insert a new button slicer that you find right next to it now let's also put this one right above the line line chart and add product category now let's make it a little bit wider so that we see over here all of the buttons and then go to the formatting options so now that already looks a little bit better because we have many more items that we can play around with and change the look and feel for this slicer now the first thing that I want to do is go here to layout because you see by default it has three rows three columns now here we just have three items so I'm going to decrease the number of rows to only one and also here for the columns we could change it but we have exactly three items so I leave it as it is now one thing that you should avoid is going all the way down to zero because then well power doesn't really like it so if I go all the way down you see I can actually choose zero columns but then of course still one column shows but I cannot click now anywhere else well it's just doing nothing basically and you have to wait a few seconds for it to recover all right that was more than a few seconds let me select the visual again and go back to the formatting options it actually still says zero um let's put it back to three all right there you go now let's resize it then as well now over here I don't want to show the title so that one I'm going to turn off and now let's see how it looks like when I click on one of the items for example here let's click on computers now it more or less looks similar to what we had before but we have a lot of different formatting options that we can start to explore let's first start with the color because that was always a big one I'm going to go here to well the buttons because that is the element that I want to change and Tada we have all these different states like with normal buttons we have hover press selected and we can say how the formatting should be for every single state all right that's really nice so we can say for example that here the fail color needs to be blue the same blue as dead line however H then it feels up the blue for well everything else but the selected State and that is because over here the state is still set to default so actually the default I want to have on White and the selected State there I want to have it in blue now let's also adjust the Border I think the blackground the selected item is maybe a little bit much so here I go to border you see we still have the selected state for which we are changing it and I'm just going to turn it off and then for the default State there I want to have a lighter gray so let's go for one of the lighter Grays that we have over there now that is one thing that we can change now but there's more of course we have also there padding right so that is the padding that you see around the text inside of the button now maybe we want to have a little bit less then we can go for custom and here we can completely customize the padding now what you cannot do however is that you want to have a different padding for example when you have over it then it gets gred out which is a little bit of a missed opportunity I don't know why it would have been nice to play around with this also for the different states but okay for the time being that's not possible all right so I'm going to go back and maybe add a little bit more ping there on the left hand side so maybe I want to have let's say 10 pixels perfect now then let's go to the next big thing that you can change which is the shape all right now here instead of having a rectangle we can also go for a rounded rectangle or snipped tap both top right so let's go for the rounded rectangle you see now we have these nice round corners if you think it's a little bit much then you can also drag it to the left a little bit you can also customize it if you want to have different roundings for the different Corners however now that's it and go for the default and that's it all right now that's it for the shape and here for the call out values let's make the font size a little bit smaller all right and instead of the font then I like gooey so let's go for normal sigi and maybe even a little bit smaller okay perfect so we have over here the new and improved slicer layout now this is already a big Improvement shape color however of course we can do more there is now also the option to go here to buttons and here for buttons let me just close the filling and the Border we have accent bars and if we click on it we get an extra line showing there on the left hand side of each button and of course that accent bar we can also customize with a different color or we can change the position of that accent bar now also the width and the transparency we can play around with now with these elements you can really create nice looking slices let's for example create a variation of of the first one that we have over here and see what we can do with it so I'm going to again create a duplicate of this page all right there we have a slicer and now instead of having here white background with a blue background for this selected item I just want to have everything without a background so let me do that quickly let's turn off the borders and the fill for each state then for the selected State the selected State there I want to have a different color for the call out value now that's not on buttons but call out value selected State and over there instead of white I want to have a gray color in Bol and then for the default State I also want to have that same gray color just like this now instead of having there gray for the selected item let's quickly change it back to Blue just like this and I want to have an accent bar for that selected item right so let's go to buttons selected item is over there so selected that's the state accent bar let's turn it on and I want to have that accent bar at the bottom in that same color blue all right so you know you see it nicely underlines the selected item now the call Val value probably should also be in the middle so I go back to call out values and here we have horizontal alignment now that is for the selected item I also want to have it for all of the other ones so I go back to default also put that in the middle all right otherwise it looks a bit misaligned and you see we have a nice looking slicer we have much more control than what we used to have in the past much more however this is not where it stops we have more and one of the things that we can do now is also to add images and that all opens a lot of new opportunities so I'm going to duplicate that slicer that we had before so that we have that as our starting point all right and now we're going to add images now also here you see we have the different states and we can choose the image that we would like to have now there we need to well have either a measure or column that has the URLs of where these images are so you need to find nice looking images for well in this case these three items audio cell phones and computers so I went to PowerPoint and in PowerPoint I found a few nice pictures when you go for example here to insert and then you go to pictures there we have stock images and then I simply look for whatever you need that matches with the items for which you need pictures now for example I had over here headphones then I found an image that I liked and those are the images that you see there now make sure that you make them big enough so that the quality is okay however too big well that again takes a lot of space so then you might want to compress the images all right so over here I made them a little bit bigger and then saved these pictures now after that we can go back to powerbi go over here to my data panel and here we can add a new measure so let's do that and let's call this one image product category so just like this and here we can say switch and I want to check the product category so over here we can just use a Max Min and whatever you like and then we have product category so product category over there and then I want to say if that product category is equal to audio then give me image one and then just like this we can do the same for computers as well as for the last category which is cell phones so cellones okay so image three all right then over here we can close that switch function and we can replace over here instead of saying the image one we need the URL now where do I get the URL from well those pictures that I got from PowerPoint is saved for example in drawbox all right so I have a drawbox folder and here you see we have that first image and from here I can get drawbox link so I'm going to copy it and just paste it in there now here instead of having the L is equal to Z we have to replace that with raw equal 1 all right and this I also do for the other images so let me do that quickly there you go and now we have a measure now with that measure we can go back to the slicer formatting options then go to images and here we can add that measure to the image field so there it is Select it and now I just have to make it a little bit bigger all right there you go good so now we know how to add these images let's also make it look maybe a little bit better all right so let's see what formatting options we have so let's go here to formatting again I'm going to change the shape this time to a normal rectangle so that we don't have these weird areas around the images all right so this looks a little bit better and then here for the selected item I want to have instead of white this a little bit lighter all right so I'm going to go over here to the button the selected item can stay as this that's fine however for the default I'm going to make the fill color a little bit lighter so maybe blue and then a lot of transparency that I want to add to it just like this all right now you see it also impacted the selected state so I go back over here to the selected state where the transparency should be set to zero okay perfect so we have a little bit but not too much now then the call out values let's go there as well so call out values let's Center it in the middle so that looks a little bit more aligned and then let's put the color to light gray now this is a little bit too much maybe a little bit darker just like this perfect now then when I hover over it I don't like the color so I go back over here two buttons then hover State and then I want to have maybe a different filling than this one so I also want to have blue however then maybe add a little bit less transparency just like this then and the last thing is maybe to get rid of the borderline so I'm going to go here to default and turn the borders off all right and that's it that already looks pretty good now when I click on it you see it nicely shows which one is selected which one is not now maybe an extra thing that we can play around with is the image itself because also there we have a few options to explore so for the default State you might want to well turn the saturation maybe a little bit lower just like this and then for the selected state they want to have full saturation okay so saturation is one thing to play around with maybe also transparency to make it a little bit more transparent or we can also play around with the blur so let's say we want to blur it when we hover over the item so over here we have hover now I want to blur it so in this date I'm going to put the blur up right so you see now it's more blurred maybe that's a little bit too much put it down and now now I want to show that label in the middle over the picture so we can set this image to the background all right so instead of having it above it we say in the off State it should go to the back and now you see ah the call out value is in the middle so let's go back to the call out value and now we have to make it a bit more readable so I'm going to make it bold in the over state I'm going to change the color twice now let's see how that looks still not readable and I want to have a background color then for the office State now to get that background color in we just have to turn it on over there and then decide on the color that we like you see over here we have now a nice background now you can also go for hug contents which might look actually a little bit better you see now it makes that background Square as big as the text is right so that it hugs the content all right perfect and I kind of like how it looks like right now we just probably make a littleit smaller so that it doesn't take that much space just like this all right now and maybe a little bit of rounded corner so go back to shape around the corners and then this is too much but maybe a little bit like five pixels looks perfect all right so now that we have a good looking new slicer for the product categories I also want to create one for the subcategories so I'm going to add another new slicer new one this one all right I'm going to put it right next to a visual over here and here we going to add these subcategory so let's drag it onto the new slicer now here we have quite a few more all right and I want to make it more like web design now that was not possible before however now it completely is so I'm going to make a few changes now let's first make sure that we see all of the subcategories and let's make it a little bit bigger okay now here you see we have quite a few all right I want to turn this over here into this you see that looks quite a bit better and you see it a lot in different websites and here we have a little check mark for those items that I selected and when we hover over it you see the check mark appearing there in the back end and it moves the Tex also to the right okay so how can we achieve this effect let's go back to our new button slice in here and the first thing that I want to do is get rid of the title again so let's turn that one off and here let's change the shape to rounded rectangle and let's put the rounded Corners to the max 50 pixels okay now I know it doesn't look so good just yet however we will get there okay so now that we have this I'm going to go to the call out values those I'm going to make much smaller let's put them to eight and let's put again the font to sigi UI okay now also here watch out in what state you are I was doing it for the hover state so let's make sure that we are in the default State all right that's a mistake that can easily happen and also here we have sui okay now let's make this slice a little bit wider because I cannot see the item names now still I can't um let's make it maybe less High just like this all right now you see well we don't have much space there in the buttons so that has to do with padding of the buttons so I go here to the buttons and let's adjust the padding so that we have over here full control so I go for custom you see that already looks better and then here I don't want to have the Ping at the top and at the bottom so that we can actually make them look more like Bells all right just like this perfect now here you see when we have more buttons that really fit then you get over here that scroll bar this is actually also something that you can control under layout so here you see when we have overflow it creates a continuous scroll now instead of that we could also go for paginated and then you get over here this arrow that you can click on however here I actually liked that scroll so I'm going to go back continueous scroll I like that a little bit more okay perfect now the next thing that we're going to do is to make it a little bit more blue so I'm going to go back over here to the buttons and here I would like to have a different color for the different states so in the default State I want to have the fill color gray so I'm going to choose a gray color now for me this is a little bit too gray so I'm going to add a little bit of transparency to it let's put this one to let's say 60% okay good then for the selected State I want to have it in blue right so I'm going to go here to select it and then we can choose the color that we like now let's select one over there this is how it looks like and put the transparency maybe up to 80% okay perfect and then we can also play around with the border now over here for the Border we want to have that same color blue in there so selected State and then for the default State maybe it's a little bit too much I'm going to add also a little bit of transparency and there you go all right now then the call out values let's go over here to the call out values for the default State I want to have it a little bit more gray so I'm going to choose a lighter gray color and then for the selected State there we can also go for a blue color again now I want these buttons not on white background so therefore I go to size and style and turn the back ground off now I could put these buttons over here on the right hand side and maybe play around with the the layout and how I size this however I think for the final one for my final version I want these buttons to be in between over here the visual and the product category slicer over there at the top all right so I'm going to resize it so that it nicely fits at the moment it looks a little bit squeezed because I don't have much space I could just take everything that I have and place it down a little bit that is of course one option and then create a bit more space however let's say we always want to have one of the product categories selected then here for the product category there I want to make sure that it forces a single select which is now also one of the options if we look here in the slic settings we can force a single select so now I always have one selected I cannot deselect that audio button there I always need one selected okay all right so now now we can make this then also a little bit bigger so that it nicely shows all right and place it down a bit okay perfect another thing that we need to watch out for is that when we select one of the subcategories that it doesn't filter that product category slicer all right so let's go to format added interactions and let set the interaction To None from the subcategory slicer to the category slicer and then turn edit interactions off again okay perfect so you see that works nicely however I cannot do a multi select so I have to change that for the subcategory slicer so I'm going to turn the single select off now we can do a multi- select I don't have to hold the control key which wasn't really user friendly anyways right so that's much better now another thing that I would like to add is a little check mark over there because it actually makes a big difference if we shift that text to the right and then put a check mark in over there on the left hand side now a check mark I don't have but we could go again to PowerPoint and then over here I can go to icons search for a check mark all right so check mark now there you go and insert it now that we have a check mark let's make it a little bit bigger and this check mark I'm going to give exactly the same color blue as what we have in powerbi so make sure that it nicely matches with the color blue that we have there as well now I'm going to copy that color card which is something you could do by going to the line chart and then over here lines and then colors and then you see we have the color blue more colors and then this is the color code that I'm going to copy over to PowerPoint take over here your image graphic format and then Graphics fil there we can put in that color code under custom all right so there you go that's the image that I want and that's the image that we can then save as a picture now save it as a picture important also here is that you save it as PNG we don't want to have any background color in there and then put it also on Dropbox one drive wherever you want to put it all right so I'm going to save my check mark there it is and then also here it is in Dropbox for me so I'm going to copy the link and then back in powerbi we can add a new measure and the same as before we going to have a measure that basically returns that image so over here this is my check mark image is equal to then we have the link and that link needs to be in between quotation marks again you don't necessarily have to change the data category to image URL all right so we can just leave it as it is and to get now that check mark image in these buttons we have to go to the buttons and then we can go to the formatting options and then we go to images and here for which state do we want to add the images well over here I cannot do it for the office State it's one of these things that bothers me still a little bit it would be nice to choose a different image for the different states not possible so let's go to default add the image so let's go over here and choose that new measure that we just created all right that was the wrong one the other one all right and then over here now you see if we make this a little bit bigger and I don't see anything now why is this I probably made a mistake well and the measure let's go back to that measure check mark image and what I forgot here is that this is in drawbox where you need to change the ending part to Raw equals one all right and now let's cross our fingers and let's see ah there you go now doesn't look beautiful however that is something that we can fix all right now let me just get rid of that white background for that PNG all right that's is better so I'm going to go over here to that slicer and then here for the default I'm going to take the image F normal that's fine for now and instead of having it at the top I want it to be on the left hand side now over here you see I have the check mark for the default on the left it's a little bit too big so that image area size you can also make smaller and if we now take that slicer and we make it a little bit less High you see then that image doesn't look so ridiculously high anymore all right and now over here let's resize it so that everything looks a bit better now that looks already quite okay but these items are actually not selected so down I don't want to show it I only want to show it in this selected state so over here we have set as background and we can turn this one off okay now you will see that now the text is on the left hand side I don't want to show these images so I'm going to put transparency all the way up all right so that you don't see them and then for the selected State there I do want to have them so I'm going to turn setus background off and then here turn the transparency to zero all right now where did they go let me just make a selection I see only then they pop up and it pushes the text to the right and that creates a really nice effect the only thing that's a little bit buggy if you ask me so over here I cannot make changes to this anymore right so I have to make changes to this for example the image area size and the space between the image and the call out then I would first have to go back to default turn this one off then make my changes turn it off again and then go back to select it so that's a little bit stupid if you ask me so I guess I didn't need to change that all right so now we have exactly that effect that I was looking for and it also opens up a nice little trick because if we go back over here to that starting slice here then here you see we have that line underneath it that accentuates which one is selected right so the accent bar now another nice effect sometimes is to push the text up or to the right kind of like a small little hover effect which here at the moment is still missing however the for normal buttons there's like a text element and then you can for example increase the padding right now here you might think we also have that right for buttons pading you can just for the Hest State increase the bading underneath it right so that so that text goes up or increase the bding to the left but if we go over here to the harvest date we cannot make changes all right so that's a little bit annoying and then you already have to start thinking about workarounds right so a workaround over here could be that you create an image placeholder and and use that kind of to push the text now let me show you what I mean we could for example add over here a measure and then this is going to be image placeholder so an image that will not show so image placeholder dummy um and then quotation mark space quotation mark or anything can in be in between these quotation marks as long as there well is something right don't leave it just empty and then we go back over here to the formatting options images and and here I want to have now an image right so I go to default add data Matrix and then over here we have the image placeholder okay now you see text already moves however I want it to be at the bottom so that it pushes the text up and this needs to happen only when I hover over it so over here for the default State I set back set the image as background so that doesn't move and then for the hover State there it turn status background off so that when I hover over it you see it pushes the text nicely up all right now of course a little bit of a stupid workaround that hopefully is not going to be necessary in the future okay good all right so let's go back to where we are all right so we have the product category slicer there at the top with the images we have over here the option to well make our selection of the subcategories with a nice web like interface so over here that second slicer and now the last thing that I want to add is a doggle button because with these new slices we can also create a nice toggle now I created a video before on how to build a toggle which you can check out over here but that is for bookmarks so to trigger a bookmark this one is a little bit different right here we can see with measure if the slicer the new slicer is toled on off and if it is on then do something right so I will show you in a second how that would work that's first build the tongle so I'm going to go over here and add my last slice for today so over here that that's the slice new all right I'm going to put it again here on the right hand side and now I want to have a too now for this we need a new table now let's go to enter data and here we can just have one column let's call it toggle and also here table and we can call toggle and here I just want to have one value and that value is going to be a circle the shape of basically the toggle that we want to show so I for on and off the in a circle now to have over here a symbol for Circle you could do Windows key and then Dot and then look for a circle somewhere but I think this circle that I found is a little bit too small so therefore I would Google it right so over here Circle unicodes or unicar and here look for a circle just copy it over and then go here and paste it in there okay now that's it load it and then we have basically just a column with one value that's circle now that table we're not going to connect to anything now then we can go over here to the right hand side to the data fields right so here we have the toggle and then take the toggle drag it on there and there you go we have our toggle button we can turn it on can turn it off it just doesn't really look nice all right so let's improve the way it looks let's go here to formatting and then here for layout let's put the rows and the columns to one all right now again watch out that you don't go to zero all right now and that little dot here I want to be on the right when it's togle on and on the left when it's togle on now for that we can go over here to the colum values all right now here I want to align it to the right for the selected state so selected state to the right okay perfect now then for the default State I want it to be on the left okay so when I turn it off you see it jumps to the left now I also want it to maybe be a little bit bigger right so over here we can play around with the size now of course this togle is not going to be this big so I'm going to make it already a little bit small smaller but you see when I make it smaller some point the dot is not in the middle anymore it doesn't fit there's always some extra space above it now of course one thing that determines it is the size of the value that's one so I'm going to make it smaller but another thing that has that plays a role is over here for the button the pading and so that one we also want to customize it so that we don't have any pading above it and below it all right now that already makes it a little bit better and then you can resize it and let's also get rid of the title and let's turn that one off as well okay now now it slowly starts to look more like a dog but if I want to turn it on then over here I don't want to have a black button I want it to show in the same color blue right so I go here to buttons and then I go to fill and for the selected State I want it to to have the color blue okay now then for the default State I want the color to be gray now so that's when I turn it off it is gray perfect now then what about the Border let's turn the Border off I don't necessarily need it and then here under the size and style the background we also don't need now let's put it already more or less where we want to have it later on over here okay perfect now then the dot over here I don't want it to be in Black when it's turned off I just want it to be in white so that is the call out value and that one we can set to White all right perfect now it is white when it's turned off it's white when it's turned on so that's okay then for the shape let's make it a little bit more rounded which is more usual so I go for the rounded rectangle increase the corners the rounding of the corners and there you go we have our little toggle now of course it's still a little bit bit big I want it to be maybe only this size so much smaller you see the dot doesn't fit anymore not that this looks bad it's also kind of a nice effect but I want the dot to be a little bit more visible so then we have to just play around with the colard value and make it smaller smaller smaller smaller you see at some point nicely fits again and then you just have to play around with the size a little bit okay there you go now this is good enough right so that gives you a lot of flexibility now you can change it however a bit more control would have nice right so if we could literally get rid of all of the spacing above it and below it however that's not really possible unless you just work with pictures you could also turn the pictures when it's selected and when it's not selected to something else right so that would also be an option all right so we have our toggle but we don't know what we are toggling off and on so maybe we can also add over your title now for that we need to make it a little bit bigger all right and then the toggle let's make the title a little a little bit smaller let's say what we turn off and on so that's going to be the forecast let's make it also a little bit more gray choose a different font type maybe ay all right and now it looks like this now play around with the size again all right and I'm going to turn it over here I'm going to position it over there so now we can turn something on and we can turn something off right so hide and show the forecast but it's not connected to anything so I need to well create a measure that basically checks is it selected or not right and on the basis of that show the forecast or the target okay now let's do this let's go and first have a look at what we wanted to on enough that's the sales Target now let me show you looks at the moment like this but doesn't react to that toggle just yet then we go over here back to our measure table new measure and here we can call this one forecast toggle all right and we want to check if is filtered that little toggle table all right if it is filtered so when it is filtered then I want to show the Target now over here we have a measure called sales Target and otherwise you don't want to show it so just blank all right now that measure we can then add to the visual all right so instead of having there the original sales Target I'm going to replace it so over here let's go and take it out and we replace it with that new measure that I called forecast toggle all right so now that we have this let's see if it works so I'm going to turn the toggle on there you go we have the line turn it off now I can get rid of the legend we don't really need it so let's play around with the formatting select the visual Legend turn off all right then we go over here to lights I want to change the look and feel for the forecast so that we have maybe a lighter color blue now let's also change the line type for the forecast so the series forecast tole then line style is going to be doed dashed whatever you like more maybe dashed here and then this talk with maybe a little bit less just like this all right perfect now we can turn it on and off nice all right now for that toggle button we could also have approach it a little bit differently so by going here to the slicer new slicer and then work with the background images so here for the button you have fil we can also choose images for the default State and different image for the selected State and then look for picture how it should look like when it's off and look for picture how it should look like when it's on so if you feel a little bit limited about how this tole look like just go for the images approach all right now I hope that you got a lot of value out of this video and that you have some new ideas of how to get the most out of this new button slicer if you have some other ideas then let me know in the com comment section below also if you have any questions just let me know and if you are interested in powerbi design then check out my upcoming training for the beginning of next year where you can build reports together with me and I teach you all that I know about powerbi design to create really good reports now if you cannot wait and just want to get going with a few videos then check out these videos over here and I want to thank you for watching and see you in the next video de

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Views: 91,446

Keywords: powerbi, howtopowerbi, how to power bi, power bi, power bi tutorial, new slicer, slicers, power bi slicer, button slicer, november 2023, power bi release, buttons, power bi design, dashboards, visualisation, bas dohmen, power bi images, image slicer, power bi training

Id: czq-HRFQRnc

Length: 38min 27sec (2307 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 26 2023