PIMP MY SLICER | Improving the DESIGN of Native Slicers in Power BI - Step by Step

creating well-designed slices in power bi get that out of my system however instead of complaining let's have a look at what formatting options are there and how we can use them to create well-designed slices in power bi let's get started [Applause] welcome to how to power bi my name is boss and if this is the very first time for you visiting this channel then make sure to hit that subscribe button to stay up to date on all of my videos in which i share everything i know about power bi now let's have a look how we can upgrade the design of our slicers now i have here already an example report to which we are going to add a normal slicer okay so here in the visualization section let's choose the slicer and i'm going to put it here on the left hand side of my report and then in the field section we can choose the fields we want to use on the slicer let's say the department field and there you go we have a slicer so now we can hold the control key and click on the check boxes to say which departments we want to filter on and all of the other visuals on the report page nicely get filled okay now it works it's functional however not so pretty so what are some design changes that we can make to the slicing to make it look a little bit better now let's first do some straightforward ones before we get into the more tricky workaround now let's say we are not going to have many slices on this report page so a slicer can take a bit more space then instead of checkboxes we can convert our items into buttons now how can we do that well simply take your slicer go to formatting options and then here under slicer settings we can change the orientation from vertical to horizontal and then you see we have buttons now the layout might be a little bit off at the beginning now what is important is that here under general and then properties here we have for the advanced options responsiveness on okay now this one you have to leave on because if you turn it off then all of the buttons well they're horizontally next to one another and we want to have them somehow vertically okay now there's no option to change the grid layout so instead of that we can just play around a little bit with the width until the buttons pop up right below one another and then we can make it a little bit higher and now you see over here if we make it high enough we have the different departments right below one another okay so you have to play around with the size a little bit until it nicely fits now if this is one of the few slices on your report page and everybody within the company knows what each item means then maybe the title or the slider header is not really necessary so for now i'm just going to turn that one off alright so now that we have this let's see what other formatting options are there under the visual tab so if we go here and open the values group then in here you see we can change the font size font color we can add border lines and we can play around with the background color okay now one that's often overlooked is the border now that is because well if you put a board on every side of each item well it doesn't really look nice however if you just keep the board on the left hand side just like this and you make it as wide as possible which is done that is the maximum you see it starts to look quite interesting especially if you go for maybe different color than gray so maybe you want to make it a little bit brighter so that it stands out a little bit more so for example red works pretty well here or we could go for maybe yellow you see this already gives it a little bit more of a modern look now what else could we do well we could go here to the background color and maybe we want to make it the same as the background behind the slicer so let me go there more colors and i'm going to give it the same color which is this silver gray so 240 to 43 to 47 all right now it would be nice of course if we could also give a different color to the selected items but that's not possible so it is always black which is a huge limitation and of course i also hope that in the future and we can also set different colors with a selected item would be nice however instead of complaining about it how can we integrate it into our design well i think this already looks quite okay but what you could also do is to go again to your border and then here instead of yellow you choose the same color black now it's not the d black this one however you have to go 2 up so 20 lighter that's the same color black you see and this also creates an interesting effect because now when the item is selected the background is black and you have the same color borderline on the left hand side so the whole thing is black and if it's not selected then only the border line on the left hand side is visible so you see working in a good way with borders can really uplift the design of your slicer now another thing that you could do is work with shapes in combination with the slicer so an obvious example would be if we go here to insert and then shapes we could add a rectangle behind the slicer alright so if i go here and place that rectangle on the left hand side and now we have to make sure that the rectangle doesn't overlap the slicing but the other way around so let's take the shape go here to format and then here send it backwards they see having the shape in the back of the slicer creates a little bit of structure and separates the slicer from the rest of the report however not that we have this background shape maybe you want to change the color again of the items that are not selected so we could for example instead of having the same silver gray background we could go for a green background so if i go over here to values again and then background and then here i can set the color to the same color green and then for the values i can choose let's say white you see now when an item is not selected it has the same color as the background shape and only the border line on the left hand side is visible and when selected it's black i think that looks pretty good but we can use shapes in more ways than just background now what we could also do is take the shape and make it much smaller so it's going to be one vertical line and then i'm going to take the slicer and here i'm going to turn the border lines off for now okay so i'm going to hit the border turn it off and then i'm going to take my shape and i'm going to make sure that it overlaps the slicer now to make sure it overlaps we have to bring it to the front again so format and bring it forward all right now to add a little bit of extra effect we can go into general effects and then here i would like to have a shadow on the right hand side okay now also here that shape doesn't have to be green we could also make this one again the same color as the selected item because the selected item is always black at least for now so we can take over here the shape go to style and then here we can choose again that black that's 20 lighter all right and you have to also make sure that the shape doesn't have a border line because now the green border line is also visible and that's it and nicely integrates with the selected items of course you can get very creative with all of the shapes that you find either here in power bi or you can create your own shape in powerpoint photoshop and use that here in power bi and then integrate that with your slicer now would this also work when we have a horizontal layout for a slicer for example if we want to have it at the top of a page now let's give this a try for example here we can take the shape and put it all the way at the top then also here i have to push it to the back so over here sound backwards and then we can take the slicer and put it here at the top of a report and resize it and as soon as we start resizing it and then you see also the buttons pop up right next to one another because well it's actually a horizontal layout it's just we set it to responsive and over here we can resize and it looks a little bit better now at the moment you might be a little bit confused whether it is the green ones that are selected or the black ones so let's maybe change the design a bit so i'm going to take here the shape and let's make here the fill color green and then i just have to change my font color of the title let's make it white again and then for the buttons we can do the same trick as before and we can take the slicer go to format and we can work with the borders again so let's go here to border and now i would put the border at the bottom just like this i'm going to select it for example let's select formula over here then the whole item is black if it's not selected then it only has the border line that's visible now to finish our button slices i would still do one last thing let's go into format your visual and then here we can go to selection and i would turn off multi select with ctrl key which just makes it a little bit easier to use so now you might think oh that looks good these slicer buttons however i want to have that normal slicer with the jack boxes or something similar to these check boxes where we have the items vertically from one another all right now what design options do we have done to make that look better now let's go back to the beginning where we had our normal slicer this one over here and let's see what we find in the formatting options now first of all if we go to the visual values then over here you see we have well the same options as before now so we can play around with the borders again with the background for the items and we can go also here in the values and play around with the padding for example not something that we didn't do before if we add a bit of padding you see we create a little bit more space more white space which can also already look a little bit better then for the slice adder which is this what we have here at the top well it lets us clear the selection and change from a list to let's say drop down however if you don't need that because we just have a few items right we don't necessarily need this clear selection button then we can also turn it off now why would you want to do that because instead of the header we could just go for a title and with the title we have more formatting options than with the header all right so here we have to type in something for text otherwise it doesn't show so department and let's say we want to have it a little bit bigger put it in the middle and maybe you want to change the text color all right so just play around with it okay good now let's place it for now here on the left hand side now then let's add a little bit of background color let's go for white and let's put the transparency to zero okay now nothing mind-blowing yet now but what i want to do next it's going to be a bit tricky i want to change the icons that we have for the checkboxes so instead of squares and filled squares i want to have something completely different for example just lines or maybe like a check mark or crosses whatever you want any character basically now how could we do that now let's first create a little bit of space so i'm going to take you this bar chart i'm just going to slide it here to the right hand side now to achieve what we are looking for we need to use other visuals and integrate that with a slicer now the first example is going to make use of a bar chart so let's take over here a normal bar chart let's place it over here on the right hand side and let's make it a little bit bigger and then we can go here to them department we want to have a breakdown by the departments and over here i would like to have a bar for each department now for that we're going to create a dummy measure now let's do that i'm going to click here on the three dots do imagine and let's call this one slicer highlight show all right and i'm just going to set the value to 1. then we can take that measure and add it here on the x axis and ac that gives us an equally sized bar for each department however as soon as i select one of the departments in the slicer of course that bar chart gets filtered even when i would go here to that field and say okay show items with no data well the filter is still applied so how can i make sure that all of the departments show again now of course i could turn off the filter interaction but i still need to have that later on to only show a bar for the selected item and if i turn the interaction off that's not possible so what's the workaround we need a disconnected table a disconnected table with one column that contains the departments okay now how can we create that table an easy way just go to the home tab let's click here on enter data and let's call this table slicer design okay now here we just need to have one department column with all of the department names so just one by one type them in just make sure that you don't make any typo and once you're done just click on load now once that is done you can switch to the modeling view and it might be that power bi creates automatically a relationship between them department and slicer design this is not what we want because that's exactly the point we don't want them department to filter slicer design so right click on the relationship delete it all right and then return back to your report view now here for the bar chart let's take this one again we place department with department from slicer design and you see now this one is not filtering our bar chart so that all of our departments show all right but we only want to have a bar for the selected item so when icare is selected over here i only want to show a bar for i care over there and not for the other ones so we have to make an adjustment to that measure that dummy measure that we wrote here so instead of one what we could do is we could say f bracket open then check the selected value of slice's design department okay so we take basically the value of that one and check if it's in well the value is the selected the selected values of um department in them department okay and if it is then we want to show it so we return the value one and otherwise nothing so we leave it black okay so this basically just checks if the department item in the design table is selected in the slicer over there okay that's it now you might be surprised because not all of the departments show just yet because we have to go here to a department on y-axis and show items with no data and because we replaced it with the new one from slicer design okay and then you see all of the departments show however we only show a bar for the one that is selected over there so if i also select former there you go we have two bars now the next thing that we need to do is to make sure that well we sort them in the same way so here we have the department sorted alphabetically so we have to do the same in a bar chart so let's do this sort by department and we have to make sure that we sort in ascending order so now the main idea is there because if i make my selection over here we have a bar over there in the bar chart okay now how can we use that well at the moment we have all of these other items that we're actually not interested in so those i want to get rid of so if we go into the bar chart format i want to get rid of that y-axis i want to get rid of the x-axis and the grid lines and here in the general i don't want to have the title okay and now here we can also give this one a background color so if we go here to general effects background white okay so the same color as the slicer has and then i make it less white and you see oh it doesn't show anymore well we still have to go here then to properties advanced options and turn responsiveness off so now we have to somehow align these bars with the items so i'm going to take this drag it here on the left hand side you see it's almost aligned already i'm going to resize it just like this and then the last part well that i usually do here in the general properties and then here we have size there we have position and you just have to play around with it until it is perfectly aligned so once you have done that we can test that so let's select one of the other items deselect it again and see over here we have now the little bar on the left hand side okay now of course the downside is that you have to click on the items themselves you cannot click on the checkboxes anymore because we have a different visual that well overlaps a part of the slicer okay so that is something to keep in mind all right then another thing that's important is that you have seen that when i click on it the slicer pops to the front then i deselect the slicer and pops back to the background okay now this also happens when you publish it however not if you make the following change so if you select the slicer and then you go here to format your visual general properties then here advanced option you have maintain layer order that is important turn that on for both of the visuals and with that turned on well it will still come to the front here in power bi desktop but not when you publish it so let me do that quickly if we go here to home publish and now here in power bi servers you see i can just click on items and it still looks good okay so now back to power vi desktop because we're not done just yet we can still do better now instead of just having then a bar well you can have also different items right so we can go back here to the bar chart and we can also add over here arrow bars why would you want to do that because with arrow bars we have again different shapes that we can then use instead of well basically these little bars that we're showing so let's make use of that i'm going to take slicer highlight show with that for the upper bound turn the arrow bars on and then here we can go to the bar and here we can say that we want to have a different shape so let's for example go here for a circle i see part of the circle gets cut off so to fix that just go back to the formatting options for the x-axis and put here the maximum to two you see that already looks better now here the next thing that we could do is then give the same color for these little circles so i'm going to go back here to arrow bars and then go to the bar section bar color and then choose green now i think that looks kind of interesting at the combination of the error icon whatever you choose there and the bar itself so you can leave it like this or what you could also do is here under formatting options for the bars just choose then a white color so that you have only the little circle or maybe you want to have something different you can also go for let's have a look and maybe a triangle like this so it looks like a little arrow for the selected items now let's see if that works so i'm going to select one other item and there you go perfect now for the whole slicer we could also add a little bit of shadow to finish it so over here in the general effects let's go for a bit of shadow and that's our slicer all right now let's now look at a variation of this approach where we do not use a bar chart but a matrix or a normal table instead which gives even more options because then you can completely customize the icon that you want to show with unicorn characters okay now the idea is kind of similar alright so let's start from scratch again so let's now delete that bar chart that we used before let's delete that one so that we not just have that normal slicer and then we can create a table and put that right next to our slicer so over here and on that table we want to have well we want to have slice highlight show and we want to have department from slicer design okay now similar idea as before now you will not see all of the departments because we still have to click on the pardon field and say that we want to show items with no data okay now i'm going to resize a little bit so that you see a bit better and there you go now the next thing that we need to do is get rid of all of the formatting elements that we don't need okay so for example if we go into formatting then i first of all don't want to have the total so let's turn the totals off and the next thing that we can do is here for style presets let's go for none and the next thing that we could do is change the background color for the alternating rows so we go into values and then here we have alternate background color let's choose white and then here we also have the grid line so let's go to grid let's turn that one off and then that border line under the column headers that's border then we want to have column header let's turn that off now the column headers themselves you cannot just get rid of would have been nice however we can make them disappear or not visible by doing the following we can go here to column headers and then we have text color let's choose white now also here for the table you need to make sure that the departments are in the same order as the departments in the slicer but by default it's in the same way so we don't have to make any changes here and then the next thing that we're going to do is instead of returning one i want to well return the icon that i want to show when it's selected versus not selected okay now where can you find these icons now they're websites like unicodetable.com where you can look for icons and then just copy them over to power bi for example over here i found a check mark that i want to use i can already copy it go back to power bi and here we're going to write a new measure similar to what we had before so slice highlight show but i just want to keep that one and create a new one so new measure paste it in here now the logic stays exactly the same but here what do i want to return now i don't want to return the one but the icon that i want to show okay and it needs to be in between quotation marks now that i can you just have to copy over and then you do the same for the icon that you want to show when it's not selected so let's say that cross over here all right so you see seminal logic and then we can give it a different name so instead of show i we play show with icon now if we then go to our table and we place highlight show with highlight icon and now instead of one or nothing you see the crosses and the check marks so let me just change the selection and slicer and see it works okay now what's the next thing now somehow we need to get rid of that first column however as soon as you start resizing that first column then it wraps it okay so we have to change that in the formatting options so let's go to format and then here we can go to values and we want to turn text map off and the same for the column headers also there you find text map turn it off and then we can resize now that first column so that nothing shows and that's second column also just make it as wide as it needs to be all right and then we can resize the whole table visual just like this now the next part is then to align again with the items of the slicer so i'm going to take over here our little table and i'm going to put it here on the left hand side of my slicer just like this and then we can go to general properties and play again with the position and once it overlaps then we have to play around with the padding so we have to go back to the visual and then here we have the grid options and here we have roll padding and font size so here if we turn the padding a little bit higher you see it starts to get a little bit better aligned and you just have to go back and forth with repositioning it so that it exactly aligns now once you have done that you probably also want to take the table and then go here to format your visual general and under effect also choose the same background color so white in this case and then zero percent transparency now you also see that i'm overlapping now the title of the slicer so here the only workaround is to take the slicer then and then go here to general turn that title off and then just realign it again a little bit so let's put it down then over here i'm going to turn the shadow off just like this and then we just need to a text box in the background all right so text box and let's type in as the title department again and then choose the font size so see gui and i want to have font size 11 and i want to have it in the middle and for the background color we can go to effects turn the background on and make it white with zero percent transparency now of course you have to send it again to the back so we want to have it all the way in the back and there you go and to that shape you can then add a little bit of shadow all right so over here you can add a bit of shadow let's make it a bit softer so let's go for custom and then here we can put the transparency to let's say 85 now of course then you want to take your items and group them together we have to organize everything here in the selection pane so let's go to selection and then once you have all three of them selected move them and then you can call this one slicer department and then we can reposition it and then take that other chart that we had there before place it back where it used to be all right okay and now let's republish it and see if it works and here in power bi service let's give it a try i'm going to change the selection you see it nicely works we have our own custom icons in a slicer now one extra benefit that we didn't discuss yet is that we can also add now tooltips to the slicer items for example with that bar chart example from before if i hover over it like over one of the items then you see we have a tooltip and that tool tab we can customize but that i leave for the next video now of course it takes quite a bit of effort to create a slicer like this and i also hope that in the future this becomes easier and you also have to consider well we need three shapes that we then grouped to create that slicer and every object needs to be loaded so it will take a bit longer to open up your page so it is a trade-off loading time versus battery design now there's one slicer design option that i didn't talk about yet and that is drop downs so let's create one and see what formatting options we have there so i have over here slicer and i'm going to take the department field and drop it on there okay now to turn that one into a drop down just click here in the top right corner drop down now for drop downs they look quite okay however we can still make them look a bit better so let's take over here to slicer go to formatting options values and then here we have again values for the background and we could give it maybe a white background all right so that's you don't see really that borderline that we have over there but just the whole background is white and then when we open it it's also consistent with the color over there you could also say okay i'm gonna go for maybe that green color that we have there so then we can go here to values and then here we can go to background and choose the same color green now for the values themselves you probably don't want to switch to white all right so that when we open this up everything is consistent okay then here for department that we have here in the header there you again have the option are you going to go for the slice a header or maybe here the title and then here use this one where you have a few more formatting options so here we can see okay it needs to be white maybe you want to have it in the middle and then we can also make it a bit bigger just like this but that's basically it for drop downs i usually don't touch any other formatting options for example over here and the values the border lines don't really make it that much better now for example if i have a border line to the left open it up it just looks weird okay and what bothers me is now i'll see these check boxes on gray but you cannot change the color so maybe that white background was a little bit cleaner so you have to be a little bit careful here so that your design matches well with the limited formatting options that are there for slices until we get more formatting options all right so that's it for this video i hope you got some new ideas for how to make the design of your slices just a bit better given the formatting options that are out there but just let me know what design or formatting options you will be looking forward to for a new updated slicer and hopefully one of the next power bi versions now if you're looking for more ideas around slices then check out one of these videos over here and i want to thank you for watching and hope to see you in the next video

Channel: How to Power BI

Views: 171,387

Keywords: power bi, power bi tutorial, power bi dashboard examples, power bi dashboard tutorial, how to power bi, howtopowerbi, creating a powerbi report, power bi visualization, power bi report, power bi report design, power bi report upgrade, power bi dashboard, power bi example, power bi visuals, power bi examples, power bi design, power bi report step by step, slicers, power bi slicers, slicer filters, slicer design, power bi slicer design, improve slicers, native slicers

Id: XciwaHASWGc

Length: 29min 44sec (1784 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 14 2022