Hey everyone!
Today we are going to dig into the creation of Bookmarks in Power BI.
Bookmarks are just the capture of a view of the data that is enabled to be loaded with just one click.
* Why do we need bookmark?
Being a person dealing with visualization tools, you must have been in the situation where you are applying certain filters and some other conditions on the visuals again & again. So, I assume that you must have been tired of applying these certain conditions to the visuals again and again… Cool!
The bookmark is one of the attractive features (or I should say “a perfect solution “for those tired folks) that makes a report handy. It let us create custom views of the visual canvas and store them for future needs. So that we can use these views on the canvas to display the data consisting certain specific requirements.
* Use-cases of bookmark-
1. Assume that you have created an awesome report of the retail client that tells insights about their e-commerce business.
Now, in the business meetings the stakeholder wants you to display the report view for the year 2019.
Oops…
Now you are going to the Filters pane and applying there the conditions of the year “2019” and applying it to display the filtered data.
I know that feels quite indelicate task to do in a meeting! I totally understand that…
Imagine If you could have a button that would be able to display you the data for the year “2019” just by a click.
Awesome…
And what if you have similar buttons at a corner of the report for all recent years of their business.
Just one click, and the view will be changed! This will definitely be going to decorate your report and showcase it as an interesting one.
* How to create a bookmark?
Not at all a cumbersome task!
You just need to make the changes for once, and then everything will work itself.
1. Okay, so to create a bookmark, you need some sort of visuals on the canvas. I have created this random one.
Now, in this report when I was required to view the data for the year “2017”, I only have a choice to go to the Filters pane and drag the year here and then apply the condition. Now what about “2018”???
This cannot work for the end client.
So, let get the bookmark ready.
2. To create a bookmark for year 2017, you will have to use the Filters pane and go to Filters pane and apply the condition for “2017” as I did here in the below image.
You may be wondering that I am doing the same traditional stuff!
No worries, here is the twist.
3. Now, on the ribbon menu of the Power BI Desktop, go to View > Bookmarks
Switch it ON.
4. This will display you one new pane between the Filters pane and Visualization pane.
5. You will see here an option to Add.
(Note: Do not forget to collapse the filters pane)
6. Click on the Add button which will capture the current view of the canvas and will store it for future use.
(You can rename it as per your convenience)
I have renamed it as 2017.
7. Now, your bookmark is ready, now you just need to keep it in the backend of any image or a button. You can choose whether to keep a custom image, or any default shape or button as displayed here in the below image.
I have chosen an image from the internet.
8. Now that selected visual element will be displayed on your canvas as the below one-
9. Now, to activate the function of the 2017 bookmark that you have recently created. you need to select the image and go the the Format Image pane which is now displayed between the Bookmarks and Fields pane.
10. Now, go to the Action section of this pane and witch it ON.
You will be shown with some dropdowns to set features of that selected image.
Now here, choose the Type> Bookamark andBookmark > 2017 as displayed in the image below-
The “2017 Image” has now been converted into a functional button.
Confused???
Follow me… 🙂
11. Now when you will hover over the image, it will be displaying you a different icon of cursor with a tooltip as displayed here-
This is why, I was mentioning it as a button!
12. Now, whatever you are watching over the canvas with any filters, no matter what.
When you will hover over this button and will ctrl+click to it (as guided in the tooltip), you will be displayed a view that shows the data of “Year 2017”.
This is because, the image > is backed up with an “action” of > “bookmark”, and that > bookmark contains > a custom view > of the data with filter as > “Year- 2017”.
13. This is how you can set certain conditions based on your ad-hoc analysis and make many bookmarks on just a single page of the report.
Have a look here…
Suppose the client told you to create a separate bookmark for each of the passed years i.e., 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020.
Here is the set-up that I proposed for this requirement.
I firstly created all 4-5 bookmarks by setting the conditions in the filter pane and then creating a new bookmark each time.
And then…
I just backed them to their respective images.
Here is the final view-
I hope, you must have found it useful.
I will take you to the tour of the advance bookmark in my next blog.
Stay connected…
🙂
Rajeshwari Sharma
Data Analyst
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