Zahid's blog on Data Engineering and BI

This is just a compilation of different types of linking mechanisms in Power BI. I have explained them from use case point of view. It’s mainly written for newbies like me who are wondering which linking feature is applicable for which use case? 🙂

Tiles: Link between dashboard and reportss

This is only available for Power BI Service. Click on ‘tiles’ icon on any visual.

Then you will see a prompt to select desired dashboard or create a new one.

And when user opens that dashboard, he can click on the tile to go into the original report from which this tiled visual is coming from. The dashboard gives you a landing page/home page or ‘summary’ of your measures/KPIs. You can then click visuals to see details inside your reports.

Bookmarks: Link to another page within same report (without parameters or filters)

This is usually needed when you just want users to click and land in another page of same report without thinking about any devilish parameters 😊

Steps:

1. Create bookmark. I have created a bookmark called ‘Potential’ which links to a page called ‘Potential View’

• Create a button/text whatever you like, give it a proper text or heading and define ‘Action’ for it. Action’s type will be ‘Bookmark’.

That’s all.

Hyperlink: Link your report from another report or another external site (with filter as parameter)

Two use cases for this type of linking:

1. User visits your report from an external site. But you want to control his landing page and filters.
2. User visits a new report from your original report. For example, if your users want to do some ad-hoc analysis separately from the original pre-defined report and you want to slice his data through filter.

Steps:

1. Following is a sample URL you can embed anywhere you like (PBI buttons, links, external HTMLs etc.)

https://app.powerbi.com/groups/me/reports/zzzzzzzz/ReportSection?filter=SvGridFact_/ReportingGeo_Desc eq ‘Territory02’

It’s based on the following pattern

URL?filter=Table/Field eq ‘value‘

Visit https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-url-filters for more details.

2. Remember, if Page1 of your report is represented by ‘zzzzzzzz’ , Page2 might be represented by ‘yyyyyyy’. You can easily copy the appropriate link from browser address bar. Many people suggested to use &pageName=ReportSection, &pageName=ReportSection2 etc. as suffix to the main URL in order to land on different pages of your report but I could not make it work. I rather used the original URL coming from browser address bar for each individual page.

3. You can embed these links in grid tables as well. Look at the following example of a grid table.

‘Geography’ column shown in Grid table is coming from a column called ‘ReportingGeo_DESC’ of ‘SvGridFact’_ table.  Now, you want to show hyperlinks in the same grid with parameter coming from Geography column (aka SvGridFact_[ ReportingGeo_DESC]).

The report where the link will redirect you has a table called ‘AttrGeographySelection’ and a column called ‘GeographySelection_DESC’. You want to filter AttrGeographySelection[GeographySelection_DESC] column with Parameter value coming from SvGridFact_[ReportingGeo_DESC ] column. So, all you have to do is to introduce a new column called ‘Hyperlink’ with following definition:

Hyperlink = “https://app.powerbi.com/groups/me/reports/zzzzzz/ReportSection?filter=AttrGeographySelection/GeographySelection_DESC eq ‘”&SvGridFact_[ReportingGeo_Desc]&”‘”

Let me make it easy for you with a simplified formula:

Hyperlink_column = “https://app.powerbi.com/groups/me/reports/zzzzzz/ReportSection?filter=DestinationReportDataTable/DestinationReportDataColumn eq ‘”&SourceReportGridDataTable[SourceReportGridDataColumn]&”‘”

By the way, I have set ‘URL Icon’ on in Format->Values section

Data behind the grid table looks like this:

Drillthrough

This is handy when you want your users to click on any data element and jump to another page within the same report. Yes, the landing page will have data filtered by the data element clicked on the source page.

Step1: Identify the landing page. Drag the desired column into drillthrough area highlighted below

For example, I have dragged Country column into Drillthrough field

Now, you can go to another page having Country and right click to drillthrough. Then you will be redirected to the landing page defined above.

Cross-report drillthrough is also possible. See official documentation on Drillthrough: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/desktop-drillthrough