The Modern Updates

As I was perusing potential updates for my home recently, I started to think about how the definition of "modern" will certainly continue to change in the future. Time will only continue to move forward, and what's popular today might not be on point next year or even less likely ten years into the future. Some concepts stand the test of time, while others don't (Frank Lloyd Wright comes to mind for the former here).

Modernizing Power BI

Design doesn't just extend to physical things like homes or buildings. In today's digital world dominated by screens, it certainly extends to computer applications as well. If we compare the appearance of the user interface of almost any software today, it's almost certainly sleeker and more minimal than it was ten or twenty years ago (if it even existed back then). Power BI is now over eight years old and it's no exception to that trend. Just look at the evolution of its icons over this time period for evidence of its own adherence to that trend!

Apart from updating the icons, what other changes can we apply in Power BI? Let's explore a few ways that we can apply modern concepts to our models!

Modern Tooltips

When we hover over data points in visuals, the default tooltip displays a near-black background with white data labels and corresponding values. We don't have to stick with this option though. We can explore modern tooltips to change the background color, choose the colors for the labels and values, adjust the font style, and vary the opacity of the tooltip itself (which often depends on the size of the tooltip and what the visual below it displays. Modern tooltips are still in Preview features mode though, so you'll need to enable it first in this options menu, and it also means it's not available if you're publishing to the Power BI Report Server.

There's also another tooltip option that enables us to add even more customization to these popup details as a third dimension on an otherwise two-dimensional page.

Here's how to create this chart in a tooltip using built-in Power BI functionalities!

Dynamic Measure String Formatting

Another way we can modernize Power BI models is by adding dynamic string formatting for our DAX measures. Unfortunately, like modern tooltips, it's still in the Preview features mode.

Examples of how to use this dynamic formatting include adding currency signs to a selected currency and adding degrees units as we see in the example below.

Fortunately, it's still possible to add units like this without using the dynamic formatting option (in case that's not available to you). Using this dynamic measure formatting though is advantageous for a number of reasons:

• It allows us to store both numeric outputs and their formatting in a single DAX measures field.
• This, in turn, reduces the number of DAX measures, especially for a large or more complex Power BI model.
• We can use the numeric output of measures with formatting in other measures directly without having to duplicate it to store as a separate text measure for the formatted data label.

Apply and Clear Slicers Buttons

One common frustration with large Power BI models is that if we filter the data points using multiple slicers, it will immediately start updating the page after we select or deselect values in each slicer. This means that we (or more importantly the end user) might experience a frustrating latency in waiting for the updated visuals on the page to load again. One solution to this is by using the built-in buttons to apply or clear all the slicers on a report page at the same time.

When we add these buttons to our page, it not only adds a button with text instructions for how to use them, but it also adds an individual action to either apply or clear all slicers, depending on the button we add.

Here's another example of how to use these buttons in my recently released Power BI Data Dashboards course! I show how to add these buttons towards the end of the video.

Power BI User Group Meeting

If you live in Houston, come check out the Power BI user group that meets every month at the Microsoft offices in City Centre!

The next meeting is on Thursday, October 19th from 4 to 6 p.m. and you can sign up for it on the Meetup event page . We're holding a special two-part meeting this month. The first hour is our usual interesting user group presentations. The second hour is a special presentation by Databricks related to how we can use it in Power BI. There'll also be snacks after the meeting to meet and mingle with other attendees!

-HW