Bookmarks, Tooltips, Interactions and Navigation

What it is

These features turn a set of visuals into something a reader can navigate and follow. Bookmarks capture a view of the report. Tooltips show extra detail on hover. Edit interactions controls how visuals affect each other. Buttons and navigators move readers around. The Selection pane and sync slicers keep the report tidy and consistent.

How it works

Bookmarks

A bookmark saves the current state of a report page so you can return to it. Open View then Bookmarks, set up the page, and choose Add.

A bookmark can capture:

• Data: filters, slicers, sort order and drill location.
• Display: which visuals are shown or hidden, spotlight and focus mode.
• Current page: the page that was open.

Each bookmark has options to include Data, Display and Current page, and to apply to all visuals or only selected visuals. A bookmark that clears Data changes only what is shown and not the filters, which is how you build toggles between views. After changing the page, use Update to re save the bookmark. Bookmarks can be grouped, and you can run them in order with View to present the report as a slide show.

Bookmarks combine with the Selection pane to show or hide visuals: hide a table, show a chart, bookmark it, then repeat for the other view and link each bookmark to a button.

Selection pane

On the View tab, Selection lists every object on the page. You can rename objects, show or hide them (the eye icon), change the layer order by dragging, and group objects so they move together. The Tab order list sets the keyboard order for accessibility. The pane is where you align names across bookmarks and buttons.

Report page tooltips

A tooltip appears when a reader hovers over a data point. A default tooltip shows the fields you place in the visual's Tooltips well. A report page tooltip shows a whole page, with visuals, filtered to the item hovered.

1. Add a page, and in Page settings set the Canvas settings type to Tooltip, a small size.
2. In Page information, turn on Allow use as tooltip.
3. Build the visuals, with a field that matches what the main visual shows.
4. On the main visual, in Format, set Tooltips to type Report page and choose the tooltip page.

Hide the tooltip page, so readers see it only on hover and not as a normal tab.

Edit interactions

By default, selecting a value in one visual cross filters or cross highlights the others on the page. Select a visual, choose Format then Edit interactions, and each other visual shows three icons.

Use None to stop a card or a slicer from filtering a specific visual. Interactions apply per page.

Buttons and navigation

Insert buttons and shapes from Insert. A button has an Action type.

A page navigator (Insert, Buttons, Navigator) builds a row of buttons for every page. A bookmark navigator does the same for bookmarks, and is a quick way to make a tab strip that toggles views. Buttons can show different looks for default, on hover, on press and disabled states.

Sorting

Sort a visual from its More options menu by choosing Sort axis and Sort ascending or descending. To sort a text column in a custom order, such as month name by month number, use Sort by column in the model. A visual can be sorted by any field it includes, not only the axis.

Sync slicers

Open View then Sync slicers. For each page, tick Sync to make a slicer affect that page, and Visible to show it there. A slicer then carries its selection across pages. You can add the slicer to a sync group name to link different slicers of the same field.

A worked scenario

An analyst builds a sales report with a Map and a Table that share the same area. She names them in the Selection pane, makes one bookmark that shows the map and hides the table, and another that does the opposite, then links each to a button. A Tooltip page with a small line chart is attached to the column chart, so hovering a month reveals daily detail. She uses Edit interactions so the KPI cards ignore the category slicer, and Sync slicers so the Year slicer applies to all three pages.