Slicers
Select a pivot → Insert → Slicer, pick a field. You get clickable buttons that filter the pivot, showing the current selection at a glance — which a filter dropdown does not.
Ctrl+click for multiple values, or turn on multi-select in the slicer header. Alt+C clears it.
Timelines
Insert → Timeline for date fields specifically. It gives a sliding date control with a granularity switch — years, quarters, months, days.
Much better than a slicer on dates, which would list every individual date as a button.
Report Connections — the important part
Right-click a slicer → Report Connections and tick every pivot table it should control.
This is what turns several pivots into a dashboard. Without it, each pivot has its own filters and users have to change three controls to answer one question.
The pivots must share a data source, or be built on the same data model, to be connected.
Formatting
Slicer → Settings controls the header, sort order, and whether items with no data are shown and where.
Hiding items with no data keeps a slicer tidy. Showing them greyed out tells the user the option exists but is empty — which is often more informative.
Columns in the slicer options let you lay buttons out horizontally, which usually suits a dashboard better than a tall single column.
Cache and caution
Pivots built from the same range may share a pivot cache, which means grouping dates in one can silently regroup another. If two pivots must behave independently, build them from separately defined sources.