pbPassingBI
/
Interactivity & controls intermediate 5 min

Cross-filtering and interactions

Click-to-filter, drill-down, and making a report explorable.

What you'll be able to do
  • Enable cross-filtering
  • Set up drill-down on a dimension hierarchy
  • Decide how much interactivity a report needs

Cross-filtering

In a chart's Setup, tick Apply cross-filtering. Clicking a bar or table row then filters every other chart on the page to that value.

It is the fastest way to make a static report feel like a tool — click East on the region chart and the whole page becomes an East report. Clicking again clears it.

Enable it on your main dimension charts, not on everything. A page where every component filters every other is disorienting.

Drill-down

In Setup, turn on Drill down and add several dimensions in order — Country, then Region, then City.

The reader gets arrows to move up and down the hierarchy inside one chart. That replaces three charts with one, which is usually a better use of the space.

Chart interactions

Beyond cross-filtering, components can be given actions: a button linking to another page, a chart element opening a URL with the clicked value passed in.

Multi-page reports with navigation buttons in the header work well — an overview page with drill-through to detail pages, rather than one enormous page.

How much is too much

Restraint beats capability

Every interactive element is something the reader has to understand. A report with two well-chosen controls and cross-filtering on one chart gets used. A report with nine controls, drill-down everywhere and cross-filtering on everything gets abandoned.

Start from the two or three questions the audience actually asks, and make those easy.

Key points
  • Cross-filtering makes clicking a chart filter the whole page
  • Drill-down replaces several charts with one hierarchy
  • Fewer, well-chosen interactions get used; many get abandoned
Check yourself