Custom Report Page Tooltips & Bookmarks Mastery

Intermediate dashboard design focuses on user experience (UX). Instead of cluttering a single canvas with dozens of confusing charts, elite Power BI developers use Custom Tooltips (micro-visuals on hover) and Bookmarks (storytelling, toggle views, and navigation menus).

1. Custom Report Page Tooltips

By default, hovering over a chart displays a standard black text box with numerical values. With Custom Tooltips, hovering over a bar can display a miniature chart, trend line, or image card!

Steps to Build a Custom Tooltip:

1. 1
   Create a new page and name it Tooltip_Category.
2. 2
   In the Page Information pane:

• Toggle Allow use as tooltip to ON.

1. 1
   In Canvas Settings:

• Set Type to Tooltip (dimensions: $320 \times 240$ pixels).

1. 1
   Add compact visuals (cards, sparklines, or bullet charts).
2. 2
   On your main visual (e.g., Regional Sales Bar Chart):

• Go to Format Visual $\to$ General $\to$ Tooltips.
• Set Type = Report page, Page = Tooltip_Category.

2. Interactive Bookmarks & The Selection Pane

A Bookmark captures the exact state of a report page, including:

• Filter and slicer states
• Visual visibility (shown vs. hidden via the Selection pane)
• Drill location and sorting order

Building a Chart/Table Toggle:

1. 1
   Open the View tab and check both Bookmarks and Selection.
2. 2
   Place a Clustered Column Chart and a Matrix Table in the exact same position on the canvas.
3. 3
   In the Selection pane:

• Hide the Matrix (click the eye icon).
• Show the Chart.
• Click Add Bookmark $\to$ name it View_Chart.

1. 1
   In the Selection pane:

• Show the Matrix.
• Hide the Chart.
• Click Add Bookmark $\to$ name it View_Table.

1. 1
   Insert two buttons on canvas: assign their Action $\to$ Bookmark to switch between views seamlessly!