Understanding Filters in Power BI

This article will walk you through Power BI Filters, how to add a filter to a report, how to format filters in reports, the different types of filters you can use, and other components.

What are Filters in Power BI

Power BI filters are used to extract the required information from the huge amount of dataset and then it controls what type of information should be present in the report and visuals. The main goal of the Power BI filter is to focus on a special kind of subset of data from the dataset based on its specific conditions. So the power BI filters only target specific types of subsets from the dataset according to its given criteria. When you open the Power BI report with its dataset, the filters panel is located on the right side of your screen.

Types of Power BI Filters

Power BI has four different kinds of filters allowing you to apply filters on four different levels. That are:

• Visual-level Filters: The filter used to apply to the individual visual in the report or dashboard are called visual-level filters. The visual level filters include sub-filter modes like Basic filters, Advanced filters, Top-N filters, etc. The visual filters can sort the data in visuals like tables, cards, charts, etc.
• Page-level Filters: The filters used to apply all visuals on the current page are called Page filters. The page filter also includes sub-filter modes like Basic filters, Advanced filters, Top-N filters, etc.
• Drill-through Filters: The filters used to drill down and navigate through different pages or regions in the dashboard are called drill-through filters. The main aim of the drill-through filter is to provide a relationship between two pages of a report.
• Report-level Filters: The filters used to apply all visuals on all pages of the dashboard are called report-level filters. These filters are also called filters on all pages. The main aim of the report-level filter is to control all page visuals inside the dashboard.

Add a Filter to a Report in Power BI

In Power BI, each filter has three modes they are Basic Filtering, Advance Filtering, and Top N Filtering which you can use while running your report.

Basic Filtering

Basic Filtering provides you with a list of values that is scrollable and searchable. If you want to search for the value from the list you can search for it with the help of the search bar. You have to simply type an identifier or the keyword in the search bar to find the value, then the list will get displayed and automatically get updated based on your search criteria. You can select multiple or single values from the list using the checkboxes. You can see in the below screenshot Basic Filtering mode for the country data.

Advance Filtering

Advance Filtering provides you with the rules instead of a list to set the range of values that the report will return. As you can see in the below screenshot Advances Filtering applies rules on the country data so it will display all remaining countries except Germany and Canada according to the given rule.

Top-N Filtering

Top-N Filtering allows you to filter the data according to its top and bottom range of value in the given dataset. This filter is useful when you want to focus on the highest and lowest values in the given dataset. As you can see below screenshot Top-N filter is applied to country data, so it will display the top two countries because we selected the top items with two 
values.

How to add Power BI Filter to a Visual

You can add the power BI filters to a visual with the help of the following steps:

Step 1: Select the visual that can be any chart, table, card, etc. to which you want to add the filter. when you select the visual the "Filters on this visual" option displays inside the Filters panel. As you can see in the below screenshot we created a pie chart as a visual and we select that pie chart after selecting it, the "Filters on this visual" option get displayed inside the Filters panel.

Step 2: Drag and drop the fields from the data panel inside the respective fields to populate the visual. As You can see in the below screenshot, we drag the Country, Product, and Qty Sold fields from the data panel and then drop them inside the respective fields under the visualization panel.

Step 3: Then the visual will get updated to include the applied filter. As we can see in the below screenshot with the creation of a pie chart Automatic filters have been already added to a pie chart.

How to add a Power BI Filter to a Page

You can add Power BI Filter to a page with the help of the following steps:

Step 1: To use page-level filter create two visuals on the dashboard. For example, we created two visuals are pie chart and a table.

Step 2: Initially use the visual level filters to populate each visual individually. As we can see in the below screenshot we populate the two visuals pie chart and column by selecting its perspective fields from the data panel. and then your dashboard is shown as below:
 

Step 3: To use the page-level filter drag and drop the data fields from the data panel under the "Filters on this page" option. As you can see in the below screenshot we drop the product data field in the "Filters on this option".

Step 4: Select the necessary values from the data field which you want to update on all visuals of the current page. and your entire visuals of the page will get updated. In the below screenshot, we select the CPU, Hard Disk, and Pad values, so these values get updated on the pie chart and column visual.

As you can see in the below screenshot, the pie chart and table two visuals get updated by in its product field.

Note: to understand and use page-level filters you must have to create two visuals on the current page.

How to add Power BI Filter to a Report

You can add Power BI Filters to a report with the help of the following steps:

Step 1: To use the report level filter create a visual on the page. As you can see in the below screenshot we created the visual that is a pie chart.

Step 2: Drag the data fields from the data panel and drop them into its respective fields to populate the visual. and then the pie chart will get created with its respective field.

Step 3: Since we have to apply a report-level filter, so we required a minimum of two pages. So right-click on Page 1 and click on a duplicate page. The duplicate page will get created with the same pie chart.

Step 4: Now Drag the data field from the data panel and drop it into the "Filters on all Pages option". As you can see in the below screenshot we drop the country data field.

Step 5: Select the values from the data field through which you want to filter the entire report data. As you can see in the below example we select two countries Canada and France from a duplicate of page 1.

Step 6: Now your Selected BI filters will get applied to your entire report. As you can see in below screenshots same filters get automatically applied on page 1 from Duplicate of page 1.

Note: To use and understand the report level filter you must have to create 2 different pages on the Power BI.

How to determine what gets Filtered In Power BI

In Power BI you can easily determine what fields and values get filtered by checking the "Filters" panel. The filter panel allows you to see the field and values that are currently filtered. After you filtered any field you can hover over a filtered field to see specific values that are filtered within a field.

As you can see in the above screenshot there is a "Filters" panel and inside that panel values of the country list get filtered. So this is how you can determine what gets filtered in Power BI.

Difference Between Power BI Slicer and Filter

The measure difference between the slicer and filter is that filters can update the data fields in your entire selection whereas the slicer can update only one visual. Filters are powerful aspects for updating the data whereas slicers are the simple aspects to update the data. So the slicers provide a more user-friendly way to user to handle the visuals whereas filters provide a systematic and extensive way to handle the data at various levels in the Power BI dashboard or report.