Visual-level filters in Power BI - Dashboard Guide

Dashboard Mode - Visual-level filters

Dashboard Goal

This dashboard helps a sales manager see total sales and sales by product category. It answers: "How do sales look for selected regions and product categories?" We use visual-level filters to focus each chart on specific data.

Sample Data

OrderID	Region	ProductCategory	SalesAmount
1001	East	Furniture	200
1002	West	Technology	450
1003	East	Office Supplies	150
1004	South	Furniture	300
1005	West	Office Supplies	120
1006	East	Technology	500
1007	South	Technology	350

Dashboard Components

• KPI Card: Total Sales
  Formula: Total Sales = SUM(Sales[SalesAmount])
  Shows total sales amount for all data (sum of all SalesAmount). Result: 2070
• Bar Chart: Sales by Product Category
  Visual-level filter applied: Region = East
  Formula for measure: Sales by Category = CALCULATE(SUM(Sales[SalesAmount]), Sales[Region] = "East")
  Shows sales grouped by ProductCategory but only for East region:
  • Furniture: 200
  • Office Supplies: 150
  • Technology: 500
• Pie Chart: Sales by Region
  No visual-level filter (shows all regions)
  Formula: Sales by Region = SUM(Sales[SalesAmount])
  Shows sales distribution:
  • East: 850
  • West: 570
  • South: 650

Dashboard Layout

+----------------------+-------------------------+
|      Total Sales      |  Sales by Product Cat.  |
|       (KPI Card)      |     (Bar Chart, East)   |
+----------------------+-------------------------+
|                   Sales by Region (Pie Chart)          |
+-------------------------------------------------------+

Interactivity

The dashboard uses visual-level filters to limit data shown in each visual independently.

• The Bar Chart only shows sales for Region = East due to its visual-level filter.
• The KPI Card and Pie Chart show data for all regions (no visual-level filters).
• If you add a slicer for Region, it will affect all visuals except those with visual-level filters overriding it.

Self Check

If you add a visual-level filter on the Pie Chart to show only Region = West, which components update?

• The Pie Chart updates to show only West region sales.
• The Bar Chart remains showing East region sales (its own visual-level filter).
• The KPI Card remains showing total sales for all regions (no filter).

Key Result

Dashboard showing total sales, sales by product category filtered to East region, and sales by region with visual-level filters.