Forum Discussion

janani80's avatar
janani80
Frequent Visitor
2 months ago

Free flowing text/date options

I want to build a dashboard where users can type department name and manager name manually and the table will populate all the colleagues falling under the manager in the mentioned department. I trie...
jubinsoni's avatar
jubinsoni
Icon for Solution Sage rankSolution Sage
12 days ago

Hi janani80​,

If the goal is only to find and show colleagues (nothing gets written back), you probably do not need Power Apps or a data function at all. Power BI now has a Text slicer (in preview in recent Desktop versions; enable it under File > Options > Preview features if you don't see it) where users type a value and press Enter, and it filters the report:

Insert > Text slicer   (one for Department, one for Manager)
-> Field: Employees[Department] / Employees[Manager Name]
-> User types "Finance" + Enter, then "Smith" + Enter
-> Table visual with Employees[Name], [Title], [Email] filters to matches

It matches on "contains", so partial names work. If you are on a version without it, a classic slicer with the search box enabled (slicer > ... > Search) gives a similar typed experience.

If you also want the table to stay empty until both boxes are filled (so users never see the full list by accident), add a visual-level filter with a measure:

Show Rows =
IF (
    ISFILTERED ( Employees[Department] ) && ISFILTERED ( Employees[Manager Name] ),
    1
)
-- table visual > Filters on this visual > Show Rows is 1

So my overall approach would be:

Read-only lookup -> Text slicers on Department + Manager
-> Measure filter so the table only shows after both are entered
-> Only use translytical flows / Power Apps if users must write data back

AI-assisted drafting: AI was used to help structure and phrase this response. I reviewed and validated the technical content before posting.