topic Re: Populate a Tooltip from a Data Dictionary in Custom Visuals Development Discussion

Populate a Tooltip from a Data Dictionary

Erosenthal — Fri, 07 Nov 2025 22:05:42 GMT

I'm on a mission to standardize the definitions for various metrics/variables in my company's PowerBI reports, and would like to have the tooltip include a definition populated from a separate source (right now we're talking about having it be a sharepoint list, but that shouldn't be a sticking point). That way, no matter who is creating the report, we'd have a standard definition ready for the tooltip.

The only way I've found to do this is to create a tooltip page for each metric, which seems a little cumbersome to me. Is there a better way? I've investigated possibly using python for this (looks like I should be able to get the gettooltip method described here to work), but also I'm very much a beginner at python, so I don't want to spend too much time on it if there's another solution.

Re: Populate a Tooltip from a Data Dictionary

lbendlin — Fri, 07 Nov 2025 23:19:33 GMT

Please clarify what you mean by "metric" . Measures?

Please clarify what you mean by "tooltip". Descriptions?

Re: Populate a Tooltip from a Data Dictionary

Erosenthal — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 14:19:30 GMT

Sure! For metric - the specifics aren't all that important, but as I'm doing reports on metrics, they would be the data fields I would input. For example, I may have multiple reports that have 'Days in Warehouse', and I would want to make sure that the ToolTip defining the 'Days in Warehouse' metric is the same across reports by having them populate from a single location.

For ToolTip - I mean the PowerBI Tooltips (sorry, I have only heard them referred to as that). The pop up that shows up when you hover over a visual to give you more information.

Re: Populate a Tooltip from a Data Dictionary

Ahmed-Elfeel — Sun, 23 Nov 2025 19:40:12 GMT

Hi @Erosenthal,

For doing standardized tooltips from a data dictionary there is about 3 or 4 approaches you can try

First Approach:

you can use Field Parameters and Data Dictionary Table to achieve this:

Create your Data Dictionary table in Power Query:

// Just An Example let Source = Table.FromRows({ {"Days in Warehouse", "Number of calendar days an item has been in warehouse storage", "Operations"}, {"Inventory Turnover", "Cost of goods sold divided by average inventory", "Finance"}, {"Order Fill Rate", "Percentage of orders completely filled from stock", "Operations"} }, type table [Metric=text, Definition=text, Category=text]) in Source

Then create relationships between your fact tables and the data dictionary
Also use the Definition field directly in tooltips by adding it to the Tooltips field in your visuals

Second Approach:

If you prefer DAX you can use calculated columns with LOOKUPVALUE

Definition = LOOKUPVALUE( 'Data Dictionary'[Definition], 'Data Dictionary'[Metric], [Your Metric Field] )

Third Approach:

Create a single reusable tooltip page that works for all metrics:

Create one tooltip report page
Add a measure that detects the current contxt:

Current Metric Definition = VAR CurrentMetric = SELECTEDVALUE('Table'[Metric Name]) RETURN CALCULATE( SELECTEDVALUE('Data Dictionary'[Definition]), 'Data Dictionary'[Metric] = CurrentMetric )

Finally use this measure in your tooltip page

Bonus Approach:

This is the modern approach which you can use field Parameters to create dynamic metrics then combine with your data dictionary

I recommend you Approach No.1 as it is the most Straightforward and Maintainable Solution 🎊❤️

if this post helps, then I would appreciate a thumbs up and mark it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.