Can columns be dynamic and show more information after a mouse hover?

[AAAAAAA]

Hey everybody,

The last couple of days I've been crash coursing PowerBI and am able to link my data to an Excel sheet that is hosted on Sharepoint and is constantly updated. My goal is to have a report at the end of each month showing what we had budgeted in a specific department, and what the variation was off of budget. Additionally, I'm looking to provide the answers and avoid the email chain of "why was this over budget?" by giving finance the ability to hover over columns and get more information about what each charge was. 

The wall I'm hitting now is formatting. We have 20 GL codes and both budget and actual on the same chart, we'll be looking at 40 columns total. That's a lot, but not so bad if they're relatively small. Being small though, makes it hard to see data. 

Questions: 

     1. Can a graph be dynamic and change to zoom in on hovered over columns? 40 tiny columns that will each expand when hovered over for further information.

     2. Is there a way to bind pairs of colums? (Actual and Budget for each of the 20 GL codes sticking side by side with spaces in between each pair).

     3. Instead of having a legend as there is in the picture below, can the text entry of each legeneded item appear when hovering over? ex: We see 61701 went over budget, and by highlighting the green or teal section a brief description of what the purchase was appears.

Thank you in advance for any knowledge you may bestow upon me! 

-A

[johncolley]

Hi @AAAAAAA ,

1. There is an option for zoom sliders in power bi. But is for numerical or timebased axis rather than categorical. The closest thing to address this I can think of would be a report page tooltip which can provide contextulised information based on the hovered over column: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/create-reports/desktop-tooltips?tabs=powerbi-desktop 

2. Yes, the clustered column chart can do this. 

3. Just turn off the legend in the visual settings. The label of the legend will still appear in the tooltip when hovering over a column.

[AAAAAAA]

Thank you John, this is so helpful!!

1. That report page tool tip looks great. In each section I can have end user, date, where the purchase was made, ect. My goal's to prevent finance from needing to ask any questions and this will allow us to make all the data they'd need visible.

2. Below is the same data in a stacked column chart vs a clustered column chart. Stacked column is much more visible and will be easy to hover over sub-sections of an actual column for further information. Is there not a visual setting I can alter to have each of the 20 GL codes be touching with a gap in between? If not, is there a way to have the clustered column chart more resemble the stacked? 

3. Super easy! 

Thanks again and pardon if I'm being thick headed!

-A

[johncolley · Accepted solution]

Hi @AAAAAAA ,

Glad the report page tooltip can address part of your requirement!

Power BI doesn't natively have a stacked & clustered column chart, so its breaking your actual number into smaller columns based on the legend. So instead of 40 columns you have twice as many which is why they are so small and separated. Here's what a clustered with just one actual column would look like: 

Thankfully @Anonymous has put together a blog post on this very topic to get to the end result I suspect you are after. https://www.villezekeviking.com/how-to-combine-a-clustered-and-stacked-chart-in-power-bi/ Hopefully it gets you the rest of the way.