Click an item on a table and move to a detail page about that item

[David283]

Hello, brand new to Power BI, making my first report and trying to figure out what's possible.

I have done some google searches and learned that drill-through and bookmarks are a thing, but I am not sure how to apply them in my use case.

I have a report with a main page that includes a current attendance report with locations and the employees on staff at those locations currently.  I also have a second and third page that each have details about all employees and locations respectively.

My goal is to make the attendance table clickable so that selecting a name or location takes the user to the detail page and filters by the selected object. So clicking 'Anthony' will take you to the "EmpDetail" page and 'Anthony' will be preselected in the slicer.

If you instead clicked 'West', you would get the "LocationDetail" page with 'West' selected.

If for some reason only navigating to one other page is possible, I would prioritize employees.

Of course the attendance table will be different each day, and there are hundreds of possible employees, and dozens of locations.

Setting up bookmarks for every employee would not be possible.

I also want users to be able to navigate to both detail pages without selecting from attendance, I will add a normal navigation menu for that.

How should I go about this?  Is a table the wrong visulazation for this task?

[MFelix]

Hi @David283 ,

The option you need to use for this is the drill trough, this will not be direct since you need to have a second "click", because it can be base on a rigth click or a button.

Check the links below:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/create-reports/desktop-drillthrough

[David283]

Hello, sorry for the late reply, been busy with other projects and just now getting back to learning this new system.

So I tried following those links and setting up drillthrough, And its alomost doing what I hoped for. I can select a location or a persons name, and go to detail pages for each.

But I am having no luck using the employee number field as the link.  If I show a table on the home page that includes the persons name and the location, I would want to actaully use the employee number (a different row on that same attendence record) to search/filter the employee detail page.  Is there some way to add a field to a visual but hide it from display?  It seems that may allow it to be a part of the selection for  the purpose of drillthrough.

Similar with the slicer on that employee detail page.  I want the slicer to display a list of employee names, but use the employee number for its filtering.  This is important for filtering tables where the employee name could have been entered and saved years ago, and the person has since changed their name.

Thank you for the help, wouldnt have gotten this far with it!

[MFelix · Accepted solution]

Hi @David283

I assume that the name of the person has a unique number try one of two things

Add the person number in the filter of the visualization and check if it flows troough to the detail page

Other option and since its a table add the number and reduce the size of the column until you don't see it. Be sure to turn off the wrap text option

[David283]

OK, i tried adding the EmpNbr field to the "Filters on this Visual" section, but that didnt seem to do anything, the Drill through for employee would not work.

But your other idea, adding the employee number colum but shrinking it to hide it did work, I can now click the name and drill through to the detail page using EmpNbr. 

I was actually using the matrix table visual rather than a plane table, I liked the way it grouped names under location and didnt need to repeat the location on each line, but I can live with a regular table unless you have another idea for a visual?

But more importantly, the slicer on the detail page.  What can i do for that?  Currently its showing a list of employee numbers, I would instead like it to show employee names (and text search with those names) , but then use the employee number associated with that name to filter all other visuals on the page.

[MFelix]

Hi @David283 ,

Isn't the employee name on the same table has the number?

Can you please share a mockup data or sample of your PBIX file. You can use a onedrive, google drive, we transfer or similar link to upload your files.

If the information is sensitive please share it trough private message.

[David283]

Hello, sorry for the late reply, i can only spend a day or 2 each week working on this.

I actaully was able to get this working correctly, I adjusted my table relations so the only link between the tables was the EmpNbr field, which (exists on all my tables that mention employees at all).  Then I set the slicer to display names for filtering, and then tested if selecting a name from the visual using the "Attendance" table would select and show information from the "Employee" table, and again the only link between the two I have set is the EmpNbr fields; and it worked.  I even misspelled the name on one or the other table to make sure it wasnt searching or filtering with that value.

So this does work, out of the box so to speak, I didnt have to do anything to set it up except carefully set the table relationships in Power BI.

Thank you again for all the help, i will mark one of your above posts as the solution.