Drill Through and Page Navigation with a Single Button

[yanain9]

Hi Power BI Community,

I’m working on a Power BI report and need some help with creating a button that can perform: navigating to a page when no selection is made on the charts, and drilling through that same page when a category is selected.

I understand that we can use a page navigation button to navigate. The drill through button will navigate to a page when a category is selected and fade out when there is no selection. However, I’m looking to combine these functionalities into a single button.

What I am trying to implement is :

1. When no selection is made on the charts, clicking the button should navigate to a specific page.
2. When a category is selected on the chart, clicking the same button should drill through to that page by filtering by the selected category.

Has anyone implemented something similar or can provide guidance on how to achieve this? Any tips or examples would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

[Ritaf1983]

Hi @yanain9 

Unfortunately, it isn't possible to combine page navigation and drill-through functionalities into a single button in Power BI because they are inherently different operations.

• Page navigation: This allows you to move between report pages, but it doesn't respond to any selections or filters applied to visuals. It simply navigates to a new page regardless of any data selection.

• Drill-through: This action is dependent on user interactions with the visuals. When a category is selected, the drill-through button applies a filter based on that selection and navigates to a drill-through page with relevant data.

Since these two actions are based on different mechanisms—one being unrelated to selections (page navigation) and the other being dependent on them (drill-through)—they can't be combined into a single button.

As a workaround, you could consider providing separate buttons for each action, or guide users clearly on when to use the drill-through button versus a standard navigation button.

If this post helps, then please consider Accepting it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly

[yanain9]

Thank you for your explanation, @Ritaf1983 .

To be clarify for that scenario, do I have to implement two pages : one for the Nagivation and the other for the Drill Through?

And also I am concerning that after Drill Through, the selected Filters cannot be cleared (reset) on that page. How could I implement if I want to see the all the category after a Drill Through on that page?

Do you have any suggestion on how should I implement the report pages for a good User Experience to cover for a similar scenario?

Thank you for your help!

[Ritaf1983 · Accepted solution]

Hi @yanain9 

In this situation, I would recommend creating two separate pages: one for the drill-through and one for unfiltered navigation. As long as the pages are designed identically, the user won’t even notice the difference.

For the drill-through itself, I’m not a fan of using buttons. The most optimal approach, in my opinion, is to let users drill directly from the chart. This way, they can interact with the data point where they are already focused.

From a UX perspective, the goal is to minimize friction for the user. It's far more intuitive to drill through from the exact point of interaction on the chart, rather than having the user make selections and then click a button to perform the drill-through.

Additionally, on the duplicated unfiltered page, you can add a page navigator with all data and call it “Reset Filters” to give users an option to return to the default view if they need to.

If this post helps, then please consider Accepting it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly

[yanain9]

Thank you for you suggestion and explanation, @Ritaf1983.

[Ritaf1983]

Happy to help💌