Filter Shortcut for Multiple Visuals/Data Sets with Unique Filters

[brdmcdgll]

Semi-beginner, self-taught Power BI user here. I’ve never been able to find an answer for this online. Hopefully this makes sense:

Context: I use Power BI to create a monthly dashboard for my organization. It tracks the status of how many projects are active, how many projects were completed on time, how many intakes we receive, which of our client organizations these intakes come from, how many meetings were held with specific parties, and so on. Since this information is highly confidential, I’m not really able to go into much more detail than that, but I’ve attached a sample .pbix file with fake data so you can see what I mean: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BnaLhSD0HNQoVbFZj1mjgutlTG-eKXjh/view?usp=drive_link

Each of these measurements are represented by separate visuals on one page. Most of the visuals are filtered to only show data that occurred within a specific date range (e.g., the previous month).

Problem: Each month, I have to edit each visual’s unique filters to only show data from the previous month. I am using multiple data sets, and most of the visuals that pull from the same data set are filtered based on different columns and I can’t apply all filters across the board (see example below). Because of this, the “filters on this page/all pages” option, “sync filters”, and basic slicers won’t work as far as I know.

What I need to do: I need to create a “shortcut” or slicer so that I can specify a date range and Power BI will automatically apply this date range to all the specific filters I am currently editing manually.

Example: I have two visuals that pull from the same “Intakes” data set:

• Visual #1: Shows total number of intakes submitted to our organization within the previous month
  • Filters “Intakes” data set by “Submitted date” column
• Visual #2: Shows total number of intakes completed by us within the past month
  • Filters “Intakes” data set by “Completed date” column

Ideally, the shortcut would automatically change the date range for the “Submitted date” filter on Visual #1, and the date range for the “Completed date” filter on Visual #2, but only apply it to those respective visuals – not both. If I were to apply the “Submitted date” filter from Visual #1 to both visuals, Visual #2 would only show completed intakes that were submitted within the last month, when it needs to include all completed intakes from the past month, regardless of when they were submitted.

There are other visuals on this page in similar situations that pull from the same data set but are filtered based off different columns. It is quite tedious and would be hard to explain to whoever takes the dashboard on if I were to leave, so I’m really trying to come up with a less “ad-hoc” solution that anyone could use. I realize there are probably some best practices I was not aware of when I created this dashboard, but it’s not feasible for me to completely rebuild it at this time.

Is there a feature in Power BI that can do this that I could research? Or have I just set this up completely wrong? Any help is appreciated, thank you.

[parry2k]

@brdmcdgll First, kudos for the great explanation. Well done!

I think what you are looking for is to create a date dimension in your model, check videos about date dimensions here.

Add Date Dimension
Importance of Date Dimension
Time Intelligence Playlist

From your table, set the relationship of all dates with this new date dimension table, one relation will be active and another will be inactive which is fine.

You need to create measures for each KPI using the USERELATIONSHIP function to activate the specific relationship and then use these measures in your visuals.

What does this all mean, now you will use filters from Date dimension tables, let's filter for August 2023, it will filter the respective measure based on the date used in the measure:

Submitted date based measures will filter where the submitted date is August 2023

Completed date based measures will filter where the completed date is August 2023

In the end, you have one filter from the date dimension table and all the respective measures will work based on it.

I hope it gets you started and will give you an idea. You can test it on the small dataset before you go all into this.