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joeatamida's avatar
joeatamida
Regular Visitor
3 years ago

Hierarchical Slicer that Does Not Include Parent Nodes

Hi folks,

 

I'm looking for something specific that I haven't seen exactly the way I need it in many other posts across many forums and videos. I need the navigational features of a hierarchical slicer without the overhead of the parents being automatically included in the filter when a selection is made for a child.

As an example, if my slicer looks like this:

  • A
    • B
      • C
      • D
    • E
    • F
      • G
      • H
  • I
    • J
      • K

When node G is selected, the out of the box slicer includes G in the filter, but also F (G's parent) and A (F's parent). I need to have that navigable tree structure, so far up to a depth of about 8 leaves deep, but I only want the filter to include G in the scenario above.

 

  1.  Am I using the default slicer correctly or incorrectly based upon my notes above?
  2. I've looked at at least 2 custom PBI visuals, but none of them actually fix this particular issue as far as I can tell. Is anyone aware of a custom visual already built that accomplishes this?
  3. I don't think other OOTB or custom visuals help here. The decomposition tree for example is too big and sprawling (I think). I've looked into other slicers, trees, and hierarchies so far with no luck.
  4. I'd like to avoid having 8 separate tables, slicers, or other objects that would have to interact with each other if possible, but I'm up for any other solutions that folks can dream up.
  5. Do I need to go build a custom visual for this solution if all else fails?

Thank you in advance and please reach out for more information if that would help.

 

Joe

Need Help

2 Replies

  • TomMartens's avatar
    TomMartens
    Icon for Super User rankSuper User
    3 years ago

    Hey joeatamida ,

     

    I think you are using the default slicer correctly, the below image shows a hierarchy using the default slicer:

    From my understanding, you want to get rid of the "children are selected" visualization, as in Europe / Germany, because a German city is selected.

     

    From my knowledge, there is no custom visual that allows using a hierarchy without indicating a selection on the parent level, here: the semi-filled checkbox.

     

    Out of curiosity, what is the requirement behind your ask?
    The visualization will not affect your measures. If one of my measures requires the list of selected cities I use VALUES( 'DimRegion"[CityName]), e.g., inside a table iterator functions like SUMX.

     

    From my personal point of view, I like the visualization, the below image helps me to identify that "something" inside France is selected.

    Nevertheless, I'm looking forward for more details about your requirement.

     

    Regards,

    Tom

    • joeatamida's avatar
      joeatamida
      Regular Visitor
      3 years ago

      TomMartens 

       

      Thank you for the reply.

       

      This could be a modeling problem, but here is the issue. Instead of something with appropriate logical and labeled separations like continent, country, county/state/other, city, etc, we have instead a series of what are effectively folders. In the example given, we want the ability to navigate these folders, which the front-end UI is capable of doing, in order to select a single directory within which to view results.

       

      The original model has all of these "Groups" (effectively folders or similar enough concepts) in a single table called Identity. Identity uses the IdentityRelationship table to refer back to itself with a ParentChild column. In order to get this slicer to work at all, we did have to develop a table with Columns "Group Level 1", "Group Level 2" etc out to 10 so that we could pull those values into the slicer in that order and create the appropriate hierarchy. We couldn't use measures with the OOTB slicers due to what I'm assuming are infinite loop-related self-referential reasons.


      The end result is the structures noted in the original post, but, in the example given, when we select G, which also selects A and F as parent nodes, then our applied filters become A and F and G for groups. Due to all of these being in a single table with no distinction (no concept like country versus state/county/other), simply parent or child nodes of otherwise unknown depth until selection takes place, this makes it difficult to implement the solution.

       

      Apologies if this is both rambling and tough to follow, but as a result, I'm thinking we may need a custom PBI visual that works just like the hierarchical slicer, but does not select the parent nodes (allowing navigation without parent selection upward). Or we may need to rebuild our model to facilitate the action we want to see which can probably be done with PATH functions or the like if I take some time to think about it and sit down with the developers. 

       

      Hopefully this makes sense and/or helps to clarify in a way that might lead to new thoughts on the topic.


      Thank you,


      Joe