How to dynamically select a slicer option based on the identity of the current user.

[Berean_50]

Say you have a slicer with options Option 1, Option 2 and Option 3.

Is it possible at all in Power BI to automatically select an Option based on the identity of the current user? For example, if user John Doe is currently logged on, then Option 1 will be selected when the user opens the Power BI report. 

I'm not asking how to filter based on the identity because it's important for the other options, Option 2 and Option 3 to still be available for selection. So it's not a matter of applying row-level security but rather of user experience customization based on the identity of the current user.

[parry2k · Accepted solution]

@Berean_50 I understood your question, but unfortunately, there is no way to select default values for an out-of-box slicer visual. maybe custom visual slicer has this option but I never used those. I think there is an idea for this functionality on the ideas page and I would recommend voting for it.

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[v-henryk-mstf]

Hi @Berean_50 ,

Depending on your description, configuring OLS may be a good option.
Object-level security (OLS) enables model authors to protect specific tables or columns from being discovered by report viewers, and only specific viewers can see and interact with them.

Refer to the following official documentation for details.

Object-level security (OLS) with Power BI - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

If the problem is still not resolved, please provide detailed error information and let me know immediately. Looking forward to your reply.

Best Regards,
Henry

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

[Berean_50]

Hi @v-henryk-mstf 

The nature of my enquiry is not so much related to security but rather user experience. Let me illustrate this using an example:

Let’s suppose you have an organisation with sales details related to the following product types: books, toys and clothing. You also may have individuals who whilst looking after a specific area of sales also have access to the other areas.

So, you build a report with a product type slicer containing the following options: Books, Toys and Clothing. Ideally, for someone who works predominantly (not solely) with the sales of  books would have the Books option automatically selected when the report is open. Obviously, you need to know the identity of the current user and using a disconnected table you could map that identity to the preferred area of sales. So far so good. However how do you automatically select the ‘Books’ product type slicer when this user opens the report? Bear in mind we don’t want to secure a table or even prevent the user from having access to the other product types. The goal is to spare the user from having to continuously click the same expected option every time they open the report.

I could possible work with duplication of pages but that could incur maintenance overhead.

I hope that’s a bit clearer now.

Thank you