Filters and Types of Filtering in Power BI

What are Power BI filters?

Power BI filters are useful tools for organizing data, visualizing and comparing your data visualizations, and creating reports.

Filters Types

• Visual Level Filter
• Page Level Filter
• Report Level Filter
• Drill Through Filter

On the right side, we can able to find Filter Pane, and from there, we can apply all the filters to our data.

We will see each filter type, how to apply them, and also the type of filtering that can be applied.

1. Visual Level Filter

This Filter is used in sorting single visuals, for example, cards, slicers, bar charts, maps, and other visuals. Filtering is done at a granular level. Let’s see the steps involved in it with an example:

Step 1. Expand Visualizations, Filters, and Fields panes from the right side.

Step 2. To apply a visual filter, you just have to click a visual that you want to filter. For example, in the below image, we have to click Sunburst visual.

We can also do multiple selections, and a new Data field can be added there.

2. Page Level Filter

Page level filter used to apply filters on a single page of a report applies filters to all the visuals present on that page.

Step 1. To use page-level filters, use the option “Filters on this page” from the Filters pane

Step 2. Drag and drop a field based on which you wish to sort the information on a report page. In the image below, we can see that the ‘Country’ field is dragged into selection.

In the below image whole page is being filtered by selecting 'Department' from the 'Training 'field, so the whole page will show details. Here, we can make both single and multiple selections as needed.

3. Report Level Filter

To apply a filter to the entire report, that is, to all the pages of a report uniformly, we use report-level filters. To apply this filter, drag and drop a field from the Fields section into the ‘Filter on all Pages’ section. Let’s start with the below examples. We have filtered the whole report by selections ‘Department’ and 'Training Completed'.

4. Drill Through Filter

By using this filter, we can focus on specific entities or on a particular field. This filter helps us to get a deeper insight into the data we want.

 We first add the fields in the drill-through section. We can analyze any part of the data set and create any drill-through views.

Until now, we have seen types of filters in Power BI. We will look into modes of Filtering.

1. Basic filtering

It’s a very basic form of filtering, which is applicable in all 3 forms of filters. Here, simply, we can select an option by which we want to filter and also search the options. Please refer to the below screen.

2. Advanced filtering

This filtering is also present in all 3 types of filters we have seen above. We can see how we do advanced filtering.

It has a unique and important role in filtering. We can find ranges of data by applying some conditions or rules.

It gives you more precise control over what you want to filter out.

Based on the type of columns, advanced filtering capabilities vary. In the second image, we can see the set of rules or conditions we can apply.

Hence this was all about filters and filtering in Power BI.

This feature helps in sorting our data and making an effective dashboard for our projects.