Power BI: show more information when needed for a better performance
In a report page, charts are a quick way to give an overview of the situation and putting tables allow to give more details to interpret those charts. Depending of the tables, the performance may be impacted based on how many information they have and the other thing is that a table takes a space of a chart.
For instance, instead to have 1 page with 3 charts + 1 table; for a better performance, it is best to have 2 pages (1 page with 4 charts and 1 hidden page with 1 table). To do that, I will use what is called “drill through”.
In my “page 1”, I have those 2 charts:
I will create the “page 2” with a table and down the “visualizations” panel, there is the “drill through”:
In the “add drill-through fields here” field, I will put the “status” column:
NOTE:
- I put “status” and not “priority” because in the “page 1”, I want only to give the “status” pie chart the “drill through” option
- I can add another field if need be, for instance, imagine that my data has a “year” column and in the “page 1”, I show results of 2025 only, in this case, I will add it and select the corresponding year
By filling the field, on the top left of the “page 2”, the “go back” icon will appear automatically, it will redirect to the “page 1”:
I will hide the “page 2” so my users will not see it by right click then select the option but if you prefer not, you don’t have to:
Back to the “page 1”, right click on the “pending” section then on the “drill through”, click on “page 2”:
It will redirect me to it and the table will show only the information related to “pending”, it has been filtered automatically based on what I selected on the pie chart:
The “drill through” doesn’t appear for “priority”:
To have it, I just have to add it in the “page 2”:
I strongly recommended to put some instructions for the users about how to get those details using the “text box” for instance:
If not, they will have to find/guess by themselves.
Interesting Topics
-
Be successfully certified ITIL 4 Managing Professional
Study, study and study, I couldn’t be successfully certified without studying it, if you are interested...
-
Be successfully certified ITIL 4 Strategic Leader
With my ITIL 4 Managing Professional certification (ITIL MP) in the pocket, it was time to go for the...
-
Hide visual and change background color based on selection
Some small tricks to customize the background colour of a text box...
-
Stacked and clustered column chart or double stacked column chart
In excel, I use a lot the combination of clustered and stacked chart...
-
Refresh Power BI
From the Power BI Service, I can set refresh but, for instance, there is no option to do it monthly or each time a change is made...
-
Power BI alerts to be sent by email from an excel file based on condition
I will explain how to send a list of emails from an excel file after creating alerts...






