A slicer is a visualization tool that filters and segments data. It allows you to filter by specific dimensions (i.e by product type or city) or by a set criteria (ex. large transactions).
When you select an item in the slicer, only that item will be shown and the rest of the data gets filtered out. For instance take your entire sales data. You can set up slicers to look at sales by product, region, date or a particular customer demographic.
To make a slicer select the slicer visual in Power BI under Visualizations. Next choose the column in your data set that you want to filter. You can also create a custom column know as a calculated column.
Below is an example of how slicers can bring your report to life
This example is a static report. However automating a report like this is easy. If your data is connected to a database where data gets updated daily or in real-time you can write a SQL query that always gets the last full week of data. If your data is still in excel files, you can also update the data in excel without having to recreate reports. Another variation is comparing this week vs last week in an automated report.
List Style | Properties |
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List | Default: Lists all values in your slicer. If you have many values it will take up lots of space or user will have to scroll. |
Dropdown | Option: Takes up a small amount of space, category values not shown. |
Selection Control | Properties |
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Select All | Default: Turned off by default. |
Single Select | Default: Turned on by default. Allows user to select only one category in slicer at a time. (unless you hold down ctrl key) |