Less = more. Particularly when it comes to dashboards.

Every report you prepare calls for the right balance between information and level of detail. A frequent use is the tooltip to show extra details on a graph or KPI.

But…a tooltip doesn’t work on your filter context. It only works on the graphs themselves. Yet there are lots of scenarios where you’d like to show details about your filter context.

An example: shop details of your branch filters in a sales report

You have a report with the performances of all your branches. The report shows a dozen KPIs that together produce a total picture of the performance. More information would make the report too crowded.

When you filter the report on branch X, it would be cool to see a number of umbrella details of that branch in a tooltip. Details you don’t need on the screen continuously, but that are good to bring up. For example, its location, the manager who runs it, a telephone number, or the number of product categories in that particular shop.

Below I show you how I managed to get that information in a tooltip on your filter context.

A tooltip for your filter context

Step 1 | Create a measure that contains nothing other than the text you want to display in the header. In this example that is “Store Details”.

Step 2 | Put a card under your filters and add your measure to that card. It now shows the text of your measure instead of a number.

Step 3 | Make sure that the filters for which you want to see details, in this case the branch filters, filter your card. It means the filter value is transferred to your card.

Step 4 | Create a separate tab where you visualise the detailed information you want to display in your tooltip.

Step 5 | Switch the tooltip toggle on your card. Now it displays a tooltip with the required details about your filter context.