The PBIX file is available at the end of the article.

Power BI reports are meant to simplify complex data, but ironically, they can sometimes do the opposite. Something I have noticed in my years in BI Analytics, is that it’s easy to fall into the habit of adding way too many visualizations in a report.

I get it — it’s an honest effort to answer every question or request from stakeholders. It’s also completely normal and happens to both new and seasoned developers (myself included).

While packing a report with information may seem like a good thing, it mostly leads to overstimulating reports that overwhelm users rather than inform them.

This is where Field Parameters can help. Introduced in Power BI to create dynamic slicers, Field Parameters allow you to swap between dimensions or measures within a single, or multiple, visualizations.

This means you can reduce the number of visuals needed, creating a cleaner, more intuitive report without losing analytical depth.

In this article, I’ll show you an approach I’ve used many times to transform an overcrowded Power BI report with Field Parameters.

In this tutorial, we’re going to use fictitious student data that involves attributes like: reading, writing, and math scores, parent education, test prep, and so on.

We’ve been asked to put together a summary report of average test scores and any additional information we have on students in an effort to uncover some patterns. Specifically, we want to see if scores could be related to any student characteristics.

An early draft might look something like this:

And there is nothing technically wrong here.

It gives us what was requested: average scores for all students and the relationships between student scores and a variety of student characteristics like if they took the test prep course, if they get free lunch, race/ethnicity groups, and parent education level.

This would be acceptable for a “quick and dirty” analysis.

But we can do much better, and this can be simplified, thanks to Field Parameters.

Parameters, in general, are nothing new in Power BI. There have been many methods in the past that have allowed developers to achieve what I’m covering in this article. However, previous methods required some workarounds and a more advanced level of knowledge in the Power Query Editor and DAX.

Now, there is a single button to easily create field parameters located in the ribbon. Navigate to Modeling, click on New Parameter, and select Fields.

Field parameters are not just limited to categorical variables, but in this tutorial we want to focus on the relationships between scores and student characteristics. Therefore, I’m going to select some of our categories like lunch, parental level of education, race/ethnicity, and test preparation course.

This will create a new table using DAX and by default be called Parameter (this can be called whatever you want). You can also change the names of the text in quotes.

Now that we have our new parameter, we’ll want to create a slicer with it. I like to use Button Slicers for parameters, but traditional slicers work just fine.

Now we can get creative. Instead of using four charts, we can provide the same information using only one.

In the previous example we used four bar charts with one of the four categories on the x-axis and student scores on the y-axis.

We can now just use one bar chart, set the new Parameter on the x-axis and student scores on the y-axis, and it will look something like this.

Notice the parameter, Lunch Status, is highlighted and reflects what is presented in the bar chart. Now that we have our base visual and slicer — we can zhuzh it up a bit.

It will now function like this. Instead of four individual charts, it’s one chart with a button slicer to navigate between each category.

I’ve added gridlines and a side-by-side comparison below of the before and after. There is about a 35% decrease in occupied space and a lot less stimuli for end users.

This allows us, as developers, to better convey the information in our reports and retain user engagement. There is also some freed up space for more relevant and important information, or just some nice white space to give the eyes a break.

I hope this tutorial has sparked an idea or offered some inspo for your next project! How do you use field parameters?

📁 To get the complete dashboard with all my edits and designs I have the PBIX file available for download below.

Originally published on Medium. Adapted for PlotStack.