Creating Custom Tooltips in Power BI

Creating Custom Tooltips in Power BI: A Detailed Guide

Tooltips in Power BI are essential elements for enhancing user interaction and providing additional context to data visualizations. By default, Power BI provides basic tooltips that display a data point’s value when you hover over a visual. However, you may need to create custom tooltips to provide more detailed information, dynamic insights, or improve the overall user experience. In this detailed guide, we will walk you through every step of creating custom tooltips in Power BI, exploring design considerations, implementation, and best practices.

1. Understanding Tooltips in Power BI

1.1 What Are Tooltips?

Tooltips are small pop-up boxes that appear when a user hovers over a visual element (like bars, columns, or data points) in Power BI. They provide additional information, such as values, data labels, or any other relevant context related to the hovered data point.

Default Tooltips: These are automatically generated by Power BI and show basic data about the hovered element (e.g., the value of a bar, column, or point in a scatter plot).

Custom Tooltips: Custom tooltips allow you to design the information shown in a tooltip beyond the default setup. They can be enriched with additional visuals, dynamic data, and enhanced formatting.

1.2 Why Use Custom Tooltips?

Custom tooltips allow you to:

Provide a deeper level of detail without cluttering the visual.
Show related metrics that add value to the main visual (e.g., show a trend chart or compare performance to a benchmark).
Customize the appearance and layout of the tooltip to match your design preferences.
Dynamically change the information based on user interaction or the selected data.

2. Steps to Create Custom Tooltips in Power BI

2.1 Step 1: Prepare the Tooltip Page

To create a custom tooltip, you need to first set up a Tooltip Page in Power BI, which will serve as the dedicated space for your custom tooltip.

Open Power BI Desktop.
Create a New Page: At the bottom of the report view, click on the “+” sign to create a new page in your Power BI report.
Rename the Page: Rename this new page to something like “Tooltip Page” to keep things organized.
Set Page Size: In the Visualizations pane, under Format (paint roller icon), expand the Page Size section. Set the Type to Tooltip. This will automatically resize the page to a smaller dimension suited for tooltips (typically 320px by 240px).
Hide the Tooltip Page from Report View: On the same Format pane, ensure that Show in Report is turned off. This will hide the tooltip page from the regular report view, making it only accessible when used as a tooltip.
- This ensures the tooltip page does not interfere with your main report.

2.2 Step 2: Add Visuals to the Tooltip Page

Once you’ve prepared the page for the tooltip, the next step is to add visuals that will appear when users hover over a visual in your main report.

Design the Tooltip Content: Think about the information you want to display. For example:
- Trend line charts for showing historical performance.
- KPI metrics for important indicators.
- Text boxes or labels for contextual information (e.g., product description or sales target).
- Images or Icons for more visually appealing tooltips.
Insert Visuals:
- Add charts like line charts, bar charts, or pie charts, depending on the data you want to display.
- You can also add cards or KPI visuals to show specific numbers or indicators.
- Place dynamic text boxes for more detailed descriptions or insights.
Format the Tooltip Visuals: You can format the visuals to match the style and branding of your report.
- Use background colors, font sizes, and padding to make the tooltip content visually appealing.
- Set conditional formatting where necessary to highlight specific data points (e.g., changing text or background color based on performance thresholds).
Ensure Tooltip Page Size: Keep the content within the dimensions of the tooltip page (320px x 240px), as anything outside this area may not be visible in the tooltip.

2.3 Step 3: Enable the Tooltip for Main Report Visuals

Once your custom tooltip page is set up, you need to link it to the visuals on your main report where you want to show the tooltip.

Select the Main Visual: Click on the visual in your report where you want the custom tooltip to appear (e.g., a bar chart, line graph, etc.).
Enable Tooltip: In the Visualizations pane, expand the Format section and scroll to Tooltip. Ensure that the tooltip option is turned on.
Link to Tooltip Page:
- In the Tooltip section, under Page, choose the custom tooltip page you created earlier from the dropdown list. This will link the tooltip page to the visual, and when you hover over the data points on the main visual, the custom tooltip will appear.
- You can also select Tooltip from the Fields pane for additional customization.

2.4 Step 4: Customize the Tooltip’s Behavior

Now that the custom tooltip is linked, you can fine-tune its behavior and appearance:

Set Tooltips to be Dynamic: You can add dynamic content based on the data point being hovered over. For example:
- Add fields to the tooltip that are dynamically linked to the hovered visual (e.g., show sales numbers for the selected product or region).
- Use DAX measures to create calculated values that change based on the hovered data.
Adjust Tooltip Positioning: Power BI automatically positions the tooltip based on where the user is hovering over the visual. However, you can ensure a better user experience by positioning the visuals on the tooltip page so they don’t overlap or get cut off.

2.5 Step 5: Test the Tooltip

Testing is essential to ensure the tooltip behaves as expected.

Interact with the Visual: Hover over the data points on the main visual to check if the custom tooltip appears.
Check Content: Make sure the correct information is displayed for each data point.
Adjust Layout: If necessary, adjust the layout of the tooltip content to ensure it looks good on different screen sizes and doesn’t overwhelm the user.

3. Advanced Customizations for Tooltips

3.1 Using DAX Measures in Tooltips

You can use DAX (Data Analysis Expressions) to create dynamic measures that calculate values based on the selected data point. These measures will update as users hover over different parts of your main visual.

Example Measure: Sales Growth = DIVIDE(SUM(Sales[CurrentPeriod]), SUM(Sales[PreviousPeriod])) - 1
Using this in a Tooltip: You can add this measure to your tooltip to dynamically display sales growth when hovering over sales data.

3.2 Tooltips with Drillthrough

Drillthrough functionality allows users to click on a data point and navigate to a new page with detailed information, potentially with different custom tooltips. By combining drillthrough and custom tooltips, you provide users with both quick insights (tooltips) and deeper analysis (drillthrough).

Create a Drillthrough Page: Set up a new page with detailed visuals and use the “Drillthrough” feature in Power BI to allow users to right-click and drill into data.

3.3 Dynamic Tooltip Behavior with Bookmarks

Bookmarks enable you to control the state of a report and can be used to adjust tooltip content. You can create a specific bookmark that triggers a custom tooltip when the user interacts with a visual or a slicer.

4. Best Practices for Creating Custom Tooltips

Keep it Simple: A tooltip should not overwhelm users with too much information. Focus on providing relevant, concise insights that enhance the understanding of the visual.
Use Color Effectively: Color coding can help highlight key information or indicate performance (e.g., green for positive growth, red for negative).
Test for Readability: Ensure that the tooltip content is readable, even with smaller visual elements. Use appropriate font sizes and contrast.
Ensure Accessibility: Consider accessibility features like high contrast, color blindness considerations, and screen reader support for users who need it.
Provide Context: Tooltips should add value by providing context or insights that aren’t immediately obvious from the main visual.

5. Conclusion

Custom tooltips in Power BI allow for a much richer and more interactive user experience. By creating a dedicated tooltip page, adding relevant visuals, and linking them to main report visuals, you can provide valuable insights in a concise, engaging format. With advanced features like dynamic content using DAX, drillthrough functionality, and bookmarks, the potential for customizing tooltips is vast. Following best practices and testing the tooltips ensures that they enhance the usability and understanding of your Power BI reports.