Page Navigation in Power BI: A Powerful feature to switch between the pages

Navigation has always been an interesting part while designing the dashboards. Power BI as a powerful Business intelligence and a interactive visualization tool, allows to create effective reports through its page navigation features .These navigation buttons gives the access to flip between the pages with ease. It is the most helpful feature in Power BI which improves dashboard usability and provides efficient way to navigate complex reports.

In Power BI, page navigation can be done in different ways:

1.      Tab Navigation

2.      Buttons

3.      Bookmarks Navigator

4.      Page Navigator

Tab Navigator

This is the most common and simplest way of switching between the pages.

In this, you can just use the tabs displayed at the bottom of the report canvas. Here, each tab represents a different page report and clicking on a tab will switch to that page.

Button Navigator

Buttons can be used to create custom navigation. When you select a button on the report canvas, the Format button pane shows you many ways to customize the button to fit your requirements. Like, you can customize the shape of a button, or add a border, background or even an icon.

Here's a more detailed breakdown.

I have analyzed the data of elderly patients  of ages 50+. I have created six pages including Introduction and conclusion.

Step 1-

Go to Insert tab -->Buttons --> Choose a button from the drop down

I have chosen Blank button type

You can copy paste to add more buttons and insert the text, color, size of your choice.

Step 2-

Now, you can set the action for the button where you can define the type of action and its destination.

Go  to Format Button --> Action --> turn it on -->  Choose the type of action you want to perform such as Page navigation to go to a specific page or Bookmark

If you selected Page navigation then choose the destination page from the list. If you selected Bookmark, choose the bookmark you want to navigate to.

Here, for the Demographics button, I have selected the Type as ‘Page Navigation’ and Destination as ‘Demographics’ ,so clicking on Demographics button will take to Demographics page.

Same way destination page can be set for each button. Now the buttons are ready to use.

Bookmark Navigator

Bookmark navigator helps you to navigate between your bookmarks easily and quickly.

It allow you to save the state of a report page, including filters, slicers, and other visuals, so that you can quickly return to that view later. This is useful when you want to create custom navigation experiences within a report.

On the Insert tab --> select Buttons  --> Navigator --> Bookmark navigator

 Page Navigator

In Power BI, multiple pages can be created within a single report, and then with Page Navigation, we can easily switch between those pages in just one click.

To explore more in detail, lets start in setting up the Page Navigator step by step.

First, add the Page navigation on the Introduction page.

Step 1-

Go to  Insert Tab --> Buttons --> Select Navigator --> Click Page Navigator

This will insert the navigation pane directly on the current page with the same names as defined on the page. This is how it will look. The three dots can be used to move the pane anywhere on the page.

 Step 2-

Now, just select the whole navigation pane and copy (Ctrl +C) and paste (Ctrl +V) it on other pages as well.

After pasting the navigation pane on other pages, it will look like this.

Moreover, you can also hide the navigation button which you do not want to show. Like on Demographics page, I want to show all page buttons except for Demographics button since we are already viewing the same page.

For this, click on the navigation pane. Then the Format Navigator will appear.

Step 3-

Format Navigator --> select Visual --> Pages --> Click on show --> All the page navigator buttons will appear here. Simply turn off the Demographics.

This setting will hide the Demographics button on the Demographics page.

The similar setting can be done on other pages where a particular navigator button is not required to be shown.

Navigation buttons can also be styled to different shapes, sizes, fonts, colors and many more as per the requirement.

You can explore many more features to beautify your button on Format Navigator like …

o   Shape

o   Rotation

o   Style

o   Pages

o   Grid Layout

Now, Showtime! So, one click and over to next page?

Not really, simply clicking on button will not take you to your desired page.

Here’s the little trick. Press Ctrl and then click on the button. This will help you in switching between the pages.

Voila! Now you have a functional Page navigation on your Power BI report.

Why to Use Page Navigator

The most useful part of using Page Navigator is when you select this option, Power BI automatically creates a page navigator for you and syncs your report pages as well.

Few best features of Page Navigation which are an added advantage are:

• The titles of the buttons match the page display names.

• The ordering of the buttons matches with the order of the report pages.

• The selected button is the current page.

• The navigator updates automatically as you add or remove pages in your report.

• The titles of the buttons update automatically as you rename pages.

  
  

Finally, to conclude, I believe this blog should be helpful and easier for learning new features of Page Navigation and more in Power BI.